Iron Dome Failure? Overnight Hezbollah Missile Salvo On Northern Israel Leads To Speculation

Hezbollah has fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel, calling it retaliation for Israeli attacks last week. Israel’s military says its Iron Dome defence system intercepted some, but not all, of the projectiles.

In the overnight and early morning hours Hezbollah pounded northern Israel and the Western Galilee with at least 30 rockets. While Israel's military says intercepted some of the rockets, it is clear from widely circulating videos (though unverified) that many of them got through Israel's sophisticated anti-air systems.

IRON DOME FAILURE!!! pic.twitter.com/6tgd8CFTW5

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) August 12, 2024

A number of regional analysts are remarking on the utter failure of Israel's Iron Dome air defense system during the salvo; however, Ynet says many rockets struck open fields and uninhabited areas, causing fires. 

Lebanese Hezbollah said the target was an IDF military installation near Kibbutz Ga’aton. The Israeli side reported no casualties in the wake of the overnight assault. A regional source indicates that "One of Israel’s interceptors hit the Hydro Therapy Centre located in the Mount Hermon region, damaging a building."

The Iran-backed Lebanese paramilitary group has been vowing revenge for the assassination strike by Israel of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut on July 30. The next day, an Israeli operation in Tehran killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Israel says it is busy strengthening defenses ahead of the still anticipated Iranian response, which is expected to include stepped-up Hezbollah action.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told a meeting of defense leader, "We are in the days of vigilance and readiness, the threats from Tehran and Beirut may materialize and it is important to explain to everyone that readiness, preparedness, and vigilance are not synonyms for fear and panic."

As for the claims of the Iron Dome utterly failing in the latest attack, others pointed to the following video, which like the above remains unverified...

The Irone Dome at work last night, shooting down Hezbollah rockets over northern Israel pic.twitter.com/2JdYjXsncP

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 12, 2024

Israeli officials are meanwhile monitoring Lebanese media reports which say Hezbollah has entirely evacuated its Beirut headquarters in anticipation of a significant flareup.

Some Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese politicians have also issued new threats:

Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Parliament of Lebanon and a staunch Hezbollah ally, says of a tensely anticipated joint Iranian and Hezbollah attack on Israel that "revenge is a dish best served cold."

He warns that the “response is inevitable” after the recent killings of top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Below: Iron Dome missiles have reportedly landed on Israeli residences over the last several days. Last week a 27-year old man was critically injured by a malfunctioning Iron Dome interceptor missile when it fell on a northern highway he was traversing.

The Pentagon has said it is speeding up its naval assets heading to regional waters, including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the deployment of the USS Georgia guided missile submarine, in anticipation for a potential Iranian attack on Israel.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/12/2024 - 09:45

NASA Inspector General Report Criticizes Boeing's Quality Control

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

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has raised concerns over quality control and standards at plane maker Boeing and its efforts to help the space agency return astronauts to the Moon.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft which launched astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station docked to the Harmony module's forward port on July 3, 2024, seen from a window on the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft docked to the adjacent port. (NASA via AP)

A report from NASA’s OIG released on Aug. 8 focuses on the Space Launch System (SLS) version 1B—the powerful heavy-lift rocket system that NASA plans to use to send the crewed Orion spacecraft and large cargo to the Moon in 2028 as part of the Artemis IV mission.

According to NASA’s report, a “critical component” of this upgrade is Boeing’s development of the SLS’s new upper stage, the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), which will aid in sending the Orion on its mission.

Once it is complete, EUS will give the SLS a 40 percent upgrade in carrying capability, going from 27 metric tons under Block 1—the SLS rocket’s first iteration—to 38 metric tons with Block 1B, according to the report.

However, progress on the SLS, which has been under development since 2014, has been plagued with issues, including Boeing’s “ineffective quality management and inexperienced workforce,” along with continued cost increases and schedule delays, the report said.

As part of its report, NASA’s OIG interviewed officials at NASA Headquarters, Marshall Space Flight Center, Boeing, and DCMA between August 2023 through May 2024.

It also visited the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, to observe the SLS core stage and EUS production.

The OIG found that Boeing’s quality management system at Michoud “does not adhere” to international standards established under the global association SAE International.

The report pointed to 71 “Corrective Action Requests”(CARs) issued by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) at Michoud between 2021 and 2023 to address “deficiencies in quality.”

NASA’s OIG said this is a “high number of CARs for a space flight system at this stage in development and reflects a recurring and degraded state of product quality control.”

“Boeing’s process to address deficiencies to date has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur,” the report said.

‘Foreign Object Debris’ Found in Fuel Tank

The report highlights other issues, including “foreign object debris ” identified inside the SLS Core Stage 2 liquid hydrogen fuel tank.

The debris included “metal shavings, Teflon, and other debris on and underneath the entry platform and ladder assembly on the forward dome panels inside of the tank.”

“Foreign object debris can damage hardware and potentially injure flight crew when entrapped within crewed flight articles,” the report stated.

The liquid hydrogen fuel tank was subsequently cleaned, reinspected, and found to meet standards, according to the report.

In another incident during its visit to Michoud in April 2023, the OIG said it observed substandard welding on a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome, a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3.

The report said that on another occasion, Boeing officials “incorrectly approved hardware processing under unacceptable environmental conditions.”

“Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing,” the report said.

To mitigate such challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees, the report noted.

However, the OIG said it found these efforts to be “inadequate” considering the “significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud.”

The Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher, are prepared for a wet dress rehearsal to practice timelines and procedures for launch at Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on June 14, 2022. (Cory Huston/NASA via AP) Rising Costs

Boeing’s EUS contract has soared from the initially agreed-upon cost of $962 million in 2017 to over $2 billion through 2025, and the company’s delivery of the EUS to NASA has been postponed six years from an initial February 2021 date established in 2016 to April 2027, the report stated.

“Given Boeing’s quality management and its related workforce challenges, we are concerned these factors could potentially impact the safety of the SLS and Orion spacecraft including its crew and cargo,” it concluded.

The OIG report included a number of recommendations, including that Boeing work with the Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD), among others, to develop a quality management system training program compliant with international standards.

The report said that NASA officials would review the program.

It also recommended financial penalties for Boeing’s “noncompliance with quality control standards,” although NASA ultimately decided not to fine the planemaker, according to the report.

The Epoch Times has contacted Boeing for comment.

Stuck in Space

The report comes as NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams remain stuck in space aboard the Boeing Starliner due to ongoing issues with its thrusters.

NASA said during a press conference earlier this week that it is considering bringing the two astronauts back on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission in February 2025.

Wilmore and Williams launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and docked with the ISS on June 6. They were originally set to return around one week later, on June 14.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/12/2024 - 09:25

Credit-Card And Auto-Loan Delinquencies Surged In The Second Quarter

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Over ten percent of credit card outstanding debt is over 90 days delinquent. Banks will be curtailing credit...

This a second look at some interesting charts from the New York Fed Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit.

Over 10 Percent of Credit Card Debt is Seriously Delinquent

Serious Delinquency for Auto Loans by Age

Serious Delinquency for Credit Cards by Age

Lenders Took More Risk

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reports Credit Card Delinquencies are Higher than in 2019 Because Lenders Took on More Risk.

After falling during the pandemic, the share of consumers with a delinquent credit card has increased rapidly since 2021 and is now higher than in 2019. While consumers with delinquencies clearly show signs of struggling, news reports have taken the rising delinquency rate as a sign that financial distress is becoming more widespread, suggesting underlying weakness in the U.S. economy. We show that rather than being a sign of broader distress, this increase in delinquencies is explained by a substantial increase in the riskiness of recently issued credit cards.

Delinquencies have been concentrated among credit cards originated in the last few years and we show these credits cards were much riskier than in previous years. Two factors explain this extra risk: First, lending standards loosened a bit in 2021 and 2022 judging by a decline in credit scores at origination. At the same time, pandemic aid and forced savings pushed average credit scores up sharply. Effectively, by not tightening significantly, lenders were originating cards much further down the risk spectrum. We show this shifting risk composition explains why delinquencies are higher than in 2019.

Overall delinquencies increased rapidly over the last few years because the credit cards originated in 2021, 2022, and 2023 have gone delinquent much more rapidly than credit cards originated in other years. About 8 percent of credit cards originated in 2016 became delinquent about four years after origination. Meanwhile, the 2021 vintage reached an 8 percent delinquency rate just after 2 years while the 2022 vintage reached 8 percent after less than two years and 2023 has followed 2022 closely so far. (The 2020 vintage is in between the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic vintages reaching 8 percent delinquency after 3 years.) At the same time, credit cards originated in earlier years have not seen a similar increase in delinquencies in recent years.

Cards Originated in 2021 Through 2023 Were Riskier than Before

Figure 3 [Above Image] shows the credit score of new credit cards originated each month and the average credit score of all consumers on the left axis. During the Great Recession, lending standards tightened sharply, so that consumers with a new credit card had average scores above 720, even while the average credit score among all consumers was around 690. As a result, the average credit score rank for consumers with a new credit card was above 55 percent from 2008 to 2014, as shown on Figure 3’s right axis. A consumer’s credit score rank is what percentage of all consumers with a score have a score lower than that consumer.

Credit stress is rising just as layoffs are increasing and it’s getting much harder to find a job if you lose one.

That newer issued credit is failing faster again suggests it is renters and generation Z that is most impacted.

But it’s not just Millennials and Zoomers. Delinquencies are rising in all age groups, just more steeply in age groups 39 and younger.

