Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Election Fraud Allegations Lead To Felony Charges Against California City Council Candidate

 

at 10/22/24 3:45am

Election Fraud Allegations Lead To Felony Charges Against California City Council Candidate Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Scott Edward Markowitz, a Fullerton City Council candidate in Orange County, California, has been charged with felony perjury after allegedly falsifying his nomination paperwork. According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the candidate had said he personally gathered all of the signatures needed in order to qualify him for the Fullerton City Council election, which takes place on Nov. 5. Fullerton City Hall, in Fullerton, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2020. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times Although ballots have been printed with Markowitz as a candidate for Fullerton’s Ward 4, which sits in the city’s southwest, the allegedly falsified nomination paperwork disqualifies Markowitz from serving on the Fullerton City Council if he is elected. In the event Markowitz wins the election, the city would shoulder the cost of a special election to elect one of the other three candidates in the race for the seat. Markowitz, like all city council candidates, had to turn in a signed attestation under penalty of perjury that whoever signed was also the one who collected signatures to qualify as a candidate for elected office. Markowitz signed the attestation, but allegedly did not collect the signatures. Orange County investigators arrested Markowitz on Monday night. The candidate was booked into the Santa Ana city jail with one felony count of perjury by declaration and one felony count of record of forged or false instrument. If convicted on both counts, Markowitz faces a maximum of three years and eight months in state prison. Markowitz signed on Aug. 9, 2024, that he collected 30 nomination signatures on his candidate nomination paperwork. However, the person who signed the paperwork must have also witnessed the signatures, and numerous people who signed said that Markowitz did not handle the paperwork, although he attested to doing so. The signatures therefore are considered invalid. “American democracy relies on the absolute integrity of the electoral process,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. “Voters must have total confidence that every election is being carried out in a fair and unbiased manner. Interference in the electoral process in any manner and at any stage jeopardizes the will of the people being carried out while eroding the trust of voters that their vote counts.” Spitzer said he did not take the decision to file charges lightly, “but given the risk to the electoral process as well as the potential of the City of Fullerton needing to pay for a special election should Markowitz be elected, there was no choice but to file criminal charges prior to the election and alert voters of his ineligibility to run for City Council.” Linda Whitaker, Jamie Valencia, and Vivian Jaramillo remain the three candidates in the Ward 4 election. They would face off if Markowitz were to be elected despite his arrest. Markowitz and the District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment. Tyler Durden Tue, 10/22/2024 - 05:45

— Iraq Stuck Between Israel And Iran As Tensions Rise

 

