Mar 012026
 


Mark Chagall Peace window, UN 1967


Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Dead (Matt Margolis)
Trump Announces Major Airstrikes Against Iranian Regime (Matt Margolis)
Saudi Arabia Joins U.S. in Fighting Iran (Salgado)
Trump Isn’t Starting a War, He’s Ending One (A.J. Christopher)
Russia Condemns US Attack On Iran, Warns Of ‘Radiological Catastrophe’ (ZH)
Barack Obama Is to Blame for Iran. Here’s Why. (Matt Margolis)
The Clash Of Civilizations Restarts History (J.B. Shurk)
The Devil (and Gavin Newsom) Went Down in Dixie (Scott Pinsker)
A Surprising Defense of Trump Came From Bill Clinton (David Manney)
How Profanity Has Taken Hold of American Politics (Turley)
Britain’s Islamic Bloc Vote Warning. America, Take Note. (Peter McIlvenna)
The EU Wants A Nord Stream Sequel, But Not All Members Are Buying It (Marsden)
Marine Le Pen Says She Will Not Run In 2027 Election If Under House Arrest (ZH)
Bhattacharya To Lead Top US Health Agencies At Trump’s Request (Attkisson)
RFK Jr. DESTROYS Media’s Trump Caricature, Celebrates Epic Win on Drug Prices (MN)

 


 

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2027850917337346454?s=20

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 


Iran is a formidable force. They had 35 years to prepare. They have a million missiles. They have a million soldiers. Question is: who has their finger on the button now Khameini’s gone?

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Dead (Matt Margolis)

Despite some initial debate, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during the airstrikes Saturday morning, Israeli officials report. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated in an Israeli strike on Tehran, with his body found under the rubble caused by an Israeli airstrike, senior Israeli officials were informed on Saturday evening, the Jerusalem Post reports. Documentation of Khamenei’s body was reportedly shown to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Khamenei has ruled the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1989, previously serving as president under Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime from 1981 until his ascension to supreme leader. He was 86 years old.


Earlier on Saturday, Iranian officials promised to release a recording from Khamenei soon after Israeli strikes targeted his Tehran compound. The preliminary assessment among Israeli officials was that Khamenei was hurt in the strike. No official confirmation has been received by Israeli, American, or Iranian sources. In the immediate aftermath of the U.S.- Israeli strikes, there was a several hour window where no one could say for sure whether Khamenei was dead, wounded, or merely in hiding. Israeli TV, citing unnamed intelligence sources, quickly assessed that Khamenei had likely been killed when his compound in Tehran was flattened, but officials in Israel, the U.S., and Iran all stopped short of formal confirmation, stressing that his fate was still uncertain.

https://twitter.com/Osint613/status/2027833699316764764

An Israeli official also confirmed to Axios that Khamenei was killed. Why it matters: The 86-year-old Khamenei led Iran for 35 years, making him one of the world’s longest-serving authoritarian rulers. His death is a massive blow to the regime and could accelerate its collapse, which U.S. and Israeli officials have stated as a goal of their operation. The big picture: Khamenei’s killing sets off an immediate succession crisis with no clear answer.Under Iran’s constitution, a council of clerics is meant to select a new supreme leader – but Israel’s strikes also targeted senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and political leaders, leaving the regime’s chain of command in disarray. Israeli officials say they assess the Iranian minister of defense and the commander of the IRGC were also among those killed in targeted strikes on Saturday.

Yes, it’s official: https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2027839695007138207

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) once again had a sensible reaction:
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They have to go all the way now.

Trump Announces Major Airstrikes Against Iranian Regime (Matt Margolis)

President Donald Trump addressed the nation early Saturday morning in an eight-minute video posted to Truth Social, announcing that the United States had begun a joint military strike in Iran. The strikes, which followed a coordinated U.S.–Israeli joint assault on key Iranian military assets, represent the most significant American military action in the Middle East in decades. “A short time ago,” he began, “the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”


He framed the attack as a long-overdue reckoning. “Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world,” Trump said. “For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries,” he said, as though ticking off the charges against a sworn enemy. Trump dove into history of Iran’s evil actions, from the 1979 hostage crisis to the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, and even the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

“Many died,” he said bluntly. “Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq.” He accused the regime of continuing “to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East” and striking “U.S. naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lands.” Then came his cutting declaration: “It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer.” “From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts,” he said, a vivid and gruesome description even by Trump’s standards. He pointed specifically to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, reminding the nation that more than 1,000 innocent people were killed, including 46 Americans, and that 12 U.S. citizens were taken hostage.

“Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Trump asserted. “It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again — they can never have a nuclear weapon.” He reminded Americans of “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the 2025 strike that “obliterated the regime’s nuclear program at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan,” and painted Iran’s leadership as directionless and fanatical. “We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. Again, they wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil,” he said.

This new campaign was both an act of defense and destiny. The Iranian regime has long had nuclear ambitions, and nothing, not even that ridiculous nuclear deal with Obama, stopped them. And Trump understands that the regime was never going to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. “They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” Trump said. Iran, he warned, had been “developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”

[..] Finally, Trump turned to the people of Iran. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said. “Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” He called it “probably your only chance for generations,” and pledged that “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.” “This is the moment for action,” Trump concluded. “Do not let it pass. May God bless the brave men and women of America’s Armed Forces. May God bless the United States of America. May God bless you all. Thank you.”

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BIG. Split up the middle east.

Saudi Arabia Joins U.S. in Fighting Iran (Salgado)

The Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia is so outraged at a retaliatory Iranian strike on a United States base on Saudi soil that it is planning to join the operation against Iran’s regime, according to Fox News. The Iranian regime might have made a fatal mistake in striking multiple Gulf states that host American military bases. Several of those countries, including Qatar, are often inclined to be favorable towards the genocidal Iranian dictatorship, but by hitting targets in those countries, the Iranian jihadis have likely made them into enemies. And if Saudi Arabia really is joining the operation against Iran, that would be a major development.


Fox News national correspondent Jennifer Griffin announced live on Saturday afternoon, “We’re just getting word that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia says they will join the U.S. in the operation against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Operation Epic Fury has a new partner. The Iranian regime was so foolish that it managed to get Saudi Arabia at least temporarily on the same side as Israel, which really is shocking.Griffin continued, “They [Saudi Arabia] said that this comes in the wake of Iran attacking the U.S. base in Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to a senior U.S. official who said the Iranians made a big mistake by firing on Arab coalition partners. Now they are likely to respond. So by Iran firing missiles at UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, they are now likely to fire back at Iranian targets.”

In short, Griffin stated, “So those coalition partners are now going to enter this operation that started off as a U.S.-Israeli operation. That is very, very significant, and we haven’t seen that happen in the past.” No kidding. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia already made an announcement that it “condemns and denounces in strongest terms the blatant Iranian aggression and the flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Qatar, the State of Kuwait, and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Kingdom affirms its full solidarity with and unwavering support for the brotherly countries, and its readiness to place all its capabilities at their disposal.”

The official statement added, “Saudi Arabia calls on the international community to condemn these blatant attacks and to take all firm measures necessary to confront Iranian violations.” By that point, Iran had launched a retaliatory strike against a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia. Even the terror-sponsoring Qatari regime that has interceded for Khamenei’s dictatorship in the past posted, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirms that the State of Qatar reserves its full right to respond to this attack in accordance with the provisions of international law and in a manner proportionate to the nature of the aggression, in defense of its sovereignty and in protection of its security and national interests.”

But since Qatar then followed that up by calling for an immediate cessation in hostilities, it is unlikely that the pro-terror state will take any military action to help the United States in this case. Qatar is likely ticked off that its pals over in Iran might dare to hit it.

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“We have “thou shalt not kill.” They have “thou shalt kill every infidel you find.”

Trump Isn’t Starting a War, He’s Ending One (A.J. Christopher)

As of this writing, the United States and Israel have begun what I can only assume to be the first round of military strikes on Iran. I also assume that the eventual goal is regime change, effected by the United States, but driven by the Iranian people. And I’m not alone. Over the past few days, the so-called “think” tanks are falling all over themselves to be the first to prophesy a quagmire, a “trap,” a “forever war,” and Iraq 3.0.


The dregs at Foreign Policy took a break from clamoring for a post-American world order to demand we not bomb Iran precisely to more quickly usher in said order. At Powerline blog, John Hinderaker gleefully straddles the fence as only he can by declaring his hope that Trump bombs the mullahs with the goal of regime change… and in the same sentence, expresses doubt that this will be accomplished. And if you’re willing to waste the brain cells, you can guess what ol’ Tucker’s position on it is.

But the absolute worst take must be from John Daniel Davison over at The Federalist. John’s main point is that if we allegedly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear abilities with Operation Midnight Hammer, than why do we need to now bomb Iran again to prevent them from acquiring nuclear capabilities?bUm, well, because Iran is trying to rebuild them. As we knew they would. And if we keep bombing only their nuclear facilities, they will simply keep rebuilding them until the next Democrat gets elected president and we stop sending bombs and start sending pallets of cash again. So there’s that. John writes, “At a certain point, it begins to look like the Trump administration is fishing for a reason to strike Iran. Sorry, but that’s not good enough.” Fishing for a reason? I’ll give you a few reasons, John. You tell me if they’re “good enough.”

  • On November 4, 1979, the Iranian government took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
  • The Iranian government helped create, fund, and arm Hezbollah and Hamas.
  • On April 18, 1983, Hezbollah bombed the American embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people.
  • On October 23, 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists bombed the American and French barracks in Beirut, killing 307 people.
  • Over the next decade, Iranian-backed terrorists hijacked several planes, including TWA flight 847, which resulted in the killing of an American sailor.
  • On July 22, 1985, Hezbollah bombed a synagogue, a Jewish nursing home, and a kindergarten in Copenhagen.
  • On March 17, 1992, Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people.
  • On July 18, 1994, Hezbollah bombed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.
  • On June 25, 1996, Iranian-backed terrorists bombed Khobar Towers, killing 19 American servicemen.
  • Iran provided training and expertise to al-Qaeda to commit the 1998 embassy bombings
  • Iran provided training and expertise to al-Qaeda to commit the 2000 USS Cole bombing.
  • During the Iraq War, Iran supported the Shia insurgency against coalition forces.
  • During the Afghan War, Iran supported the Taliban insurgency against coalition forces.
  • Iran supported Syria’s Assad government in crushing its own revolution.
  • On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a genocidal war against Israel.
  • Iran trains and supports the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
  • Iran maintains close ties with the world’s most totalitarian governments, to include Russia, China, North Korea and, until recently, Venezuela.
  • Iran’s government is protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which is basically an Islamic version of Hitler’s SS.
  • For the last 47 years, Iran has been the foremost sponsor of terror in the world.


