Biden Embarrassingly Reverses Plan To Defund Schools With Archery & Hunting Programs
The White House told Fox News that President Biden is expected to sign legislation overturning his administration's previous decision to defund hunter and archery programs at schools nationwide.
A White House spokesperson said Biden will support the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act that ensures proper funding via the Department of Education for elementary and secondary school hunting and archery programs. This comes after the anti-Second Amendment administration withheld funding for these programs earlier this year.
Last week, the US Congress unanimously passed The Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act.
The bipartisan legislation passed unanimously in the Senate on Wednesday evening and passed the House in a 424-1 vote one night prior. The bill had been championed by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who said a 2022 gun control law had been misinterpreted by the administration to restrict students' access to enrichment programs like hunting safety, archery and even culinary classes. -Fox News
"The bill had been championed by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who said a 2022 gun control law had been misinterpreted by the administration to restrict students' access to enrichment programs like hunting safety, archery and even culinary classes," Fox News noted.
... we're sure the administration "misinterpreted" the gun control law as these anti-gunners wage war on law-abiding/tax-paying gun owners while only emboldening criminals through disastrous social justice reforms that have triggered a crime tsunami across failed progressive metro areas nationwide.
"Thankfully, President Biden saw the political writing on the wall after getting humiliated by an overwhelming vote of disapproval in the House. So, he has announced that he will sign this bill into law. But we all know that the embarrassing vote in the House could have been easily avoided if he simply wasn't so hellbent on attacking guns and our heritage everywhere he possibly can. Gun Owners of America is proud to have played a role in ensuring our children can continue to participate in the quality hunter education and shooting sports programs that they very much enjoy," Erich Pratt, the senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, told us.
Great news, hunter safety & archery/shooting sports programs WILL CONTINUE in schools!
We're proud to have made sure this story didn't go unnoticed, but shame on Joe Biden for previously making this an issue. As he would say: "C'mon man!" https://t.co/68jFShJHdY
Children have become responsible hunters and firearm owners through these programs that have existed for decades. Hunting and archery programs will continue to be a permanent fixture at schools.
Hunter Biden's Daughter Was Living In White House While Representing Peruvian Government
The Biden family may have some more explaining to do over their international affairs, after the NY Post reports that Naomi Biden (Hunter's eldest daughter, not the grandchild Joe Biden mouth-kissed during the 2020 election), was living in the White House while representing the government of Peru in a legal case.
According to a review of public records, the 29-year-old has been working for DC-based law firm Arnold & Porter since January 2021, the same month her grandfather was sworn in as the 46th US president, after interning for the firm in 2019.
In September 2021, Naomi appeared in a legal filing disclosing her involvement in a case brought by Worth Capital Holdings 27, LLC, a Delaware firm which claimed that the country was interfering in the operation of their oil refinery located in the southern Amazon. Worth has sought $590 million in damages.
Of note, Arnold & Porter specializes in foreign litigation, and has defended dozens of sovereign states - including Venezuela, Bulgaria and Hungary. Interestingly, the Post notes that Naomi doesn't have a public page on the firm's website, unlike other firm attorneys.
Which begs the question, particularly in light of questions over the entire Biden family's foreign dealings, should Naomi have registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act)? That would of course depend on the circumstances and extent of her work.
"Everywhere we look it seems there are major conflicts of interest in which the Biden family leveraged their name, access, and patriarch’s power to benefit personal business dealings. All of this must continue to be investigated and exposed – perhaps Biden’s granddaughter should be the next person to come before the Oversight Committee,”
The Biden granddaughter lived at the first residence from August 2022 to March 2023. A rep for Naomi Biden insisted she only worked on the case for “three weeks” in September 2021 — and not while living at the White House. -NY Post
"Naomi Biden’s international arbitration work doesn’t include matters involving the United States government — she is a junior lawyer and a member of international arbitration teams involving private sector plaintiffs. She doesn’t discuss confidential client work with anyone inside or outside the White House," a spokesman for Arnold & Porter told The Post, while the law firm wouldn't say if Naomi had represented any other foreign nations since joining.
The Post also notes that Naomi had quite the nice ride to the elite law firm - having attended the capital's elite Sidwell Friends School in the summer of 2011 while Joe Biden was Vice President. She then worked as an aide for then-Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV).
More recently, Naomi was pictured and videotaped posing with Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky, and having a conversation with his daughter, Karina Zlochevsky.
"She is very excited to join us. Maybe we can find her a job now that she’s graduating college," Hunter Biden wrote to Burisma CFO, Vadym Pozharsky, according to emails from his abandoned laptop, the Post further reports.
