Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

The AI rally is boosting semiconductor stocks, which are traditionally a highly cyclical leading indicator of economic growth. A soft landing (or just a very mild recession) is still unlikely, but less so than it was a few months ago.

The share performance of highly-cyclical semiconductor firms has always given a good advance read on economic activity. Today, semis are pointing to an upturn in one of the most leading data points of sentiment, ISM new orders.

Similarly, semis are also pointing to a global cyclical upturn. South Korean exports are themselves a highly cyclical barometer of global activity and semis’ rise suggest they should soon do likewise.

One must be careful when using single inputs like this. It’s well known the rally in semis is being driven by AI speculation, and it is also fairly well understood that stocks like Nvidia now look overvalued.

Furthermore, it’s folly not to weigh up the rally in semis with the weight of other evidence that the US will soon enter a recession, if it’s not already in one (as I have discussed frequently).

Nonetheless, it’d be remiss to ignore altogether a hitherto reliable leading signal of economic growth, that may be telling us something we’re missing.

It’s common for one sector (eg housing, oil, etc) to lead us into a recession, and it’s not unusual for a sector to lead us out of one too.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“I’m sick and tired of hearing Democrats whining about Joe Biden’s age. The man knows how to govern. Just shut up and vote to save Democracy.”

- Rob Reiner, Hollywood savant

Perhaps you’re aware that the World Health Organization (WHO) is cooking up a plan to impose its will over all the sovereign nations on this planet in the event of future pandemics.

That means, for instance, that the WHO would issue orders to the USA about lockdowns, vaccines, and vaccine passports and we US citizens supposedly would be compelled to follow them.

Why the “Joe Biden” regime would go along with this globalist fuckery is one of the abiding mysteries of our time - except that they go along with everything else that the cabal of Geneva cooks up, such as attacks on farmers, and on oil production, and on relations between men and women, and on personal privacy, and on economic liberty throughout Western Civ, as if they’re working overtime to kill it off. And all of us with it.

I think they are working overtime at that because the sore-beset citizens of Western Civ are onto their game, and getting restless about it. So, the Geneva cabal is in a race against time before the center pole of their circus tent collapses and the nations of the world are compelled to follow the zeitgeist in the direction of de-centralizing, foiling all their grand plans.

The “Joe Biden” regime is pretending to ignore the reality that this WHO deal is actually a treaty that would require ratification by a two-thirds vote in the senate, an unlikely outcome. In any case, handing over authority to the WHO — in effect, to its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — to push around American citizens like a giant herd of cattle would be patently unlawful.

That center pole of the circus tent is the wobbling global economy. It’s barely holding up the canvas over the three rings of the circus. In the center ring, the death-defying spectacle of the Biden Family crime case is playing out before a huge audience (us). This week, a gun went off at the FBI and smoke is curling out of the barrel. FBI Director Christopher Wray was forced to verify that he’s been sitting on an incriminating document for three years from a “trusted” confidential human source, i.e., an informant, stating that the Biden Family received a $5-million bribe from a foreign entity when “JB” was vice-president.

That’s only one bribe of many others, of course, as documented in the Hunter Biden laptop, and it must be obvious it represents treasonous behavior that will demand resignation or impeachment. As this spools out in the weeks and months ahead, do you think Americans will be in the mood to accept further insults such as “Joe Biden” surrendering our national sovereignty to the WHO?

Anyway, you must ask yourself: why on earth should I trust the WHO about anything? Did they not participate in laying a trip on the world with Covid-19? How did those lockdowns work out? Do you think they destroyed enough businesses and ruined enough households? How’s the vaccination program doing? Effective? Safe? Yeah, maybe not so much. Maybe killing a lot of people, wrecking immune systems, sterilizing reproductive organs, causing gross disabilities, shattering lives.

Of course, in over three years neither the WHO nor the US medical authorities showed the slightest interest in helping to figure out how the Covid-19 virus was made in a lab, and exactly how it got loose in the world. Lately, Dr. Ghebreyesus has warned the world about much worse future pandemics supposedly coming down at us. Oh? Really? What does he know that we don’t? That possibly new efforts to concoct chimeric diseases are ongoing in labs around the world? (You know that dozens of such labs were discovered in Ukraine as the war got underway there in 2022.) What’s Dr. Ghebreyesus doing to stop that?

If US orgs and citizens are involved in this “research,” why doesn’t the WHO alert our government leaders so they can stop it? (Would they? I’m not so sure.) And, who is behind it this time? The Eco-Health Alliance again, like with Covid-19? By the way, that outfit got another whopping grant last fall from the NIH to “study” bat viruses — right after the NIH terminated a previous grant on account of The Eco-Health Alliance failing to turn over notebooks and other records.

No, you cannot trust the WHO about anything. The “trust horizon” (a concept introduced by the great Nicole Foss, late of The Automatic Earth dot com) is shrinking. You can no longer trust any distant authorities. You also cannot trust the US federal government (especially the executive branch behind “Joe Biden”). And notice: the trust horizon is shrinking just as the world is de-centralizing. This, you see, is the main contradiction behind all the Globalists’ twisted ambitions to control everything, including you. They are working against the current tide of human history which is pushing everything toward down-scaling, re-localization, and re-assertion of the sovereign individual person.

That trend will become increasingly evident as things organized at the giant scale start to implode — giant retail chains, medical behemoths, hedge funds, big banks, you name it. The world no longer has the mojo for globalism. There’s reason to wonder these days whether the USA has the mojo to remain a unified national polity of states. Our federal government is not only financially bankrupt beyond any coherent reckoning, it is also morally bankrupt, and it has decided to make war against its own people. None of this is satisfactory and none of this is working. It’s time to figure out who and what you can trust and act accordingly.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) warned in a Tuesday advisory that Minnesota residents who use marijuana cannot legally own firearms despite the recent legalization of cannabis for recreational use.

According to the St. Paul ATF office, because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, people who smoke weed or take marijuana edibles are "still federally defined as an 'unlawful user' of a controlled substance," and are therefore "prohibited from shipping, transporting, receiving, or possessing firearms or ammunition."

"Until marijuana is legalized federally, firearms owners and possessors should be mindful that it remains federally illegal to mix marijuana with firearms and ammunition," said ATF acting special agent in charge of the of the St. Paul field division, Jeff Reed.

That warning from the ATF is concerning for Second Amendment rights advocate Rob Doar, vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus. He said he's long been aware of the state-and-federal cannabis contradiction, whether it's for medical or recreational use.

Doar urges gun owners to be aware of the risks, even though under Minnesota's new law, sheriffs cannot deny someone a permit to carry solely because they are enrolled in the medical cannabis program or are an adult using marijuana. -CBS News

"I think if [the ATF agents] weren't planning on enforcing it, they may have just let it go and it would kind of be a wink-wink, nudge-nudge that yes it's illegal, but much like other federal cannabis prohibitions, we're not going to be enforcing it," said Doar, adding "The fact that they sent out the notice is cause for some raised eyebrows."

Cannabis attorney Jason Tarasek of Vincente LLP says that the federal government has typically turned a blind eye and has "left states alone" when it comes to those which have legalized marijuana, but now "It's an interesting song and dance we're going through with the federal government."

Doar and Tarasek would like clarification from the feds.

"It would be great to get some clearer guidance from the federal government that would make people in legal markets more comfortable that they don't need to be worried about the federal government knocking at their door," said Tarasek.

During the Obama years, the DOJ issued guidance advising that they wouldn't interfere in states that had legalized marijuana as long as it didn't interfere with federal law enforcement priorities. It was rescinded by former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the Trump administration.

Read the ATF letter below:

Oil prices were trading up on Friday afternoon as shorts got a little nervous heading into the OPEC+ weekend, with new rumors circulating about the group’s discussions about another 1 million bpd in production cuts.

The OPEC+ group is scheduled for three separate meetings beginning this weekend and concluding on June 4.

While the general sentiment has been that the group will keep the status quo as far as production targets are concerned. But Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister has made boisterous threats against oil’s speculators in the runup to the meeting, saying that shorts will be “ouching”.

On Thursday, Reuters suggested that the OPEC+ group would be unlikely to deepen its production targets at the meeting this weekend.

But late on Friday, Reuters suggested that OPEC+ was indeed discussing an additional output cut of around 1 million barrels “among possible options” for the meeting on June 4.

“Everything is on the table,” Iran’s OPEC Governor Amir Zamaninia told reporters in the Austrian capital.

Crude oil prices were already trading up ahead of the meeting, but increased even more in the afternoon hours, bringing Brent crude to $76.32 at 4:20 p.m., a $2.06 per barrel increase on the day. WTI was trading at $71.90 per barrel at that time.