If these reasons aren’t “good enough” for John Daniel Davison, and we need to go “fishing” for more reasons, here’s another one: The Iranian government is founded on an offshoot of Islam called Twelver Shiism. It is an apocalyptic sect which holds that the twelfth imam Muhammad al-Mahdi (born 870 AD) never actually died, and has been in hiding this entire time. The Twelvers believe it is their divine duty to usher in the Apocalypse in order to trigger his return. Hence the unrelenting half-century war of terror against the West. We have “thou shalt not kill.” They have “thou shalt kill every infidel you find. That’s the mindset we’re up against. Not reason. Not logic. Not deals or agreements or easing of sanctions. Not a return to the “stable” order of the Cold War that so many “conservatives” seem to long for. The Ayatollahs, their IRGC henchmen, and their Hamas and Hezbollah proxies want all of us dead. All of us.

They would behead John’s kids in front of him and laugh as they did it. Still “not good enough,” John? Here’s one more reason: In the last 47 years, the geopolitical chessboard has never been so favorable to us and so unfavorable to Iran. In the last few years, Iran has lost both Hamas and Hezbollah as serious forces. Iran has lost its base in Syria. Iran has lost its base in Venezuela. Russia and China have quietly dumped Iran. The Houthis have been taught a few lessons. Iran has recently been militarily weakened in its humiliating defeat in the Twelve-Day War with Israel, as well as with Operation Midnight Hammer. And millions of the Iranian government’s own citizens openly despise the regime, and will be more than happy to see it relegated to the dustbin of history.

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Russia has to protest of course. But they’re happy too. Who wants to deal with a medieval regime?

Russia Condemns US Attack On Iran, Warns Of ‘Radiological Catastrophe’ (ZH)

As fully predictable, Moscow has blasted the major overnight and early morning US-Israeli strikes on Iran, calling the attack “a preplanned and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent U.N. member state” and has demanded an immediate halt to the military campaign and a return to diplomacy. The Foreign Ministry in a statement on Telegram accused Washington and Tel Aviv of “hiding behind” concerns about Iran’s nuclear program while actually pursuing regime change, as also cited in The Associated Press. After all, even on Friday Iran was strongly signaling readiness to take enrichment down to zero, as our own headline and others indicated: Iran Reportedly Agrees To Give Up Nuclear Material In Breakthrough: ‘Peace Deal Within Reach’.


Moscow is further warning of Iraq-style catastrophe and a regional domino effect which could unleash terrorism and chaos for years to come. The attacks could trigger “humanitarian, economic and possibly radiological catastrophe” in the region, and charged the US and Israel of “plunging the Middle East into an abyss of uncontrolled escalation.” However, the Kremlin is unlikely to come to Iran’s rescue in any direct way, given it is carefully trying to balance and restore relations with Washington in the context of the Ukraine war.

As for that other raging conflict in Eastern Europe, now four years in, Ukraine has come out in support of the US attacks on Iran. This is understandable, given the Iranians have long supplied Moscow with suicide drones which have wreaked havoc on Ukrainian cities. China too has condemned the attack on Iran alongside Moscow, but using words much more restrained that Russia’s. “China calls for an immediate stop of the military actions, no further escalation of the tense situation, resumption of dialogue and negotiation, and efforts to uphold peace and stability in the Middle East,” its foreign ministry ministry said on X.

Most or all of the BRICS countries are expected to come out against the US-Israeli aggression. Europe is expected to by and large stay on the sidelines, fearing that any broader Mideast war would have spillover effects, such as another potential refugee crisis. The UK, Germany and France have said nothing specifically on the ‘legality’ of the unprovoked US attack on Tehran, but have instead condemned the Iranian response.They released a joint statement telling Iran to stop its attacks on US-Israeli assets and bases in the region. “We condemn Iranian attacks on countries in the region in the strongest terms,” French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.

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JCPOA

Barack Obama Is to Blame for Iran. Here’s Why. (Matt Margolis)

Americans woke up Saturday to something big. The United States and Israel launched a massive joint offensive against Iran’s regime, known as Operation Epic Fury. According to reports, targets included Iran’s supreme leader and president. Major combat operations are now underway, and the implications are global. Predictably, Democrats in Washington and even some Republicans are questioning the strikes. But let’s be honest — this moment was long overdue. Iran’s reign of terror didn’t start yesterday. In fact, this confrontation is the direct result of the Obama administration’s disastrous decision a decade ago to appease, enrich, and embolden Tehran.


Barack Obama and his administration sold the world a fantasy with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. This treaty was so bad that Obama didn’t even attempt to get the Senate to ratify it. He just pretended it wasn’t a treaty and signed it unilaterally, claiming it as a foreign policy victory for himself. In fact, Obama was so desperate to make the deal a defining foreign policy achievement of his presidency that the lies about the deal from the left have never stopped. He told us it was a historic diplomatic breakthrough that would block Iran’s path to nuclear weapons. In reality, it handed the mullahs a lifeline and a fortune. Sanctions were lifted. Tehran gained access to roughly $150 billion in frozen assets, and there was that infamous $1.7 billion in cash sent to the regime, much of it delivered on pallets in the middle of the night. Every step of the way, Obama was emboldening Iran, not containing it.

It didn’t take long for Iran to show what a joke the deal really was. Just three months after signing the deal, Tehran test-fired ballistic missiles in open violation of U.N. resolutions. German intelligence later reported that Iran was still seeking technology for a military nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed repeated violations of material limits — all while Obama kept reassuring us that the agreement was “working.” Even he eventually admitted Iran was violating the “spirit” of the deal, and that was as close as he’d ever get to admitting that his deal was a sham. nAnd while Obama’s State Department was congratulating itself, Iranian leaders were laughing. They bragged that the JCPOA favored Iran. Hassan Rouhani, then Iran’s president, boasted that the regime had used diplomacy to buy time and advance its nuclear program. The Obama administration believed it was outsmarting Tehran, but in reality, it had been duped.

It’s not as if the liberal media didn’t notice this either. The New York Times even reported in 2015 that Iran had breached its enrichment limits before the deal was finalized. Inspectors found that while the Obama White House claimed Iran’s program was “frozen,” the country’s nuclear stockpile actually increased by 20%. Iran was supposed to convert that material for peaceful use. Instead, they let it grow — and Washington looked the other way. By the time President Donald Trump took office, the JCPOA wasn’t the safeguard Democrats claimed it was; it was just a smokescreen. Obama’s grand achievement hadn’t restrained Iran’s nuclear ambitions one bit. If anything, it emboldened them to pursue nuclear weapons as never before. The regime’s missile program accelerated, its proxies expanded across the region, and its leaders grew richer, bolder, and more violent.

Nevertheless, when Trump took office in 2017, he didn’t immediately pull the plug. He gave the deal every chance to work. But by 2018, the evidence was clear: continued violations, broken promises, and a regime that had learned there were no consequences. So, in May of that year, Trump ended the charade and withdrew from the deal once and for all. Of course, Joe Biden wanted to revive the deal when he took office. While he never succeeded, the message to Iran was clear: the Democratic Party would always be there for the regime. If you want to know why negotiations with Iran always failed, the answer is obvious: they had to do was wait out Trump, and hope Democrats would be in power again.

Iran has been daring the world to stop it for years, and now, it is finally getting what it deserves.

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“Burma, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos fight against each other and themselves..”

The Clash Of Civilizations Restarts History (J.B. Shurk)

Western globalists won’t last long. Thirty-five years ago, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama made a name for himself by advancing the proposition that the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union promised the ascendency and universalization of so-called Western liberal democracy. As a Marxist-Hegelian who saw the progression of history as an evolutionary process with a natural and predetermined conclusion, Fukuyama envisioned Western-styled liberalism as both “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government.” Expecting all human struggles to barrel toward a state of imminent equilibrium and future peace, Fukuyama stated out loud what many other late-twentieth century thinkers also believed: Humanity had reached the end of history.


After the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks in the United States, two decades of the “Global War on Terrorism,” communist China’s expansive “Belt and Road Initiative,” immigration-fueled social strife, the collapse of public trust in government institutions, the prevalence of pre-civil war conditions across Europe, the rise of Indian economic power,, the emergence of Donald Trump’s nationalism as a counterbalance to the World Economic Forum’s vaunted globalism, the return of the Russian Federation as a major source of European angst, the growth of “multiculturalism” and its attendant fracturing of national unity, the “great powers” competition for hydrocarbon energies and other natural resources, the new geopolitical race to project strength in the Arctic, and the ever-present discussion of an impending World War III — just to name a few of the numerous global conflicts of the first quarter of the present century — Fukuyama’s “end of history” argument has probably reached the end of its usefulness.

Before the curse of humanity’s short memory stores Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis in the cupboard until it can be retrieved, dusted off, and recycled for practical use next century (just as Fukuyama had done with the historical conceptions of Hegel and Marx), it is worth noting how much of the academic world bought into this argument. I remember listening to two young political science professors discussing Fukuyama’s work after the 9/11 terror attacks, and even then — in the midst of such a horrific rebuke to the proposition that a globalized form of Western liberalism was preordained — both academics were staunch believers in the “end of history” and disagreed only about whether Professor Fukuyama was worthy of so much praise for having merely stated what was glaringly obvious.

I was around another man at the time named Samuel P. Huntington, and he had written an essay and book that took Fukuyama’s thesis to task. In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Professor Huntington argued that unbridgeable cultural conflicts would continue to remake the world. Although critics called him “racist,” “Islamophobic,” “ignorant,” and even “Hitlerian” for dismissing the unifying effects of “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” Huntington’s predictions for a volatile twenty-first century were much more accurate than anything coming from the “end of history” camp. Still, even after death, the man who dispassionately forecasted a civilizational clash and an emerging period of global uncertainty is still maligned as “prejudicial,” “white supremacist,” “bigoted,” and “imperialist.”

Is there any conflict raging in the world today that can’t be described in terms of competing cultural values? Israel and its Islamic neighbors have been in a perennial state of war for eighty years. Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims remain at each other’s throats. Christianity and Islam have added fuel to fiery tribal conflicts that continue to rage across the continent of Africa. Armenia’s Christians and Azerbaijan’s Muslims struggle to maintain peace. The Balkans remain a potpourri of combative cultures and ethnic groups whose simmering passions can quickly boil over. Burma, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos fight against each other and themselves as civilizational loyalties turn ancient resentments into recurring bouts of violence. The War in Ukraine centers around the contested Donbas region whose people more closely align with the language, religion, and culture of Russia than with the historic identity that unites the people living in the western two-thirds of Ukraine. Everywhere in the world, battle lines are drawn around civilizational identity. Religious conflict, historic grievance, and cultural incompatibility drive violence around the planet.