Think about the headline question at a personal level and also how you think the average person might answer.
Image from YouTube video below.
In answer to my lead question, I would expect a huge variety of opinions including but not limited to: Inflation, putting food on the table, rent, student loans, US debt, rising deficits, Social Security running out of money, broken political system, care of a sick or dying loved one, climate change, Trump, Biden, gas prices, crime, education, employment, unaffordable housing, saving for retirement, the UAW strike, auto repairs, home repairs, the cost of an auto, lack of saving, finding a job after college, credit card debt, and gasoline prices.
That’s over 20 legitimate concerns off the top of my head. Assistance to Ukraine as the #1 top priority is one thing that would not have crossed my mind until I saw this Tweet.
It's interesting that a politician is telling the people what their interest is… it really is mindblowing just how out of touch these politicians are.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says “Providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans“.
Would assistance to Ukraine be your number one priority? Top 10? Top 20? On your list at all?
Q: Are politicians that seriously out of touch with what people’s concerns are?
A: Of course they are.
It’s not just McConnell, or Republicans, or Democrats. It’s the whole stinking collective lot of them.
They all make decisions based on their priorities, not yours, often based on which donors are giving them the most money for their election campaigns.
CBO Debt to GDP Estimates
Debt-to-GDP image from the Congressional Budget Office, annotations by Mish.
Debt to GDP Alarm Bells Ring, Neither Party Will Solve This
US Debt held by the public is soaring out of sight. It’s even worse than it looks for reasons I explain.
Yet, despite deficit spending and the national debt being enormous problems, I wonder how they would rate in a national poll.
The last concern of those struggling to put food on the table, pay rent, take care of elderly parents, pay down credit card or student debt, or pay the bills in general, is sending $100 billion and counting to Ukraine.
No One Will Fix This
Compromise is always more spending for this in return for more spending on that.
Bnd both parties want to spend more on the military.
“Neither party will fix the deficits. Neither party will do anything about mounting debt. No one will do anything about anything because the political system is totally broken.” Mish
Victor Davis Hanson criticized Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, for Milley’s retirement speech in which he blasts “Trump without mentioning Trump.”
“As Gen. Milley leaves office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on his last day he goes out ranting about his loyalty to the Constitution and not to a ‘dictator’ - blasting Trump without mentioning Trump, and thus trumping as it were Trump’s own excesses with those of his own,” Hanson posted on X.
“So transits the most politicalized and weaponized 4-star Joint Chiefs of Staff since the office was created.”
“Would that instead Milley had at least explained the 2021 historically disastrous flight from Kabul and defeat in Afghanistan, or the radical implementation of woke agendas into the Pentagon retention and promotion policies, or why he felt the illustrious and renown Professor Kendi, of current Boston University ‘Center for Antiracist Research’ infamy, should be required reading for the U.S. military at time when its recruitment is descending into historical lows and its deterrent reputation is seriously questioned,” posted Hanson.
As Gen. Milley leaves office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on his last day he goes out ranting about his loyalty to the Constitution and not to a “dictator,”—blasting Trump without mentioning Trump, and thus trumping as it were Trump’s own excesses with those of his own.…
In his speech at a Friday ceremony honoring his retirement, Milley said:
“We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or dictator. We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution.”
So what about Milley’s own “constitutional" legacy? Victor Davis Hanson asks:
"Is it that an officer who deems his civilian President and Commander in Chief dangerous - as diagnosed by 4-star psychiatrist, state department diplomat, and now theater commander Milley - has a right to commandeer the chain of command, usurp powers that are expressly by law denied to him, and then take it on himself in a time of Chinese-American tensions to freelance, by contacting his communist counterpart to warn him about his own president’s diagnosed volatility, and to reassure the hardened Stalinist that Dr/Gen. Milley will inform him first of any precipitate action from the White House."
Dictatorial much?
Hanson suggests Americans ask the departing Milley, two questions:
1) if Trump is reelected in 2024, will a retired General Milley, as did his retired 4-star colleagues in 2020, violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and repeat his current charges against a second-term President Trump - matching the previous invective of his colleagues' accusations of “liar” or “Mussolini”?.
And
2) what would Milley have done had a subordinate like himself, say a 3-star general, decided that Gen. Mark Milley’s Beijing gambit and his arrogation of command powers that were not legally his own, posed a grave threat to the republic? And thus would such a 3-star call up theater commanders to warn them to resist Milley’s reckless orders and to report to him first, followed by his phone call to the top Chinese PLA general to assure them that if Milley somehow gave an order deemed by the 3-star to be dangerously provocative, then he would not only not obey it but rather first warn the Chinese military of Milley’s unstable state of mind.