Recession Debate

On August 9, I discussed why things are worse than they look.

If you missed it, please see Recession Debate: Citing the Sahm Rule, WSJ’s Greg Ip Says No Recession

Recessions frequently start with positive job growth and positive industrial production.

And jobs are highly likely to be seriously overstated. My calculations of pending negative revisions is similar to that of Bloomberg’s chief economist.

For discussion, please see Expect the BLS to Revise Job Growth Down by 730,000 in 2023, More This Year

If you think jobs are strong, you are very mistaken.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/12/2024 - 08:45

'Eating Ze Bugs Is Vegan' – What The Rise Of "Ento-Veganism" Really Means

Via Off-Guardian.org,

The latest “Dude, eating insects is so hip and cool” article dropped this week, this time from The Guardian, and with a little twist thrown in.

It’s pushing the idea of “ento-veganism”, that is to say “vegans” who won’t eat animals…except insects.

Or, what we used to call non-vegans.

It’s just another step in the redefining of language as needs must, yet another front in the war on words.

They are shifting the meaning of veganism from saving animals to being “sustainable”. The philosophy of “ento-veganism” is apparently to “do the least harm possible”.

…except to crickets, I guess.

The greater point here is that, while the mainstream has been promoting veganism for years, that’s much more about stopping people from eating meat and dairy than it is about getting people to eat vegetables.

After all, a vegan could hypothetically be living on a small holding in the middle of nowhere and surviving entirely on their home-grown vegetables…and that’s the last thing the WEF-types want.

They’re not going to all the trouble of resetting society so we can eat organic cauliflower.

They want everyone eating GMO soy cubes dusted in cricket flour.

They want processed. They want artificial. Most importantly, they want to make it so no one can ever be self-sufficient.

And while that means promoting veganism for now, it also means slowly redefining what “veganism” actually means.

Last year, eating lab-grown meat became “vegan”…

Which, technically, you can argue from an ethical point of view.

But then this year, eating crickets is “vegan” too.

Who knows what “vegan” will mean next year?

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/12/2024 - 02:00

Big Question: How Are Ukraine Stakeholders, CIA, & The US Intel Community Going To Stop Donald Trump?

Authored by 'sundance' via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

This is the simple albeit massive question that even President Trump himself doesn’t spend time thinking about. 

Melania does.

• To stop him in 2016, the FBI and DOJ ran a comprehensive surveillance operation against his campaign.  The same people manufactured a completely fabricated case of Trump colluding with Russia. Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2017, the DOJ and Congress ran a comprehensive Special Counsel operation against his presidency.  The justification of the SC operation was to prove a completely fabricated case of Trump colluding with Russia.  The real reason for the SC operation was to cover up the FBI and DOJ completely fabricating the case of Trump colluding with Russia. Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2019, congress and the intelligence apparatus (Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson) manufactured an impeachment hoax using Ukraine, a fabricated DoD plant on the National Security Council (Vindman), the CIA (Ciaramella) and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (Attkinson).  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2020, the U.S. Intelligence Community, working through the U.S. CDC, seeded a global pandemic and quickly manufactured an election result using mail-in ballots to manufacture 81 million votes for a completely controlled candidate with dementia.  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2022, Joe Biden (through AG Garland) appointed a special prosecutor (smith) to investigate, indict and convict him.  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2023, the FBI and DOJ raided his home. Indicted him under claims of “national security,” then began to use Lawfare in the court system against him.  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2024, the U.S. Secret Service permitted a 20-year-old with a backpack, range finder, drone and long rifle, to walk into a Trump rally, set up position on a rooftop next to the USSS operating team, and fire eight shots at less than 150 yards at President Trump’s head, wounding his ear.  Have you forgotten?

So, my question remains:

What will the Ukraine stakeholders, in congress, within NATO, within the State Dept, within the CIA and Intelligence Community and within the multinational banking and investment companies (Blackrock), do over the next few months to stop President Donald Trump from winning in November?

…She Knows!

With the 2024 election rapidly coming, it is worth revisiting the actual tariff outcome to American consumers in order to dispel the popular myths about tariffs raising prices here at home.

CPA – […] Since the Section 301 tariffs were imposed, the share of imports from China has steadily declined from 21.6% in 2017 the year prior to the tariffs to 16.5%, a decline of 5.1%. No other country has lost as much share of total U.S. import penetration over the past five years.

In terms of total import value, Mexico gained the most from the tariffs, adding $110.8 billion. Vietnam gained the second most in import value by $78.4 billion and by far gained the most of total share of U.S. imports. In 2017, Vietnam accounted for about 2% of U.S. imports at $46.5 billion. In 2022, the U.S. imported $127.5 billion in goods from Vietnam, and the share of the total nearly doubled to 3.9%. Other countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia all saw significant increases in their value of imports by the U.S. (read more)

This might be the cited data you want to bookmark for later reference.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!

Overall, year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; yup, that was our inflation rate.  The rate in the latter half of 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate basically remained consistent.   [See Below]  The U.S. economy was on a smooth glide path, strong, stable, and Main Street was growing with MAGAnomics at work.

A couple of important points. 

First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers, and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America First MAGAnomic initiative.  Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.

Which brings us to the second important point.  Notice how food prices had very low year-over-year inflation – 0.5 percent.  That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag’s hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:

(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)

For the previous twenty years, food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand.   The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.

President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process.  As farm products were less exported, the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle.  Food prices dropped, and our pantry costs were lowered.

The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July 2019, when Amazon held its two-day blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits.   Likely that’s because blue collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong.  Yes, MAGAnomics was working.

Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?

Well, exactly the opposite happened.

[BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:

[Table 1 – BLS report link]

This was a really interesting dynamic that no one in the professional punditry would dare explain.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products.  [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.]  However, when the EU and China responded by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.

Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper.   Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere.   All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.

This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.

This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.

Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:

[…]  Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.

[…]  Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.

[Page #4 – BLS Report, pdf] – BLS press release.

So yes, we know President Trump can save Social Security and Medicare by expanding the economy with his America First economic policy.  We do not need to guess if it is possible or listen to pundits theorize about his approach being some random ‘catch phrase’ disconnected from reality.  Yes folks, we have the receipts.

This was MAGAnomics at work, and this is entirely what created the middle class MAGA coalition.  No other Republican candidate has this economic policy in their outlook, because all other candidates are purchased by the Wall Street multinationals.

America First MAGAnomics is unique to President Trump, because he is the only one independent enough to implement them.

That’s just the reality of the situation.  

They hate him for it… 

*  *  *

[Support CTH Research Here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 23:20

Ohio Prosecutor Fired After Biting Man's Finger Off In Bizarre Road Rage Incident

Here's something to think about the next time you want to give someone 'the finger' in traffic.

An assistant Ohio prosecutor was fired from his job for allegedly biting off a man's finger in a road rage incident last month, according to a report from the New York Post.

The man who lost a finger reportedly honked at the prosecutor, Christopher Murray, at a green light. 

The Riverside Police Department responded to reports of a fight on the US Route 35 overpass, about 210 miles from Cleveland, where one caller mentioned severe bloodshed and a bitten-off finger, according to the arrest report.

The Post report states that when law enforcement arrived, they found a 43-year-old man covered in blood standing outside his vehicle. Medical personnel confirmed that part of his middle finger had been bitten off. 

The victim's finger was severed at the tip of the knuckle, and police later found it under his vehicle. He claimed he honked at the car in front of him when it didn't move after the light turned green.

He "laid on his horn", according to the Post. 

Police identified the driver as Murray, who allegedly approached the victim’s car, declared his intent to fight, and pulled open the driver’s door.

The two ended up on the ground, where the victim claimed Murray bit his finger. Murray then fled but dropped his phone, which police used to identify him. The victim was taken to the hospital for further treatment, and Murray now faces felonious assault charges.

Greene County Prosecuting Attorney David D. Hayes said he had been fired from his job as a result: “As Greene County Prosecuting Attorney, I became aware on July 8, 2024, of an ongoing criminal investigation in Montgomery County regarding my employee Christopher Murray.”

“After due consideration, I terminated Christopher Murray’s employment with the Greene County Prosecutor’s Office.”

Here is the report from WDTN:

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 22:45

Audit Finds NYC Overpaid Upstate Hotels By Millions For Sheltering Illegal Immigrants

Authored by Cara Ding via The Epoch Times,

A new audit by the New York City Comptroller’s Office found the city overpaid upstate hotels and other subcontractors by millions to shelter illegal immigrants last spring.

The audit also finds sizable undue commission payments to DocGo, a main city contractor responsible for running temporary shelters in the metro area at an annual cost of $432 million.

DocGo was one of a few city contractors tasked with developing upstate hotels-turned-shelters last May, a novel city practice that auditors deem “unusual,” and has met with strong opposition from several upstate counties, including Rockland and Orange.

Although the city’s DocGo contract has been running for over a year, the audit only looks at city payments for services rendered in the beginning months of May and June last year.

The audit covers more than 30 temporary hotels-turned-shelters managed by DocGo both inside and outside the city, including two in the town of Newburgh in Orange County.

It finds that as high as 80 percent of payments for that two-month period—at $11 million—either lack proof of services rendered or are unauthorized per the contract.

Of the questionable payments, $2.5 million were for unauthorized security, medical, and social services, $1.7 million for vacant rooms, and $230,000 for inflated food bills, according to the audit.