A supply reduction of as much as 1 million barrels a day is the most likely outcome, according to RBC’s Chief Commodities Strategist Helima Croft.

“We think that the continued macro worries and soured sentiment will lead the group to make another downward adjustment,” she said in a note.

But Saudi Arabia appears to still be in control of OPEC+, and The Kingdom could decide to make good on his threats to punish short sellers for their speculative trades that fly in the face of market fundamentals.

“I keep advising them (referencing oil speculators) that they will be ouching, they did ouch in April, I don’t have to show my cards. I am not a poker player…but I would just tell them watch out,” Saudi’s energy minister said late last month in the runup to the meeting.

As a reminder for why there could be some "ouching". Bloomberg shows, the trading positions of hedge funds and other non-commercial traders are at the most bearish levels since at least 2011 across a combination of all major oil contracts...

Finally, while hedge funds are betting that OPEC is quietly overproducing and exporting much more than their recent quota permits, a recent update by Goldman Sachs shows that bears may be in for a very rude awakening, as seaborne net exports by OPEC countries which announced a cut in April have finally tumbled by over 1mmb/d over the past 2 weeks.

OPEC+ has suggested with its latest moves that its sweet price spot is around $80-90 per barrel, so it is trying to keep prices around that level.

Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardoan.org,

It has always been astounding to me that people think for even a second that their government makes decisions to help the people—that has never been the case.

If a government’s decision helps anyone it is always an after effect…or an afterthought or a collateral unintended benefit.

The primary intent is for power, control, and money…to satisfy individual pursuits and goals of the global narcissistic/god-complex elite.

Anyone (which turns out to be most everyone) who supports this and thinks their government, or their nation, is operating in the people’s interest is signing their own death warrant.

“Don’t be so negative, Dr. Todd, there are good things in life too!”

Oh my yes, there are: newborn babies, sunsets, oceans, art, music, forests, waterfalls, sex with your lover, dogs…millions of things. But that is not what I am writing about right now. I am writing about the thing, and group of things, that will wipe all of that good stuff off the face of the earth. Sure, sure, sure, it won’t be forever. Good will prevail, but it could be a million years before it all comes back if we let it go now. And I think it is worth the fight to preserve what we’ve got.

Needless to say, people have always followed leaders. I am not an anthropologist, but I would take a guess that even in primitive times there were leaders of tribes, chiefs, kings, queens, or whatever. I would also guess that this arrangement probably worked well more often than not. Societies were close knit; if a leader went bonkers it was probably easier to just push him or her off a cliff somewhere. And considering how different things were back then, there probably was not as much incentive to be selfish, power hungry, wampum hungry, or weird in other ways. I also would guess this complacent sort of culture, if there ever was such a thing, did not last very long.

I’m sure adjacent tribes had some things the neighbors wanted, and sure the all too human trait of wanting power over others did not take too long to appear. Being the Grand Poobah of many people had to have the same allure it has today. Wars broke out, discrimination certainly reared its ugly head (“that tribe over there has longer necks than we do, let’s kill them!”), and of course truly important issues caused conflicts, like need for food, water, etc.

Things were a lot worse back in history than today in a lot of ways. But things along these lines did actually get better, in my humble opinion, during a brief period in the West. The establishment of a new country with fresh ideals was a sight for sore eyes back in the late 1700’s. I don’t think anything like it, on that particular scale, had been attempted in the human experience post antiquity (which we, regardless of what we have been told, know very little about). It indeed was a grand experiment—the new colonies in North America shedding the shackles of the tyranny of King George III of England.

The new fledgling country created a Constitution that was truly inspiring at the time. The checks and balances incorporated in that government was also inspiring, and did hold itself together fairly well for quite some time. Of course there are always problems, as there would be with anything brave and novel. But it all hung together fairly well for a bit of time.

I’ll stop there with the history lesson, which may not be all that accurate anyway, but I think you get the picture. Even if you disagree that the new United States of America was an exciting bit of work, you probably can agree that putting one man, or woman, in charge of a lot of people, has never gone all that well. Before the presidency of the United States, there were of course Kings and Queens. Even the US was concerned about having a single person at the head of the executive branch of government, lest it be too much like a monarchy. Some continue (many actually) to believe that the US form of government is still the best, and if certain things are readjusted, the US will continue to be the greatest country in the world.

I digress.

Wherever you are on that fence, you must agree that things are rather different now than what the founding fathers envisioned. Why? That would take a book, or several, to address. Point here is that we can no longer trust this system to be objective, compassionate, fair, benevolent, and not self-serving and destructive. In fact, it seems that the system itself is selling out to foreign interests, and the actual sovereignty of the nation is threatened, and this threat is largely coming from within.

We see this with other nations as well, basically handing over their sovereign rights as a nation to the likes of the WHO, or the UN, or even the WEF. What we see is much like watching a Sci-Fi motion picture where the bad guys are stripping a nation of everything that makes it the “representation of the people” into a personal self-serving slave to unelected powers.

What does this mean? Well, when you really think about it, there is no way this sort of global take over could ever be in the best interests of other human beings living on the planet. Even if you could have a benevolent world power (which is an oxymoron, in my opinion) you would, just by its nature, have to rule in very broad strokes, i.e., everything you implemented would have to be implemented for the good of the majority. That leaves quite a few people out. The hundreds of diverse cultures and the billions of humans that make them up would have to be reduced down to manageable attributes—becoming more and more like each other.

What does this sound like? If you thought “prison” you win the prize. Look at cultures like North Korea, and you will get some idea of what would be happening. And it is worse than that, because North Korea did not start out as a diverse culture—unlike the diversity of the entire globe.

And all that assuming this world system is benevolent, which it most certainly is not. Of course they present themselves as benevolent, and much like all fictional evil leaders (as well as the real ones throughout history), they may even believe they are benevolent. But any world leader(s) will have to focus on the destruction of humanity before they can accomplish any sort of world control over its inhabitants. That is simply the nature of the beast. I’ll say it again: any world leader(s) will have to focus on the destruction of humanity before they can accomplish any sort of world control over its inhabitants. No two ways about it.

And of course, in our modern age, this destruction of humanity is quite a bit more complex than literally whipping people into compliance like they did in the old days. Right now (and this will probably change) most of the psyop is accomplished either through the carrot enticement and then ruling with the stick, or through fear (stick first, carrot as a reward for compliance.)

It is the same game.

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

Repeated COVID-19 vaccination weakens the immune system, potentially making people susceptible to life-threatening conditions such as cancer, according to a new study.

Multiple doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines lead to higher levels of antibodies called IgG4, which can provide a protective effect. But a growing body of evidence indicates that the “abnormally high levels” of the immunoglobulin subclass actually make the immune system more susceptible to the COVID-19 spike protein in the vaccines, researchers said in the paper.

They pointed to experiments performed on mice that found multiple boosters on top of the initial COVID-19 vaccination “significantly decreased” protection against both the Delta and Omicron virus variants and testing that found a spike in IgG4 levels after repeat Pfizer vaccination, suggesting immune exhaustion.

Studies have detected higher levels of IgG4 in people who died with COVID-19 when compared to those who recovered and linked the levels with another known determinant of COVID-19-related mortality, the researchers also noted.

A review of the literature also showed that vaccines against HIV, malaria, and pertussis also induce the production of IgG4.

“In sum, COVID-19 epidemiological studies cited in our work plus the failure of HIV, Malaria, and Pertussis vaccines constitute irrefutable evidence demonstrating that an increase in IgG4 levels impairs immune responses,” Alberto Rubio Casillas, a researcher with the biology laboratory at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico and one of the authors of the new paper, told The Epoch Times via email.

The paper was published by the journal Vaccines in May.

Pfizer and Moderna officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Both companies utilize messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in their vaccines.

Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the technology, said the paper illustrates why he’s been warning about the negative effects of repeated vaccination.

“I warned that more jabs can result in what’s called high zone tolerance, of which the switch to IgG4 is one of the mechanisms. And now we have data that clearly demonstrate that’s occurring in the case of this as well as some other vaccines,” Malone, who wasn’t involved with the study, told The Epoch Times.

“So it’s basically validating that this rush to administer and re-administer without having solid data to back those decisions was highly counterproductive and appears to have resulted in a cohort of people that are actually more susceptible to the disease.”

Possible Problems

The weakened immune systems brought about by repeated vaccination could lead to serious problems, including cancer, the researchers said.

Read more here...

Authored by Cardinal Pritchard via NotTheBee.com,

You guys, this is getting a little ridiculous. Since when is a pregnant man something we celebrate during pride month? Like, this stuff is straight out of the circus but somehow — and I don't know when it happened — here we are celebrating a chick who cut off her boobs and made herself look like a man and then got herself pregnant.