Is that the kind of military Milley wishes to leave as his legacy, as he departs barking accusations at the moon?
* * *
In addition to being an American Greatness columnist, Hanson is a renowned American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illy Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Hanson has authored several books, including “The Second World Wars,” “The Case for Trump,” and the recently released “The Dying Citizen.” His insights and analyses on political and historical matters are widely respected and sought after in academic and media circles.
Below is my column in USA Today on what the Menendez indictment might say about the Hunter Biden investigation. From the luxury cars to massive amounts of money to even their choice of counsel, the two scandals have striking similarities.
Here is the column:
In February 2019, Sen. Bob Menendez was having nightmares. The Democratic senator from New Jersey said he was haunted by a question that “keeps me up at night” — whether President Donald Trump was compromised by the Russian government because of past secret dealings.
Menendez’s restless nights also may have had something to do with the fact that at the time, he was allegedly accepting lavish gifts from various sources in exchange for using his Senate seat to bestow favors.
The indictment of Menendez and his wife last week included details of alleged bribes that went to the senator in exchange for revealing sensitive, nonpublic information to Egyptian contacts less than a year before his sleep-deprived speech.
Menendez denied the accusations on Friday. However, even if half of this indictment is true, Menendez is toast. He was able to dodge a bullet in 2017 when a jury hung over a separate series of corruption charges involving lavish gifts. This time, the Justice Department says it has photos of thousands of dollars in cash stuffed in clothing, a luxury car, gold bars and other gifts.
That would keep anyone up at night, but there may be one other insomniac this week: Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell.
There are striking similarities between the Menendez and Biden cases.
While Hunter Biden was allegedly selling access to and influence with his father, he also allegedly received massive payments. His associate Devon Archer told Congress that they were selling the Biden family “brand,” and that Joe Biden was “the brand.”
Like Menendez, Hunter Biden allegedly received a luxury car from his foreign clients. For the senator, the Justice Department says it was a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz. For the president’s son, investigators say it was a $142,000 Fisker sports car.
Indeed, the alleged object of these payments was influence with then-Vice President Biden, when he was the presiding officer of the Senate. Menendez was one of the nation’s most powerful senators at the time.
There are also dealings that reference Hunter Biden and his associates in the Menendez matter. When the senator was trying to arrange for Joe Biden to host a foreign event, an aide to Menendez reportedly reached out to Hunter Biden’s associates.
While the president’s son is accused of peddling influence, in Menendez’s case, it is his wife who is accused of acting as a go-between with those trying to buy the senator’s attention. Nadine Menendez allegedly had lunches and countless communications with people, who, according to the indictment, sought favors from the senator.
Nadine Menendez allegedly knew the co-defendants before she married the senator in 2020. The couple met at an IHOP, but he fittingly proposed to her in 2019 at the Taj Mahal on a trip to India. The setting for the proposal would foretell the lavish gifts to come.
Like Hunter, she is accused of marketing her ability to deliver access to her husband. In March 2020, she allegedly texted an Egyptian official that “anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”
There is of course a major difference between the Biden and Menendez cases: Menendez and his wife are being criminally charged for their alleged influence peddling.
Despite charging figures like Paul Manafort for similar accusations, prosecutors have avoided charges in the Biden case that would put Hunter at the center of a corruption prosecution. Instead, they sought an embarrassing “sweetheart deal” that collapsed in court.
In the Menendez case, investigators left no stone unturned in tracing gifts and money. In the Biden case, a special agent with the IRS testified before Congress that the Bidens were tipped off on planned searches and an attempt to interview the president’s son.
As the Justice Department grinds Menendez into a fine powder, it is likely to draw more attention to the relatively light touch shown Hunter Biden. It is, as Menendez said on the Senate floor in 2019, the type of thing that keeps you up at night.
A revolt against government policies that many say usurp parental authority is spreading across the nation—especially in blue states where lawmakers have promoted transgender ideology and "gender-affirming care"—according to parents, attorneys, and teachers.
For more than a year, California parents have shown up in droves at legislative hearings and phoned in by the hundreds to protest policies that encourage schools to keep social gender transitions of children secret. Teachers also have begun to refuse to hide information about a child's gender identity from parents.
Meanwhile, Democratic members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus have spearheaded legislation supporting so-called gender-affirming care, especially for children, touting it as a “first-in-the-nation” model.
Parental rights groups such as Our Duty have pushed back against the model, while groups such as Planned Parenthood, Equality California, and others support it.
California school districts claim that they’re required by law to keep gender transitions secret from parents unless a child wants to tell his or her parents. But recent court rulings tell a different story.