For example, a Newburgh hotel billed a total of $57,000 for hundreds of unoccupied rooms in early May, for which DocGo got an additional $40,000 in commissions.

At the same hotel, billed hours of security services for May 12 exceeded the contract limit by eight times—it was claimed over 20 guards were on different shifts that day to aid the hotel’s own force—and were paid without the city’s written approval.

The same Newburgh hotel also stood out as having the highest number of meals delivered during the two-month period. For example, it billed 1,288 meals for May 26, whereas only 388 meals and snacks would be needed that day based on the stated occupancy.

Hundreds of illegal immigrants or asylum seekers lined up outside of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City on June 6, 2023. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

All payments were made by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which has direct oversight of DocGo and its subcontractors.

In response to auditors, HPD said it had given undocumented verbal permission to payments beyond the scope of the contract, that it paid for vacant hotel rooms in preparation for a likely sudden influx, and that excess food was sometimes purchased and stored for future use.

The Epoch Times reached out to Mayor Eric Adams and DocGo for comment.

Upstate Hotel Visits

Auditors visited around two dozen hotels in the New York City metro area last December and found 530 rooms at eight upstate hotels housed illegal immigrants from the city.

These hotels were in the counties of Albany, Westchester, Dutchess, and Orange, where two Newburgh hotels had 122 rooms used as city shelters.

Orange County has had an effective court-ordered temporary ban against the city’s upstate hotel shelter practice since last May. Prior to the ban, the city had sent 186 illegal immigrants to the two Newburgh hotels, according to a court filing at the state supreme court.

County attorney Richard Golden told The Epoch Times in an Aug. 9 statement that he has no knowledge of new arrivals from the city to any county hotels after the ban.

The county also has an executive order in place barring New York City from establishing unlawful shelters inside the county, which withheld a legal challenge last month.

The largest portion—nearly half—of surveyed illegal immigrants during the hotel visits are from Venezuela, followed by Ecuador, Colombia, and Mauritania.

Most entered the country illegally via the southern border in Texas, with a relatively small number arriving via the states of California, Arizona, and New York, according to the audit.

During their visits to these hotels, auditors found deficiencies—such as missing microwaves and refrigerators, mold, and water damage—in 80 percent of the inspected rooms.

DocGo will manage upstate hotels for the city until December, although its shelter services inside NYC ended in May, according to the audit.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is challenging Adams in the Democratic primary for the mayoral race in the fall of 2025.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 22:10

Combatting "False Narratives": D.C. Circuit Refuses To Block Judge Limiting The Speech Of Jan. 6th Defendant

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have previously discussed controversial sentences handed down in cases involving rioters on January 6th, including sentencing orders that, in my view, violate First Amendment rights. That included the case of Daniel Goodwyn, who pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. That crime would ordinarily not involve any jail time for a first offender.

However, Judge Reggie B. Walton  of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia decided that he would use the case to regulate what Goodwyn was reading and communicating with a chilling probation order. After the case was sent back by the D.C. Circuit, Walton doubled down on his extraordinary order. Now the D.C. Circuit has refused to hear an emergency appeal.

Judge Walton has attracted controversy and criticism over his public comments about former President Donald Trump and the other issues. He caused a stir in Washington after doing an interview with CNN in which he rebuked former President Donald Trump for his criticism of judges and their family members. Walton previously called Trump a “charlatan,”  and said that “I don’t think he cares about democracy, only power.”

Critics charged that Walton’s public statements ran afoul of Canon 3A(6) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which states:

“A judge should not make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.”

Walton then triggered criticism over his handling of the Goodwin case.

The case involved Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas, who pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. That is a relatively minor offense, but Walton imposed a 60-day jail sentence in June 2023 with these ongoing conditions on his online reading and speech.

Walton reportedly noted that Goodwyn spread “disinformation” during a broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on March 14, 2023 and ordered that Mr. Goodwyn’s computer be subject to “monitoring and inspection” by a probation agent to check if he spread Jan. 6 disinformation during the term of his supervised release.

After accepting the plea to a single misdemeanor, Walton expressed scorn for Goodwyn appearing “gleeful” on Jan. 6 and his “egging on” other rioters.

He asked his defense counsel “why I should feel that he doesn’t pose a risk to our democracy?”

As a condition for supervised release, DOJ pushed the monitoring conditions and found a judge who seemed eager to impose it.

The order reflects the utter impunity shown by the Justice Department in its pursuit of January 6th defendants.  Justice Department official Michael Sherwin  proudly declared in a television interview that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”

Sherwin was celebrated for his pledge to use such draconian means to send a message to others in the country. (Sherwin has left the Justice Department and is now a partner at Kobre & Kim).

Walton was rebuked by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for a surveillance order of Goodwin to detect any spreading of “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discussed concerns over the cases like Goodwyn’s and their implications for free speech. I participated in the coverage on January 6th and criticized President Trump’s speech while he was giving it. I disagreed with the legal claims made to oppose certification. However, the “shock and awe” campaign of the Justice Department, in my view, has trampled on free speech rights in cases that range from Goodwyn to the prosecutions of Trump himself.

Many of us were relieved when appellate judges (Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Bradley Garcia) rebuked Walton and held that “[t]he district court plainly erred in imposing the computer-monitoring condition without considering whether it was ‘reasonably related’ to the relevant sentencing factors and involved ‘no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary’ to achieve the purposes behind the sentencing.”

They sent the case back but, to the surprise of few, Judge Walton proceeded to double down on the monitoring while implausibly declaring “I don’t want to chill anyone’s First Amendment rights.”

For some reason, Walton believes that barring an individual from reviewing and engaging in political speech does not “chill” his First Amendment rights.

Most of us were appalled by the riot and the underlying views of figures like Goodwyn, who is a self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys. He was rightfully arrested and should be punished for his conduct. The question is not the legitimacy of punishment, but the scope of that punishment.

Prosecutor Brian Brady detailed how the Justice Department has in place a new system using artificial intelligence to monitor the reading and statements of citizens like Goodwyn. The Justice Department brushed aside the free speech concerns since Goodwyn remains under court supervision, even though he pleaded guilty to only a single misdemeanor.

Brady described a virtual AI driven thought program. The justification was that Goodwyn refused to abandon his extreme political views:

“Throughout the pendency of Goodwyn’s case, he has made untruthful statements regarding his conduct and the events of the day, he has used websites and social media to place targets on police officers who defended the Capitol, and he has used these platforms to publish and view extremist media. Imposing the requested [monitoring] conditions would protect the public from further dissemination of misinformation… [and] provide specific deterrence from him committing similar crimes.”

So now federal courts can use a single misdemeanor for unlawful entry in a federal building for less than 40 seconds to “protect the public from … dissemination of misinformation” on the government.

That was all Walton needed to hear. Relying on a record supplied by the Justice Department, Walton said in the hearing that Goodwyn is still engaging “in the same type of rhetoric” that fomented the Jan. 6 violence. He added that he was concerned about Goodwyn spreading “false narratives” when we are “on the heels of another election.”

Walton merely added the DOJ record to his renewed sentencing conditions.

Defense counsel then returned to the D.C. Circuit to seek an emergency stay but Judges Florence Pan and Bradley Garcia denied the motion, holding that “Appellant has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal” to prevent further “false narratives.”

That drew a pointed dissent from Judge Gregory Katsas who stated:

Daniel Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1). Goodwyn entered the Capitol and remained inside for a total of 36 seconds. He did not use force to enter, did not assault police officers, and neither took nor damaged any government property. When police instructed Goodwyn to leave the building, he did so.

...

On appeal, this Court vacated the condition … We further instructed the district court, if it wished to impose a new computer- monitoring condition on remand, to “explain its reasoning,” to “develop the record in support of its decision,” and to ensure that the condition complies with section 3583(d) and with the Constitution.

The district court reimposed the same condition on remand. In an oral hearing, the court said that Goodwyn had made statements on social media that “can be, it seems to me, construed as” urging a repeat of January 6, particularly “on the heels of another election.”  In its written order, the court elaborated on what it called Goodwyn’s “concerning online activity.”  This included posting exhortations to “#StopTheSteal!” and “#FightForTrump,” soliciting donations to fund his travel to Washington, posing for a livestream while inside the Capitol, confirming his presence there by text, and tweeting opinions such as: “They WANT a revolution. They’re proving our point. They don’t represent us. They hate us.” Id. at 3–4. In addressing what the court described as Goodwyn pushing “false narratives” about January 6 after-the-fact, the court, quoting from the government’s brief, led with the fact Goodwyn “sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel.” Id. at 4. Finally, in concluding that computer monitoring was reasonably related to Goodwyn’s offense, the court reasoned that monitoring would prevent Goodwyn from raising funds to support potential future crimes and would separate him “from extremist media, rehabilitating him.”

Judge Katsas stated that Goodwyn was likely to prevail on the merits and that his colleagues allowed the denial of First Amendment rights to continue in the interim.

The Walton order reflects the erosion of support for the First Amendment, even on our courts. It is reminiscent of our previous discussion of how courts have criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of the crackdown on free speech in the United Kingdom.

Here is the D.C. Circuit order: United States v. Goodwyn

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 21:00

Russian Military Ship Spotted 30 Miles Off Alaska By Coast Guard

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter on routine patrol around Alaska’s Aleutian Islands came across a Russian military ship in international waters but within the U.S. exclusive economic zone, the AP reported citing US military officials.

The crew on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley on Monday detected the vessel about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of the Amukta Pass, the Coast Guard said in a Friday statement. A helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak also spotted the vessel.