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“Black people are roughly 20% of the Democratic Party. In the critical primary state of South Carolina, nearly 60% of the voters are black.” […] Gavin Newsom is slick, but he’s no Slick Willy.”

The Devil (and Gavin Newsom) Went Down in Dixie (Scott Pinsker)

I love Charlie Daniels, but this has always bothered me: From the lyrics to his classic “Uneasy Rider”:


I I just ordered up a beer and sat down at the bar
When some guy walked in an’ said, “Who owns this car?
With the peace sign, the mag wheels, and four on the floor”


Well he looked at me and I damn near died
And I decided that I’d jus wait outside
So I laid a dollar on the bar and headed for the door

Jes’ when I thought I’d get outta there with my skin
These five big dudes come strollin’ in
With this one old drunk chick and some fella with green teeth

Okay, so first one guy walks in. Then five more guys come in — plus a drunk woman and the green-toothed gentlemen. That’s eight guys! Then the lyrics continue:
An’ I was almost to the door when the biggest one
Said “You tip your hat to this lady, son”
An’ when I did, all that hair fell out from underneath

Now the last thing I wanted was to get into a fight
In Jackson Mississippi on a Saturday night
‘Specially when there was three of them and only one of me

Wait — how did it go from eight to three?! Like I said, I love Charlie Daniels, but my boy’s not the greatest at math. Oh well. Still a heck of a storyteller. And his biggest hit was “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” (Of course, since the Devil went DOWN to Georgia, the implication is, Hell must be north of Georgia. I’m thinking Richmond, Va.) Either way, the devil wasn’t the only one defeated in Dixie: Gavin Newsom, the exquisitely coiffed governor of California, just rolled snake eyes, too. Even his hometown news site admitted it. From SFGATE:”Newsom Is Touring Southern States. It’s Exposing Some Hurdles in His Path to 2028″.

Newsom began the first stretch of the book tour for his memoir “Young Man in a Hurry” this weekend in the South, with stops in Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina. His team said starting in that region was “quite intentional” — but he’s already ruffled some feathers. While he is mostly sharing heartening anecdotes from the book, including how he handled being a student raised by a single mother and struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia, he is also clearly using his hourlong stage appearances to appeal to potential swing voters. No, it’s NOT about appealing to swing voters — at least, not yet. Newsom only cares about Democratic voters because, without them, swing voters are meaningless. He’s got to win his party’s nomination first.

That’s why his book tour was built around a Bizarro version of the Southern Strategy: Newsom needs black support. It’s his biggest vulnerability. We discussed this earlier in the week:”Black people are roughly 20% of the Democratic Party. In the critical primary state of South Carolina, nearly 60% of the voters are black.” […] Gavin Newsom is slick, but he’s no Slick Willy. There’s a reason why Toni Morrison dubbed the Man from Hope our “first black president.” Whereas Bill Clinton had an aw-shucks, good-natured, instantly relatable Southern charm, Gavin Newsom is as white as mayonnaise. Newsom isn’t “street” — unless that street is Wall Street. He’s the Patriarchy personified. Without black support, Gavin Newsom risks being the next Bernie Sanders. In CNN’s 2020 postmortem on Sanders’ loss to Joe Biden, the #1 reason cited was: Lack of Black Support.

Sanders ran into a wall in 2016 among black voters. Hillary Clinton catapulted herself to victory by winning blowouts throughout the South, where black voters make up a huge chunk of primary voters. Sanders needed to improve upon his performance. Instead, Sanders did as bad in 2020 among this pivotal group. Among African Americans who voted for Biden or Sanders, Sanders won just 23% in the median state with an entrance or exit poll. That was the same percentage he garnered in 2016. Black voters propelled Biden to his big win in South Carolina, which started him on his journey to defeating Sanders. This is why Gavin Newsom set up shop in Dixieland: He’s learned from Sanders’ campaign mistakes. Striking gold in New Hampshire or Iowa is meaningless if your cupboard is bare in the South. Trouble is, he tried to bond with black Democrats by playing up his stupidity. Here’s the video:

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“For Clinton to say, under oath, that Trump showed no indication of criminal involvement doesn’t neatly fit into partisan talking points. ”

A Surprising Defense of Trump Came From Bill Clinton (David Manney)

Every once in a while, politics delivers a moment nobody sees coming. Former President Bill Clinton, under oath, reported that President Donald Trump never gave him any indication he was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal conduct. That sworn statement now adds a new wrinkle to one of the most combustible and easily proven false stories of the last decade. Bill Clinton has been facing questions about his own past ties to Epstein. Flight logs show Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private jet several times in the early 2000s, but he’s maintained he cut off contact after learning more about Epstein’s behavior. In this recent sworn exchange, Clinton reportedly stated that during his interactions with Trump, he never saw or heard anything suggesting Trump engaged in Epstein’s crimes.


Trump has repeatedly acknowledged knowing Epstein socially in the 1990s, appearing in photographs from that period. He’s also publicly stated that he broke off contact with Epstein years before Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea. In 2019, Trump told reporters that he hadn’t spoken to Epstein in about 15 years and described himself as “not a fan.” “Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein behaved inappropriately toward a club member’s teenage daughter, according to journalists from the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal. The reporters included some information about Trump’s links to Epstein in their 2020 book, “The Grifter’s Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency.”

A Mar-a-Lago member told the journalists that Trump had “kicked Epstein out after Epstein harassed the daughter of a member,” Sarah Blaskey of the Miami Herald reported. “The way this person described it, such an act could irreparably harm the Trump brand, leaving Donald no choice but to remove Epstein.” The incident happened around October 2007, when Mar-a-Lago’s registry listed Epstein’s account as “closed,” the Miami Herald reported. Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls. He died in a Manhattan detention facility while awaiting trial. His longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted in 2021 on federal sex trafficking charges and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Clinton’s reported testimony stands out for one simple reason: it cuts against the common political storyline. Clinton and Trump have been rivals since Trump rode the escalator, trading barbs publicly and representing opposite poles in American politics. For Clinton to say, under oath, that Trump showed no indication of criminal involvement doesn’t neatly fit into partisan talking points. Statements under oath carry legal weight; false testimony risks perjury. That context matters; when a former president speaks under penalty of law, the words deserve attention. The broader Epstein scandal has touched powerful names across finance, politics, and entertainment, while Congressional interest remains high. Lawmakers continue seeking documents and testimony tied to Epstein’s network as calls for full disclosure have come from both sides of the aisle.

Clinton’s sworn statement doesn’t erase Trump’s past social proximity to Epstein, but it adds a factual element that complicates sweeping accusations. When critics assert that association equals guilt, sworn testimony suggesting otherwise forces a pause. While it’s fair to call the moment unexpected, it’s also fair to ask whether legacy political commentators who’ve spent years speculating will give equal attention to testimony challenging their narrative. Ignoring inconvenient details only subtracts from their sinking credibility. The Epstein case remains one of the most disturbing and long-reaching criminal sagas in modern history. Justice for victims remains central. Factual clarity about who did what remains essential, and when sworn testimony contradicts assumptions, it can’t be brushed aside.

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“I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to f–k Trump. Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.”

How Profanity Has Taken Hold of American Politics (Turley)

“Respectfully, f–k off.” Those words by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, summed up the current race to the bottom of American politics. Democrats appear in a competition of the profane where voters are now subject to a virtual carpet-bombing of f-bombs and other indecent language. Gardon’s response was to a standard media inquiry after Newsom’s controversial statement to a black interviewer. In an Atlanta event, Newsom declared: “I’m like you … I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy … literally a 960 SAT guy. You’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.” It was widely denounced as racist, but Newsom insisted that he was only talking about his struggle with dyslexia.


The spin quickly fell apart after his statement, “I’m like you … I’m no better than you,” which suggested he thought the audience in Atlanta had low scores. Reporters followed up to ask for proof about his disability, including his claim that “I cannot read.” The response was an f-bomb from Gardon. Newsom, too, unleashed a profane attack on Sean Hannity of Fox News — who gave the California governor a chance to respond to his critics. When Hannity criticized Newsom’s comments in Atlanta, the governor posted several four-letter words on X, concluding with: “Spare me your fake f—ing outrage.” There was a time when political leaders maintained basic standards of civility and avoided profanity in public. Presidents like Lyndon Johnson could be quite salty in private, but drew a line in public.

Rporters followed up to ask for proof about his disability, including his claim that “I cannot read.” The response was an f-bomb from Gardon. Notably, one of Richard Nixon’s objections to his tapes being made public was the inclusion of foul language used in the Oval Office. He noted in his book In the Arena that “since neither I nor most other presidents had ever used profanity in public, millions were shocked.” It was not long ago that Trump’s then-new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci shocked many with a profane diatribe. He defended it as “an Italian thing.” At the time, I wrote that, as someone who was raised in an Italian family, we clearly had a different upbringing. I noted that if I used that language in public, my Sicilian grandmother would have ended the diatribe with a backhand.

Profanity sometimes added to the mystique of military leaders who sought to convey that they were unconcerned with social norms as warriors. Gen. George Patton was known to drop some doozies. In one scene in the famous eponymous movie, Patton is asked about the Bible next to his bed and whether he really prayed. Patton responds, “I sure do … Every godd–n day…” Politics was different. The public once looked to political leaders as role models who exemplified social norms. It now appears that profanity is viewed as an essential element of political speech on the left.m mPolitics was different. The public once looked to political leaders as role models who exemplified social norms. Katie Porter this week thrilled a crowd by waving around a sign reading “F–k Trump.” Porter was previously criticized for using such language to abuse staffers to “get out of my f–cking shot” in an interview.

At the State of the Union, Rep. Rashida Tlaib wore a button on the House floor reading “F–k Ice.” Such behavior is not just limited to Democrats. President Trump has used profanity on occasion. However, the Democrats appear to have made profanity a signature element in their campaigns.Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, seems a perpetual profanity machine, regularly telling figures like Elon Musk to “f–k off” and dropping the f-bomb at a higher rate than prepositions. Some are virtually giggly over swearing in public. Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) declared, “I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to f–k Trump. Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.” The crowd roared with approval that Dexter was feigning being naughty with dirty words.

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Muslims born in Britain. Now poised to take over. How will the Christians defend themelves? They don’t even know they’re under threat.

Britain’s Islamic Bloc Vote Warning. America, Take Note. (Peter McIlvenna)

Britain’s Gorton and Denton by-election on Feb. 26 was more than just a local upset. It gave a glimpse into demographic changes that could shape U.S. politics. The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer won with 41% and 14,980 votes, turning this Labour stronghold into the Greens’ first northern seat. Reform UK came second with 29% of the vote, and Labour finished third with 25%. Turnout was low at 48%. The main story: Muslim bloc power flipped a seat, and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s strategy did not work. The seat’s divided nature tells the story. Manchester wards like Burnage, Gorton & Abbey Hey, Levenshulme, and Longsight are changing fast: 40% Muslim, 62% U.K.-born, and 30% are graduates or students.