Landmark Case
A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked California's Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to comply with guidance issued by the California Department of Education that encourages educators to keep gender transitions of students secret from their parents.
Judge Roger T. Benitez granted a preliminary injunction (pdf) against the state and the Escondido Union School District stating the policy is unconstitutional.
The teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, claimed the state and district violated their constitutional and religious rights. They were both placed on paid administrative leave after their lawsuit was filed in April but are negotiating with the district to get back to work in the classroom.
The teachers told The Epoch Times that gender transitions among girls at their middle school are a “social experiment” that has become a social contagion.
When the girls go to the school counselors they get "so much praise and affirming” and are celebrated as “brave” and “honest,” Ms. West said.
“It’s only girls at our school. They eat it up. They get so much attention. They see one kid gets this, and they kind of follow along. It’s infecting them. It’s spreading.”
Until recently, it was rare to have even one child identify as transgender, but it's becoming much more common, Ms. West said.
“I had seven girls in one class that wanted to be trans all of a sudden,” she said.
Ms. Mirabelli said gender transitions are “trending” in California public schools.
“Schools are now the social engineer,” she said. “They’re socially transitioning children, and as they move through the social transition, the next level is, of course, the medical transition.
“We can’t just stand by while all this is going on.
“I had a trans kid in my class. This kid was a fantastic student, one of my favorites—worked hard, good grades, well-behaved. We had a great relationship. I knew that little girl was not a boy, and in the not-too-distant future she looked in the mirror and said, ‘Hey, I’m pretty. Wait a minute.”
Ms. Mirabelli said she wants no part of putting children on a “conveyor belt” toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and eventually surgical transitions that they might regret later in life.
“These kids are 10, 11, and 12 years old. They’re in the throes of adolescence. We’ve been teaching adolescent children for decades. We’ve seen it all. We know that they go through a lot,” she said.
To get to the bottom of why gender transitions are trending, she said, “Follow the money.”
The so-called sex reassignment surgery market reached $2.1 billion last year in the United States and is expected to more than double to $5 billion by 2030, according to a 2022 report by business consulting firm Grand View Research. More research released by Acute Market Reports indicates that North America holds at least half of the global market share for so-called sex reassignment surgeries.
According to the Gender Mapping Project, there were only “a handful” of gender clinics for children operating in North America a decade ago, but there are now more than 400 involved in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry, even as parts of Europe move away from the “affirmative care” model.
Paul Jonna, a Thomas More Society attorney representing the teachers, told The Epoch Times that the ruling in favor of the teachers is significant.
“This ruling could really set the framework for how this issue should be analyzed, not just in California, but everywhere,” he said.
The state issued “very misleading” guidance in the form of an FAQ page to every school district in the state asserting that parental exclusion is required by California law under privacy rights for children and that it was required to keep students safe, he said.
“They said it was nonbinding guidance, but they used words like ‘required’ and ‘must,’ and basically every school district interpreted it as binding,” Mr. Jonna said. “The [district] was convinced it was binding and said so at the hearing ... but in fact, this was not mandatory.”
The judge, he said, was deeply troubled over inconsistent positions that the state has taken and grilled state attorneys in the four-hour hearing on whether the policy was backed by law.
“So, which is it?” the judge asked, according to the court transcript. “Is the FAQ binding on the school district or not?”
Eventually, state attorneys agreed that the policy isn't binding and doesn’t compel school districts to enact the rule.
“The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition,” Judge Benitez said, quoting the 1979 Supreme Court case Parham v. J.R.
He added: “Isn’t that precisely what your rules does? ... It basically says that all parents are presumed to be the enemy if the child simply says, ‘I don’t want my parents to know.’”
The judge asked why parents, who are ultimately legally responsible for the care and nurturing of their children, are “cut out.”
Fed Engages In Shocking Seasonal Adjustments To Convert $92BN Bank Deposit Outflow Into $36BN Inflow
Retail money-market fund inflows continued last week and usage of The Fed's emergency funding facility for banks remains at record highs, as shrinkage of The Fed's balance sheet continues.
Tonight, all eyes are on the bank deposits for more worries, and on a seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits jumped $49BN last week (the biggest inflow since May)...
Source: Bloomberg
But, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits plunged $85BN last week (the biggest drop since July)...
Source: Bloomberg
Which means the gap between surging money-market fund assets and bank deposits continues to grow...
Source: Bloomberg
For the last two weeks, the SA and NSA data has 'agreed' on its direction... but not this week as The Fed's utter fuckery turned a massive $92BN domestic US bank deposit outflow into a $36BN deposit inflow...