The vessel was “transiting in international waters but still inside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone,” which extends 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the U.S. shoreline, according to the statement.

The Coast Guard vessel did not communicate with the Russian ship but followed it as it moved east, the statement said.

“We met presence with presence to ensure there were no disruptions to U.S. interests in the maritime environment around Alaska” Cmdr. Steven Baldovsky, commanding officer of the Alex Haley, said in the statement.

In July, the Coast Guard while on patrol spotted four Chinese military ships north of the Amchitka Pass in the Aleutian Islands in international waters but also within the U.S. exclusive economic zone, officials said.

Russian and Chinese bombers later that month flew together for the first time in international airspace off the coast of Alaska, in a new show of expanding military cooperation that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the time raises concerns.

The flights weren’t seen as a threat, and the bombers were tracked and intercepted by U.S. and Canadian fighter jets. But it was the first time that Chinese bomber aircraft flew within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. And it was the first time Chinese and Russian aircraft took off from the same base in northeast Russia.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 20:25

Former RBC CFO Sues For $36 Million After Being Terminated For Alleged Affair With Co-Worker

RBC's former CFO is suing the bank that terminated her, alleging they made a a “devastating” error in firing her.

Nadine Ahn was terminated for a relationship with a co-worker, according to BNN Bloomberg, and is now suing in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice denying that she ever had a romantic relationship. 

She claims in her suit she suffered “palpable reputational harm” and “public humiliation” and is suing for $36 million in pay and damages, the report says. 

RBC had previously said she was involved in an “undisclosed close personal relationship with another employee which led to preferential treatment of the employee including promotion and compensation increases.” 

Ahn's lawsuit details how CEO Dave McKay texted her on April 4, requesting a meeting the next morning.

When she arrived, McKay was absent, and instead, she faced unexpected questions from a lawyer about her relationship with Ken Mason from the bank's treasury group. Her laptop and cell phones were also seized, according to the court filing.

“RBC’s investigator accused Ms. Ahn of providing Mr. Mason with preferential treatment and insinuated that they were having an affair. Ms. Ahn pleads that RBC’s allegations are patently false.” her statement says. 

BNN reported that Ahn and Mason had been friends since 2013, well before she became CFO, and she argues RBC's code didn’t require disclosing their friendship, which wasn't hidden. Mason, who was also fired, has sued the bank, claiming he was "ambushed" by a biased and unfair workplace investigation.

“RBC opted to make an example of Ken and Ahn by wrongly publicly shaming them in order to project moral righteousness, appearing to swiftly investigate and punish perceived corruption,” Ahn's filing says. 

“The clear insinuation of the RBC Statement was that Ken and Ahn had had an extramarital affair and that Ken received career advancement and financial benefits as a result. This insinuation was false and defamatory.”

A spokesperson for RBC said: “These claims are without merit, and we will vigorously defend against them in court. We conducted a thorough review with an investigation by outside legal counsel and the facts are very clear that there was a significant breach of our Code of Conduct based on the irrefutable evidence collected during the investigation.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 19:15

The Ardent Pipe-Dreams Of American Voters

Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardioan.org,

To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”

- Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh

Voters in the USA live in fantasy and probably always will.  No matter how obvious it is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, the ardent pipe dreams of a new face in the White House go to their heads every four years.

It can only be explained by a combination of intellectual ignorance, the acceptance of propaganda, and the embrace of illusions.

An analogy is apropos. In the small town and vicinity where I live, there are about 10 pot shops where pipe dreams are dispensed. As The Platters sang long ago, “when your heart’s on fire, you must realize smoke gets in your eyes.”  But few realize it.

Smoke?  What smoke?

Quadrennially, this love affair with the presidential candidates burns hot and heavy despite their records, as if they were heart throbs of stage and screen, straight from Broadway or Hollywood deeply concerned for the public’s welfare.

Americans love actors, and the presidential candidates are of course actors, following the directions of the fat cats who produce their shows.  As the grand opening of election day approaches, the supine public is aroused to a fanatical frenzy of excitement from its years’-long sleep by a mass media that spews out drivel to deceive.  It could be said that what the media propagandists digest, the public eats.

Smoke and mirrors never fail as the electorate’s favorite billionaire-backed candidates – at this point in 2024 Trump and Kamala Harris (but don’t count on it) – spew lie after lie and the mass media faithfully promote the show as if it were an actual contest between good and evil, a grand movie.  The acting is terrible, but the audience is so inflamed they can’t tell.

“There are unconscious actors among them and involuntary actors; the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors,” Friedrich Nietzsche told us long ago, alluding to far more than this crude political masquerade – to life itself – urging us to take a deep look at the games we play and love in our politicians because they confirm our illusions.

In the 2020 election between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, more than 158 million ballots were cast, a record number that was two-thirds of estimated eligible voters.  That was about seven percentage points higher than in 2016 when Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off.  Each election was supposed to be the most important in “your lifetime.”

And as everyone knows, the country has gotten more prosperous, healthier and happier, and the world more peaceful, in those eight years of Republican and Democratic rule.

One can expect more of the same smoke this year as the excitement, titillation, and political lies build to a November 4th crescendo.  Illusions die hard, or to be more accurate – they do not die.

The Spectacle rolls on.

Although it might sound uppity, unless people read books that explain how the political and economic system is constructed and how it operates, they have no hope of understanding why the presidential elections are musical chairs played to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Podcasts and talks can be instructive when true, but they don’t stick like words on a page in a book that you have noted and can refer back to.

But the vast majority of people will not read such books because many can’t read or are too lazy or distracted to take the time to switch off digital media and the mainstream corporate press.  It is only through slow meditative reading and study of the great analytic books about social structure, propaganda, history, capitalism, and political economy that a person can truly grasp the nature of the power elite’s domination of the US government, the mass media, and the White House.

A soupçon of differences between contestants for the presidency – superficial makeup – is enough to have those caught in the spectacle get worked up into a hot lather of excitement for candidates chosen by the billionaires.  It is an aspect of the mania for celebrity culture.

One cannot simply imbibe the daily mass media, listen to talking heads, or read books recommended and promoted by The New York Times or some prize committee such as the Booker or Pulitzer prizes. (see the NYT’s Best Sellers here – as if #5 could be as “best” as #1).

It is no secret that the reading public has been shrinking for years as literacy has waned dramatically.  This is not an accident as the internet, cell phones, and the online life have been pushed by the authorities at every level, including throughout the school system.  (I am not arguing that the voters saw through the electoral charade in the past because the level of cultural literacy was higher.)

Today, a walk into any local library throughout the country will confirm the sad state of what even those who read books are reading.  The new fiction shelves are filled with books with candy-colored sensationalized covers that evoke bodice-ripping books of old now updated to sound more serious by telling stories of orphans on European trains during WW II, mysterious murders, separated twins, equally evil Nazis and Russians on the prowl, childhood trauma, unfaithful men, etc.  All seemingly NY Times bestsellers, together with the “non-fiction” books within which you would search a long time on the shelves to find a radical critique of the American political system and its propaganda arms.

This issue of voting and literacy is connected to another key matter.  The American public as a whole does not much care to follow foreign policy and military issues.  That is an understatement.  Once the military draft was ended in January 1973, the public lost interest in who was being killed in America’s wars.  Let foreigners be damned was the unspoken assumption.  It was a stroke of genius by the military-industrial-political complex, for politics has always been about what’s in it for us, and when the military is voluntary and Americans are dying in smaller numbers, people are indifferent to the killing.

When it comes to politics, the public’s focus is primarily on domestic issues, the economy, health care, taxes, etc., despite the fact that the entire economy is dependent on war and preparations for war and the U.S. has been at war continually for decades.  The U.S spends nearly $900 billion dollars annually on “defense” spending; this is more than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan combined.

As everyone knows:

The U.S. is defending itself in Syria where its troops illegally occupy the oilfields in the northeast.

It is defending itself helping Israel slaughter Palestinians and supporting an expanded Middle Eastern war.

It is defending itself by attacking Russia via Ukraine and leading the world to nuclear war.

It is defending itself by provoking China in the South China Sea.

It is defending itself all over the world with special forces and military bases everywhere because everyone is out to get us.

It is defending itself always far, far away from its own shores.

Everyone knows that’s how it goes.

But facetiousness aside, the voting public either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that.  Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse.  It is an economy based on fantasy and fake money with a national debt over 35 trillion dollars that will never be repaid.  That’s another illusion.  But I am speaking of pipe dreams, am I not?    And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their indifference and ignorance of its ramifications throughout the society and more importantly, its effects in death and destruction on the rest of the world.  But that’s how it goes as their focus is on the masked faces that face each other on the stage of the masquerade ball every four years.

This charade is comical but accepted by so many, and as the Halloween season in a presidential election year in the USA approaches, it becomes most clear.  It’s always a trick until four years elapses and the next poisoned candy treat is offered.

Get to the polls.  Your life depends on it!

But there is a big price to be paid – a lesson always too late for the learning – for going to the masquerade ball.  Yet when smoke gets in your eyes…ah, such an exciting time it is!

“Do you not know there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask?” warned Søren Kierkegaard.

“Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked?

Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this?

Or are you not terrified by it?”

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 18:40

Appeals Court Rules Against ATF's Pistol Brace Ban

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court in North Dakota has found that a rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that restricts ownership of pistol attachments known as stabilizing braces is “arbitrary and capricious,” ordering a lower court to re-consider a motion that would block enforcement of the brace ban.