In Longsight, 60% are Muslim and 52% U.K.-born, making it a diverse, urban area where Gaza is a common topic. The Greens succeeded by using multilingual flyers, focusing on Palestine, and promoting anti-Islamophobia messages. Instead of attacking others, they built coalitions. That bloc, along with tactical left-wing voters, overshadowed everything else.Tameside wards, including Denton North East, South, and West, feel very different: less than 3% Muslim, 86% U.K.-born, and over 80% white British. These are working-class areas with few graduates and strong local roots. Reform UK led here, getting over 40% in some places by appealing to “keep Britain British” sentiment. Still, Manchester’s voters decided the outcome. This is a story of two different visions, almost like a modern Dickens novel.

Manchester is moving away from traditional English and British identity, with lower native birth rates, more multiculturalism, less connection to Christianity and old values, and a shift toward new cultural expressions. Tameside, on the other hand, is more cautious about fast cultural change, holding on to traditions and trying to keep established cultural identities. It is similar to the old divide between East and West Germany. The East kept its German identity, had little migration, and held onto traditions. The West became more multicultural, saw fewer native births, and its religious makeup changed. Gorton-Denton is a smaller version of this: Manchester shows the changing face of old England, while Tameside tries to stay recognizably British. The Greens won by understanding that concentrated bloc votes and progressive alliances now matter more than nostalgia.

Farage’s role was chaotic. Before the election, he avoided criticizing Muslims, maybe to appeal to more voters. But after losing, Farage accused others of “sectarian voting,” “cheating,” and “dangerous Muslim sectarianism.” He complained about “family voting,” with observers noting it in twelve percent of sampled cases, where husbands and wives crowded voting booths—the highest rate ever recorded. Democracy Volunteers flagged 68% of polling stations. No mosques were used as polling places; the council managed the process. Still, Farage’s comments sparked controversy. Critics say he changes his stance: soft on Islam to grow Reform, but harsh when things go wrong. Either way, he seems unsettled, caught between his supporters and the need to win votes.

Now, America faces similar questions in its primaries. The Muslim population is under 2% nationally, but is expected to grow due to higher birth rates and migration. CAIR reported 38 Muslim winners across the country last year. Zohran Mamdani won New York’s mayoral race with strong support for his socialist and pro-Palestine views. Ninety-seven percent of Muslim voters supported him, along with major donors, and Gaza became a key issue. Does this sound familiar? If the Gorton-Denton approach shows up in other places, like Dearborn, Queens, or Minneapolis, organized turnout could affect close elections.

Strong support from certain communities may help some candidates, while others might choose more moderate strategies. Family-based turnout, like what was seen in the U.K., could change usual voting patterns. Demographic changes are likely to continue, with some areas keeping traditional majorities and others forming new coalitions. The message is clear: Pay attention to demographic trends, or you might be surprised by changes in election results. Primaries are still important—voters may choose to stick with the status quo or join coalitions that want change. The lesson from Britain is that traditions alone may not be enough when organized participation increases.

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“Ukraine’s oil pipeline blackmail has Hungary demanding that support for Kiev be cut off..”

The EU Wants A Nord Stream Sequel, But Not All Members Are Buying It (Marsden)

The Druzhba, or ‘Friendship’, oil pipeline is really living up to its name. All the ‘friends’ are fighting with each other. And now Hungary, worried about the EU’s slack attitude about what happens to its oil source, is saying that it’s time to deploy the army to protect it. Critics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban argue that he only wants troops deployed inside the country because he’s down in the polls ahead of the April national election and he’s going to try some kind of autocratic jiu-jitsu to cancel them. Which totally ignores the fact that Ukrainian secret services are actively attacking the pipeline’s infrastructure – and there is something really fishy about the EU’s permissiveness around it.


Everyone from the Kiev Independent to French state media, France 24, has been attributing to the SBU, Kiev’s secret services, drone strikes on February 23, targeting a Russian oil pumping station serving Druzhba – citing actual SBU sources. And the EU’s position has been, “Look, it’s up to Ukraine if they want to fix it.” It’s not like they owe the EU anything, right? Just billions of euros, and counting. Can’t even get a repair job these days for that price, apparently. So Hungary’s been saying, “Hey, are you jokers going to actually do something about this? Because we’re putting our foot down on your whole ‘cash for Ukraine for European defense contractors’ charade and unilaterally canceling the next episode of your Russian sanctions unity show with a veto, until you reel in your spoiled brat foster kid.”

The EU says it would welcome the reactivation of landlocked Slovakia and Hungary’s fuel source running across Ukraine and delivering Russian oil. Funny that’s the case only now that it’s been bombed and the tap has been turned off – after years of official EU policy to ditch the Russian fuel that runs through it. But Brussels also said that it’s ultimately up to Little Zelya, Vladimir Zelensky, as to what he wants to do. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has been sounding like a waitress at Denny’s who’s fed up waiting for Little Zelya to decide what he wants while he kicks his little feet against the high chair. Queen Mommy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, insists that he should be able to freely choose between blackmailing Hungary over oil or resuming the flow – with all the nonchalance of deciding between pancakes or a kid’s combo, even though it’s the Europeans whose interests she’s supposed to be defending and who are paying the tab.

“This risks our sovereignty, and we are not willing to tolerate this in silence,” Szijjarto said. “It is very frustrating that here in Brussels they usually stand on the side of a non-EU member state against EU member states. The European Commission behaves like a Ukraine Commission, and this is unbelievable.”

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Here’s democracy for you. Wait, didn’t that start in France?

“If I cannot be a candidate, Bardella will determine at what level he needs my presence, my advice and my experience,” Le Pen has stated about her protegé ..”

Marine Le Pen Says She Will Not Run In 2027 Election If Under House Arrest (ZH)

In March 2025, Le Pen was convicted on charges dating back years ago, in a move that was widely contested and seen as a highly political attempt to keep her from running in next year’s presidential election. Now, she says she has no intention of running if her ban from running is lifted, if it means she must wear an electronic tag, i.e., ankle monitor. She is also ready to place full trust in Jordan Bardella, current leader of the National Rally (RN) Le Pen’s comments came during an interview with French television station BFMTV, her first since French prosecutors asked a court to uphold her five-year ban. A ruling on her case is expected on July 7.


“You cannot campaign under these conditions. Can you campaign without going out in the evenings to meet your constituents at rallies?” she asked, referring to the idea of having to campaign while wearing a monitor and under house arrest. Prosecutors had asked for Le Pen to be sentenced to four years in prison (three of which were suspended) and a fine of €100,000.In France, shorter prison sentences are often commuted, meaning that if the court follows the prosecutor’s request, Le Pen could spend anywhere from a few months to a year under house arrest, wearing an anklet. However, Le Pen has said she would not campaign under such circumstances. Le Pen says she will be present in court on July 7 to hear the Court of Appeal’s decision.

“Of course I will go, as I went every day to the trial in the first instance and on appeal because I respect justice,” she told BFMTV. Regarding the 2027 election, Le Pen said regarding RN leader Jordan Bardella: “The best-case scenario is that I am elected president of the Republic and he is my prime minister.” However, if she cannot run, then “Jordan will find himself a prime minister,” and she will take whatever “role he wants me to have.” Emphasizing that Bardella will be free to make his own choices, Le Pen told listeners, “If I cannot be a candidate, he will determine at what level he needs my presence, my advice and my experience.”

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A good thing about Covid: we found some really good people in the US. No, it ain’t Fauci.

“You don’t have to worry about looking over your shoulder, that you aren’t ideologically pure enough. You just focus on science that can translate over to solving the longevity problems that the United States has, the chronic disease problems, the real problems.”

Bhattacharya To Lead Top US Health Agencies At Trump’s Request (Attkisson)

The head of the National Institutes of Health is now at the helm of a sub-agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya says President Trump personally asked him to take the CDC job temporarily until a permanent director can be named. “It’s hard to say ‘no’ to the president. What it means is that I will still be the director of the NIH. That’s my main day job,” Bhattacharya told “Full Measure” in a recent interview at NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. “But over the next couple of months, I’m gonna go work with folks at the CDC to help get the agency in a place where the new director, whoever ends up being Senate confirmed, we’ll have an organization that’s running well so that they can get their priorities in place.”


Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya was a medical doctor and professor at Stanford University, “happily publishing in journals.” But during Covid, he became a very vocal opponent – for scientific reasons – for government-mandated lockdowns to try to stop the spread of the virus. “I did a bunch of research that suggested that the lockdowns were not helping people, in fact, were causing tremendous harm to the poor children in the working class, all the school closures and all that,” he says. Bhattacharya helped create and get thousands of signatures on the Great Barrington Declaration to speak out against the lockdowns on public health grounds. For that, he became a target of the head of NIH at the time, Dr. Frances Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who headed the NIH Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

It was later revealed that the two men orchestrated a “devastating take-down” of Dr. Bhattacharya and his colleagues to silence and discredit them. Today, it’s a stunning reversal of fortunes for Dr. Bhattacharya that he was chosen to head up the very agency whose leaders had conspired against him. Bhattacharya says one of his main goals is to remove politics and ideology from science to “leave a lot more space for actual science.”“The cultural shift is, is enormous,” he says. “The purpose and the mission of the NIH is to do research that improves the health and longevity of the American people,” Bhattacharya said. “First of all, everyone should be behind that mission. And then second, once you say that’s the mission, that we’re only gonna be focused on the mission, it frees you up from all of the baggage.

“You don’t have to worry about looking over your shoulder, that you aren’t ideologically pure enough. You just focus on science that can translate over to solving the longevity problems that the United States has, the chronic disease problems, the real problems.” Establishment medicine figures who were frequently proved wrong about approaches to Covid and matters of Covid vaccine safety and effectiveness criticize most every decision and move Bhattacharya now makes. He says in response to the criticism: “If the NIH’s mission is to do support research that translates into better health and longer life for Americans, well, the NIH over the last 15 years has failed in its mission.

“And so the idea that it’s anti-science or politicizing the agency to remove political agendas from the agency, it’s almost Orwellian. And so when I see these stories, my general understanding of them is that it’s people that benefited from the old system where the focus was in part on ideology.” Bhattacharya says part of the steps to remove politics from the NIH is to begin a new plan to genuinely study vaccine injuries and treatments. “We’re working on that,” he told “Full Measure.” “One of the things that Tony Fauci’s old NIAID is gonna be doing is studying vaccine injury.”