Why?

[Warning: Post-Mastectomy Photos]

Fashion magazine cover featuring pregnant transgender man Logan Brown sparks outrage: ‘Could not sink any lower’ https://t.co/cI3Dp6yT0t pic.twitter.com/kYjun4aYvm

— New York Post (@nypost) June 2, 2023

Why are we celebrating this?

What makes this progressive?

I'm genuinely curious, because I don't think everyday liberals, progressives — whatever they want to call themselves — I don't think they're really into supporting this kind of stuff when it comes down to it.

I think they realize how strange it is but they don't want to say anything because they might be rejected by their peers.

Yet this is what they're supporting with their silence:

Introducing Logan Brown, GLAMOUR's June Pride cover star ??

“I'm a pregnant trans man and I do exist. No matter what anyone says, I'm living proof.”

??https://t.co/445NHyTcbH #Pride #PrideMonth pic.twitter.com/6NNdgsmXIF

— British GLAMOUR (@GlamourMagUK) June 1, 2023

From the story:

A topless pregnant transgender man featured on the cover of Glamour U.K.'s June issue ignited a fierce reaction from online critics Thursday.

Author Logan Brown, a 27-year-old who was born female but now identifies as a transgender man, posed as the cover star of British Glamour Magazine's digital issue celebrating Pride Month in a painted-on suit, showcasing a large baby bump.

Brown unexpectedly became pregnant with partner Bailey J Mills, a non-binary drag performer in the U.K., while taking a break from testosterone treatments due to health reasons, the fashion magazine said.

"A topless pregnant transgender man."

Try saying that ten times fast.

Doesn't really roll off the tongue very well, now does it?

And that last paragraph there is just a doozy, I tell ya...

I can't even do it.

Look, I know we're supposed to be outraged by this stuff or whatever, but I've grown accustomed to it when it comes to the far left. They're weird, man, and everybody knows it.

These are crazy times, and while everybody loves a little science fiction, this is anything but that. It's real, and it's right there at the top of the page. It may look like something out of a Ray Bradbury story, but it's the truth, and when people see the truth — in this case, a mainstream magazine featuring a "pregnant transgender man" on the cover — it hits them differently.

So stop arguing with people on Twitter and have some real conversations, why don't ya?

Cuz that's the only way to get the word out as to how strange these people really are.

In the span of just two weeks, nearly 30 children have vanished in Cleveland, sparking huge concern from a local police chief who said he hasn't seen anything like this in his 33-year career.

Newburgh Heights police chief John Majoy told reporters that as many as 27 children have been reported missing in the greater Cleveland area.

“It’s a silent crime that happens right under our noses,” he said.

“The problem is where are they? Where do they go? They can be in a drug house or farmed to prostitution or caught up in drug trafficking or gangs.”

He called the number of missing children, whose ages range from 12 to 17, unprecedented when speaking to reporters.

"There's always peaks and valleys with missing persons, but this year it seems like an extraordinary year," he told Fox News Digital.

"For some reason, in 2023, we've seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because we don't know what's going on with some of these kids, whether they're being trafficked or whether they're involved in gang activity or drugs."

Cleveland police recorded that the kids were reported missing between May 2 and May 16.

As The Sun reports, more than 15,000 children were reported missing in Ohio last year, and four of them were found dead.

In more than 8,500 of the cases, abduction played a role, with 34 cases being the result of abductions by a noncustodial parent.

According to a report by Ohio Attorney General, Dave Yost, only five of the cases stemmed from children being kidnapped by a stranger.

Police were able to find 36 percent of the children but 615 were still missing when 2023 began.

Shockingly, Cleveland Police records show another 25 youths on its missing persons roster who disappeared between May 17 and May 31.

What the hell is happening in Cleveland?

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In an excellent display of how US foreign policy can be used as a means of pandering to domestic interest groups, the Biden administration has threatened to impose sanctions on Uganda as punishment for that regime's adoption of new laws criminalizing some types of homosexual behavior. 

While it is abundantly clear that this move from the Ugandan state presents absolutely no threat to any vital US interest, the Biden administration apparently believes the situation requires immediate action by the US regime.

According to Axios, the Biden Administration's proposed actions

includ[e] whether the U.S. will continue to safely deliver services under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other forms of assistance and investments. ... Biden administration officials will also review Uganda's eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for hundreds of products.

What exactly are these new laws that require the State Department to get involved in the internal affairs of a country 8,000 miles away? According to The Hill, 

The new anti-gay law would impose the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality” and would impose a life sentence for engaging in gay sex. The state defines “aggravated homosexuality” as homosexual acts carried out by those infected with H.I.V. or homosexual acts that involve children, disabled people, or those drugged against their will. 

Or put another way, the death penalty will be imposed in many cases on those found guilty of engaging in sex with children and with people unable to consent. Even in those cases, these are pretty harsh penalties, and certainly few Americans—from any part of the political spectrum—would support such measures. 

The proposed method of punishing Ugandans is rather curious, however. Note that the sanctions being discussed include—ironically—cutting off AIDS relief dollars, plus dollars that the regime has long insisted are absolutely vital to economic development and poverty relief in the developing world. If that's true, then the US regime proposes trying to impoverish ordinary Ugandans as punishment for acts of the Ugandan regime. 

It is also notable that the US regime appears to now be fixated on such laws in Uganda when similar laws already exist on the books of several US allies. For example, the death penalty can be imposed for various homosexual acts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. "Death by stoning" is also inflicted on alleged homosexuals in US ally Pakistan. Moreover, after 20-years of US occupation, Afghanistan imposes similar punishments. Those are just the places where the death penalty is potentially imposed. Homosexual acts are criminalized in a variety of countries that retain friendly relations with the US including Egypt—the top recipient of US foreign aid—plus Iraq, Jordan, South Sudan, and Nigeria. Homosexual sex between males can bring life imprisonment in Tanzania. 

So why is Uganda now so much in the crosshairs while Saudi Arabia escapes notice? 

The fact is the US regime is threatening sanctions on ordinary Ugandans because it can.  Given that there is no sizable or electorally powerful Ugandan population in the US, it costs the administration nothing to denounce Uganda while also virtue signaling to extremely powerful and well-funded domestic LGBT interest groups. Denouncing the Saudis or the Qataris, on the other, hand might bring geopolitical "complications" and thus you won't hear much about Saudi or Qatari punishment of homosexual acts in the US media or in Washington. 

The US's Moralistic and Imperialist Impulses 

Moreover, Washington's willingness to immediately begin threatening sanctions against some faraway country has been part of the overall imperialist impulse that has prevailed in Washington since the end of the Cold War. This was when the US shifted toward become an ever-more-aggressive world morality police that would attempt to globally "protect right" in vague mimicry of how the federal government—via the federal courts and threats of cutting off federal funding—dictates to the states what counts as acceptable law.

This new scheme was apparent by 1994 when Murray Rothbard wrote a sarcastic article suggesting that the US be prepared to invade any foreign country where the local regime has not sufficiently embraced the American regime's cultural ideals. The key, Rothbard contends, was to define every foreign "deviation" as a threat to US national security. Rothbard noted that even by the mid 1990s, American interventionists such as the neoconservatives had already "cunningly redefined 'national interest' to cover every ill, every grievance, under the sun."

This naturally would lead, Rothbard suggested, to the need to intervene in nearly every foreign country on earth:

Is someone starving somewhere, however remote from our borders? That's a problem for our national interest. Is someone or some group killing some other group anywhere in the world? That's our national interest. Is some government not a "democracy" as defined by our liberal-neocon elites? That challenges our national interest. Is someone committing Hate Thought anywhere on the globe? That has to be solved in our national interest. ...And so every grievance everywhere constitutes our national interest, and it becomes the obligation of good old Uncle Sam, as the Only Remaining Superpower and the world's designated Mr. Fixit, to solve each and every one of these problems. For "we cannot stand idly by" while anyone anywhere starves, hits someone over the head, is undemocratic, or commits a Hate Crime.

And so, since no other countries shape up to U.S. standards in a world of Sole Superpower they must be severely chastised by the U.S., I make a Modest Proposal for the only possible consistent and coherent foreign policy: the U.S. must, very soon, Invade the Entire World! Sanctions are peanuts; we must invade every country in the world, perhaps softening them up beforehand with a wonderful high-tech missile bombing show courtesy of CNN. 

The good news in the Uganda case is that at least we're not hearing any calls for actual regime change or "boots on the ground" in Uganda (so far). 