at 10/22/24 3:00am

Iraq Stuck Between Israel And Iran As Tensions Rise Authored by James Durso via OilPrice.com, Iraq’s leaders have a lot on their minds, stuck between Israel and Iran as the two countries veer closer to open conflict. Washington generally has a permissive attitude to whatever Israel wants to do, so if the attackers cross Iraq the assumption will be that the Americans approved, or did not disapprove, of the attack on Iran. Iraq is balancing between Russia and China to avoid becoming a client state, and American investment would increase Baghdad’s autonomy. Iraq’s leaders have a lot on their minds, stuck between Israel and Iran as the two countries veer closer to open conflict. Iraq is still recovering from the reign of Saddam Hussein, the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, decades of sanctions that followed the 1991 invasion of Kuwait, liberation by the U.S.-led “coalition of the willing” in 2003, a post-invasion reconstruction that wasted much of the $60 billion spent, and the Islamic State insurgency of 2014-2019. The U.S.-led sanctions campaign against the Saddam Hussein regime disrupted the Iraqi economy, causing inflation to skyrocket, unemployment numbers to hit record levels, a dramatic fall in living standards, the collapse of the infrastructure, and a serious decline in the availability of public services. But it was OK, as Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) informed Americans, “we think the price is worth it." All that, plus Saddam’s crimes against his own people for almost 25 years, weigh on Iraq’s as they navigate to a peaceful, prosperous future. And there are other issues to vex Baghdad. There are about 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and most Iraqis want them to leave. (In 2020, Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution demanding the expulsion of U.S. troops after the U.S. killed Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.) The governments recently announced an agreement on the Americans’ departure, though the U.S. refuses to explain how many troops will remain in Iraq and what they will be doing. The story put out for public consumption is that the goal is the “enduring defeat” of the Islamic State (IS), so will the U.S. try to declare the Islamic State is still a threat to delay withdrawing in order to support Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi militias, and bolster Washington’s clients, the Iraqi Kurds?   And the Americans aren’t the only uninvited guests: Iraq hosts around 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mostly Syrian Kurds, and over 1 million Iraqis remain internally displaced by Islamic State insurgency. The U.S. still influences Iraq by requiring a sanctions waiver for Iraqi purchases of electricity from Iraq, and it recently banned all foreign transactions in Chinese Yuan. Washington still controls the disbursement of Iraq’s dollar-denominated oil revenues from an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In a final gesture of disrespect, the U.S. made a monthly disbursement of dollars to Iraq and at one point rationed dollars, claiming it was necessary to prevent smuggling and money laundering, though the move immediately devalued the Iraqi Riyal. The Iran-influenced militia, the PMF, is now part of Iraq’s government, but that hasn’t stayed America’s hand when it decides to kill a PMF leader. Washington damaged itself in Iraq by killing PMF leaders Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in 2020, and Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi and Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari in 2024. Baghdad had moved the PMF, once a private militia, into the government in 2016 (no doubt with American encouragement), so the killing of PMF leaders, who were government officials, likely increased local support the PMF and weakened Iraqi leaders, the same leaders the U.S. then expects to stand up to Iran and purge the militias. This is about as realistic as the White House eradicating every trace of the Sinaloa Cartel from the U.S. In both countries, those groups survive, and thrive, because they have some popular support, but also because government agencies and powerful people in both countries benefit from their activities.   The Pentagon produced no “ticking bomb” rationale for the “self-defense” attacks that it always describes as “appropriate and proportionate,” and would have shouted it from the rooftops if there was.  The Pentagon killed the PMF leaders because it could, and as a way to eliminate potential future problems in the future, ignoring the here-and-now problems it caused for Baghdad. A recent drone attack on Israel launched from Iraq killed two Israeli troops and injured 24. Iraqis are concerned about Israeli retaliation, but this is a good opportunity for the U.S. to tell Israel to stand down, and to pass information on the attackers to Baghdad so it can demonstrably clean house. Allowing Israel to strike Iraq will weaken Iraqi leaders when Washington should be doing what it can to strengthen them; standing idly by when its Israeli client attacks another country with impunity will only hurt U.S. interests. Israel is planning to attack Iran in retaliation for Iran’s retaliation to Israel’s killing its allies in Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian military officers, the attack on its consulate in Damascus, Syria. And, hopefully, to slow Iran’s nuclear program.  The most direct routes are through Iraq and Saudi Arabia but Iraq’s foreign minister said the expansion of war to Iran via Iraq’s airspace is “unacceptable.” Washington generally has a permissive attitude to whatever Israel wants to do, so if the attackers cross Iraq the assumption will be that the Americans approved, or did not disapprove, of the attack on Iran. This will dilute support for the U.S., weaken U.S.