In a 2–1 decision issued on Aug. 9 by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the majority found that a coalition of 25 Republican attorneys are likely to succeed in their legal challenge against the ATF rule that treats pistols fitted with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles and subjects them to various restrictions.

“The Final Rule, as a whole, is arbitrary and capricious because it allows the ATF to arrive at whatever conclusion it wishes without ‘adequately explain[ing] the standard on which its decision is based,’” the majority opinion states. “Thus, we conclude the Coalition is likely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.”

The states and other plaintiffs sued the ATF in February 2023, with U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in North Dakota declining to grant their motion for a preliminary injunction and block the rule. Arguing that they were unlikely to succeed on the merits, Hovland found that ATF had adequately explained its rulemaking process.

The majority on the 8th Circuit disagreed, and in their Aug. 9 decision ordered Hovland to reconsider the plaintiffs’ motion for a injunction that would block the ATF rule’s enforcement.

“We reverse the order denying a preliminary injunction and remand with instructions to reconsider the motion consistent with this opinion,” the judges wrote in the majority opinion.

Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd dissented, saying that the panel should have affirmed Hovland’s order because there was no need for a preliminary injunction after the rule was vacated in June by U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas.

O'Connor argued in his 12-page decision that the ATF’s rule that treated roughly 99 percent of pistols fitted with the braces as short-barreled rifles violated the Administrative Procedures Act’s procedural requirements because it was not a “logical outgrowth” of the proposed version of the rule.

“The Court finds that the adaptation of the Final Rule was arbitrary and capricious for two reasons,” O'Connor wrote. “First, the Defendants did not provide a detailed justification for their reversal of the agency’s longstanding position. And second, the Final Rule’s standards are impermissibly vague.”

The judge granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and ordered the rule vacated.

The ATF told The Epoch Times that it had no comment on the 8th Circuit ruling.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who were among the 25 attorneys general who challenged the ATF rule, praised the 8th Circuit ruling.

“This victory upholds Americans’ constitutional rights and stops the Biden-Harris ATF’s illegal attempt to make millions of law-abiding citizens felons overnight,” Bird said in a statement.

Bailey issued a statement saying: “The Constitution was meant to be a floor, not a ceiling, for our God-given rights. We will continue to do everything in our power to safeguard Missourians’ right to keep and bear arms against encroachment by unelected federal bureaucrats.”

Stabilizing Braces

The pistol stabilizing brace, introduced over a decade ago, was designed to aid disabled individuals and others who require assistance when shooting large-format pistols, such as those built on AR-15 platforms. This accessory attaches to the rear of the pistol and the shooter’s forearm, providing a steadier aim for one-handed shooting.

Restrictions on stabilizing braces have been the subject of intense debate after the ATF proposed them in 2020. Initially, the ATF said in open letters that it did not consider the braces as converting pistols into short-barreled rifles but in the final rule, the agency cited changes in the braces’ design in saying they convert pistols into restricted short-barreled rifles.

In January 2023, the DOJ announced that it had submitted the final rule to the Federal Register, formalizing the regulation that President Joe Biden advocated for in April 2020 after it was found that a man killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, using a gun with a stabilizing brace.

The rule went into effect immediately upon publication. Any firearms with stabilizing braces or similar attachments that qualified them under the new rule as short-barreled rifles had to be registered no later than within 120 days, or modified by removing the brace and restored into a regular pistol, or turned into a local ATF office, or destroyed.

Short-barreled rifles are subject to more strict regulations under the National Firearms Act (NFA), with those found in possession of unregistered NFA firearms can face fines of up to $10,000, 10 years in prison, and a felony conviction that disqualifies them from future firearm ownership.

The rule faced pushback from Republicans and gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association, which pointed out they were originally designed for disabled veterans.

The rule faced several legal challenges. In one of the lawsuits, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals determined in August 2023 that the rule was finalized without giving the public a meaningful chance to comment on it, in violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which sent the case to O'Connor in Texas, who in June this year vacated the rule, setting up a possible U.S. Supreme Court appeal.

The number of Americans impacted by the ATF’s brace rule is difficult to determine. The ATF estimates that 3 million pistol braces have been sold. Second Amendment advocates say the number is closer to 40 million.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 17:30

A Question Of Timing

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

France, 1788.    Russia, 1916.    Germany, 1937.

These dates have something in common.

In France in 1788, political conditions had been getting questionable, but there was no apparent need to panic. That came the following year, with the sudden outbreak of the French Revolution. From that point on, it was dangerous even to go out in the streets of Paris. So many people had become enraged, that even if you were not a member of the aristocracy, you could easily become collateral damage.

And so, it would have been wise if, in 1788, you had decided to pack your bags and remove yourself from the epicentre of what was developing.

Similarly, in 1916, Russia was at war with the Germans, and the populace was becoming increasingly vocal about the state of the economy. Yet, even the czar believed that the people simply had to accept the situation and muddle through.

A year later, soldiers were deserting, a host of political wannabes were vying for power and anyone who simply wanted to be left alone to run his own life was now afraid to go out on the streets.

And of course, in Germany, prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, all the warnings were there that the country was beginning to unravel, but virtually everyone assumed that, somehow, things would be all right.

A year later, Germany was at war with five nations and had invaded three others. People were being rounded up, imprisoned and/or shot. Those who sought to get out of Germany found that they were no longer allowed to do so.

And history is full of similar cases. In hindsight, the warning signs have always been there: an increasingly autocratic government, increasingly volatile and irrational political struggles, mounting debt, increased taxation, a declining economy and the removal of basic freedoms “for the greater good.”

In 1929, if you lived in the US, you might have just paid $2,735 for a new Packard Custom 8 Roadster – a means of showing off your recent gains in the stock market. A year later, you might well have offered it for sale for only $100, as, for all your previous price offers, there were no takers. And you, like they, had been wiped out in the crash, and $100 meant the difference between eating and not eating.

In 1958, you might have been enjoying a daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana and joking to friends about ‘las barbudas’ – the tiny rebel force hiding in the Sierra Madre. A year later, the joking had ended and private businesses like El Floridita had been nationalized by the new government.

For millennia, the playbook has been the same. Countries that had been wonderful to live in, began to deteriorate from within, and the great majority of residents had failed to read the tea leaves – the warning signs that, in the future, conditions were not going to get better; they were going to get worse.

But why should this be so?

Well, in 1787, in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment that gave rise to Adam Smith, economist and historian Alexander Tytler is credited as having said:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

He further noted that the latter stages of any such decline are marked, first, by complacency, then by apathy. The final stage is invariably one of bondage.

In some cases of collapse, the country is taken over by an outside force, but invariably, as stated above, the rot always starts from within. It’s simply human nature for the majority of any population, when passing through challenging times, to fall prey to promises that, somehow, a change in the form of government can and will result in the elimination of problematic conditions.

But how do those who make such claims sell their ideas? Do they suggest that everyone should work harder and practice a greater level of abnegation?

Well, no. Although such people may exist and may even become outspoken, they are, historically, never the individuals whom the majority of the population follow. Invariably, the majority (having become complacent and pathetic), choose those who promise to take from one group and share the spoils amongst those who are less productive.

As illogical as this promise is, most people, even if they doubt the reality of the claim, tend to think, “Well, it couldn’t be any worse. I might get something, so let’s give it a try.”

A very simple case in point is the Bahamas election of 1967, in which Bahamians elected their first ‘man of the people’ as their premier. Under his rhetoric of ‘Bahamas for Bahamians,’ he promised the large underclass of Bahamians that he would take the top jobs away from the British bankers and other business leaders and that the spoils would go to the average Bahamian.

Of particular interest were the luxury vehicles driven by successful businessmen. Bahamians in their thousands imagined that the senior staff in banks would be fired, that they themselves would be given the jobs… and the fancy Jaguar Saloons.

And that did happen to some extent. Those who were loyal to Prime Minister Lynden Pindling did move up to management positions overnight – positions for which they were not qualified. Not surprisingly, they were unable to learn decades of knowledge overnight. They subsequently either lost their new jobs, or the banks lost business on a massive scale.

And the Jaguars? Well, it turned out that there were thousands of Bahamians for every Jaguar that existed, and for 99.9%, there would be no previously imagined spoils.

Instead, their lives soon headed south in the coming months and years, as wealth flowed away from the Bahamas, most of it never to return.

In other countries the details have often been quite a bit more complex, but the scenario and the outcome have been the same.

Once the warning signs begin to appear, it’s important to remember that, historically, the process never reverses itself. An apathetic population is not one that will suddenly decide to roll up its sleeves and get the country, once again, on a productive footing.

Invariably, the population jumps on the toboggan of empty promises and rides it downhill until it reaches the economic bottom.

And so, circumventing such a situation becomes a question of timing. When it becomes clear that the telltale signs are reappearing once again, those who are wise will acknowledge that the sands are running out and it’s time to move on.

The signs tend to be the same in any locale, in any era. They’re quite easy to see. The difficult part is choosing to make an exit whilst it’s still easy to do so.

*  *  *

Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of broke governments in need of more cash. There are still steps you can take to ensure you survive the turmoil with your money intact. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 16:55

ActBlue Tightens Donation Security Requirements Amid Investigations

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

ActBlue agreed to tighten its donation security requirements, according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who, along with other Republican-controlled states and a congressional committee, is investigating the Democratic fundraising platform.

Paxton said in an Aug. 8 statement that ActBlue has cooperated with the Texas investigation and will now require CVV codes for credit card contributions.