Fortunately, many Americans haven't yet bought into the idea that every objectionable act by foreign regimes can be defined as a threat to US national interests. This is why even today, when Washington targets some foreign regime for "regime change" or economic sanctions or a volley of cruise missiles, the American interventionists usually try to at least suggest that the target regime is some kind of threat to US "national interests." 

Experience suggests that if the regime really wants to get the American public riled up about a new war, Washington has to make the case for something beyond mere "humanitarian" intervention. This is why the Bush administration felt it had to trump up accusations of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. It's why President Obama claimed the US has a "national security interest in ... ensuring that we’ve got a stable Syria." It's why those who wanted a US war with Bosnia insisted that conflict in the Balkans in the mid 1990s provided a threat to "vital" US interests such as "European stability" and NATO unity. 

Sometimes, though, some foreign countries are so obviously not a threat to the US that "humanitarian" meddling through military action isn't politically viable. In those cases, the regime usually falls back on "sanctions." 

This strategy has been around a long time. Murray Rothbard noticed this trend in 1994 as well, and he listed just some of the real-life suggested sanctions that could be employed to whip foreign regimes into line:

In recent weeks, in addition to humanitarian troops, there had been escalating talk of American "sanctions": against North Korea of course, but also against Japan (for not buying more U.S. exports), against Haiti, against the Bosnian Serbs... Jesse Jackson wants the U.S. to invade Nigeria pronto, and now we have Senato[r] Kerry (D., Mass.) calling for sanctions against our ancient foe, Canada, for not welcoming New England fishermen in its waters.

Uganda is just one of a great many regimes targeted in this fashion in recent decades. 

Yet the landscape has changed considerably since 1994. In 2023, the US obsession with sanctioning dozens of countries has backfired and begun to isolate the US more and more from the developing world and from any regime that doesn't enjoy taking orders from Washington. This includes the regimes in some of the world largest economies, including China, India, and Brazil. The US's tendency to incessantly turn to sanctions to make a political point—and the apparent capriciousness with which the US regime is willing to do so—only motivates the world's regimes to insulate themselves from the US, whether through minimizing dollar transactions or forming tighter alliances with potential allies outside the US orbit. We may soon find Uganda looking for a similar way out. 

Read More:

• "Thanks to Sanctions, the US Is Losing Its Grip on the Middle East"

• "Will Biden Sanction Half the World to Isolate Russia?"

• "Why Sanctions Don't Work, and Why They Mostly Hurt Ordinary People" 

The war from across the border has impacted citizens in the Belgorod region of Russia to the point that many towns and villages have been evacuated, with some looking like ghost towns--this after armed groups mounted multiple raids since the war's start--as well as increased shelling and rocket fire. Just two days ago the anti-Moscow "Russian Volunteer Corps" said they launched another attack out of Ukraine, after a bigger one nearly two weeks ago left multiple casualties and many saboteurs killed. 

The New York Times wrote on Saturday that "Shebekino, a town of 40,000 six miles from the border, has effectively become a new part of the front line as Ukraine has intensified attacks inside Russia, including on residential areas near its own borders." This is all upending the lives of residents in the border region, akin to what already happened long ago on the Ukrainian side of the border. "The spate of assaults, most recently by militia groups aligned against Moscow, has sparked the largest military evacuation effort in Russia in decades," the report underscored. The past days have witnessed area residents move into temporary shelters, including the large Belgorod arena in the oblast capital.

On Saturday the controversial founder and leader of Russia's Wagner mercenary group has offered in a message to the public that he stands ready to send his fighters to protect the border region. 

But as part of the ongoing public spat with the regular military chain of command, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin blamed the army for failing in its duties, given all the latest Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod. 

"If the defense ministry, in the near future, does not stop what is happening in the Belgorod region.. then of course we will come to defend Russian land," Prigozhin said on Telegram. 

"The civilian population is dying in Belgorod," he added, and warned that he would not wait for an "invitation" to deploy his forces there. Earlier in the week Prigozhin went so far as to say some top Russian military commanders should be investigated for crimes related to failure of duty.

Already the Russian military has been active in the region, particularly after the May 21-22 ground incursion by a militia group sent from Ukraine, which saw armed groups take over multiple villages for a short period of time. 

On Saturday two more civilians were killed in cross-border fire from Ukraine. This brings the overall death toll from the area to seven killed just this week. "Since this morning, the district of Shebekino has been under shelling of the Ukrainian armed forces," Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement. One victim was described as an elderly woman, while another woman died from her wounds in the village of Bezlyudovka. 

??Town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region of Russia; June, 2023.

Due to the nonstop shelling of the armed forces of Ukraine, some residents have resorted to looting local stores. pic.twitter.com/urk1LrfsE2

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 3, 2023

A couple of others were wounded in the shelling. Prigozhin's message of potentially sending his fighters to defend the area comes amid rising frustration over the ramped-up attacks. Governor Gladkov has as of the end of this week counted 500 total attacks throughout the conflict, which has included instances of rocket and mortar fire. 

Recovery efforts are underway, with large excavators trying to untangle the wreckage, after India's worst train disaster in decades happened in the eastern state of Odisha on Friday.

At least 288 people have been confirmed killed with more than 900 injured, many seriously, in what's being described as a "three-way accident". Two passenger trains collided, with the massive wreck then impacting a nearby idled freight train. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to the site on Saturday, seeking to console the families of the deceased. "The people we have lost, we will not be able to bring them back. But the government is with their families in their grief," Modi said. "This is a very serious incident for the government. We have given directions for all lines of inquiry, and whoever is found responsible will be given the strongest punishment. They will not be spared."

International correspondents from the site are describing gut-wrenching, horrific scenes. "In humid air filled with the odor of human flesh, relatives went through the harrowing exercise of identifying their loved ones from about 120 dead bodies lined up on the ground after the crash on Friday night," a New York Times report describes. 

"Among those searching was Miyah Jan Mullah, who had come from neighboring West Bengal to look for his son, Musavir, who had been on his way to his tailoring job in Chennai," the tragic account continues. "When Mr. Mullah finally found Musavir’s body, most of it was burned, but his face was largely intact."

Footage shows a huge area of mangled wreckage stretching dozens of cars...

Amid rising frustration and anger directed at authorities among families searching for answers, a preliminary government reports has said the derailment was possibly the result of a signal error.

A consensus sequence of events and timeline has emerged as follows: 

The high-speed passenger train traveling from Kolkata, the Coromandel Express, slammed into a freight train that had been idling at a small-town station, Bahanaga Bazar, around 7 p.m. local time Friday. The passenger train was “going at full speed across the station as it was not supposed to stop” there, the report said, according to The New York Times.

After hitting the freight train, the passenger train, which was carrying 1,257 passengers, derailed. Twenty-one of its coaches bounced off the track, with three more cars landing onto another track.

 “Simultaneously” the Yesvantpur-Howrah Express, a passenger train with 1,039 aboard heading in the opposite direction from Bengaluru to Kolkata, was on the track that the three dislocated coaches lay. This second collision knocked the two coaches of the third train off its tracks.

Emergency services with rescue dogs have reportedly halted the search for live victims and have now turned to body recovery and identification. One survivor and eyewitness told Reuters he saw "Families crushed away, limbless bodies and a bloodbath on the tracks." 

BREAKING: Drone footage of damage from India train crash, as death toll nears 300.pic.twitter.com/u8XaWi6CSQ

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) June 3, 2023

Given the still rising death toll this could in the end surpass the country's biggest disaster in its history, which occurred in August 1995. The Firozabad Train Collision near New Delhi killed 358 people.

Authored by Jessie Zhang via Thje Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An Australian and Swedish investigation has found that among the hundreds of COVID-19 research papers that have been withdrawn, a retracted study linking the drug hydroxychloroquine to increased mortality was the most cited paper.

With 1,360 citations at the time of data extraction, researchers in the field were still referring to the paper “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” long after it was retracted.

Authors of the analysis involving the University of Wollongong, Linköping University, and Western Sydney Local Health District wrote (pdf) that “most researchers who cite retracted research do not identify that the paper is retracted, even when submitting long after the paper has been withdrawn.”

“This has serious implications for the reliability of published research and the academic literature, which need to be addressed,” they said.

“Retraction is the final safeguard against academic error and misconduct, and thus a cornerstone of the entire process of knowledge generation.”

Scientists Question Findings

Over 100 medical professionals wrote an open letter, raising ten major issues with the paper.

These included the fact that there was “no ethics review” and “unusually small reported variances in baseline variables, interventions and outcomes,” as well as “no mention of the countries or hospitals that contributed to the data source and no acknowledgments to their contributions.”