-friendly politicians, and strengthen the hands of Moscow and Beijing, who won’t mind seeing the Americans entangled in the expansion of the Israel-Palestine civil war into a regional conflict (and Russian and Chinese oil investors in Iraq won’t mind the price spike.)  Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani, visited the White House in April 2024 and his focus was the economic relationship between the U.S. and Iraq, especially because about 60 per cent of Iraq’s population is under the age of 25, and high youth unemployment (or under-employment) is a drag on the economy and a recruiting opportunity for Iran and the Islamists.  When Americans think of Iraq in economic terms it’s all about the oil, but in November 2023 ExxonMobil, America’s biggest oil company, exited Iraq with nothing to show for a decade-long effort. (PetroChina took over ExxonMobil’s role and now owns the biggest share in the West Qurna 1 oilfield, one of the world’s biggest with estimated recoverable reserves of over 20 billion barrels.) The departure will lower the expectations of other U.S. companies, but Sudani wants to revitalize economic ties with America.   Russia has invested over $19 billion in the Iraq energy sector with LUKOIL, Gazprom Neft and Rosneft the top investors. In early 2024, Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant, was awarded the development contract for the Nasiriyah oil field, which holds an estimated 4.36 billion barrels. Iraq is balancing between Russia and China to avoid becoming a client state, and American investment would increase Baghdad’s autonomy, but that’s assuming Washington doesn’t intend to do the same as Moscow and Beijing. In the absence of U.S. investment, Iraq may still be able to fund a diversified economy with oil income and that be less efficient than non-energy foreign direct investment, but Iraq has to make up for lost time since 1980, when Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Iran, and can’t afford to delay. U.S.-Iraq trade has room for growth. In 2022, the U.S. exported $897 million in goods, the top product being automobiles. Iraq, in turn, exported $10.3 billion in goods, most of it crude oil. A key economic objective of Iraq is the $17 billion Development Road, an overland road and rail link from the al-Faw port on the Persian Gulf to Europe via Turkey, that will host free-trade zones along its length. This initiative is designed to shorten travel time between Asia and Europe, potentially competing with Egypt's Suez Canal. The project is expected to enhance Iraq's geopolitical position, promote regional stability, and reduce the country's reliance on hydrocarbons by providing financial returns through increased trade. However, it faces challenges such as financing, implementation, corruption, and potential insecurity. The Development Road may benefit from connecting to other transport projects in the area: the International North–South Transport Corridor, the ship, rail, and road route for moving freight between India, Russia, Iran, Europe, and Central Asia; and the Middle Corridor, an alternative to the Northern Corridor through Russia, which connects Southeast Asia and China to Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. Though the projects may be complementary, they may also compete for funding so no project is fully realized and each sees only minor improvements in the host country's infrastructure.  The U.S. president and the Iraqi prime minister should consider the shape of the future U.S.-Iraq relationship, which has to now been securitized, first by the Cold War, then the invasion of Kuwait and the resulting sanctions campaign, the U.S.-led invasion, and finally the Islamic State insurgency. The 2003 invasion weakened the Iraqi state and invited greater Iranian influence which the U.S. should help Baghdad dilute, though the two countries share a common religion and some tribal areas straddle the Iraq-Iran border, so Baghdad and Tehran will probably always be too close for Washington’s liking. Where Iran is concerned, in Washington, DC it’s always 1979.   America’s leaders’ challenge is to understand the concept of “sunk cost,” which means the approximately 4,500 U.S. military deaths, and the $2.1 trillion spent (mostly borrowed) in a war of choice is no reason to linger in Iraq, though the “enduring defeat” of the IS may give the project a new lease on life. Iraq is the best modern example of The Meddler’s Trap, “a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. …A military intervention causes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect.”   The U.S. and Iraq need to move from a security relationship to an economic relationship, and for Iraq to be a full partner the Americans may have to surrender their stranglehold on Iraq’s oil revenues, which gives the U.S. outsized influence with a key member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. If Washington is reluctant to do business, Iraq can always explore joining BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), though it will have to present the organization with a rationale other than “We have hydrocarbons,” which the current members, that include Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, have in abundance. Iraq is a member of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which may be a source of assistance to diversify its economy and infrastructure to make it more attractive to BRICS, or it may get more attention from China if Beijing senses Washington is bedeviled by a lack of imagination. Iraq joined China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2015 and has received approximately $10.5 billion as of 2021, with investments focusing on energy projects, infrastructure development, and construction. The U.S. can help Iraq navigate its way to a prosperous future for Iraqi youth, but both countries will have to distance themselves from  Jerusalem and Tehran because indulging those two often promotes self-harm instead of cooperation and opportunity. Tyler Durden Tue, 10/22/2024 - 05:00