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Bobby’s become a big Trump fan.

RFK Jr. DESTROYS Media’s Trump Caricature, Celebrates Epic Win on Drug Prices (MN)

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a powerful takedown of the fake news narrative surrounding President Trump, exposing the blatant lies and highlighting the administration’s groundbreaking success in driving down prescription drug costs—a move that puts American families first and crushes Big Pharma’s grip. Kennedy’s remarks come amid the Trump administration’s aggressive push to overhaul healthcare, including the implementation of the Most Favored Nation policy, which ensures Americans no longer foot the bill for the world’s highest drug prices. Kennedy noted that the U.S. had been paying two to four times as much for prescription drugs as other nations, with the administration securing agreements from “60 or 70” drug companies to end this disparity.


This victory builds directly on Trump’s longstanding commitment to dismantle Obamacare’s inefficiencies and redirect funds to the people, as we detailed in our earlier coverage of his plan to scrap the “STUPID” system and empower Americans. Kennedy didn’t hold back on the media’s relentless smear campaign against Trump. “The caricature you see in the press: ‘Narcissistic bombast, who is uneducated, not thoughtful, lacks compassion.’ The ACTUAL person is the OPPOSITE of those things!” Kennedy stated. He praised Trump’s intellect and expertise across multiple fields, noting “He’s extremely detail-oriented, he’s an encyclopedia in many areas, in business, in sports, in the arts, in architecture, in building.”

Kennedy emphasized Trump’s unparalleled ability to deliver results, stressing “He knows how to, above all, he just knows how to get things done.” “He understands the uses of power probably better than any president that I can name and I’m pretty familiar with all the presidents,” Kennedy added. “So I don’t think we’ve ever had somebody who understands the use of power that he does. And the boldness with which he moves and which he expects us to move, I think has inspired all the people who work here right now to do things that people told them before were not possible,” he further urged. Tying it to the drug price breakthrough, Kennedy highlighted how Trump’s leadership turned promises into action.

“We were paying the highest drug price of any country in the world, now we’re paying the lowest. Every president’s promised to do that and all of them have said it’s insurmountable, you can’t do it, but we were able to do it!” he emphasised. This aligns with the broader Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) mission. As Calley Means has previously pointed out, key wins include lowering drug prices alongside reforms like eliminating food dyes and acknowledging vaccine injuries—proving MAHA is “WINNING big” despite leftist opposition. This drug price overhaul, part of Trump’s executive actions, ensures nearly 95% of medications are now the cheapest globally, delivering affordability without stifling innovation—a stark contrast to the bloated systems of the past.

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https://twitter.com/NicHulscher/status/2027428352978558997?s=20 entanglement

 

 

 

 

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Apr 112018
 


Jan van Eyck The Last Judgement (detail) 1430

 

Hussman’s Script For A 60% Tumble In The Stock Market (MW)
World Trade System In Danger Of Being Torn Apart – Lagarde (G.)
Eurocontrol Warns Airlines Of Possible Missile Strikes Into Syria (R.)
Russian Envoy: Any US Missiles Fired At Syria Will Be Shot Down (R.)
We All Need To Unite Against War In Syria (CJ)
Zuckerberg Deflects Senators’ Questions, Gets $3 Billion For The Effort (MW)
Ban Targeted Advertising (Dayen)
EU Top Court Backs France Ban Of Uber (AFP)
Barclays Says Bitcoin Behaves Like An Infectious Disease (BBG)
The Failures of Anti-Trumpism (NYT)
Save the Children Faces Formal Investigation Over Staff Misconduct (G.)
Greece at Bottom of Eurozone Growth Rate (GR)
More Than Half Your Body Is Not Human (BBC)

 

 

“Investment is about valuation. Speculation is about psychology,” Hussman said. “Both factors are unfavorable here.”

Hussman’s Script For A 60% Tumble In The Stock Market (MW)

Enjoy days like this while they last, warns longtime bear John Hussman, because the volatility we’re seeing on the Dow and the S&P 500 only serves to reinforce his pessimistic view that the stock market is careening toward a painful drop of at least 60% and a decade or more of zero to negative returns. “We’re observing the very early effects of risk-aversion in a hypervalued market,” the Hussman Trust president wrote in his latest missive. “To some extent, the actual news events are irrelevant. I certainly wouldn’t gauge market risk by monitoring the day-to-day news on potential tariffs or even prospects for rate changes by the Fed.”

For those of you feeling a bit queasy because of what Hussman describes as the “rather minimal level of volatility” we’ve seen lately, it’s time to make some changes and rebalance your portfolio with some hedges, or at least lighten up by adding cash. “But do so knowing one thing in advance: you will experience regret,” he says. “If the market advances after you rebalance, you’ll regret having sold anything. If the market declines after you rebalance, you’ll regret not having sold more.”

The driving factor he frequently cites for the top-heavy market is that the Fed’s quantitative easing has inflated valuations to unsustainable levels, and as the free money goes away, the bottom will fall out, leaving a trail of blown-up investors in its wake. “Investment is about valuation. Speculation is about psychology,” Hussman said. “Both factors are unfavorable here.” He used this chart or the median price/revenue ratio of S&P components to show just how overvalued stocks are at this point, even after the recent tumble:

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Because the trade system benefits everyone, right?

World Trade System In Danger Of Being Torn Apart – Lagarde (G.)

The head of the IMF has warned of “darker clouds looming” for the global economy amid simmering trade tensions between the US and China, urging governments around the world to steer clear of protectionism or face negative consequences. Christine Lagarde said the current system for world trade was “in danger of being torn apart”, with the potential to upset the present global economic upswing and make consumers poorer. Speaking in Hong Kong amid signs the standoff could be abating, Lagarde said it would be an “inexcusable, collective policy failure” for world trade to break down with nations erecting punitive tariff systems against their rivals. “Let us redouble our efforts to reduce trade barriers and resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures,” she said.

[..] Using language that could be interpreted as a veiled attack on Trump in the speech ahead of the meeting, Lagarde said nations could make domestic policy changes to address trade imbalances and use international forums to settle disputes. “We can all do more – but we cannot do it alone,” she said. “Unfair trade practices have little impact on a country’s overall trade deficit with the rest of the world. That imbalance is driven by the fact that a country spends above its income.” Identifying the US as an example of a nation that could benefit from reforms, she said Washington could help tackle its trade imbalances by gradually curbing public spending and by increasing revenue, which she said would help reduce future fiscal deficits.

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Jamming.

Eurocontrol Warns Airlines Of Possible Missile Strikes Into Syria (R.)

Pan-European air traffic control agency Eurocontrol on Tuesday warned airlines to exercise caution in the eastern Mediterranean due to the possible launch of air strikes into Syria in next 72 hours. Eurocontrol said that air-to-ground and/or cruise missiles could be used within that period and there was a possibility of intermittent disruption of radio navigation equipment. U.S. President Donald Trump and Western allies are discussing possible military action to punish Syria’s President Bashar Assad for a suspected poison gas attack on Saturday on a rebel-held town that long had held out against government forces.

Trump on Tuesday canceled a planned trip to Latin America later this week to focus instead on responding to the Syria incident, the White House said. Trump had on Monday warned of a quick, forceful response once responsibility for the Syria attack was established. The Eurocontrol warning on its website did not specify the origin of any potential missile threat. “Due to the possible launch of air strikes into Syria with air-to-ground and/or cruise missiles within the next 72 hours, and the possibility of intermittent disruption of radio navigation equipment, due consideration needs to be taken when planning flight operations in the Eastern Mediterranean/Nicosia FIR area,” it said, referring to the designated airspace.

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Clear as that.

Russian Envoy: Any US Missiles Fired At Syria Will Be Shot Down (R.)

Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon said any U.S. missiles fired at Syria would be shot down and the launch sites targeted, a step that could trigger a major escalation in the Syrian war. Russian Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin, in comments broadcast on Tuesday evening, said he was referring to a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian armed forces chief of staff. The Russian military said on March 13 that it would respond to any U.S. strike on Syria, targeting any missiles and launchers involved in such an attack. Russia is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally.

The United States and its allies are considering whether to hit Syria over a suspected poison gas attack that medical relief organizations say killed dozens of people in the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus on Saturday. “If there is a strike by the Americans, then…the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired,” Zasypkin told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, speaking in Arabic. He also said a clash “should be ruled out and therefore we are ready to hold negotiations”.

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Yes, we do. But it’s very late in the game.

We All Need To Unite Against War In Syria (CJ)

Last night Fox’s Tucker Carlson did what may have been the most amazing thing that has ever happened on American television. As the drums of war beat louder than they have in years, Carlson stared right into the camera and did the exact opposite of what every mainstream US pundit is doing right now: he told the truth. He told the truth about Syria. He told the truth about Yemen. He told the truth about the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. He told the truth about the bipartisan war machine which drops all pretense of opposition the instant it’s time for bloodshed. He told the truth about what war is, what it costs, and what it does to our world.

He stood in stark, unequivocal opposition to the trajectory the Trump administration appears to be moving along. And he did it on Fox News. I have a deep and abiding hatred in my heart for Fox News and all things Murdoch. I will never forget nor forgive the key role the Murdoch press played in deceiving our world into the unimaginable evil that was the Iraq invasion. But if I’d held a reflexive rejection of anything with the Fox News logo in the corner, I never would have seen Carlson’s epic monologue, never would have shared it with my social media following, never would have embedded it in this article, and this bright flash of truth would have been diminished by that much in the impact it was able to have on public consciousness.

And I know that there are many leftists who declined to help spread awareness of that Carlson monologue based solely on the fact that he’s a conservative pundit on a conservative network who has said things they disagree with in the past. This is stupid. We should be able to throw any weapon at all at the war machine, not fight with one hand tied behind our backs just because we don’t like conservatives.

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It was even worse than imagined.

Zuckerberg Deflects Senators’ Questions, Gets $3 Billion For The Effort (MW)

Mark Zuckerberg has come far since the early days of Facebook, and that growth was extremely apparent in how deftly the chief executive dealt with several hours of inscrutable questioning by U.S. senators Tuesday over the social network’s role in presidential election-meddling and the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Wearing a conservative suit and light blue tie, an outfit he would rarely wear in Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg sat ramrod straight in his witness chair for most of the many hours of questions. He responded to each questioner by first addressing them as senator or chair. He looked earnest and serious for almost every question, even during some of the laughable questions from some of the less tech-savvy members of the Senate, such as the one by Sen. Orrin Hatch, who asked how Facebook makes money if it doesn’t charge users anything.