Other concerns were that the average daily doses of hydroxychloroquine were higher than the FDA-recommended amounts, which would present skewed results.

They also found that the data that was reportedly from Australian patients did not seem to match data from the Australian government.

Eventually, the study led the World Health Organization to temporarily suspend the trial of hydroxychloroquine on COVID-19 patients and to the UK regulatory body, MHRA, requesting the temporary pause of recruitment into all hydroxychloroquine trials in the UK.

France also changed its national recommendation of the drug in COVID-19 treatments and halted all trials.

Currently, a total of 337 research papers on COVID-19 have been retracted, according to Retraction Watch.

Further retractions are expected as the investigation of proceeds.

More than $1.3 billion U.S. tax dollars were sent to Russia and China over the past five years (since 2017), according to a new analysis released today by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and OpenTheBooks.com auditors. This amount likely doesn’t reflect the total amount because federal agencies do not follow the trail of tax dollars to their final destination.

Senator Ernst and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) are leading the charge to create transparency and accountability for the taxpayer dollars that are being handed out in China and Russia. Today, they are introducing the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act that would require every penny from a government grant paid to any organization in China and Russia to be tracked and publicly disclosed.

Senator Ernst and OpenTheBooks determined more than $490 million from U.S. grants and contracts were paid to organizations in China over the past five years and another $870 million were paid to entities in Russia.

"Holding firms responsible to publicly report where and how they use their grants and contract awards can deputize private citizens and make them part of the solution. Radical transparency is revolutionizing U.S. public policy and is the information machine for democracy. Everyone has a stake in a more transparent, effective government."

Some of these projects in Russia and China funded by taxpayer dollars already tracked down include:

• $58.7 million from Department of State, including $96,875 for gender equality through exhibition of New Yorker magazine cartoons

• $51.6 million from Department of Defense, including $6 million for tech support of the military “deployment and distribution command” software – delivering equipment and supplies anywhere our military is deployed, even though the DOD Inspector General warned the Pentagon about using Chinese IT companies on DOD projects

• $4.7 million to a Russian company for health insurance that was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022

• $4.2 million from Health and Human Services, including $770,466 to a state-run lab in Russia to put cats on treadmills

• $2.4 million on Russian alcohol and addiction research

• $2 million funneled to China’s state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses and transgenic mice

• $1.6 million to Chinese companies from National School Lunch Program, which means taxpayer dollars from the CARES Act meant for American farmers went to Chinese ag exporters

• $1.45 million for pandemic virus tracking in Russia

• Subsidies for the Russian space program by funding the Russia Space Agency and vendors

* * *

And while it's great that the US is tracking "every penny" paid to adversarial countries, why doesn't the government also track every penny spent to friendly countries - what little is left of them - not to mention domestic recipients? Last time we checked, the Pentagon - the biggest money laundering machine in the world, far greater than bitcoin ever could be - which can only account for 39% of its $3.5 trillion in assets and racked up $35 trillion in accounting changes in just one year, and has never passed a full audit. Maybe instead of worrying so much about the few billions going to the Wuhan lab - what's done is done - someone can rein in the trillions in untracable spending and money laundering that takes place right under the noses of America's elected bureaucrats.

Washing State has fired their anti-racist 'director of the Office of Equity' for being a huge racist, according to findings from an internal investigation obtained by The Center Square.

Hired in 2021, Dr. Karen Johnson was fired on May 17 by Gov. Jay Inslee after an internal investigation launched in November - and published nine days later - found that she engaged in "inappropriate conduct," which included "inappropriate or insensitive comments," including ethnic remarks.

For example, Johnson, pictured above, told one female employee that she couldn't wear her hair in braids because it was "cultural appropriation." (Oh?)

More specific allegations via The Center Square;

• Dr. Johnson accusing certain OFM employees of being paternalistic during a meeting, then getting “infuriated” and telling her staff to log off the meeting when Chief Financial Officer David Schumacher indicated that she did not know what the term meant and the dictionary definition was read.
• Dr. Johnson “alluding” to employees that she received messages from God and telling specific people that “God had instructed her to hire them and that they would be disappointing God by not accepting the role.”
• Dr. Johnson, who is Black, telling a Mexican employee that “this may take some time for me because I generally distrust Mexican people. Mexican people have the option of being White when it is convenient for them.”

The investigation, which involved more than a dozen witnesses and 2.649 pages of documentation, also found that Johnson "was disorganized and lacked adequate structure and process," and publicly criticized employees.

In a letter to the law firm which conducted the investigation, Johnson said: "If this decision means that, by default, what has been said about me without me stands as fact, so be it," adding "I must keep a clear conscious by not participating in this triangulating behavior, one of my non-negotiables. My truth is that I am more than willing to make myself available to meet with you and the person(s) bringing the allegation(s)/concern(s), as is my custom. Seeking reconciliation is more important to me than seeking to prove who is right. My destiny depends on this decision and destiny demands that I move forward."

Investigators also found that since the office was set up in 2021, five out of 17 employees resigned. "Each of the individuals who resigned attributed their decision to leave, at least in part, to a chaotic, overburdened, and disrespectful workplace culture created by Dr. Johnson."

Employees raised several concerns, including a lack of organizational process and procedures, micromanagement, and a lack of work-life balance, as well as “inappropriate or insensitive comments.”

One employee was “publicly chastised” for attending a meeting they had been invited to at the governor’s office without getting permission or notifying Johnson, and another reported being “shamed” by Johnson in a private meeting and in public.

Investigators said several people raised concerns of “biased and insensitive conduct,” including stereotyping and bias based on gender, bias against Mexicans, and tokenism related to military veteran status. -Seattle Times

Two employees "were told to wear makeup, specifically lipstick," according to the report - a claim denied by Johnson.

According to Johnson, "the staff she was given did not have the skill set needed to operate with emotional maturity. Her staff operated like they needed a boss to tell them what to do. They could not operate at the speed of trust with character and competence."

Also, at least two of them were Mexican - so Johnson would "generally distrust" them.

In an interesting plot twist as we wade deeper into the 2024 election cycle, YouTube on Friday announced it will stop deleting content arguing that "widespread fraud, errors or glitches" affected the 2020 or other past presidential elections. 

“In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the platform said in a blog post.  

The policy change elicited howls from the left, including an Orwell-flavored protest from an advocacy group called "Free Press." The group's Nora Benavidez told AFP that YouTube's "dangerous decision to immediately stop removing content... which continues to sow hate and disinformation that threatens our democracy must be reversed immediately."   

In its announcement, YouTube said it had removed "tens of thousands" of election-related videos but that, effective immediately, the 2020 election is fair game for anyone who wants to take a shot at it. The company's policing of election discussions began in December 2020, after the safe harbor date for state vote certifications had passed.

YouTube gave me a strike and deleted my video for showing election fraud claims from both Dems & Repubs—just raw history, no commentary... https://t.co/4NvpTTLnAK pic.twitter.com/OFMPVTPLAH

— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) June 2, 2023

YouTube's ham-handed censorship regime clobbered those who merely reported about claims of 2024 election misdeeds. "Their efforts were so aggressive that at one point YouTube actually censored a video released by the January 6 committee," notes Robby Soave at Reason.  

"We recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape," said YouTube, the San Bruno, California-based social media titan and subsidiary of Alphabet's Google. In March, YouTube restored Donald Trump's account, which had been blocked from adding new content in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot.

Don't think for a second YouTube is turning into a free speech utopia: People searching for information about elections will continue to be steered toward "content from authoritative sources," with dissident voices nudged from search results and suggestions.  

What's more, YouTube will curiously keep banning election-fraud claims relating to the 2021 German federal election, and the 2014, 2018, and 2022 Brazilian Presidential elections. 

YouTube said certain election content is still forbidden: 

"Content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes"

As we wrote in May, YouTube has been removing videos about Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, with the the Google-owned video platform then explaining that its policies prohibit videos about "criminal and terrorist organizations."

Authored by Brian McGlinchey via starkrealities.substack.com 

As the latest debt-ceiling drama winds down, Americans are varyingly exasperated, angered, anxious and maybe even a little bit entertained by the spectacle.

While their emotions vary, most citizens have something in common: They don’t realize they’re being misled about the actual depth of their government’s financial disorder. Despite all the talk of the federal government hitting a Congressionally-set $31.4 trillion debt limit, the truth is that DC’s actual liabilities are far higher than even that disturbing number.

Estimates by the relatively few scholars and organizations who venture to expose Washington’s charade vary, but they overwhelmingly place the federal government’s true total obligations at over $100 trillion. For example, Truth In Accounting’s latest tally puts Uncle Sam’s total IOUs at $156 trillion.