— Inside The Trend Of Americans Retiring Abroad

 

at 10/22/24 2:15am

Inside The Trend Of Americans Retiring Abroad Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), As a record number of Americans turn 65 this year, retiring abroad is becoming an increasingly attractive option for many. Former U.S. residents—or “expats”—say it offers a solution to soaring costs of living and health care in the United States. This dream, however, comes with a disclaimer: There are still plenty of challenges to navigate in other countries. A day at the seaside tourist resort of Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo State, Mexico, on Feb. 15, 2019. Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images For some retirement-age expats, finding a slower pace of life, a sense of community, and a temperate climate were reasons enough to pull up stakes. Near the sun-drenched shores of Playa del Carmen in Mexico, Jeff Natale is living his best life at age 68. “I wanted a warm spot year-round,” he told The Epoch Times in an email. Natale, the author of An Expats Guide to Living in Playa del Carmen, runs JMN Consulting LLC. After spending years in New York and New Jersey, he decided he'd had enough of brutal winters and urban sprawl. The inspiration to live a different kind of life came after a high school trip to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula in 1982. Natale fell in love with the culture, traditions, and slow-paced lifestyle of the locals and dreamed of returning one day to live there. More than 30 years later, after marriage and raising a family in the United States, that’s exactly what he did. After what he referred to as a “series of life-changing events,” Natale turned his attention back to Mexico. He contacted a realtor and closed on a condo in Playa del Carmen in 2014, which kicked off a five-year retirement plan countdown that came to fruition in 2019. “I said goodbye to the United States and arrived in Cancun with five suitcases and my African Grey Parrot,” Natale said. Latin American countries such as Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil are top choices for living, according to the expat resource InterNations. In Europe, Spain ranks in the top 10 for best expat destinations, alongside the Philippines and Thailand in Southeast Asia. The number of Americans collecting Social Security income abroad in recent years has risen sharply. In December 2008, the number of retired workers collecting benefits abroad was 306,906, according to the Social Security Administration. That number reached 443,546 by December 2021. As of this year, more than 760,000 total Social Security beneficiaries living abroad receive a total of $7.5 billion in payments. That’s represents an almost 40 percent increase of total beneficiaries collecting from another country since 2008. Beachgoers in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, on May 25, 2020. Isaac Buj/Europa Press via AP In the Philippines, Mike Jansen said he'd be spending his golden years abroad due, in part, to “unhappiness with American lying politicians” and how the government has treated former military service members like himself. “Decided on the Philippines due to the culture, and they have more [spoken] English here than any other Asian country,” Jansen told The Epoch Times in a text. Having lived in the country for 15 years, Jansen married a Filipina and is raising a family. He’s been working on an addition to his house for the past 10 months, putting in a formal dining room downstairs and a bedroom, bathroom, and balcony upstairs. Jansen said the lower cost of living is definitely a bonus of living in the Philippines. “So far, it’s cheaper than America,” Jansen said. “As long as the exchange rate does not dive.” Health Is Wealth When asked why he chose Playa del Carmen, Natale said the seaside town is a colorful “melting pot” of people, food, and lifestyles from all over Mexico. “Considering Cancun is only 53 years old, and the state of Quintana Roo just celebrated its 50th anniversary, the vast majority of ‘older’ locals are representative of all parts of Mexico.” Natale also said medical services are good and can be affordable. “I have found health care to be reasonably priced as a resident. Of course, there are two tiers of pricing—one for non-residents and one for residents. I do not have health insurance here as prices for care are much less than in my home states.” Pricing varies in Mexico’s health care system. Public health care is cheap by U.S. standards, with an emergency room consultation costing as little as $6 in some places. However, services can be limited in the public sector, especially in rural areas. There can also be longer wait times for doctors in the public sector compared to the private sector. Private health care is considered the gold standard in Mexico. It offers access to a wider network of hospitals and specialists, better infrastructure, and a higher number of English-speaking staff, according to the insurance provider Allianz Care. As in most countries, private health care is more expensive in Mexico. Insurance options are available for expats who want the highest quality of care, and coverage plans are customized. On average, private health insurance can cost $1,700 per year or more. Insurance through Mexico’s public or national health care program is considerably less, costing $500 per year for eligible residents. Natale acknowledged that despite the overall affordability of health care in Mexico, private insurance prices are steep. “If I need world-class health care, I can always go to Cancun, Merida, or Mexico City. Age and pre-existing conditions dictate the costs for insurance [in Mexico], and at my age of 68, it does not fit into my budget.” Mexico has been a popular medical tourism destination for years. Thanks to the rising number of U.S. residents seeking health care abroad, retirees now enjoy well-established infrastructure and English-speaking care providers. In 2007, roughly 750,000 Americans traveled to other nations for health care. That number surpassed 1.4 million by 2017, according to a study published in The American Journal of Medicine. A man holds a sign advertising dental services as he waits for American medical tourists to arrive from the border crossing checkpoint in Los Algodones, Mexico, on April 11, 2023. Around 600 dentists cram the four main streets of the town, offering procedures at a fraction of the cost in the United States. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images In the medical tourism world, Prathyusha Itikarlapalli said she’s encountered many reasons why U.S. residents are looking to retire in another country. “Health care is the number one priority for most people considering moving abroad for retirement,” Itikarlapalli told The Epoch Times by email. In her work with Envoy Health, a company that partners with dental clinics in Mexico, she has found that many Americans seek treatment like implants and full mouth restorations across the border. “These patients are often drawn by the flexibility of appointments and the convenience of transportation amenities that clinics offer, making the experience much easier for those traveling from the U.S.,” Itikarlapalli said. “Whether it’s the final medical bill that drives home the unsustainable costs or the realization that their retirement savings won’t be enough, this financial pressure is what frequently tips the balance.” At face value, dental work in Mexico can offer significant savings, depending on a patient’s circumstances. Costs can vary from $35 for a simple cleaning to $650 for a dental implant. By comparison, a dental implant in the United States starts around $1,000 and can go up to $5,000. Another important value add for American expats is proximity. “Mexico, for some of us, never really seems that foreign. Plus, we can go back and forth so easy!” Mike Wall, an expat in Playa del Carmen, told The Epoch Times via text. Careful Planning An estimated 80 percent of households with older adults—around 47 million—are either financially struggling or not far from it, according to a National Council on Aging study. Being able to afford retirement in the United States is a growing concern. This is reflected in a recent CNBC survey where one in every five retirees said they have no retirement savings. Another 15 percent said they have less than $50,000 saved. More than half of respondents feel they don’t have enough money to last for the duration of their retirement, and 86 percent said inflation has impacted their savings. In the same poll, one in every three surveyed retirees chose to relocate. Among the reasons cited are finding a lower cost of living, a better lifestyle, and better weather. The results aren’t surprising, considering the number of Americans collecting Social Security income outside the United States. It’s a trend that transcends generations—with interest in living abroad tripling since 1974, according to a Monmouth University poll. However, despite the perks of finding cheaper, sunnier shores abroad, there are still hurdles to navigate. “Challenges for retirees often involve understanding and integrating into local legal systems,” attorney Michael Hurckes, managing partner at MAH Advising, told The Epoch Times by email. As a legal professional specializing in succession planning and transition services, Hurckes helps clients navigate the challenging landscape of international financial and legal decisions. In many cases, he said clients need help with retirement planning abroad. “Many U.S. residents I’ve worked with choose to retire outside the U.S. primarily due to favorable tax implications and robust estate planning opportunities, which often reduce financial burdens considerably while protecting their legacy. One client cited the advantage of a reduced estate tax burden in their selected country as a decisive factor,” Hurckes said. “My role frequently involves ensuring compliance with foreign property and inheritance laws, which can differ vastly from U.S. systems and impact tax liabilities.” There’s no getting around the fact that retiring abroad requires a lot of leg work. According to U.S. Bank’s wealth management division, retirees should consider residency requirements, tax obligations, banking, and real estate before moving overseas. “There’s a big difference between visiting a country on vacation and moving there,” Rachelle Tubongbanua, senior vice president and managing director of U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, said in a company article. According to Natale, some of the barriers American retirees encounter in other countries involve language, distance from family, and political and economic turmoil. However, not all obstacles are straightforward. Americans can move to Mexico with their pets, but Natale said this was no easy feat for him. It took nearly a year to obtain the proper permits for his parrot to enter the country, but only “30 minutes to almost be deported upon our arrival.” He called the incident a “classic lesson” in bureaucracy and corruption. But for Natale, it was just a bump on the road toward finding a new community and a better quality of life. “Mexico is now my home,” he said. “My lifestyle is local. I live among locals, shop like a local, and have fully assimilated into Mexican culture. My acceptance by Mexican society has been overwhelming.” On the other side of the world, Jansen feels the same way and is glad to call the Philippines home. “God willing, I'll never have to leave here.” Tyler Durden Tue, 10/22/2024 - 04:15