“Senator, we run ads,” Zuckerberg said with a smile. That calm response was in marked contrast to when Zuckerberg faced another type of grilling, at the All Things D conference in 2010, when he gave vague and rambling answers about Facebook’s changes to its privacy controls at the time, and had to take off his famous hoodie while wiping sweat from his face under the lights on stage. Part of his preparedness for the Senate hearing, where he managed to repeat several core phrases that the company has been perpetuating in the media, came as a result of Facebook’s information bombardment over the past month.

Some of the company’s obvious talking points have been repeated throughout the past weeks, such as how sorry Zuckerberg is, how much control Facebook users actually do have over their own data, how Facebook is trying to build a positive community and constant reminders of how the company started in a Harvard University dorm when he was 19. According to the New York Times, Facebook hired a team of experts to give Zuckerberg — who can be combative and defensive — a crash course in humility and charm ahead of the hearing in sessions that included mock hearings with its communications team and outside advisers. That preparation paid off: After the first two hours of questions were nearing an end and there was a call for a potential break, Zuckerberg took a sip of water and said he could keep going for a bit longer.

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Exactly. Stop that and all the Facebok nonsense stops. But those in power don’t want it to stop.

Ban Targeted Advertising (Dayen)

For the first 35 years of my life, like most Americans, I was exposed to lots of advertising. I absorbed billboards and print ads and direct mailers and television commercials and radio jingles. I learned about available products and services, and chose which ones I wanted. Some businesses I patronized survived and others didn’t. The economy mostly proceeded apace. Then, over the last decade, this form of marketing became seen as insufficient—or rather, the rise of digital media made a more invasive form of marketing too irresistible. Instead of having to cast a wide net in searching for potential customers, advertisers now could know every intimate detail about those customers beforehand.

They began targeting people geographically and behaviorally, based on common interests or things they liked in social media or what they wrote in emails to friends. The surveillance economy was born. The surveillance economy should die. This manner of advertising doesn’t serve the public and it’s not even clear it serves advertisers. It facilitates monopoly, as those with the biggest data troves receive all the ad dollars. That centralizes the potential for and magnitude of abuse, with Big Data used to discriminate against groups, steer vulnerable people to financial scams, and meddle in U.S. elections.

Cambridge Analytica’s scraping of 87 million user profiles through a simple personality quiz, and then weaponizing that information on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, revealed how information on social media is inherently insecure. Now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is appearing before Congress on Tuesday to explain how this won’t happen again. But instead of leaving regulation to Facebook, or devising one Rube Goldberg scenario after another to try to protect consumer data, the U.S. can take one simple, legal step to roll back this dystopian nightmare: ban targeted advertising.

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App or transport?

EU Top Court Backs France Ban Of Uber (AFP)

The EU’s top court on Tuesday backed the right of member states like France to ban a service by ridesharing firm Uber without notifying Brussels, in a fresh setback to the US giant. The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of France’s ban of the UberPop service, which links amateur drivers with customers, comparing it to a December decision backing traditional taxi firms in the Spanish city of Barcelona. “Member States may prohibit and punish, as a matter of criminal law, the illegal exercise of transport activities in the context of the UberPop service, without notifying the Commission in advance,” the European Court of Justice ruled. [..]

Uber France is facing criminal proceedings in a court in the northern French city of Lille for its UberPop service. It argues that member states like France were required to notify the European Commission about the criminal legislation under which the case was brought because it concerned a technical regulation of an information society service. But the court of justice said the French case resembled one it ruled on in December when it classified Uber as an ordinary transportation company instead of an app and should be regulated as such. “In the Court’s view, the UberPop service offered in France is essentially identical to the service provided in Spain,” the court of justice statement said.

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True or not, a nice angle.

Barclays Says Bitcoin Behaves Like An Infectious Disease (BBG)

Is the rise of Bitcoin analogous to the spread of an infectious disease? Analysts at Barclays saw enough similarities to develop a pricing model for the cryptocurrency that takes its cues from the world of epidemiology. Their diagnosis: Bitcoin has probably peaked. The Barclays model divides the pool of potential Bitcoin investors into three groups: susceptible, infected and immune. It assumes that as prices rise, “infections” spread by word-of-mouth (nobody likes missing out when their friends and colleagues are getting rich). Barclays analysts led by Joseph Abate in New York explained the rest in a note to clients on Tuesday:

“As more of the population become asset holders, the share of the population available to become new buyers – the potential ‘host’ population – falls, while the share of the population that are potential sellers (‘recoveries’) increases. Eventually, this leads to a plateauing of prices, and progressively, as random shocks to the larger supply population push up the ratio of sellers to buyers, prices begin to fall. That induces speculative selling pressure as price declines are projected forward exponentially.” A similar dynamic plays out with infectious diseases when the so-called immunity threshold is reached, “the point at which a sufficient portion of the population becomes immune such that there are no more secondary infections,” the analysts wrote.

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Does David Brooks realize that anti-Trumpism, of which he’s a proud supporter, is what won Da Doland da election?

The Failures of Anti-Trumpism (NYT)

Over the past year, those of us in the anti-Trump camp have churned out billions of words critiquing the president. The point of this work is to expose the harm President Trump is doing, weaken his support and prevent him from doing worse. And by that standard, the anti-Trump movement is a failure. We have persuaded no one. Trump’s approval rating is around 40%, which is basically unchanged from where it’s been all along. We have not hindered him. Trump has more power than he did a year ago, not less. With more mainstream figures like H. R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn gone, the administration is growing more nationalist, not less. We have not dislodged him.

For all the hype, the Mueller investigation looks less and less likely to fundamentally alter the course of the administration. We have not contained him. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is complete. 89% of Republicans now have a positive impression of the man. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 59% of Republicans consider themselves more a supporter of Trump than of the Republican Party. On trade, immigration, entitlement reform, spending, foreign policy, race relations and personal morality, this is Trump’s party, not Reagan’s or anyone else’s. A lot of us never-Trumpers assumed momentum would be on our side as his scandals and incompetences mounted. It hasn’t turned out that way.

I almost never meet a Trump supporter who has become disillusioned. I often meet Republicans who were once ambivalent but who have now joined the Trump train. National Review was once staunchly anti-Trump, and many of its writers remain so, but, tellingly, N.R. editor Rich Lowry just had a column in Politico called “The Never Trump Delusion” arguing that Trump is not that big a departure from the Republican mainstream. The surest evidence of Trump’s dominance is on the campaign trail. As The Times’s Jonathan Martin reported, many Republicans, including Ted Cruz, are making the argument that if Democrats take over Congress, they will impeach the president. In other words, far from ignoring Trump, these Republicans are making defending him the center of their campaigns.

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Et tu, Brute?

Save the Children Faces Formal Investigation Over Staff Misconduct (G.)

Save the Children, the global charity mired in allegations that it failed to investigate sexual abuse and inappropriate behaviour by staff, is to be formally investigated by the Charity Commission. In a statement announcing a statutory inquiry, the commission said it had been prompted by “concerns about the charity’s handling, reporting and response to serious allegations of misconduct and harassment against senior staff members in 2012 and 2015”. The commission describes a statutory inquiry as its “most serious form of engagement” with a charity.

The news, announced on Tuesday night, will be another blow for the charity two months after it emerged that both Justin Forsyth, its former chief executive, and Brendan Cox, the former policy director and widower of the MP Jo Cox, left the charity in 2015 following allegations of misconduct. The two men knew each other from their years working for Gordon Brown and the Labour party. After he left Save the Children, Forsyth went on to a senior role at Unicef. He resigned in February after the reports of inappropriate behaviour emerged. Cox also resigned from the charities More in Common and the Jo Cox Foundation, set up in the aftermath of his wife’s murder.

The commission, which itself has been criticised for failing to follow up allegations involving the charities it polices, has been working with Save the Children since the facts about Forsyth and Cox emerged in the wake of the scandal involving Oxfam workers in Haiti. Save the Children is already reviewing its workplace culture and the implementation of recommendations made by a previous review. But the Charity Commission said its recent work with it, and new information from other sources that has recently come into the regulator’s possession, meant that the commission wanted to make further inquiries.

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It’s crazy to think the Greek economy is growing.

Greece at Bottom of Eurozone Growth Rate (GR)

Greece’s growth was the lowest among eurozone countries for 2017, with a GDP rise of just 1.4% while the eurozone average was 2.3%, according to European Central Bank figures. The ECB annual report released on Monday showed Ireland at the top of the growth chart among eurozone member states with a 5% GDP increase. Overall, 2017 was a year of growth for the whole of the single-currency bloc. According to the report, the main reason Greece fared so low in 2017 was that it showed only 0.1% growth in private consumption, compared to an average 1.6% increase in the rest of eurozone states.

At the same time, Greece showed a 1.1% decline in government spending, while the average in the euro area was a 1.2% increase. In terms of per capita GDP at current prices and adjusted for the cost of living, Greeks have an average annual income of €19,900 ($24,527) compared to €54,600 for each Irish citizen. In Portugal, average income amounted to €23,100, compared to €18,100 before the economic crisis. In Cyprus, the average income was €24,600 compared to €29,900 before the crisis. The “before the economic crisis” figures refer to the 1999-2008 period. On average in the euro area, per capita GDP stood at €31,700 according to the latest figures (2016), compared to €24,400 before the crisis.

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Bugs as drugs. “Originally it was thought our cells were outnumbered 10 to one.”

Well, our genes are outnumbered 1000 to 1.

More Than Half Your Body Is Not Human (BBC)

More than half of your body is not human, say scientists. Human cells make up only 43% of the body’s total cell count. The rest are microscopic colonists. Understanding this hidden half of ourselves – our microbiome – is rapidly transforming understanding of diseases from allergy to Parkinson’s. The field is even asking questions of what it means to be “human” and is leading to new innovative treatments as a result. “They are essential to your health,” says Prof Ruth Ley, the director of the department of microbiome science at the Max Planck Institute, “your body isn’t just you”. No matter how well you wash, nearly every nook and cranny of your body is covered in microscopic creatures.

This includes bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea (organisms originally misclassified as bacteria). The greatest concentration of this microscopic life is in the dark murky depths of our oxygen-deprived bowels. Prof Rob Knight, from University of California San Diego, told the BBC: “You’re more microbe than you are human.” Originally it was thought our cells were outnumbered 10 to one. “That’s been refined much closer to one-to-one, so the current estimate is you’re about 43% human if you’re counting up all the cells,” he says. But genetically we’re even more outgunned. The human genome – the full set of genetic instructions for a human being – is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes. But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

[..] Antibiotics and vaccines have been the weapons unleashed against the likes of smallpox, Mycobacterium tuberculosis or MRSA. That’s been a good thing and has saved large numbers of lives. But some researchers are concerned that our assault on the bad guys has done untold damage to our “good bacteria”. Prof Ley told me: “We have over the past 50 years done a terrific job of eliminating infectious disease. “But we have seen an enormous and terrifying increase in autoimmune disease and in allergy. “Where work on the microbiome comes in is seeing how changes in the microbiome, that happened as a result of the success we’ve had fighting pathogens, have now contributed to a whole new set of diseases that we have to deal with.”