Source: Bloomberg
On an NSA basis, Large banks saw $66BN of outflows (SA $26BN inflows), Small banks saw $26BN outflows (SA $9.1BN inflows), and Foreign banks saw $7,3BN inflows (SA $13BN inflows)...
Source: Bloomberg
The gap between SA and NSA deposit losses since the SVB Crisis is now over $150BN...
Source: Bloomberg
On the other side of the ledger, large banks saw loan volumes decline (odd given the $26BN inflows SA) while small banks saw loan volumes jump $8.2BN...
Source: Bloomberg
The key warning sign continues to trend lower (Small Banks' reserve constraint), supported above the critical level by The Fed's emergency funds (for now)...
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, last week we suggested the gap between large bank and small bank deposits may mean its time for another small bank failure so JPMorgan can soak up some more cheap deposits... and sure enough, Jamie Dimon hinted that the banking crisis was not over...
"The problem of interest rate exposure was known to everyone. I do not think we want a system where no bank ever fails. So, having a bunch of failures is not a terrible thing. But if it causes havoc in the system, we have to modify regulations to stop that from happening."
After an ugly month and even uglier quarter, we sure hope these banks are making plans to fill the $108BN hole in their balance sheets they are filling with expensive Fed loans.
By mid-July, a little more than a week after Meta launched Twitter-clone Threads on July 5, we noted (read: here) a startling trend of the keyword "Twitter Killer" being used by corporate press ahead, during, and after launch. This was a coordinated attack - as the corporate press, and now even some in the Biden administration, want to cancel the free-speech billionaire.
Have some in the corporate press given up on their Twitter X attacks?
"It's okay to admit defeat, especially when something is not working out," Forbes said this week as Threads has lost a whopping 80% of its users since launch.
And Musk has made it a mission to be that 'asteroid' to make legacy, dinosaur media extinct: "I hope people around the world engage in citizen journalism, so we know what's truly happening and we get real-time, on-the-ground coverage!"
You'd be surprised how many people still don't notice the bias
Let's give it another year, citizen journalists will continue to expose mainstream media
One X user said, "You'd be surprised how many people still don't notice the bias Let's give it another year, citizen journalists will continue to expose mainstream media."
"It Feels Like A Storm Is Coming": Gloom Of 2023 Confronts Upbeat End-Of-Year History
By Michael Msika, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
Coming off a rough quarter and with clouds hanging over the continent’s economic outlook, stock investors aren’t getting excited about the remaining months of the year, which have historically been strong.
After three consecutive quarters of gains, the Stoxx 600 is set to end the July-September period with negative returns. The peak interest rate narrative has taken a hit as central banks continued to send hawkish messages, with more work likely needed to bring inflation back to the 2% target.
While the Stoxx 600 only experienced modest declines during the quarter, a heavy sector rotation has played out, with investors taking profit on winners from the first half of the year, such as luxuries, tech and travel, while soaring oil propelled energy stocks higher.
“It feels like a storm is coming,” says Freddie Lait, managing partner at Latitude Investment Management. Investors should “avoid very hot sectors or at least take some money off the table.”
The latest Bank of America fund managers survey showed that overall, they are still pessimistic in the near term. Some 63% of European-based investors predicted downside for the market in the coming months, a consequence of monetary tightening as well as earnings downgrades. The cautious view is echoed by strategists who see range-bound returns at best in the last quarter.
That would come as sharp contrast to the historical returns of the Stoxx 600. Seasonality shows that European equities’ perform best over the last three months of the year. October in particular can be volatile, but the benchmark ended with positive returns in 18 of the past 25 years. This year, however, more losses are likely before a potential rebound.
“A bottom for the stock market is likely to happen during the fourth quarter,” says Matthias Born, equity chief investment officer and portfolio manager at Berenberg. “Sentiment is getting more and more negative, flows are going to cash, positioning is low, which could also create a buying opportunity in a similar way to what we saw last October.”
High rates remain a major problem for stocks, as bonds and cash are now offering a very competitive yield and less risk, especially if earnings estimates start to come down. That in turn would pressure valuations, making stocks more expensive than they currently look.
“Amid peak central banks’ hawkishness and downside risks to the economy, bonds are looking more reasonably priced now and increasingly attractive versus equities,” says Barclays strategist Emmanuel Cau. “History shows that yields tend to move lower after the Fed stops hiking rates, and if the low PMIs are indeed a reliable indicator of growth, equities could have catch-down potential” to bonds.
With no clear signs of recovery, economic surprises in Europe remain negative, while composite PMI has been in contraction since June. Still, earnings are showing resilience, providing a floor to equities, according to Cau. He expects earnings to determine the trajectory of the broader equity market, rather than the direction or the level of rates.