— Fethullah Gulen, Alleged Mastermind Of 2016 Coup In Turkey, Dies At 83

 

at 10/22/24 1:30am

Fethullah Gulen, Alleged Mastermind Of 2016 Coup In Turkey, Dies At 83 Via Middle East Eye Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish religious leader who founded the Gulen Movement, has died in the US state of Pennsylvania on Sunday night aged 83. Gulen and his movement were accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed military coup in July 2016, which left hundreds of Turks dead. The movement itself denied involvement in the attempt to depose the Turkish government but its role in the coup attempt is accepted across Turkish society and even amongst opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Herkul, an official website that releases announcements on Gulen’s activities, reported that the religious leader passed away at a hospital where he was undergoing treatment for chronic illnesses. A detailed report on his health condition and information about his funeral would be released later, it added.  A handout picture released by Zaman Daily shows Fethullah Gulen at his residence on 24 September 2013 in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania (AFP). Gulen’s death symbolizes the end of an era in Turkish politics. Born in 1941, Gulen established himself as an imam in Turkey in the 1970s and eventually set up a well-organized religious movement to disseminate his beliefs. The movement spread globally through a network of Turkish schools in more than 100 countries.  Functioning as an organization built around the figure of Gulen, the movement claimed to follow the teachings of late Islamic cleric and Sufi, Said Nursi. Gulen transformed the group into a fully fledged political movement, whose followers practiced a form of entryism, in which they actively recruited individuals and placed them into key state institutes such as the police, judiciary and military.  Initial alliance Early on in this endeavor, the Gulen movement's policies dovetailed with the mainstream religious conservative movement, led by current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Conservatives welcomed attempts to make the military and judiciary less hostile to religious groups, as those institutions were pivotal in suppressing the role of Islam in politics throughout Turkey's modern history. Within this climate of repression, Gulen moved to the US 1999, citing health reasons, and never returned to Turkey.  From his base in the US, Gulen's movement established schools, a media conglomerate with magazines, newspapers, and TV stations, as well business unions. Networks of dormitories and student houses operating under the Gulen banner were used as a recruiting ground for the movement. Well-educated or bright potential members were chosen and had their identities masked or downplayed in order to easily enter government service.  When Erdogan entered office as prime minister in 2003, Gulen already had a large network of followers within the state, which was previously dominated by Turkish nationalists, secularists and others.  Erdogan allied himself with Gulen over the years to strengthen his own influence over the police and judiciary, as well as to undercut the military’s influence over politics. The alliance succeeded in bringing about constitutional changes in 2010 and Gulen-linked individuals dominated top judicial positions. What followed were indictments against top generals and other powerful figures in the state who were accused of plotting to overthrow Erdogan, further dampening the role of the military in Turkish politics. Break with Erdogan Erdogan’s first crack with Gulen occurred during the Israeli attack on a Gaza flotilla in 2010 when nine Turkish citizens were killed by Israeli soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara, a ship attempting to break the siege on the people of Gaza. Gulen criticized the flotilla as being too risky and slammed the government for permitting the boat to sail. Another sore point was the 2013 peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Gulen opposed. Tensions simmered through the 2013 Gezi Park protests, as Gulen decided on a position of neutrality as anti-government protesters staged the most serious civil unrest against AKP rule since it took power in 2002. The final break was a December 2013 corruption inquiry into three ministers within the Erodgan government. Erdogan accused Gulen and his movement of trying to use his people in the judiciary and police to topple his government through trumped-up charges. After Erdogan won local elections a few months after the inquiry, he began his move against the Gulen movement, removing individuals associated with the group from state service, as well as declaring them terrorists. The government also went after Gulen-linked companies, media outlets, and schools. This crackdown intensified after the 2016 coup attempt, after which widescale purges resulted in the dismissal and arrest of tens of thousands of civil servants and other state employees through emergency powers. The Turkish state officially references the Gulen organization as a terror group... FETO terror group ringleader Fetullah Gulen dies in US pic.twitter.com/NwTW4oTx2n — TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) October 21, 2024 Gulen’s presence in the US also became a point of tension with Washington, which did not immediately condemn the coup attempt. Ankara's official demand for the US to return the cleric to Turkey were repeatedly ignored by the Americans, with Washington insisting there was not enough evidence implicating Gulen in the plot. For its part, the Gulen Movement, which operates more than 100 charter schools in the US, has established lobbying groups to pressure Congress on alleged human rights abuses taking place in Turkey. The group is, however, itself marred with division. Gulen's nephew, Ebuseleme Gulen, earlier this year accused the movement's leadership of knowing and approving the 2016 coup attempt by empowering people close to Gulen to participate in the insurrection while misleading Gulen about their involvement.  Turkish sources familiar with the issue told media on Monday that there would be a leadership crisis within the movement following Gulen's death. The sources said Cevdet Turkyolu, one of Gulen's lieutenants in Pennslyvania, and Abdullah Aymaz, the current leader of the group in Europe, are expected to compete for the top position in the coming days.  Tyler Durden Tue, 10/22/2024 - 03:30

— From Blindness To 360-Degree-Vision: What 4,000 Near-Death Cases Bring To Light

 