The frequently-mentioned $31 trillion “national debt” figure only encompasses Treasury borrowing in the form of bills, notes and bonds. Critically, it doesn’t include unfunded liabilities. That’s the term for financial promises the government has made without having money set aside to fulfill them.

America’s unfunded liabilities span three main categories of promised future benefits:

• Federal employee and military veteran pensions and benefits.

• Social Security retirement income and disability insurance

• Medicare benefits

Calculations of the present value of unfunded liabilities vary, because they require assumptions about variables including future interest rates, life expectancies and the cost of health care.

Each year, the Treasury produces a mammoth report summarizing the federal government’s financial situation. While the Treasury presents the national debt as it’s commonly understood, and separately presents its own calculation of unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and similar programs, nowhere in 258 pages does the department combine those numbers and present the hideous $100-trillion-plus total.

The absence of that grand total is no oversight: Letting citizens see the stark reality of the government’s financial condition simply isn’t in the interest of our rulers, whether they’re on the blue team or the red one.

Counting only Treasury borrowing, the federal government’s $31 trillion debt equates to 117% of the country’s $26.5 trillion gross domestic product (GDP), a figure that approximates the country’s annual economic production. That’s alarming enough, but if we use Truth in Accounting’s numbers, the total is a jarring 589% of GDP.

Providing a more relatable perspective, the Chicago-based watchdog group says the “true national debt” comes out to $933,000 per taxpayer.

As I wrote in November, the federal government’s path to financial calamity is hardwired into the budget process, as so-called “mandatory spending” on programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid now represent a whopping 71% of the US budget, more than double the share in 1965.

Meanwhile, interest payments alone are consuming ever-higher shares of federal revenues:

There’s good reason why the government chooses not to illuminate citizens about the true national debt. After all, if more Americans grasped the full scope of Washington’s fiscal insanity, they would:

• Understand that promised Social Security and Medicare benefits are unsustainable — particularly for the youngest Americans, who are currently compelled to fund benefits for older Americans in a coercive Ponzi scheme

• Be less likely to support costly foreign interventionism, to include the more than $113 billion already spent on the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine — more Americans would question the premise that their security is impacted by who controls Ukraine’s heavily ethnic-Russian Donbas region.

• Toss aside the rose-colored glasses through which they view big-spending proposals, like last summer’s $375 billion package to fund a crony-enriching and quixotic battle against climate change

• Apply greater scrutiny to military spending, with more people questioning why the Pentagon should spend more than $7.3 trillion over the next 10 years — more than it spent in the decade that encompassed the peak of US warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan

• Cast a harsher eye on thinly-disguised vote-buying schemes — from student debt cancellation to reparations for black people — and increasingly disfavor all varieties of wealth redistribution, from subsidies for Iowa farmers to (illegal) aid for Israel.

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

Nearly 800,000 Maryland drivers sporting the War of 1812 license plate have a URL on the bottom that now links to a website promoting an online casino based in the Philippines. 

The license plate issued between 2012-16 has the URL www.starspangled200.org printed at the bottom. The website once informed people about the American patriot Francis Scott Key and the history of the War of 1812 when the British bombarded Fort McHenry in downtown Baltimore City.

Domain registration information shows that starspangled200.org has since been re-registered to "Philippines Best Betting Site, Deposit 100 Receive 250." 

A Redditor earlier this week first spotted the change. They said, "I was never a fan of having a plate celebrating the War of 1812, but I'm even more upset now that I (and tons of other Marylanders) are driving advertisements for international online gambling."

A Maryland Department of Transportation's Motor Vehicle Administration spokesperson told local news Fox5 that it "does not endorse the views or content on the current website using that URL, and is working with the agency's IT department to identify options to resolve the current issue." 

Nearly 800,000 Marylanders are driving billboards for a Philippines casino. Great job, MVA... 

Authored by 'Robert Kogon' via The Brownstone Institute,

So, word has it that Twitter has withdrawn from the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, a fact that appears only to be known thanks to a couple of pissy tweets from EU officials. I cannot help but wonder if this is not finally Elon Musk’s response to the question I asked in my article here several weeks ago: namely, how can a self-styled “free-speech absolutist” be part of a “Permanent Task-Force on Disinformation” that is precisely a creation of the EU’s Code?

But does it matter? The answer is no. The withdrawal of Twitter’s signature from the Code is a highly theatrical, but essentially empty gesture, which will undoubtedly serve to shore up Musk’s free speech bad-boy bona fides, but has virtually no practical consequences. 

This is because: (1) as I have discussed in various articles (for instance, here and here), the effect of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is to render the hitherto ostensibly voluntary commitments undertaken in the Code obligatory for all so-called Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and (2) as discussed here, the European Commission just designated a whole series of entities as VLOPs that were never signatories of the Code.

Twitter is thus in no different a position than Amazon, Apple and Wikipedia, none of which were ever signatories of the Code, but all of which will be expected by the EU to comply with its censorship requirements on the pain of ruinous fines. 

As EU officials like to put it, the DSA transformed the “code of practice” into a code of conduct: i.e. you had better do it or else.

Compliance is thus not a matter of a signature. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And the fact of the matter is that Musk and Twitter are complying with the EU’s censorship requirements. Much of the programming that has gone into the Twitter algorithm is obviously designed for this very purpose.

What, for instance, are the below lines of code?

They are “safety labels” that have been included in the algorithm to restrict the visibility of alleged “misinformation.” Furthermore – leaving aside the handy “generic misinfo” catch-all – the general categories of “misinformation” used exactly mirror the main areas of concern targeted by the EU in its efforts to “regulate” online speech: “medical misinfo” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, “civic misinfo” in the context of issues of electoral integrity, and “crisis misinfo” in the context of the war in Ukraine.

Indeed, as Elon Musk and his lawyers certainly know, the final version of the DSA includes a “crisis response mechanism,” (Art. 36) which is clearly modeled on the European Commission’s initially ad hoc response to the Ukraine crisis and which requires platforms to take special measures to mitigate crisis-related “misinformation.” 

In its January submission to the EU (see reports archive here), in the section devoted precisely to its efforts to combat Ukraine-war-related “misinformation,” Twitter writes (pp. 70-71): 

“We … use a combination of technology and human review to proactively identify misleading information. More than 65% of violative content is surfaced by our automated systems, and the majority of remaining content we enforce on is surfaced through regular monitoring by our internal teams and our work with trusted partners.”

How is this not compliance? Or at least a very vigorous effort to achieve it? And the methodology outlined is presumably used to “enforce on” other types of “mis-“ or “disinformation” as well.

Finally, what is the below notice, which many Twitter users recently received informing them that they are not eligible to participate in Twitter Ads because their account as such has been labeled “organic misinformation?”

Why in the world would Twitter turn away advertising business? The answer is simple and straightforward: because none other than the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation requires it to do so in connection with the so-called “demonetization of disinformation.” 

Thus, section II(d-f) of the Code reads:

(d) The Signatories recognise the need to combat the dissemination of harmful Disinformation via advertising messages and services.

(e) Relevant Signatories recognise the need to take granular and tailored action to address Disinformation risks linked to the distribution of online advertising. Actions will be applicable to all online advertising.

(f) Relevant Signatories recognise the importance of implementing policies and processes not to accept remuneration from Disinformation actors, or otherwise promote such accounts and websites.

So, in short, vis-à-vis the EU and its Code, Twitter is complying, not defying. Removing Twitter’s signature from the Code when its signature is no longer required on the Code anyway is not defiance. Among other things, not labeling content and/or users as “misinformation,” not restricting the visibility of content and/or users so labeled, and accepting advertising from whomever has the money to pay would be defiance.

But the EU’s response to such defiance would undoubtedly be something more than tweets. It would be the mobilization of the entire punitive arsenal contained in the DSA and, in particular, the threat or application of the DSA fines of 6 percent of the company’s global turnover.

It is not enough to (symbolically) withdraw from the Code of Practice to defy the EU. Defying the EU would require Twitter to withdraw from the EU altogether.

Chinese scientists broke ground Tuesday on a planned 10,000-meter (32,808) foot hole into the Earth's crust - the country's deepest ever borehole according to Bloomberg, citing the Xinhua state-run news agency.

The shaft will penetrate over 10 continental strata, or layers of rock, and will reach the cretaceous system in the earth's crust which dates back some 145 million years. The project will provide data on Earth's internal structure, as well as prove up underground drilling technologies, according to China's National Petroleum Corp., which is in charge of the 457-day project.

The effort could be used to identify mineral resources as well as help assess environmental risks such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

"The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables," said Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in a statement to Xinhua.