One primary focus of the Texas probe launched in December 2023 involved ActBlue’s failure to require donors to provide CVV codes, which are numerical codes printed on credit cards commonly used to combat credit card fraud.

“ActBlue has been the subject of numerous allegations of illicit activity, including that its platform may enable fraud,” the statement said.

Paxton said his office issued a supplemental civil investigative demand in his ongoing probe to obtain additional information relevant to allegations of wrongdoing regarding ActBlue.

Enforcing the law surrounding elections and campaign contributions is critical, he said.

“Certain features of campaign finance law may incentivize bad actors to use platforms like ActBlue to covertly move money to political campaigns to evade legal requirements,” Paxton said.

State attorneys general from Virginia, Wyoming, and Missouri have launched similar investigations into ActBlue.

ActBlue has denied wrongdoing.

“This investigation is nothing more than a partisan political attack and scare tactic to undermine the power of Democratic and progressive small-dollar donors,” the organization said in a statement on Aug. 2 as Virginia announced its investigation.

Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) speaks at a hearing with the House Administration subcommittee on Elections in Washington on June 24, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Republicans have resorted to “political attacks and spreading false accusations” because they can’t accept that millions of Democrats are donating, according to the group’s statement.

ActBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

On the federal level, Rep. Bryan Steil, (R-Wis.) chairman of the House Administration Committee, initiated a probe into ActBlue last fall amid allegations it facilitated illegal contributions to political committees nationwide.

In an Aug. 5 news release, Steil asked the FEC to require political campaigns to verify online donors’ CVV codes and stop taking donations via prepaid credit cards and gift cards.

In March 2023, O'Keefe Media Group reported that senior citizens in Maryland and elsewhere denied making all the donations attributed to them in Federal Election Commission records.

Donors contacted by O'Keefe Media Group said they made political contributions to ActBlue but had no knowledge of making what amounted to thousands of donations—with some totaling more than $200,000— in a few years.

The media group found similar anomalies in data from WinRed, a Republican platform similar to ActBlue. The House Administration Committee does not appear to be investigating the WinRed fundraising organization.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 12:50

Plagiarizing Trump, Copycat Kamala Promises No Tax On Tips

At a Saturday rally in Las Vegas just three weeks into her campaign, Kamala Harris "stole" one of Donald Trump's defining policy stances - promising to abolish federal income taxes on tips if elected. While right-wing social media reacted by vaulting #CopyCatKamala to the top of Twitter's politics trending list, tax-savvy observers sighed, knowing the policy is riddled with drawbacks.  

Harris didn't just steal the idea, she even copied Trump's choice of where to announce it, as the former president also unveiled the idea in Vegas on June 9th. That makes sense, given the hospitality-heavy city's high proportion of voters working in tipped jobs. 

Kamala's first major policy proposal was plagiarized directly from Trump pic.twitter.com/8OgpBGA627

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 11, 2024

Trump quickly took to Truth Social to ridicule Harris for parroting his proposal and cast doubt on whether she's serious about it:

From a pure retail-politics point of view, Trump's proposal was brilliant, as it outflanked the Democrats in appealing directly to low-income, working class people. Rather than contest the position, Team Harris decided to simply neutralize its benefit to Trump by removing it as a voting-booth differentiator.

Yet, as tech entrepreneur and investor David Sacks noted on X: "The entire narrative of the Harris campaign is that she represents something fresh and new. She just shattered that by blatantly copying Trump’s “no tax on tips." 

The entire narrative of the Harris campaign is that she represents something fresh and new. She just shattered that by blatantly copying Trump’s “no tax on tips.”

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) August 11, 2024

And with no accomplishments from the Biden-Harris administration to ride on, Harris and her handlers have resorted to plagiarism. At the same time, corporate media is turning a blind eye to the fact that she hasn't given a single unscripted interview since announcing her run.

Prior to Harris jumping on the bandwagon, Nevada's two senators -- both Democrats -- voiced their own support for the concept. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a "No Tax On Tips Act" to make the idea a reality, and Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds offered a companion House bill, while Reps. Thomas Massie and Matt Gaetz offered a “Tax Free Tips Act of 2024” with different specifics.

- pic.twitter.com/AEsbqfHssK

— The Right To Bear Memes (@grandoldmemes) August 11, 2024

While the concept has a great ring to it, its actual application could have an underwhelming effect on the working class and some unintended consequences for many others. As Tax Foundation senior policy analyst Alex Muresianu wrote in July:

"The policy would be poorly targeted at low- and middle-income earners, given the relatively small share of the population working in tipped occupations. Worse, the exemption itself, and any safeguards added, would add to the complexity of the tax code overall."

Only 2.5% of American workers earn tips, and just 5% of the bottom quartile of earners, Muresianu noted, citing the work of the Yale Budget Lab. Then there's the fact that many tip-income workers pay little or no federal income taxes as it is, thanks to the standard deduction and credits like the child tax credit and earned income tax credit (EITC).

For those who do make enough to pay federal income tax, the "no tax on tips" idea is another example of politicians picking winners and losers, with a waitress making $34,000 getting a huge break while a cashier with the same total earnings getting left out. 

Source: Tax Foundation "Frustrated With Tipping? No Tax On Tips Could Make It Worse"

That brings us to an important question about policy specifics -- just which taxes would tips be exempt from? Under the Cruz-Donalds "No Tax On Tips Act," tips would be spared from federal income tax, but remain subject to the payroll tax that purportedly funds Social Security and Medicare. The Massie-Gaetz offering would exempt tips from both flavors of government theft.  

On the knowingly false assumption that tax-free tips wouldn't alter behavior of labor market participants, the cost of the proposal might be around $107 billion over 10 years. However, making a certain kind of income at least income-tax-free will offer a powerful incentive to shift compensation in that direction, including many occupations where tips are currently nonexistent. 

Just last year the IRS under Biden-Harris made plans to crack down on tips.

Now Kamala is stealing Trump’s policy of “no tax on tips.”#CopyCatKamala pic.twitter.com/63aiLioajY

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 11, 2024

"One could imagine a scenario in which, say, highly compensated lawyers or accountants begin to receive some of their income as voluntary tips," cautioned Muresianu. Congress could try heading that off by imposing income limits and other restrictions on the exemption, but that would only further complicate an already Byzantine tax code. An increase to the standard deduction would offer a simpler and more even-handed avenue for easing tax pressure on the working class. 

Kamala Harris, who now claims to be against taxing tips, was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which expanded the IRS so it could go after people not paying taxes on tips.

Incredible stuff. The most inauthentic, astro-turfed campaign in history. pic.twitter.com/9Nne61oJPi

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 11, 2024

If all that isn't enough to give you pause about "no taxes on tips," consider how many more places -- dentist offices, auto shops, florists, groceries -- where you might have a cashier spinning one of those touch-screens around and asking you to choose how much you want to tip.  

Pathetic! https://t.co/3PE9NF964b pic.twitter.com/g4Hsj7Ftlp

— Captain Sou (@SouSanDiego) August 11, 2024

Fresh and newly borrowed.

It seems this is who she is.

Fake and unoriginal.

People are so gullible, they’ll willingly sign up for it.

Sad for the country if she wins.

— Town Square (@XTownSquareX) August 11, 2024

This race will boil down to one issue…The Real Kamala Harris.

If Trump can expose it, he wins.

If the Democrats/media can keep it hidden, she wins.

— Johnny (@JohnBrdln) August 11, 2024

Prediction: when she announces her “policies” they’re going to be basically identical to Trump.

A few will stray, which will separate her, but she doesn’t have time for new policy. This is going to be a copy/paste job with 2 months to pitch what Trump’s been pitching for years.

— Drew (@tallRevere) August 11, 2024

Good point...

Her first official policy is steal Trumps. Also, why wait. You’re VP now.

— MERICA MEMED (@Mericamemed) August 11, 2024

Another zinger. 

Next thing you'll know...

What else will Harris plagiarize before the September 10th debate with Trump?

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 12:15

Appeals Court Blocks Key Parts Of Biden's Student Loan Relief Plan

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court has issued an order blocking key parts of the federal government’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) student loan forgiveness plan, replacing an earlier temporary administrative stay with an injunction that lays out specific prohibitions that will remain in force until the court issues a final ruling on the matter or until the Supreme Court intervenes.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 9 ruled against the Department of Education’s (DOE) student loan forgiveness plan, largely granting an injunction requested by seven GOP-led states of a district court order that they say didn’t go far enough in blocking the program.

The SAVE plan, which aimed to lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers and speed up loan forgiveness for some, has been a point of contention since its introduction, drawing legal challenges from several states.

The latest order halts key aspects of the program while the legal battle continues.

The Eighth Circuit’s partial injunction prohibits the Biden administration from forgiving any principal or interest on loans under the SAVE plan, blocks provisions that would prevent interest from accruing on loans, and disallows borrowers from making very low or $0 monthly payments based on their income.

The federal government is “enjoined from any further forgiveness of principal or interest, from not charging borrowers accrued interest, and from further implementing SAVE’s payment-threshold provisions,” the judges wrote. The injunction will remain in effect until further order of the Eighth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court, the judges stated.

An initial ruling by a district court in Missouri partially blocked the SAVE plan but allowed other key parts to continue. The Eighth Circuit Court noted in its Aug. 9 order that the government adapted to the district court ruling by creating a hybrid plan that continued loan forgiveness in a different form, effectively undermining the district court’s injunction.