at 10/22/24 12:45am

From Blindness To 360-Degree-Vision: What 4,000 Near-Death Cases Bring To Light Authored by Yuhong Dong, M.D., Ph.D. via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Vicki Umipeg was prematurely born at 22 weeks, weighing 3 pounds. Her optic nerve was damaged due to high oxygen in the incubator, resulting in complete blindness. She had no visual experiences, no awareness of light whatsoever. Illustration by Fei Meng At the age of 22, she was thrown out of a car in Seattle, resulting in severe injuries—skull fractures, concussion, and injuries to her neck, back, and leg. While being rescued in the hospital, she found herself floating to the ceiling. She had panoramic vision and saw a woman’s body lying on a metal operating table, with a male and a female medical staff working to save her. When she noticed the distinct wedding ring on the woman’s hand, she realized it was her ring, and the woman lying there was her. As she had been blind all her life, she had never seen that ring or her body. Only in that near-death experience (NDE) did she see her ring. Vicki was the research subject of Dr. Jeffrey Long, a practicing radiation oncologist in Kentucky. Long has dedicated more than 25 years to studying near-death experiences. He has researched and reviewed more than 4,000 cases of unique NDEs and published them on his website, the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation. Long summarized the most common experiences of NDE based on his research, which is similar to what Dr. Raymond Moody, known as the father of NDE, has found: Out-of-body experience Absence of pain Passage through a tunnel towards a bright light Encountering deceased loved ones in a heavenly realm Undergoing a profound life review Feeling overwhelming love and peace Vicki’s case falls under the typical type of “out-of-body experience.” Her experience, especially the panoramic vision, is shared by all with NDEs. 360-Degree Vision In a recent conversation with The Epoch Times, Long recalled his conversation with the blind woman. “She had a 360-degree vision, where she could simultaneously be aware of and process vision during her near-death experience, in front of her, behind her, right, left, up, down.” “In fact, I told Vicki that the rest of us in our earthly lives have these pie-shaped visual fields because of the location of our eyes, in our eye sockets. She literally laughed at me because her entire life experience with vision [during her NDE] was at 360 or spherical vision.” Furthermore, initially unfamiliar with math and science, Vicki intuitively grasped calculus and understood how planets are formed after her NDE. She gained answers to questions about science, math, life, planets, and God, experiencing a flood of knowledge and understanding languages she didn’t know before. From Delusional to Real People who reported near-death experiences were often dismissed by the scientific community as delusional or religiously influenced until a significant shift in perspective over the past few decades. In 1978, five independent medical doctors and scientists—John Audette, who has a master of science degree; Dr. Bruce Greyson; Dr. Raymond Moody; Ken Ring, who has a doctorate in social psychology; and Dr. Michael Sabom—co-established the International Association for Near-Death Studies, paving the way for exploring these extraordinary experiences through scientific lenses. “I first heard about near-death experience decades ago when I was in my residency training,” Long said, “and in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association.” “I was flipping through the journal looking for a cancer-related article, and totally by accident, found the phrase near death experience in the title of an article. I was puzzled because nothing I'd learned in medical school explained that. You’re either alive or dead.” The article was written by Sabom, a cardiologist who studied people who have survived cardiac arrest and coma. Some patients reported their consciousness came out of their bodies and observed what was happening while their bodies were unconscious, he wrote. What they described seeing was accurate down to the finest details. Several years later, the wife of one of Long’s college friends shared her detailed and remarkable near-death experience with him. “During a surgery under general anesthesia, she went into cardiac arrest due to an allergic reaction, meaning her heart stopped,” Long said. “At that point, she had an out-of-body experience, witnessing the chaos in the operating room and hearing the loud alarm from the EKG monitoring her heart. She briefly passed through a tunnel and found herself in a non-earthly realm where she encountered other beings. There, she was given a choice about returning to her life. She asked the beings for guidance, and after some conversation, she decided to return to her body. She was successfully resuscitated.” Long wondered why more people weren’t researching this fascinating phenomenon, so he began his journey to collect NDE cases. He built a database of 4,000 cases. “By far the largest publicly accessible collection of near-death experiences in the world,” he told The Epoch Times. In a survey, he asked people directly about the reality of their experience, and nearly 95 percent of respondents said their experience was “definitely real.” The 30 Failed Hypotheses According to Long, people who are skeptical about NDEs have proposed more than 30 different explanations for these experiences. “The reason that there are so many of these skeptical explanations—over 30 floating around—is very simple,” Long told The Epoch Times, “Because none of the skeptical explanations explain anything during the near-death experience, let alone everything that occurs.” Hypotheses of hallucinations induced by hypoxia (decreased oxygen levels) and hypercarbia (increased carbon dioxide) were raised to explain why NDEs don’t fly. The reason is simple, “Medically, that results in confusion and diminished consciousness, not increased.” Long said. The Lancet study studied hundreds of patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest or clinically dead. Eighteen percent of those patients reported NDE. If cerebral hypoxia is the reason for causing near-death experiences—and everyone clinically dead has hypoxia—then most patients should have experienced NDE, said the researcher. However, this was not the case. Others have argued that endorphins—the brain’s naturally produced narcotic-like substance—might explain NDEs. However, endorphins continue to exert their post-event pain-relieving effect on the brain for over an hour, which is not aligned with NDE, Long said. “With near-death experiences, the moment they return to their physical body—boom—there’s no relief of pain or anything; they’re instantly having pain.” Long said. Others have talked about seizures. Long said, “Seizures generally cause reduced or substantially altered consciousness, not the lucid, consistent experiences.” Ernst Rodin, the former president of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society, commented, “In spite of having seen hundreds of patients with temporal lobe seizures during three decades of professional life, I have never come across that symptomatology [NDE] as part of a seizure.” The Lancet study also concluded that patients’ medication treatments or fear of death were found to be not associated with NDEs. ‘Doubly Impossible’ Additionally, NDEs have even been documented under general anesthesia. “Under general anesthesia, you should have no possible lucid, organized, conscious experience.” Long said. Some people were under general anesthesia—and then their heart stopped—in this case, Long said, it should be “doubly impossible to have any conscious experience.” And yet, they’re still having the same typically hyper-lucid, hyper-alert, hyper-conscious experience that all other near-death experiences have, he added. “That, almost single-handedly, refutes any possibility that NDEs are due to physical brain function.” Beyond Cultures, Religion, and Age Other hypotheses include the psychological model, which proposes that NDEs are caused by imaginations based on personal, religious, or cultural background. However, individuals often report NDEs that are inconsistent with their life experiences or beliefs regarding death. Some people say NDEs are culturally determined. However, Long found that the experiences are “remarkably similar wherever in the world they occur.” “No matter where on earth they happen, it doesn’t make any difference. Whether you’re, say, a Muslim in Egypt or a Hindu in India, a Christian in the United States, or even an atheist everywhere in the world, that near-death experiences occur, and whatever their prior belief system was or wasn’t, the content what happens during a near-death experience is strikingly similar.” After the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China, Chinese scientists observed a similar pattern of NDEs as the Western record. Among the 81 survivors, 65 percent had heightened clarity of thought, 43 percent felt separation from their physical bodies, and 40 percent felt weightlessness. The experience was similar regardless of age, gender, occupation, or health status before the earthquake. Long studied a group of children 5 and younger, with an average age of 3.5—“practically a culturally blank slate,” he said. “The content of these very young children is strikingly similar to the content of near-death experiences of older children and adults.” Meeting God Moody, who started studying NDE more than half a century ago, has pointed out that many near-death experiencers describe encountering a radiant being of light known as “The Being of Light,” as Moody describes in his book, “Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon - Survival of Bodily Death.” This light is often described as a brilliant and indescribable radiance that doesn’t harm the eyes. Most individuals perceive this light as an advanced being imbued with love and warmth, or God. Vicki also reported that in her NDE, she saw a figure with extraordinary radiance; she recognized this being to be Jesus. To further investigate the truthfulness of “God” in near-death experiences, Long conducted research about God between 2011 and 2014, based on 420 cases of NDEs from people of various professions and walks of life. Before experiencing a near-death event, 39 percent of people believed in the “absolute existence of God.” After their NDE, this belief increased to 72.6 percent. The number of individuals who believed in the absolute existence of God increased by 86 percent, and their faith in God greatly intensified, he wrote in his book, “God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience.” Long carefully examined 277 descriptions of encounters with God and found a significant consistency in their descriptions—an all-loving and all-gracious supreme being radiating love and grace. Other common features of encounters with God described in near-death experiences include nonjudgment, acceptance of who they are and a sense of unity or oneness with God. Communication is essentially always nonphysical or telepathic. Positive Message Before delving into NDE research, Long was puzzled by questions such as “who we are,” he felt that we are much more than just how our physical brain operates. Near-death experiences provide overwhelming evidence for the existence of a consciousness apart from the body—a more eternal existence, said Long. We are not just constrained operating machines but lives with numerous possibilities beyond our current recognition. This is “the most powerfully positive message” for all humanity, he added. Tyler Durden Tue, 10/22/2024 - 02:45