President Xi Jinping called for greater progress in deep Earth exploration in a speech addressing some of the nation’s leading scientists in 2021. -Bloomberg

The current record for a hole bored into the earth is the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole, which has a recorded depth of 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) and was completed in 1989 after 20 years of drilling.

For reference, the earth's crust is an average of 30 km (19 miles) thick.

While the IMF is currently gearing up to introduce its new global CBDC system called the UMU (also known as the Unicoin), The Bank for International Settlements has been busy with multiple projects designed to centralize all international banks and central banks into a single umbrella network that allows for quick cross-border transactions using digital currencies.  In other words, a cashless society.   

One such concept, called Project Icebreaker, dealt specifically with creating a SWIFT-like bottleneck system which would allow global banks to regulate and eventually homogenize all currencies into a single one world exchange model that would give them the power to cut out any nation or company that does not meet their ideological approval.

The latest idea from the BIS is Project Aurora, which may be even more disturbing than Icebreaker in its implications.  Aurora is designed to use "machine learning" (AI) as a tool to monitor vast flows of financial transactions from all over the world in order to identify specifically flagged patterns.  The BIS says that this is meant to discover criminal money laundering structures protected by "money mules."  However, in order for the AI to sift through global transactions in real time, corporate banks and governments would have to create extensive streamlined access to accounts then open the doors wide for the AI to operate with impunity.  

Some banks are already implementing their own private AI monitoring systems to catch unusual account activities, but Aurora would require international access on a scale that would be incredible as well as horrifying.

Much like the drug war was used as a rationale in the US and Europe to give governments unfettered access to citizen finances; a power which has since been abused in a number of ways (in some cases accounts can be seized on the mere suspicion of a crime, rather than conviction), Aurora relies on the bogeyman of money laundering to give governments and global banks vast surveillance powers.  The project's focus on AI is presented as if this will protect individual privacy, but all AI programs serve their makers.  Whoever controls the AI also controls who the AI targets.

The idea of a worldwide AI integrated bank monitoring system in the hands of the BIS or other globalist institutions is immensely dangerous.  One could even imagine a future in which personal accounts are frozen regularly for any number of infractions, from financial to political.       

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

China’s halting recovery will keep the slowing inflation trend gathering pace around the world intact for now, allowing central banks to take their foot off the tightening pedal.

The global disinflationary trend is in full swing. Virtually every country has seen a slowdown in its annual inflation rate.

This is likely to continue for the time being given the situation in China. After another false start, China’s outlook has taken a negative turn.

Real-estate activity continues to decline, house-price growth is low, yields have started to fall again, and imports have dropped, reflecting stagnating demand.

The typically sure-fire sign all is not well in China is when capital outflow picks up, and that is what appears to be happening. The chart below shows a proxy for capital outflow, based on the difference between FX-reserve accumulation and the trade surplus.

In short, if reserves are not growing despite China running a large trade surplus, this tells us capital must be leaking abroad (which, officially, it does not as China has a (nominally) closed capital account).

This also explains the yuan’s depreciation. The fact China has not been leaning against the weakening currency tells us they are allowing it to decline as a pressure valve to ease the capital outflow.

China’s slowdown will keep pressure off commodity prices, and therefore allow global disinflation to continue. However, watch for signs when China is likely to re-stimulate – perhaps in a “flood-like” manner – as a sign for when the disinflationary trend could, in the following three-to-six months, reverse.

The inflation lull will allow the Federal Reserve and other central banks more leeway to ease back for now, but they may be back sooner than they would like when China decides enough is enough.

Via 'Jim's blog',

Both sides have been fighting in Ukraine using World War I tactics, and developments in the war have so far recapitulated World War I.

Towards the end of World War I, the Germans, finally realizing they were going to lose the war of attrition, because of the immense industrial capability of America, attempted to regain war of movement, with underwhelming success, and eventually could no longer attempt to do so. They gained considerable territory, which gains merely put them in a worse position to fight the war of attrition. Like Ukraine, tactical victories but strategic defeats, as with the costly attempt to relieve Bakhmut, which has resulted in them advancing on the flanks of Bakhmut to a position far worse for them in attritive warfare.

Ukraine has been throwing reserves at various points on the front, with underwhelming success similar to that of the Germans in World War I, which similarly has resulted in gains that put them in a worse position for fighting a war of attrition.

They are now moving troops around from one active front to another, which you only do when desperately short of reserves. I previously posted that the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive had started some time ago, and had not been announced for lack of impressive results. That they are redeploying troops involved in active fighting suggests that the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive is now most likely over for lack of reserves, though fog of war makes it hard to speak confidently.

In World War I, the incapacity to mount further attempts at war of movement was followed by 100 days of increasingly rapid and costly German defeats and retreats in attritive warfare, and it became apparent that if the Germans did not make peace on any terms they could get, then eventually there would be attritive warfare all the way to Berlin, most German men would die, and Berlin would be flattened. So they cut a deal where they handed over their heavy weapons, but the army and the nation remained an army and a nation. Without that deal, the war would likely have gone on for years, with enormous costs for everyone, but by far the greatest costs for Germans.

And a sane and capable Global American Empire would accept, in a hundred days or so, the deal that Putin has been offering – assuming it will still be on offer after major retreats and losses in attritive warfare.

But a sane and capable Global American Empire would probably have been capable of winning.

So a possible and likely outcome is that the war goes on till Kiev starts being flattened and most Ukrainian men are dead. Which may well take quite a while. At which point there is a significant likelihood that Nato will be thrown in to relieve Kiev.

In a full war between Russia and Nato, neither side has any incentive to refrain escalating all the way to nukes.

If Nato intervenes the rationale will be that quick decisive victory is attainable, which is unlikely to be the case. So, nukes.

Do anyone’s nukes still work?

My guess is that Global American Empire nukes stopped working a long time ago, but some Russian nukes still work.

Nukes were and are made out of components that deteriorate over time, and have to regularly refurbished, reconditioned and sometimes rebuilt. And if you are not testing, your maintenance process is likely to go off the rails when the men that built those bombs retire. The test ban treaty was a stealth slow motion nuclear disarmament treaty.

If someone’s nukes still work, this is likely to bring the war to a quick and decisive end, with relatively small destruction and casualties. I estimate that only about twenty percent of Americans would die in the course of losing a nuclear war, deaths insignificant compared to abortion and all that, and destruction insignificant compared to the Rust Belt and all the Detroits. No big deal in the broad historical sweep that this blog looks at.

If, on the other hand, technological decay means we fight World War I all over again, but this time political decay means that it is fought all the way to the end, the death and destruction could be considerably greater. But perhaps, in a hundred days or so, while the Global American Empire still holds most of the Ukraine, as the Germans still held most of Europe, the Global American Empire will figure out that it is 1918-11-11 all over again.

We shall see.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

One of the most common strategies used by the political left to attack 2nd Amendment supporters is to ramp up the anti-gun hype every time a crime involving a gun is committed. They don’t care much about the tragedy itself, they only care about how they can use it for political gain. However, it’s very important to understand that this is not only about removing gun rights for leftists – It’s also about creating a false association in the public consciousness that guns = crime.

That is to say, they want to condition people to believe that once guns are gone, crime and murder will be gone also. But, firearms have been an integral part of American society for hundreds of years, and gun ownership has been present through times of relative peace as well as times of increased violence.

In the case of countries like the UK with incredibly strict gun laws, muggings, rape and homicides have been rising with knife attacks in particular increasing by 80%. While it is technically more difficult to murder a person with a knife, it’s also a lot easier for larger, stronger assailants and gangs to succeed in harming people when those people have no equalizer. Disarmament makes life EASIER for criminals, not harder.

So, if guns are not the catalyst for rising violence, then what is?  In reality, the very people who want guns taken from the hands of law abiding Americans are the same people largely responsible for the spike in homicide rates. Imagine that…

In the US, violent crimes and murders are exponentially higher in Democrat run cities, many of them with increased gun control measures. In fact, of the top 30 most violent cities in the US, 27 of them are Democrat controlled. Wherever leftists dominate politically, violence, theft, rape and murder are sure to follow. Anti-gun proponents often try to cite high homicide numbers in certain conservative states like Texas, but the majority of those crimes are actually committed in cities run by leftists.

The truth is, blue cities are dragging red states and the rest of the country down. According to the statistics, in theory, if the public was to replace all Democrat city politicians with conservative leadership murder rates would immediately plunge across the US by virtue of policy.