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Jan 102018
 
 January 10, 2018  Posted by at 10:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Ansel Adams The Tetons and the Snake River 1942

 

Is Bank of Japan The Latest To Take The Punch Bowl Away? (CNBC)
Fed Officials Are Scrambling To Figure Out How To Fight Next Recession (BI)
Market Could Be Headed For A ‘Melt-Up’ Of 30% – Bill Miller (CNBC)
People Have A Hard Time Even Imagining How The Market Could Decline (ZH)
World Bank Issues Warnings On Interest Rates And Inflation (G.)
South Korea’s Moon Says Trump Deserves ‘Big’ Credit For North Korea Talks (R.)
Apple’s Privacy Feature Costs Ad Companies Millions (G.)
Antivirus Tools Caught With Their Hands In The Windows Cookie Jar (Reg.)
Julian Assange’s Stay In London Embassy Untenable, Says Ecuador (G.)
Australia Must Rescue Assange From The Establishment That Tortured Manning (CJ)
The Fog of War: Global Airstrike Deaths Up At Least 82% In 2017 (RT)
Scores Feared Dead And Up To 100 Missing After Boat Sinks Off Libya Coast (G.)

 

 

The Last of the Mohicans. But does Japan really want to, and can it, carry the global financial system on its shoulders now the Fed and ECB no longer want to do their share?

Is Bank of Japan The Latest To Take The Punch Bowl Away? (CNBC)

The Bank of Japan is seen as the last grown-up in the room actively filling the global liquidity punch bowl with both hands. That’s why a slight tweak to its bond-buying program caused a flurry across financial markets Tuesday, sparking speculation it was joining the Fed and ECB in cutting back on asset purchases, a move that could ultimately help drive up global interest rates. On Tuesday, the BOJ modestly trimmed its purchases of Japanese government bonds by about $10 billion in the 10- to 25-year maturities and another $10 billion in maturities of more than 25 years. The yen jumped about 0.5% to about 112.60 to the dollar, and bond yields rose. The U.S. 10-year yield also moved higher, breaking above the key 2.50% to as high as 2.55%. Meanwhile, the 10-year JGB yield moved in a range of about 0.16 and saw a high of 0.074%.

But some strategists say while the BOJ may have sent a powerful signal, it is just acting on a technicality that comes with changes it made to its bond purchase program back in 2016. Unlike the U.S. and Europe, where central banks have targeted the balance sheet size, the Japanese central bank is targeting interest rates and its purchases are based on prices. “I think it’s too early to proclaim the easy conditions in Japan are over. That said, I do think it’s constructive and it shows how sensitive the markets are to any potential change,” said Greg Peters, senior portfolio manager at PGIM Fixed Income. The Bank of Japan has been a poster child for central bank easing, taking its rates to negative levels and buying all types of assets, including stocks.

“They’re still buying ETFs, J-REITs, corporate paper. They changed how they’re easing, but they’re still easing,” said Marc Chandler, head of fixed-income strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman. “I think the market is overinterpreting this, partly because of their positions. They’re short yen. They’re long euros. They’re being squeezed on both legs today.” [..] While it’s last to leave the party, a change in BOJ policies would be the most symbolic move yet that the extreme policies adopted in the global financial crisis are finally coming to an end, and the juice that helped push risk assets higher is being slowly withdrawn. Chandler said the BOJ has made a point of saying it will continue to ease. “The BOJ says, ‘We’re going to be patient. We’re going to be the last one out.’ … [Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe told the Bank of Japan..

“If long rates continue to move higher, and the BOJ follows this with a continued reduction in the pace of the purchases, then we know we’re on to something. We’re on to a potential change in monetary policy in Japan,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Financial Group. “I think that is likely in 2018,” Boockvar said. “Whether this is the beginning of it, we’ll have to see. They have some cover too. They know what the Fed is going to do, and they know what the ECB is doing. Does the BOJ want to be the outlier of temporary insanity when every other central bank is pulling back? They are the epitome of extremity in terms of monetary policy.”

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Fed interference will go down in history as the uttermost of stupidities. Not yet though, the narrative of saving the economy can still be kept alive. But wait till things go south.

Fed Officials Are Scrambling To Figure Out How To Fight Next Recession (BI)

Federal Reserve officials puzzled by chronically-low US inflation seem to agree on at least one thing: They worry, almost universally, that they will lack the tools to fight the next recession, whenever it comes. Yet instead of focusing on tried and true policy measures like low interest rates and possibly bond buys, Fed officials current and former appear focused instead on broad shifts in the policy framework, including moving away from the current inflation targeting regime toward a potentially more aggressive approach. More importantly, the string of discordant ideas being offered up at a Brookings Institution conference by such high profile figures as former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, former White House economic advisor Lawrence Summers, and two current Fed members, does more to confuse the already muddled outlook for monetary policy than clarify it.

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren suggested the Fed follow the model of the Bank of Canada, which periodically reviews its approach to maintaining price stability. He also called for the Fed to move toward an inflation target range, which he hinted might be from 1.5% to 3%, rather than the current 2% goal. John Williams, president of the San Francisco Fed, called for a system where the Fed would target the price level, meaning that it would compensate periods of undershooting the 2% inflation goal with periods of overshooting. US inflation has remained stubbornly below the Fed’s 2% target for much of the economic recovery, suggesting the labor market is not as healthy as the 17-year low unemployment rate of 4.1% suggests.

Shifting to a price-level target is “not nearly as scary as you might think” Williams told the audience of monetary economists, academics, and market participants. He worried about the “issue of credibility” that has resulted from persistently below-target inflation, which makes it look ” like the central bank is not committed to its goals.” Prolonged low inflation, which also reflects soft wage growth, can make monetary policy less effective because “it gets into inflation expectations and makes it harder to achieve 2% objective in good times.”

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Possible in theory, but with CB tightening not in practice.

Market Could Be Headed For A ‘Melt-Up’ Of 30% – Bill Miller (CNBC)

Worried about higher interest rates putting a dent on the stock market’s rip-roaring rally? Fear not, a rise in rates will actually help stocks, according to legendary investor Bill Miller. “Those 10-year yields go through 2.6% and head towards 3%, I think we could have the kind of melt-up we had in 2013, where we had the market go up 30%,” Miller, the founder of Miller Value Partners, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Tuesday. “If we can get the 10-year towards that 3% level, you’ll see the same thing.” “In 2013, people finally began to lose money in bonds. They took money out of bond funds and put it into equity funds,” Miller said. Miller is considered one of the best investors ever, after beating the market for 15 years in a row while working at Legg Mason. Stocks have been on a rip-roaring rally for more than a year, as economic data and corporate earnings have improved.

On Tuesday, they closed at fresh record highs. But some experts fear the improvements in the economy could force the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy faster than they forecast, thus pushing interest rates higher. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 2.55% on Tuesday and hit its highest level since March.The yield has not traded above 3% since early 2014. It last traded above 2.6% last March. But Miller thinks the stock market could get another boost from lower corporate tax rates. President Donald Trump signed a bill in December that slashed the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%. “The tax cuts are probably partly in the market, but maybe not wholly in the market because we’re seeing things like companies raising the minimum wage, giving bonuses,” he said. “The people that are getting those $1,000 bonuses probably have a marginal propensity to consume of 99%.”

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It’s high time for that decline then.

People Have A Hard Time Even Imagining How The Market Could Decline (ZH)

A calm complacency never before seen has fallen blanket-like over US equity markets. “The behavior of volatility has entirely changed since 2014,” noted BAML in a a recent note thanks to major central banks keeping interest rates near historic lows (and printed more money than ever before). As The Wall Street Journal points out, One sign of that: VIX closed below 10 more times last year than any others year in its history, and until today, closed below 10 for the first 5 days of 2018… And while correlation is not causation, there is a clear causal link between the conditioning now deeply embedded within investors’ minds and the endless expansion of central bank balance sheets…

As JPMorgan’s infamous quant guru Marko Kolanovic wrote, “the first four Fed hikes in a decade have failed to generate the revival of volatilities that many had expected at the end of last year,” and a wave of political uncertainty linked to U.S. tensions with North Korea and the new presidential administration also raised the prospect that market tumults could occur with greater frequency… but no… In fact worse still for The Fed, financial conditions eased as they tightened and vol collapsed to levels never seen before…

All of which has led, as The Wall Street Journal reports, to a number of investors abandoning defensive positions taken to protect against a market downturn, in the latest sign that many doubters are shedding caution as the long rally rolls on. “I haven’t seen hedging activity this light since the end of the financial crisis,” said Peter Cecchini, a New York-based chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald. “It started in late 2016 and accelerated in the second half of the year.” But as Morgan Stanley warns in a recent note, what goes up (this fast) typically comes down… “Our team has observed a dramatic shift in sentiment since we initiated coverage in April. In April, it felt as if people were looking for a reason for the market to fail. Now, we have seen a total reversal with people having a hard time even imagining how the market could decline.”

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Recovery is just a story. Unless it has become viable to fight debt with more debt.

World Bank Issues Warnings On Interest Rates And Inflation (G.)

Financial markets are complacent about the risks of sharply higher interest rates that could be triggered by better than expected growth in the global economy this year, the World Bank has warned. The Washington-based organisation said that much of the rich west was running at full capacity as a result of a broad-based upswing in activity, but were now vulnerable to a period of rising inflation that would prompt action from central banks. Launching the Bank’s global economic prospects, the lead author Franziska Ohnsorge said: “There could be faster than expected inflation that would mean faster than expected interest rate hikes.” Ohnsorge added that stock markets were at levels similar to those seen before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, while bond markets were assuming that low inflation would keep official borrowing costs down.

“Financial markets are vulnerable to unforeseen negative news. They appear to be complacent,” she said, while announcing that the Bank has revised up its 2018 forecast for the global economy following a better than expected performance in the US, China, the eurozone and Japan in 2017. In its half-yearly assessment, the Bank said a recovery in manufacturing, investment and trade would mean global growth of 3.1% this year, up from the 2.9% pencilled in last June. But it warned the acceleration in growth would be temporary unless governments implemented structural reforms to raise long-term growth potential. “The broad-based recovery in global growth is encouraging, but this is no time for complacency,” said Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank’s president.

“This is a great opportunity to invest in human and physical capital. If policy makers around the world focus on these key investments, they can increase their countries’ productivity, boost workforce participation, and move closer to the goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.”

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They’re even planning to march in the Olympics opening ceremony together.