The hybrid plan meant that the lower court’s injunction only delayed loan forgiveness from 10 to 20 years and that borrowers could still get their loans fully forgiven after 20 years, even if they’ve made zero payments each month.

The Biden administration appealed the district court injunction, while the coalition of Republican-led states cross-appealed, seeking an expanded injunction. In response, the Eighth Circuit issued a decision on July 18 that granted the states’ emergency motion for an administrative stay, temporarily halting the implementation of the entire SAVE plan.

The Eighth Circuit then ruled on Aug. 9 to replace the administrative stay with a superseding injunction, siding with the district court’s finding that the plaintiffs have a “fair chance” of winning their argument on the merits because the sheer magnitude of the Biden administration’s debt relief plan.

Estimated to forgive around $475 billion in student loans, the SAVE plan likely exceeds the scope of congressionally authorized income-driven repayment plans.

The partial injunction only blocks the more controversial parts of the SAVE plan, such as faster forgiveness and non-accrual of interest, while allowing the federal government to continue offering income-driven repayment options to borrowers, just under stricter terms. The judges recognized that some aspects of the SAVE Plan, which were challenged as overreach, may exceed the government’s authority. However, other elements are within the permissible scope of income-driven repayment programs authorized by Congress.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona issued a statement expressing opposition to the appellate court’s decision.

“I strongly disagree with the Eighth Circuit’s decision blocking our Administration’s SAVE plan,” he said in a post on X, adding that borrowers currently enrolled in the program will be placed in an interest-free forbearance, the details of which would be announced by the DOE in the coming days.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey voiced support for the decision to grant an injunction.

“This court order is a stark reminder to the Biden–Harris Administration that Congress did not grant them the authority to saddle working Americans with $500 billion in someone else’s Ivy League debt,“ he said in a statement. ”This is a huge win for every American who still believes in paying their own way.”

Despite the injunction, the federal government can still implement the broader structure of income-driven repayment under the SAVE plan, meaning that borrowers can still make payments that are calculated based on their income and family size.

Further, the injunction indicates that all borrowers currently impacted by the Eighth Circuit Court’s administrative stay are allowed to remain in administrative forbearance and are thus not required to pay principal or interest on their loans. Also, borrowers who have remained in PAYE and REPAYE plans are not impacted, and the coalition of states that challenged the SAVE plan “cannot turn back the clock on any loans that have already been forgiven.”

Another federal judge in Kansas had also blocked parts of the SAVE plan. However, a different federal appeals court, the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, put part of that decision on hold. A group of Republican-led states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate that injunction.

In an earlier emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a DOE spokesperson said that Congress gave the department the authority to define the terms of income-driven repayment plans in 1993 and that the SAVE plan is the fourth time the agency has used that authority.

The spokesperson added that the Biden administration “won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country—no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”

The Education Department said recently that it had already granted $5.5 billion to 414,000 borrowers through the SAVE plan.

The administration has estimated that the program would cost taxpayers around $156 billion over a decade, while Republican attorneys general argued that its true cost will amount to around $475 billion.

The Eighth Circuit wrote in its Aug. 9 decision that a budget model by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania estimated that the program would cost $475 billion, while siding with the Kansas district court’s finding that the Biden administration’s expansion of the income-driven repayment plans from a program costing roughly $15 billion to $475 billion “expands agency authority to such an extent that it alters it.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 11:40

Trump Campaign Hacked, Microsoft Says Iran-Backed Group "Mint Sandstorm" Responsible

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

Microsoft’s cyber threat assessment unit said on Aug. 9 that a high-ranking official on a U.S. presidential campaign had been hacked by an Iran-backed group, with the Trump campaign later revealing that it had been the target of a cyber attack and linked the breach to “foreign sources hostile to the United States.”

The report from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) indicates that an Iranian group called Mint Sandstorm that is connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account belonging to a former senior campaign adviser.

“Mint Sandstorm similarly targeted a presidential campaign in May and June 2020 five to six months ahead of the last U.S. presidential election,” MTAC said, adding that the same group also tried but failed to breach an account belonging to a former presidential candidate.

No details were released on the official’s identity, but Microsoft’s threat assessment team said that the Iranian-linked breaches related to increasing attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election in November.

“This recent cyber-enabled influence activity arises from a combination of actors which are conducting initial cyber reconnaissance and seeding online personas and websites into the information space,” according to the report.

Following the release of the report, the Trump 2024 presidential campaign confirmed that it had been the target of a cyberattack in which campaign documents were stolen.

The breach, which Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Politico on Aug. 10 has been attributed to “foreign sources hostile to the United States,” marks a significant development in the area of foreign interference in U.S. elections as the race for the White House heats up.

Politico reported that, on July 22, it began receiving emails from an anonymous source using the alias “Robert.” The emails reportedly contained internal documents from the Trump campaign, including a 271-page research dossier on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who was vetted as a potential vice presidential nominee and later chosen as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

Cheung pointed to the Microsoft report and its finding that Iranian hackers had broken into the account of a high-ranking official on the U.S. presidential campaign as evidence of involvement of a foreign hostile power in the Trump campaign breach.

“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” Cheung told the outlet.

He also linked the timing of the breach to reports of Iranian plots against Trump, who remains a target of Iranian hostility after ordering the 2020 assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

Cheung, who did not immediately respond to a request from The Epoch Times for more details of the development, declined to tell Politico whether the Trump campaign had contacted law enforcement in regards to the breach.

U.S. intelligence officials recently stated that Iran had been hard at work sowing political discord in the United States via the use of clandestine or ghost social media accounts. Iran has denied that such practices are taking place and said that any actions against the United States are purely defensive and do not involve cyber attacks.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement in July confirming that Iranian groups had targeted the U.S. political campaign, specifically that of Trump, to influence the upcoming election.

The U.S. intelligence community “has observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States,” the statement reads.

Microsoft’s report said that the hackers’ activity also covered a wider scope, including gaining intelligence on U.S. political campaigns, which allowed Iranian groups to target political swing states in the United States.

The report also stated that the previous breach involving the county official, which took place in May, was part of a wider “password spray operation.” This type of operation involves the use of common or leaked passwords, which hackers use on multiple accounts until they find a match and break into one.

The report confirmed that no other accounts were compromised through the breach and that all other targeted officials were notified of the cyber attack.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 11:25

How Overpriced Are Basic Necessities In Prison?

Apart from receiving basics like soap, toilet paper, a tooth brush and tooth paste as well as clothes and three meals per day, prisoners in the U.S. largely have to pay for additional food, religious and hygiene items themselves.

And, as Statista's Florian Zandt details below, while inflation has driven up prices across the board, prison commissaries often add a premium that goes far beyond regular price increases.

For example, a packet of instant ramen by the brand Maruchan currently costs $0.20 at Walmart, while commissaries in state prisons around the country charge as much as $0.65 for the same serving size. This is according to data aggregated by reporters Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg and Ethan Corey at The Appeal for the first-ever database on commissary prices in the U.S. 

This premium is hard to bear for many prisoners due to average prison job wages topping out at a maximum of $0.52 per hour as evidenced by an ACLU report from 2022.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Statista calculations show prison laborers in regular jobs, which include maintenance or working the kitchen, need to work an average of 1.6 hours to afford one packet of the most commonly offered state-wide ramen variant. For a cup of mac & cheese, inmates have to work more than a half-day on average. In terms of personal hygiene, many items considered basic necessities to maintain personal health are even less affordable for prisoners. A tube of toothpaste or a deodorant stick, for example, take around one and a half days to earn based on the average hourly wage.

Looking at state-level averages, many items become even less affordable to regular inmates. For example, the average hourly wage for a prisoner in Louisiana is $0.06, while a packet of ramen costs $0.57. While states like Texas, which don't pay their prison workers at all, argue that the labor of incarcerated people pays for their room and board, companies outside the prison walls also profit from the cheapest workforce in the country. An in-depth Associated Press investigation on forced labor in prison "tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market", with companies like McDonald's or Walmart profiting off this arrangement.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 11:05

What Is AI Really? Digital Illusions, False Promises, And Mass Re-Education

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Much fanfare has been lavished on the concept of Artificial Intelligence in the past five years to the point that its primacy is treated in the media as a forgone conclusion. The idea that algorithms can “think” has become a pervading myth, a sci-fi fantasy come to life. The reality is much less impressive...

We continually hear from globalists at the World Economic Forum and other elitist institutions that AI is the catalyst for the “4th Industrial Revolution” – A technological singularity that will supposedly change every aspect of our society forever. I keep waiting for the moment that AI does something significant in terms of advancing human knowledge or making our lives better. The moment never comes. In fact, the globalists keep moving the goalposts for what AI really is.

I would note that WEF zealots like Yuval Harari talk about AI like it is the rise of an all powerful deity (I discuss the globalist worship of AI in my article ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Secular Look At The Digital Antichrist’). Yet, Harari has also recently downplayed AI as a sentient intelligence. He argues that it doesn’t need to achieve self awareness or consciousness in order to be considered a super being or living entity. He even suggests that the popular image of a Terminator-like AI with individual agency and desire is not a legitimate expectation.

In other words, AI as it stands today is nothing more than a mindless algorithm, and thus, it is not AI.  But, if every aspect of our world is engineered around digital infrastructures and the populace is taught to put blind faith in the “infallibility” of algorithms then eventually become the robot gods the globalists so desperately desire.  That is to say, AI dominance is only possible if everyone BELIEVES that AI is legitimate.  Harari essentially admits to this agenda in the speech above.