— NATO's Response To Russian Attack On The Baltics Could Take Days And Devastate Lithuania, War Simulation Shows

 

at 10/22/24 12:00am

NATO's Response To Russian Attack On The Baltics Could Take Days And Devastate Lithuania, War Simulation Shows Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News, A recent war simulation reported by the German newspaper Bild has modeled the potential fallout from a Russian attack on NATO’s eastern flank, specifically targeting the Baltic states. The simulation, which explores the implications of such a conflict, highlights a worst-case scenario where NATO’s response could be delayed, leaving Lithuania and its neighbors vulnerable to a Russian advance. The computer-simulated wargame, developed with input from former U.S. Army Europe commander Ben Hodges and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove, envisions an attack taking place in 2027, with Russian forces launching assaults from Belarus and the Kaliningrad region, swiftly moving to occupy parts of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The focus of the attack would be the strategically significant Suwałki Corridor, a 100-kilometer stretch of land connecting Kaliningrad to Belarus. Often dubbed “the most dangerous place on the planet,” this corridor could be used to cut off the Baltic states from the rest of NATO. The simulation suggests that NATO’s Article 5 – the alliance’s collective defense clause – could take several days to activate, causing delays in mobilizing support. As a result, Lithuania and the other Baltic states would need to face Russian forces alone for up to 10 days before NATO could deliver significant reinforcements to the region. During this period, NATO’s German brigade stationed in Lithuania, expected to number 5,000 troops and 44 Leopard 2 tanks by 2027, would play a crucial role. In the simulation, German tanks eventually halted the Russian advance within three days of deployment. “We need to buy as much time as possible,” explained General Breedlove. “First there will be air support, then the fleet, and then heavy ground troops. It would be necessary to hold positions until the arrival of large NATO forces,” he noted. Despite successful resistance, the damage to Lithuania would be severe, with the country left partially occupied and devastated by the end of the conflict. Thousands of fatalities on both sides would also be recorded in a ferocious few days of fighting. Read more here... Tyler Durden Tue, 10/22/2024 - 02:00

— The Left Falsely Portrays Disinformation As The Right's Monopoly

 