“Europe is facing macro headwinds with anemic growth and stubborn inflation,” says Andrew McCaffery, global CIO at Fidelity International in his third quarter view. “Activity is slowing and the outlook for equities is cloudy.”
Jeremy Farrar’s book from August 2021 is relatively more candid than most accounts of the initial decision to lock down in the US and UK. “It’s hard to come off nocturnal calls about the possibility of a lab leak and go back to bed,” he wrote of the clandestine phone calls he was getting from January 27-31, 2020. They had already alerted the FBI and MI5.
“I’d never had trouble sleeping before, something that comes from spending a career working as a doctor in critical care and medicine. But the situation with this new virus and the dark question marks over its origins felt emotionally overwhelming. None of us knew what was going to happen but things had already escalated into an international emergency. On top of that, just a few of us – Eddie [Holmes], Kristian [Anderson], Tony [Fauci] and I – were now privy to sensitive information that, if proved to be true, might set off a whole series of events that would be far bigger than any of us. It felt as if a storm was gathering, of forces beyond anything I had experienced and over which none of us had any control.”
At that point in the trajectory of events, intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic had been put on notice. Anthony Fauci also received confirmation that money from the National Institutes of Health had been channeled to the offending lab in Wuhan, which meant that his career was on the line. Working at a furious pace, the famed “Proximal Origin” paper was produced in record time. It concluded that there was no lab leak.
In a remarkable series of revelations this week, we’ve learned that the CIA was involved in trying to make payments to those authors (thank you whistleblower), plus it appears that Fauci made visits to the CIA’s headquarters, most likely around the same time.
Suddenly we get some possible clarity in what has otherwise been a very blurry picture. The anomaly that has heretofore cried out for explanation is how it is that Fauci changed his mind so dramatically and precisely on the merit of lockdowns for the virus. One day he was counseling calm because this was flu-like, and the next day he was drumming up awareness of the coming lockdown. That day was February 27, 2020, the same day that the New York Times joined with alarmist propaganda from its lead virus reporter Donald G. McNeil.
On February 26, Fauci was writing: “Do not let the fear of the unknown… distort your evaluation of the risk of the pandemic to you relative to the risks that you face every day… do not yield to unreasonable fear.”
The next day, February 27, Fauci wrote actress Morgan Fairchild – likely the most high-profile influencer he knew from the firmament – that “be prepared to mitigate an outbreak in this country by measures that include social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools, etc.”
To be sure, twenty-plus days had passed between the time Fauci alerted intelligence and when he decided to become the voice for lockdowns. We don’t know the exact date of the meetings with the CIA. But generally until now, most of February 2020 has been a blur in terms of the timeline. Something was going on but we hadn’t known just what.
Let’s distinguish between a proximate and distal cause of the lockdowns.
The proximate cause is the fear of a lab leak and an aping of the Wuhan strategy of keeping everyone in their homes to stop the spread. They might have believed this would work, based on the legend of how SARS-1 was controlled. The CIA had dealings with Wuhan and so did Fauci. They both had an interest in denying the lab leak and stopping the spread. The WHO gave them cover.
The distal reasons are more complicated. What stands out here is the possibility of a quid pro quo. The CIA pays scientists to say there was no lab leak and otherwise instructs its kept media sources (New York Times) to call the lab leak a conspiracy theory of the far right. Every measure would be deployed to keep Fauci off the hot seat for his funding of the Wuhan lab. But this cooperation would need to come at a price. Fauci would need to participate in a real-life version of the germ games (Event 201 and Crimson Contagion).
It would be the biggest role of Fauci’s long career. He would need to throw out his principles and medical knowledge of, for example, natural immunity and standard epidemiology concerning the spread of viruses and mitigation strategies. The old pandemic playbook would need to be shredded in favor of lockdown theory as invented in 2005 and then tried in Wuhan. The WHO could be relied upon to say that this strategy worked.
Fauci would need to be on TV daily to somehow persuade Americans to give up their precious rights and liberties. This would need to go on for a long time, maybe all the way to the election, however implausible this sounds. He would need to push the vaccine for which he had already made a deal with Moderna in late January.
Above all else, he would need to convince Trump to go along. That was the hardest part. They considered Trump’s weaknesses. He was a germaphobe so that’s good. He hated Chinese imports so it was merely a matter of describing the virus this way. But he also has a well-known weakness for deferring to highly competent and articulate professional women. That’s where the highly reliable Deborah Birx comes in: Fauci would be her wingman to convince Trump to green-light the lockdowns.