The allure of AI for average people is the pie-in-the-sky promise of freedom from worry or responsibility. As with all narcissists, the global elite love to future-fake and buy popular conformity now on false promises of rewards that will never come.

Yes, algorithms are currently used to help laymen do things they could not do before, such as build websites, edit essays, cheat on college exams, create bad artwork and video content, etc. Useful applications are few and far between. For example, the claim that AI is “revolutionizing” medical diagnosis and treatment is far-fetched.  The US, the nation that arguably has the most access to AI tools, is also suffering from declining life expectancy.  We know it’s not covid because the virus has a 99.8% average survival rate.  You would think that if AI is so powerful in its ability to identify and treat ailments the average American would be living longer.

There is no evidence of a single benefit to AI on a broader social scale. At most, it looks like it will be good at taking jobs away from web developers and McDonald’s drive-thru employees.  The globalist notion that AI is going to create a robotic renaissance of art, music, literature and scientific discovery is utter nonsense.  AI has proven to be nothing more than a tool of mediocre convenience, but that’s actually why it’s so dangerous.

I suspect the WEF has changed its ideas about what AI should be because it’s not living up to the delusional aspirations they originally had for it. They’ve been waiting for a piece of software to come to life and start giving them insights into the mechanics of the universe and they’re starting to realize that’s never going to happen. Instead, the elitists are shifting their focus increasingly into the melding of the human world and the digital world. They want to fabricate the necessity of AI because human dependency on the technology serves the purposes of centralization.

But what would this actually look like? Well, it requires that the population continues to get dumber while AI becomes more integral to society.

For example, it is widely accepted at this point that a college education is no indication of intelligence or skill. There are millions of graduates entering the workforce today that display an unsettling level of incompetence. This is partially because college educators are less capable, ideologically biased and the average curriculum has degraded. But, also, we need to start accounting for the number of kids coasting their way through school using ChatGPT and other cheat boxes.

They don’t need to learn anything, the algorithm and their cell phone camera does it all for them. This trend is disturbing because human beings have a tendency to take the easiest path in every aspect of survival. Most people stopped learning how to grow food because industrial farming does it for us. They stopped learning how to hunt because there are slaughterhouses and refrigerated trucks.  Many Zennials today are incapable of cooking for themselves because they can get takeout to their door anytime they want. They barely talk on the phone or create physical communities anymore because texting and social media have become the intermediaries in human interaction.

Yes, everything is “easier”, but that does not mean anything is better.

My great fear – The future that I see coming down the road, is one in which human beings no longer bother to think. AI might be seen as the ultimate accumulation of human knowledge; a massive library or digital brain that does all the searching and thinking for you. Why learn anything when AI “knows everything.” Except, this is a lie..

AI doesn’t know everything; it only knows what its programmers want it to know. It only gives you the information its programmers want you to have. The globalists understand this and they can taste the power that they will have should AI become paramount as an educational platform.  They see it as a way to trick people into abandoning personal development and individual thought.

Look at it this way: If everyone in the world starts turning to AI for answers to all their questions, then everyone in the world will be given the same exact answers and will come to the same exact conclusions. All AI has to do is actively censor any information that contradicts the official narrative.

We got a taste of this Orwellian condition during the covid pandemic when Big Tech companies like Google used algorithms to bury any and all data that proved covid was not the threat that government officials said it was. You could not go on YouTube for at least three years and look up alternative information on covid or the vaccines. The algorithm forced everyone to sift through a long list of establishment sources, many of them promoting blatant lies about masking, social distancing, the covid death rate and vaccine safety.

The powers-that-be don’t even need to directly censor or remove information they don’t like. All they have to do is let the algorithm dictate the search results and bury the truth on Page 10,000 where no one will look.

How would this affect the average person?  Say AI is programmed to dictate scientific discourse.  What if AI says that man-made climate change is an undeniable reality and the “science is settled” while never presenting the mountain of counter-evidence to the contrary?  No one will look up the real data because AI will make it impossible to find.  Everyone will assume AI is telling them all there is to know about the subject, but it gets worse than that…

Many readers might remember a few months back when Google AI system “Gemini” was programmed to force DEI onto its users. Whenever a person asked the AI to create a historical image the algorithm made everyone black or brown and often female. Depictions of white men were suspiciously rare despite historical accuracy. This meant endless images of black and brown Highlanders in Scotland, black Founding Fathers in America, female Catholic Popes, Asian knights in Medieval Europe, and hilariously, even black Nazis in WWII Germany.

AI developers often claim that once an AI is created they don’t really control what it does and how it grows. The Gemini incident proves this is a lie. AI can definitely be controlled, or at least molded by coding to promote whatever propaganda the programmers want it to promote. There is no such thing as an autonomous AI; there is always an agenda.

To summarize, globalists want the proliferation of AI because they know that people are lazy and will use the system as a stand-in for individual research. If this happens on a large scale then AI could be used to rewrite every aspect of history, corrupt the very roots of science and mathematics and turn the population into a drooling hive mind; a buzzing froth of braindead drones consuming every proclamation of the algorithm as if it is sacrosanct.

In this way, Yuval Harari is right. AI does not need to become sentient or wield an army of killer robots to do great harm to humanity. All it has to do is be convenient enough that we no longer care to think for ourselves.  Like the “Great and Powerful” OZ hiding behind a digital curtain, you assume you’re gaining knowledge from a wizard when you’re really being manipulated by globalist snake oil salesmen.

*  *  *

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 10:30

Russia Begins Heavy Retaliation On Ukrainian Capital As Zelensky Breaks Silence On Kursk Invasion

Now in the sixth day of the Kursk invasion, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky explained the following on Sunday, breaking his silence and giving his first official confirmation of the daring cross-border ground operation, "Today, I received several reports from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyii regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor’s territory." He added: "Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor."

On the same day Russia’s Foreign Ministry has vowed, "A tough response from the Russian army will not be long in coming." But that response appears to have already begun overnight and into Sunday, as the capital of Kiev has come under heavy missile attack. Missiles did not reach the center of the city, but the suburbs were impacted.

Aftermath of strike in the village of Rozhivka in the Kiev region of Ukraine. Reuters

The Associated Press has described that at least four ballistic missiles slammed into the capital region along with 57 Shahed drones sent, citing Ukraine's air force, which also said its air defenses intercepted 53 of the drones.

Zelensky has alleged that as part of the aerial assault, Russia used a North Korean ballistic missile. "According to preliminary information, the Russians used a North Korean missile in this attack – yet another deliberate terrorist strike against Ukraine," Zelensky stated on social media. "Pyrotechnic experts are still working to determine the exact data regarding this missile," he added.

The US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink has condemned the new Russian aerial assault, saying it killed a man and his four-year old boy.

Air alerts and explosions sounded all night around Kyiv as Russia launched multiple missile attacks, killing a man and his 4-year-old son. A terrible reminder that Russia has not stopped its illegal invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory and its bombing of peaceful civilians. pic.twitter.com/Sj782XuafZ

— Ambassador Bridget A. Brink (@USAmbKyiv) August 11, 2024

As has been the pattern after any major air assault by Russia, Zelensky pressed his Western allies for more immediate defense equipment to defend the skies. He urged that "to really stop Russian terror, we need not only a full-fledged air shield that will protect all our cities and communities, but also strong decisions from partners — decisions that will remove restrictions on our defensive actions."

This reference to "strong decisions" is clearly an appeal for Western militaries to get more directly involved.

Some analysts view this ongoing Kursk cross-border offensive as a last-ditch and desperate ploy to force an escalation so that the US and NATO will more directly intervene, or else to gain leverage. Others say this is all PR-driven and that Ukrainian troops are being sacrificed in what's essentially a suicide mission for propaganda purposes and as but a temporary blow to Kremlin morale...

As I said, Kursk attack is PR-driven decision by Zelensky: "Invading Russia is Zelensky’s riskiest decision yet. Crack troops are being used for a risky counterpunch to Putin that astonished the world — and the fingerprints of Ukraine’s president are all over it.

President… pic.twitter.com/cFMfohUTVW

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) August 10, 2024

It also appears a distraction of sorts from the front lines, where Ukraine is fairing poorly and having serious manpower problems. It might be forcing Russia to relocate reservists from the Donbass region as well in order to urgently protect its borders.

Ukraine has continued sending drones and missiles into Russian territory, with one reportedly hitting a building in Kursk on Sunday, wounding 13 according to local sources.

BREAKING:

The Ukrainian Army has struck and destroyed a Russian convoy of trucks carrying T-80 tanks into the battle zone near Korenovo in the Kursk region of Russia.

Another major blow to the Russian forces in the area. pic.twitter.com/oG2twrm2ak

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 11, 2024

Meanwhile, the world is witnessing Russia fight a war to repel invaders on its own territory in the southern region, with state media describing a Ukrainian command and control center having been destroyed in the Kursk region:

A missile strike has destroyed a Ukrainian command-and-control center in Russia’s Kursk Region, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has claimed, releasing video of the strike. Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale incursion into the border region earlier this week.   

Ukraine sent tanks into Kursk, which Russia is taking out via airstrikes...

Many tens of thousands of Russian citizens have been evacuated from several border regions - with Russian sources acknowledging some 80,000 have fled in buses, trains, and cars. A formal "state of emergency" has persisted as Russia pours troops and security forces into the Kursk region to restore order.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/11/2024 - 09:55