South Korea’s Moon Says Trump Deserves ‘Big’ Credit For North Korea Talks (R.)

South Korean President Moon Jae-in credited U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday for helping to spark the first inter-Korean talks in more than two years, and warned that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if provocations continued. The talks were held on Tuesday on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone, which has divided the two Koreas since 1953, after a prolonged period of tension on the Korean peninsula over the North’s missile and nuclear programs. North Korea ramped up its missile launches last year and also conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, resulting in some of the strongest international sanctions yet. The latest sanctions sought to drastically cut the North’s access to refined petroleum imports and earnings from workers abroad. Pyongyang called the steps an “act of war”.

Seoul and Pyongyang agreed at Tuesday’s talks, the first since December 2015, to resolve all problems between them through dialogue and also to revive military consultations so that accidental conflict could be averted. “I think President Trump deserves big credit for bringing about the inter-Korean talks, I want to show my gratitude,” Moon told reporters at his New Year’s news conference. “It could be a resulting work of the U.S.-led sanctions and pressure.” Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un exchanged threats and insults over the past year, raising fears of a new war on the peninsula. South Korea and the United States are technically still at war with the North after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

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Ads are killing the experience. Most people by now have ad blockers. That whole industry needs drastic change.

Apple’s Privacy Feature Costs Ad Companies Millions (G.)

Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new privacy feature from Apple that prevents users from being tracked around the web. Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced. With annual revenue in 2016 topping $730m, the overall cost of the privacy feature on just one company is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Dennis Buchheim, general manager of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab, said that the feature would impact the industry widely.

“We expect a range of companies are facing similar negative impacts from Apple’s Safari tracking changes. Moreover, we anticipate that Apple will retain ITP and evolve it over time as they see fit,” Buchheim told the Guardian. “There will surely be some continued efforts to ‘outwit’ ITP, but we recommend more sustainable, responsible approaches in the short-term,” Buchheim added. “We also want to work across the industry (ideally including Apple) longer-term to address more robust, cross-device advertising targeting and measurement capabilities that are also consumer friendly.” ITP was announced in June 2017 and released for iPhones, iPads and Macs in September. The feature prevents Apple users from being tracked around the internet through careful management of “cookies”, small pieces of code that allow an advertising technology company to continually identify users as they browse.

Its launch sparked complaints from the advertising industry, which called ITP “sabotage”. An open letter signed by six advertising trade bodies called on Apple “to rethink its plan … [that risks] disrupting the valuable digital advertising ecosystem that funds much of today’s digital content and services.” It also accused the company of ignoring internet standards, which say that a cookie should remain on a computer until it expires naturally or is manually removed by a user. Instead, the industry said, Apple is replacing those standards “with an amorphous set of shifting rules that will hurt the user experience and sabotage the economic model for the internet”.

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We haven’t heard the last of this flaw which is actually a feature.

Antivirus Tools Caught With Their Hands In The Windows Cookie Jar (Reg.)

Microsoft’s workaround to protect Windows computers from the Intel processor security flaw dubbed Meltdown has revealed the rootkit-like nature of modern security tools. Some anti-malware packages are incompatible with Redmond’s Meltdown patch, released last week, because the tools make, according to Microsoft, “unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory,” crashing the system with a blue screen of death. In extreme cases, systems fail to boot up when antivirus packages clash with the patch. The problem arises because the Meltdown patch involves moving the kernel into its own private virtual memory address space. Usually, operating systems such as Windows and Linux map the kernel into the top region of every user process’s virtual memory space.

The kernel is marked invisible to the running programs, although due to the Meltdown design oversight in Intel’s modern chips, its memory can still be read by applications. This is bad because it means programs can siphon off passwords and other secrets held in protected kernel memory. Certain antivirus products drill deep into the kernel’s internals in order to keep tabs on the system and detect the presence of malware. These tools turn out to trash the computer if the kernel is moved out the way into a separate context. In other words, Microsoft went to shift its cookies out of its jar, and caught antivirus makers with their hands stuck in the pot. Thus, Microsoft asked anti-malware vendors to test whether or not their software is compatible with the security update, and set a specific Windows registry key to confirm all is well.

Only when the key is set will the operating system allow the Meltdown workaround to be installed and activated. Therefore, if an antivirus tool does not set the key, or the user does not set the key manually for some reason, the security fix is not applied. In fact, until this registry key is set, the user won’t be able to apply any Windows security updates – not just this month’s patches, but any of them in the future.

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UK and US will not give in any time soon.

Julian Assange’s Stay In London Embassy Untenable, Says Ecuador (G.)

Ecuador’s foreign minister has said Julian Assange’s five-and-a-half-year stay in her country’s London embassy is “untenable” and should be ended through international mediation. The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up in Knightsbridge since the summer of 2012, when he faced the prospect of extradition to Sweden over claims that he sexually assaulted two women. He denies the accusations. Swedish prosecutors last year unexpectedly dropped their investigation into the allegations, which included a claim of rape. But Assange still faces arrest for breaching bail conditions if he steps outside the embassy and WikiLeaks has voiced fears that the US will seek his extradition and that there is a sealed indictment ordering his arrest. [..] Jeff Sessions, said last May that Assange’s arrest was now a “priority”.

Ecuador’s foreign minister, María Fernanda Espinosa, said her country was now seeking a “third country or a personality” to mediate a final settlement with the UK to resolve the impasse and said it was “considering and exploring the possibility of mediation”. “No solution will be achieved without international cooperation and the cooperation of the United Kingdom, which has also shown interest in seeking a way out,” she told foreign correspondents in Quito, according to Agence France-Presse. Assange, who has received numerous visitors to his modest quarters in the embassy, ranging from Nigel Farage to Lady Gaga, has described the period since his initial arrest as a “terrible injustice”. Not being able to see his children grow up was “not something I can forgive”, he said.

[..] On Tuesday evening, a lawyer for Assange appeared to welcome Ecuador’s proposal. He said his client had a right to asylum and argued that the risk of him being persecuted in the US had “escalated further in recent months under the Trump administration’s war on WikiLeaks” and that the investigation in Sweden had twice been discontinued. “If the UK wishes to show that it is a nation that respects its human rights obligations and commitments to the United Nations, it is time for Mr Assange to be allowed to enjoy his right to liberty, and fundamental right to protection against persecution in the United States,” he said. A spokesperson for the UK government said: “The government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.”

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“Julian Assange isn’t hiding from justice, he’s hiding from injustice.”

Australia Must Rescue Assange From The Establishment That Tortured Manning (CJ)

Private Manning was tortured. As sure as if they’d strapped her down and set upon her flesh with fire and steel, she was tortured. United Nations special rapporteur on torture Juan E. Mendez stated unequivocally in 2012 that Manning’s treatment at the hands of the US government during her imprisonment was “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” after 295 legal scholars had already signed a letter in 2011 declaring that she was being “detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.” Humans, like all primates, are evolutionarily programmed to be social animals, which is why solitary confinement causes our systems to become saturated in distress signals as real as pain or fear. Studies have shown that fifteen days of this draconian practice causes permanent psychological damage. Manning was in solitary confinement for nearly a year.

Manning attempted suicide in July of 2016. To punish her for her attempt to end her misery, they tortured her some more. She attempted suicide again three months later. The same sadistic regime which inflicted these horrors upon Manning has during the current administration prioritized the arrest of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, and the international arms of the US power establishment have been working to facilitate that aim. The Guardian reports that Ecuador’s foreign minister is now saying Assange’s continued stay in the nation’s London embassy has become “untenable” and is seeking international mediation, to which a spokesman for the UK government has responded that “The government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.”

Justice. A government whose international operations are uniformly indistinct from America’s wants Assange to leave political asylum and trust his life to an international power establishment that tortures whistleblowers in the name of “justice”. Julian Assange isn’t hiding from justice, he’s hiding from injustice. What sane human being wouldn’t? Time after time after time we are shown that whistleblowers, leakers, and those who facilitate them are not shown anything remotely resembling justice by this depraved Orwellian establishment. Which is why Australia must intervene and protect him.

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The value of your life plunges along with that of others.

The Fog of War: Global Airstrike Deaths Up At Least 82% In 2017 (RT)

More than 15,000 civilians were killed by explosive weapons in 2017, a 42 percent increase on last year, while deaths by airstrikes increased by 82 percent, a new study by Action on Armed Violence has found. The research shows that, while official stats on civilian casualties are on the rise, they’re still modest in comparison to the “true figures.” “The US has a habit of assuming all fighting-aged men are, in fact, fighters…This is the hammer that the US uses to establish the truth in war,” the organization’s Executive Director Iain Overton told RT. Much of the increase is due to the battles to retake Islamic State strongholds in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria. The Syrian conflict and the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen also accounted for a large proportion of civilian deaths.

The survey, found 8,932 civilians were killed by air-launched explosives in the first 11 months of 2017, compared to 4,902 during the same period in 2016. “At least 60 countries around the world saw explosive weapons being used last year,” Action on Armed Violence’s Executive Director Iain Overton told RT. “We have always acknowledged that our data would likely represent a lower figure of total civilians killed or injured than might actually be the case,” Overton said. “This is particularly true when there is a single fatality or wounding, and particularly in under-reporting of those injured by a bomb blast.” “When the fog of war descends casualty figures often fall short – both because they become highly politicized and because accurate reporting is often a casualty of war itself,” he added.

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Europe has no morals left.

Scores Feared Dead And Up To 100 Missing After Boat Sinks Off Libya Coast (G.)

Survivors from a boat that foundered off Libya’s coast on Tuesday said about 50 people who had embarked with them were feared dead, while the coastguard said the number of missing might be as high as 100. Libyan coastguard vessels picked up nearly 300 migrants from three boats off the coast of the North African country on Tuesday, but one rubber boat was punctured and the coastguard only found 16 survivors clinging to its wreckage. “We found the migrant boat at about 10 o’clock this morning. It had sunk and we found 16 migrants. The rest were all missing and, unfortunately, we didn’t find any bodies or [other] survivors,” said Nasr al-Qamoudi, a coastguard commander.

Several of the survivors, who were brought back to a naval base in Tripoli, said there were originally about 70 people on board the boat when it set off near the town of Khoms, east of the capital. A coastguard statement later said that “at least 90-100” migrants were missing. The two other migrant boats were found off Zawiya, west of Tripoli. [..] Libya is the most common departure point for migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa by sea. More than 600,000 have crossed the central Mediterranean in the past four years, generally travelling in flimsy inflatable craft provided by smugglers that often break down or puncture. Under heavy pressure from Italy, some Libyan armed factions have blocked smuggling since last summer. Libya’s Italian-backed coastguard has also stepped up interceptions, returning migrants to Libya, where they are detained and often re-enter smuggling networks.

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