What does the CIA get out of this? The vast intelligence community would have to be put in charge of the pandemic response as the rule maker, the lead agency. Its outposts such as CISA would handle labor-related issues and use its contacts in social media to curate the public mind. This would allow the intelligence community finally to crack down on information flows that had begun 20 years earlier that they had heretofore failed to manage.
The CIA would hobble and hamstring the US president, whom they hated. And importantly, there was his China problem. He had wrecked relations through his tariff wars. So far as they were concerned, this was treason because he did it all on his own. This man was completely out of control. He needed to be put in his place. To convince the president to destroy the US economy with his own hand would be the ultimate coup de grace for the CIA.
A lockdown would restart trade with China. It did in fact achieve that.
How would Fauci and the CIA convince Trump to lock down and restart trade with China? By exploiting these weaknesses and others too: his vulnerability to flattery, his desire for presidential aggrandizement, and his longing for Xi-like powers over all to turn off and then turn on a whole country. Then they would push Trump to buy the much-needed personal protective equipment from China.
They finally got their way: somewhere between March 10 or possibly as late as March 14, Trump gave the go ahead. The press conference of March 16, especially those magical 70 seconds in which Fauci read the words mandating lockdowns because Birx turned out to be too squeamish, was the great turning point. A few days later, Trump was on the phone with Xi asking for equipment.
In addition, such a lockdown would greatly please the digital tech industry, which would experience a huge boost in demand, plus large corporations like Amazon and WalMart, which would stay open as their competitors were closed. Finally, it would be a massive subsidy to pharma and especially the mRNA platform technology itself, which would enjoy the credit for ending the pandemic.
If this whole scenario is true, it means that all along Fauci was merely playing a role, a front man for much deeper interests and priorities in the CIA-led intelligence community. This broad outline makes sense of why Fauci changed his mind on lockdowns, including the timing of the change. There are still many more details to know, but these new fragments of new information take our understanding in a new and more coherent direction.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
North Korea Enshrines "Permanent" Nuclear Power Status In Constitution
On Thursday North Korean state media quoted leader Kim Jong Un as saying more advanced atomic weapons are needed to counter the threat from the United States.
This signals the death knell for Washington's long stated policy goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, given that the remarks came as Kim enshrined the DPRK's status as a permanent nuclear power in its constitution.
North Korea's "nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout,"Kim told the State People's Assembly, according to state-run KCNA.
Starting last year he declared the north as an "irreversible" nuclear weapons state, and has in the last couple months ramped up ballistic missile tests in response to intermittent, ongoing joint US military drills with the south. This has already been a record year in terms of the number of Pyongyang's missile tests.
The north's rubber-stamp parliament, which met Tuesday and Wednesday, has approved the nuclear update to the constitution. Kim described that this was necessary as the United States has "maximized its nuclear war threats to our Republic by resuming the large-scale nuclear war joint drills with clear aggressive nature and putting the deployment of its strategic nuclear assets near the Korean peninsula on a permanent basis."
In July, the nuclear-armed USS Kentucky Navy ballistic missile submarine made a port call in South Korea, which marked a first in decades. It has stayed there since, enraging Pyongyang.
Kim in his Thursday address also blasted growing defense cooperation between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo as the "worst actual threat," saying that as a result "it is very important for the DPRK to accelerate the modernization of nuclear weapons in order to hold the definite edge of strategic deterrence."
A similar message was delivered in New York on Tuesday by Kim Song, North Korea's representative at the UN, who said in an address to the UN General Assembly that the region is close to the "brink of a nuclear war".
NEW: North Korea’s ambassador to the U.N. issued a stark warning that the Korean Peninsula has reached a “hair-trigger situation with imminent danger of nuclear war breakout,” delivering a speech at the 78th U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. https://t.co/Rwtxf37wkW
"Owing to the reckless and continued hysteria of nuclear showdown on the part of the US and its following forces, the year 2023 has been recorded as an extremely dangerous year that the military security situation in and around the Korean peninsula was driven closer to the brink of a nuclear war," he said.
"Due to [Seoul’s] sycophantic and humiliating policy of depending on outside forces, the Korean peninsula is in a hair-trigger situation with imminent danger of nuclear war," the ambassador continued. He further blasted the US for attempting to erect an "Asian NATO" that will bring a "new Cold War structure to northeast Asia."
One Map Summarizes Status Of Ukraine War & Russia's Strategy
A new map and series of infographics created and published by The New York Times on Thursday shows a stalemated frontline stretching from southern Ukraine and across the entire east of the country. It also underscores that Russia exercises control over the vast majority of the territories of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia—which was a stated goal of Putin's war aims.