But what is it specifically about Democrat leadership that leads to far higher crime? There are other trends to consider, such as incarceration rates in any given state or county, severity of punishment for violent crimes and repeat offenders, and let’s not forget a subject a lot of people don’t want to talk about – The separation of the mentally ill from the rest of society. Leftists often support revolving door policies for criminals, reduced sentences for violent crime (if the perpetrator is a minority) and they are adamantly opposed to incarceration for those with dangerous mental illness.

They’re happy to take away the 2nd Amendment rights of innocent Americans, but they have no interest in keeping criminals in prison or keeping mentally unstable people away from normal society. Perhaps because their goal is NOT to reduce violence, but to use exponential violence in society as a reason to erode the constitution.

Incarceration does in fact work, far better that gun control does. But in order to understand the incarceration rate and its effectiveness in stopping violence, we have to look at two systems simultaneously – Prison incarceration and mental asylum incarceration. The following data shows US incarceration per capita in various prison systems for the past century:

The next graph shows homicide rates per capita for between 1900 to around 2010

And this graph shows homicide rates from the 1960’s up to the 2020s.

One issue that is immediately noticeable is that prison numbers spiked massively starting in the mid-1980s, after which homicide rates began to plunge. Also note that less incarceration in the early 1900s coincides with much higher murder rates across the nation. But what about that dip in murders from the 1930s to the 1960s? What caused that?

Well, it’s not necessarily an economic problem as many progressive might suggest. The country was hitting peak prosperity in the 1920s and murder rates were still sky high. On the opposite end, the system was still in depression turmoil in the 1930s to 1940s, but homicide rates plunged. So, what caused violent crime to fall in that era?

The only factor that seems to coincide with this period of relative peace is the sudden increase in psychiatric incarceration from around the 1930s onward.

While prison rates remained low and mostly static between the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, the number of mental asylums holding dangerous patients was growing. And, like magic, violence in the US dropped off a cliff.

By extension, as asylums began to shut down in the 1970s, murders jumped back once again to record highs. Without asylums and with low prison incarceration, homicides spread like wildfire and it did not stop until the mid-1980s when prison rates spiked. In other words, the prison system and the legal system had to finally pick up the slack left behind as the mental asylums disappeared.

Finally, take note of the recent jump in homicides and violence in the past few years in graph #3 – It matches almost exactly with falling incarceration trends in Graph #1.  This has been mostly encouraged by Democrat policies in blue cities and blue states. Also keep in mind that the Democrats of today are part of a new woke cultism – They are not necessarily the same Democrats from 30 years ago. Woke Democrats want all barriers to criminal activity removed, including incarceration.

Furthermore, mental illness in the US is on the rise. Over 42% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with at least one mental health condition and psychiatric drugs are doing little to help. We have minimal mental illness facilities in place to deal with the influx of unstable people permeating society. We are about to REPEAT the pattern of the early 1900s, with a lower prison population and no asylums, violence will likely continue to spiral out of control.

To be sure, in the past there were some terrible practices involving mental health establishments and it doesn’t do anyone any good to repeat those mistakes. In the early days of psychiatry they caste a wide net that caught a lot of dangerous people, but they also locked up anyone with marginal mental problems as well. This led to abuses.

That said, it’s foolish to dismiss the numbers; asylums worked. They helped to reduce murders dramatically. At least 1% of the human population has psychopathic traits (including lack of empathy) and these people cause at least 30% of all crime in the US. At least 3% of the human population exhibits psychotic tendencies, which means they are prone to abrupt violence without treatment.  Something has to be done to address the mentally unstable in our nation. Their odds of recidivism are extremely high, and they will keep committing the same crimes over and over again until they are stopped.

This is the elephant in the room that the political left doesn’t want to talk about. They try to hide it with social justice platitudes and feel-good welfare programs, but these things are clearly useless. Separating dangerous and insane people from the rest of the population is the only sure method for saving lives in the long run and keeping civilization intact.

The solution is simple and two-fold: Get rid of leftist leaders in major cities that set violent repeat offenders free, and bring back mental health facilities to lock up the crazies if necessary. This is the ONLY WAY to stop the avalanche of violent crime that awaits Americans as the next few years unfold.

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After years of brutal crackdowns, crypto trading is coming back to China... or at least Hong Kong for now.

On Thursday, Hong Kong took a step toward becoming a cryptocurrency hub with the start of applications for licenses to run trading platforms and exchanges, Nikkei reported. Trading of cryptocurrencies in the Chinese territory has been restricted to institutional investors and other professionals since 2018, but Hong Kong's new regulations will allow retail trading as soon as the second half of 2023, which means that HK will soon emerge as the conduit by which billions in Chinese retail savings mysteriously disappear into the outside world, a function that until not too long ago was served by Macau.

Officials said the city's move to welcome crypto, which comes amid global regulatory headwinds for the industry, is backed by safeguards for investors.

"Hong Kong's comprehensive virtual assets regulatory framework follows the principle of 'same business, same risks, same rules' and aims to provide robust investor protection and manage key risks," said Julia Leung, CEO of the Securities and Futures Commission. "This will enable the industry to develop sustainably and support innovation."

Requirements for obtaining a license include capital of at least 5 million Hong Kong dollars ($638,000), measures to combat money laundering and the appointment of experienced managers.

"Operators of virtual asset trading platforms who are prepared to comply with the SFC's standards are welcome to apply for a licence," the commission said in a May 23 notice. "Those who do not plan to do so should proceed to an orderly closure of their business in Hong Kong."

More than 80 companies have expressed interest in obtaining a license, authorities say. Mainland Chinese companies are particularly eager to enter the Hong Kong market, because they face a total ban on providing cryptocurrency-related services at home.

A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned property developer Greenland Group plans to apply for a license, local media report. Online lender ZA Bank said on May 24 that it would partner with licensed companies to offer trading services for individuals.

"We welcome the licensing guidelines issued yesterday by the Hong Kong SFC, and we are excited to offer the new investment opportunities brought by virtual assets to our users," ZA Bank CEO Ronald Iu said.

In Asia, South Korea and Singapore have taken the lead in regulating the crypto market, attracting some businesses that fled the U.S. and other countries. Hong Kong was regarded as being tough on the industry after China's move to ban related services in 2021, but the city has reversed its stance.

In October, Hong Kong announced a policy of promoting virtual currencies. An exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking bitcoin listed on the Hong Kong exchange in December.

"The fact that an international finance hub like Hong Kong is setting out to create and support a crypto trading environment means a boost of investor confidence in the industry," said Eddie Chou, a blockchain lecturer and fintech consultant.

A cloud has hung over Hong Kong's status as an international financial hub since China imposed a national security law in 2020 that critics say erodes the city's autonomy.

"Without Beijing's approval and backing, there can be no policy change in Hong Kong," an asset management executive here said. "They may intend to treat it as an exception like Macao, the only place in China where casinos are allowed, and use it as a testing ground" for crypto.

That is precisely what Beijing is doing, because even in China the local elite understands that as a result of the massive Chinese capital account monetary firewall, the country needs some way to transfer some of those trillions in savings offshore.

For now, Hong Kong regulators are promising a firm hand.

"Our regulations will be tight," Eddie Yue, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said at the Bloomberg Wealth Asia Summit in May. "We will let the industry develop and innovate. We will let them create the ecosystem here, and that actually brings a lot of excitement. But that doesn't mean light-touch regulation."

In its quest to making the metaverse the next big thing in tech, Facebook’s parent company Meta unveiled a new virtual and mixed reality headset on Thursday.

Starting at $499.99, the Quest 3 is much more affordable than the Quest Pro that was launched last fall, while offering performance that is far superior to its predecessor, the Meta Quest 2.

"Quest 3 is our first mass-market offering to deliver both cutting-edge VR and MR experiences in a single device, setting a new benchmark for future headsets," Meta said in its announcement, clearly nodding towards Apple, which is expected to unveil its own long-in-the-making VR/AR headset at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week.

"Ultimately, our vision is to enable you to move through all realities in a way that’s intuitive and delightful," Mark Rabkin, vice president of VR at Meta said.

"Going beyond the rigid classifications of ‘virtual reality’ and ‘mixed reality’ to deliver truly next-gen experiences that let you effortlessly blend the physical and virtual worlds."

But, as Statista's Felix Richter notes, while Meta has already invested billions in that vision, so far it remains just that: a vision that has yet to come to life.

According to estimates from Statista Market Insights, users of AR and VR devices are still few and far between, with growth projections until 2027 nowhere near the scale that would make mixed reality “the next computing platform”, at least for now.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Statista estimates that 98 million people will be using VR hardware this year, while 23 million will be dabbling with more advanced AR technology. By 2027, both AR and VR are expected to have surpassed 100 million users worldwide, but that’s still a longshot from the billions of smartphone users across the planet.