The Times finds that "Less territory changed hands in August than in any other month of the war" and that "While Ukraine made small gains in the south, Russia took slightly more land overall, mostly in the northeast." And in total, the report says, "When both sides’ gains are added up, Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has highlighted the map, saying it shows"how virtually nothing has changed from 9 months of tragically deadly and expensive fighting in Ukraine throughout 2023."
Additionally, the NY Times points out that the total amount of territory which changed hands since the start of 2023 (in Russia's favor) is smaller than the size of New York City and smaller than Ukraine's capital of Kiev.
"How much did we spend on that summer offensive again?" questioned Fox News pundit Laura Ingram.
Russian forces at this point control almost 20% (or more precisely, 18%) of geographic territory of Ukraine.
While Ukraine's offensive which has been on since the start of the summer has clearly failed, as also just admitted in BBC, there's little evidence that Russia is currently engaged in broad efforts to push its lines forward, deeper into Ukraine.
Amazing and sad chart from NYT on how virtually nothing has changed from 9 months of tragically deadly and expensive fighting in Ukraine throughout 2023:
Pink zones show parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia since January.
One war analyst cited in the Times report underscored that it appears Russia is "comfortable" maintaining control of what it already possesses, and has laid miles of minefields and erected defenses which have proven a nightmare for the Ukrainians:
Rather than seeking rapid gains, the Russian military appears to be comfortable holding the territory it already controls, according to Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher in war studies at King’s College London. "It’s not losing anything by not moving forward," she said.
Russia’s forces outnumber Ukraine’s nearly three to one on the battlefield, and with a larger population to replenish its ranks, Russia could see a prolonged defense as in its interests.
"The whole strategy in Ukraine is for the Russians to let the Ukrainians run against those defenses, kill as many as possible, and destroy as much Western equipment as possible," she added.
In essence Russia can run out the clock while Ukraine faces continuing high rates of attrition, and weakening Western resolve, and a splintering NATO alliance.
Meanwhile Russia is set to raise defense spending by nearly 70% next year as it increasingly sees itself in a bigger de facto conflict with the West...
#UPDATE Russia said on Thursday that it plans to raise defence spending by almost 70% next year, funnelling massive resources into its Ukraine offensive to fight what it calls a "hybrid war" unleashed by the West ➡️ https://t.co/v6d7YhEF5Ipic.twitter.com/QLAG6WE3De
Zelensky's government, if and when it finally concedes that it must negotiate, will be forced to cede the four territories - or at least the bulk. New lines have been drawn and Russian forces aren't going anywhere, no matter how many billions in western weapons and ammo are poured into Kiev—that's at least according to the commentary of 'realist' observers.
Iran has revealed plans to build a new oil refinery in Syria's Homs governorate with a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day (bpd) as part of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Damascus and the government of Venezuela.
"A tripartite memorandum was signed between Iran, Venezuela, and Syria for a new 140,000 barrel refinery to be built in Syria," Jalil Salari, the Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) told state-run Fars News Agency this week.
"The studies that were conducted found that Syria and its neighboring countries are in need of petroleum products, therefore a refinery with a capacity of 140,000 barrels was identified next to the two existing Syrian refineries of Homs and Bania," the official added, highlighting that the three nations will soon enter the financing and construction phase.
Salari also revealed that the existing Homs refinery was repaired by Iranian engineers during a visit by President Ebrahim Raisi in May, and that the studies for the new refinery were conducted by a team from the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
The landmark deal comes in spite of a brutal sanctions campaign from the west that nearly decimated the oil industries of all three nations.
Iran has played a pivotal role in helping both Syria and Venezuela overcome the worst of the western onslaught, providing both countries with technical, material, and military assistance.
In June, Caracas resumed work at the El Palito oil refinery, which is undergoing major repair and expansion work as part of a 100-million-euro deal signed in May 2022 with NIORDC. Iranian technical teams are also working to restore Venezuela's largest oil refinery complex, the Paraguana Refining Center. The plan calls for combining Chinese and Iranian parts and equipment in a refinery built initially using US technology.
By building the new refinery in Homs, Iran will also aid Syria in boosting its oil production levels, as the country has lost over $100 billion in revenues since the start of the war due to the destruction caused by western bombs and an ongoing oil theft campaign led by the US occupation army.
In 2019, former US president Donald Trump detailed why Washington intends to uphold the occupation of northeast Syria, saying, "We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil.… I like oil. We’re keeping the oil."
According to The Cradle columnist Firas Shoufi, the main goal of siphoning off Syrian oil to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) is to help the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which is protected by more than 13 US military bases, to finance its activities and cover its local fuel needs. Iran is also fighting fuel smuggling near its shores, often seizing tankers in the Red Sea that carry stolen fuel.