at 10/21/24 9:25pm

The Left Falsely Portrays Disinformation As The Right's Monopoly Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics, On an Oct. 13 MSNBC broadcast with anchor Jen Psaki, Democratic strategist – and former political advisor to President Bill Clinton – James Carville denounced Donald Trump for putting “the entire Constitution in jeopardy.” Carville offered a concrete example of the right’s subversion of American freedom and democracy: “The Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas have totally greenlighted the idea that you could round up, use the military to round up your political enemies.” A former political advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Psaki replied with a smile, “We love the truth telling.” Carville and Psaki are typical. The left often portrays itself as the rigorous defender of truth against relentless right-wing disinformation while resolutely promoting progressive disinformation, including the falsehood that disinformation is a distinctively right-wing phenomenon. Small wonder that Carville did not elaborate on his extraordinary accusation, and that Psaki did not ask why he singled out Justice Thomas or how the Supreme Court authorized the rounding up of political enemies. Perhaps Carville had in mind the court’s holding last July in Trump v. United States “that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” But the Constitution does not give the president authority to round up political enemies. Did Carville glibly attack Trump and did Psaki politely play along? Did partisan rage distort Carville’s judgment as well as Psaki’s? Did Carville resolve to assert – and Psaki to endorse – whatever it takes, including nightmare scenarios, to protect democracy from Trump? It is hard to read hearts and minds. But one can confidently affirm that deceiving about politics is as old as politics. Circumstances change. Regimes come and go. Empires rise and fall. Parties win and lose. Yet even as modernization and technology revolutionize human affairs by generating material abundance, destabilizing settled expectations, and eroding inherited understandings, human beings remain social and political animals. Individuals need one another’s company and cooperation while – given diverse backgrounds, disposition, abilities, and interests – differing over what is useful, just, and good. Some strive to exercise power over others while most try to minimize the power that others exercise over them. Through it all, passion and prejudice constantly buffet everyone’s reasoning, and auspicious opportunities and dire predicaments tempt even the virtuous to portray the facts as other than they are. No doubt novel opportunities abound today for promulgating lies and disseminating the family of departures from the truth that human beings routinely produce, distribute, consume, and rail against. In particular, the Internet, digital communications, and social media have facilitated the acquisition and transmission of immense amounts of information. This has greatly increased the quantity and accelerated the velocity of casual errors, self-deceptions, well-meaning half-truths, fraudulently marketed opinions and ideas, and outright lies that swirl through political culture. Both right and left in America partake of the free-for-all of duplicity – often crude, occasionally artful – that plagues American politics. There is, however, an asymmetry. Both sides insist that the other is exclusively at fault for the decay of public discourse. But the left controls the commanding heights of education, mainstream and social media, and government bureaucracy. The left’s false contention that the right exercises a monopoly on manipulation, deceit, and falsehood is particularly damaging because the left amplifies its accusation through domination of the nation’s communication, elite opinion formation, and rule-making and law-enforcement institutions. This substantial advantage in the struggle to shape public opinion encourages the left’s sense of superiority while blinding progressives to their own intellectual subterfuges and ideological swindles. It also foments outrage on the right. Conservatives justify their extreme statements and outrageous claims as playing by progressives’ rules. Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel recently illustrated the left’s propensity to wrongly present disinformation as a specifically right-wing pathology. Author of “Galaxy Brain,” The Atlantic’s newsletter “about technology, media, and big ideas,” Warzel argues in “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” that an unprecedented assault on truth has “been building for more than a decade.” The crisis stems, he maintains, from a calamitous combination of right-wing extremism and digital technology that breaks reality into two – a world of truth inhabited by the left and a world of “dark” falsehoods that the right creates, outfits, and calls home. “This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity,” writes Warzel. “This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world.” Warzel would have placed his analysis of just how badly political discourse in America has deteriorated on much sounder footing if he had recognized that the left also employs digital technology to fabricate and maintain a separate world. In the left’s alternative reality, the remorseless siege of systemic racism, sexism, and other sinister forms of oppression obliges progressives to abandon basic requirements of evidence and argument to rally the faithful and save the nation and the world. Responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, maintains Warzel, have set a new low. “Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories,” he writes, “the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism.” He gives chilling examples careening around the Internet of harebrained conspiracy theories about government malfeasance and implausible stories of official neglect, or deliberate disregard, of storm victims that have delayed the delivery of essential government services. These remind that people can easily dupe others and be duped, especially when hurricane season coincides with election season, and individuals are armed with smart phones and social media accounts, and distrust elite institutions. Warzel is rightly alarmed that “Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality – or desire one at all.” But his one-sided analysis inadvertently underscores that fault for the splintering of America does not lie solely with Trump and his backers. Or even primarily. Yes, Jan. 6, 2021, was a disgrace. Yes, right-wing rhetoric can be ridiculous, ominous, and vile. And yes, right-wing activists also exploit the Internet to stoke grievance and stir up resentment and rage. Still, progressives tend to neglect that Trump and his voters have reasons, accumulating for decades, for distrusting institutions fundamental to the nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom and dominated by progressives: universities, the mainstream media and social media, and the federal bureaucracy. Contrary to the common view on the left that Trump inaugurated a war on truth, our universities have for at least two generations sought to emancipate students from the traditional understanding that higher education’s purpose is to pursue knowledge and cultivate independent minds. Instead, through a succession of intellectual fashions and fads – including positivism, relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, identity politics, and intersectionality – universities have fostered the incoherent and partisan belief that since moral values are socially constructed, progressive policies must prevail. Meanwhile, our progressive media – mainstream and social – and our progressive federal bureaucracy have collaborated to promote progressive national narratives by censoring opinions that challenge the progressive perspective and weaponizing the law against those who oppose progressivism’s hegemony. The most egregious such collaboration revolved around the charge – widely presented as established fact by the press, defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, and elected Democratic officials and progressive intellectuals – that Donald Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election. This weighed down President Trump and hampered his administration. Yet after a two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose team contained several experienced and high-powered Democratic lawyers, issued a lengthy report stating that the investigation “did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Another disreputable collaboration to advance progressive ends sought to push Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over the finish line in November 2020. A few weeks before the election, the New York Post accurately reported that a laptop containing incriminating evidence belonged to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The mainstream media, social media, and the FBI censored the Post’s reporting while disseminating the falsehood that the computer was a product of Russian disinformation. A third major collaboration occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times and the Washington Post derided the notion that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, which it likely did, and government officials, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, suppressed the lab-leak hypothesis. In addition, the mainstream media, social media, and federal government teamed up to discredit and silence those who raised questions about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines. To do their share to arrest the splintering of America, progressives must do more than profess their love of the truth. They must act like they mean it. Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 23:25

— Hurricane Helene's Political Disaster

 

at 10/21/24 9:00pm

Hurricane Helene's Political Disaster Authored by Ryan Bonifay via RealClearPolitics, Hurricane Helene devastated large swaths of western North Carolina, with entire towns wiped away or forever altered. The human disaster will be felt for decades. But there’s another impending disaster no one is talking about – a political one. North Carolina is a perennial swing state with a penchant for split-ticket voting. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by less than 1.5 percentage points. In 2008, Barack Obama clinched the state for the Democrats by a mere 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million votes. This year, North Carolina is once again a battleground state, with both political parties spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and both presidential nominees are spending significant time here. In the Tar Heel State, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are literally fighting for every single vote. But Hurricane Helene didn’t just wipe out towns. It may also wipe out people’s right to vote. Tens of thousands of voters are homeless or temporarily camped out far from their homes. While the North Carolina Board of Elections is tweaking rules to make it easier to vote, residents in the most severely damaged areas probably have other, bigger problems on their minds – like missing relatives, lost livelihoods, children who can’t go to school, filing insurance claims, just to name a few. The last thing on their to-do lists is remembering to reregister to vote at their new address before Oct. 6, which has since come and gone.  There is an unspoken question that needs to be voiced: What happens if hundreds of thousands of voters in western North Carolina can’t vote in the 2024 election? The disaster declaration in western North Carolina encompasses 25 counties, comprising 1.3 million registered voters, of which 974,514 voted for president in 2020. Currently, registered Republicans make up 37.9% of western North Carolina voters compared to 28.2% in the rest of the state. Registered Democrats make up only 22.8% of western North Carolina voters compared to 33.2% in the rest of the state. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those 25 counties.  In other words, western North Carolina is Republican country, even with deep blue Asheville sitting in the heart of the mountains. In the closest election in recent history, Republicans don’t have 600,000 votes to spare. In order for a Republican candidate to have a fighting chance of winning statewide in North Carolina, they have to drive up their margin of victory in the western part of the state. Since 2016, Republican presidential and Senate candidates have won by a margin of 23.4% to 27.9% in western North Carolina. In those same elections, all Republicans (Trump, Tillis, Budd), except former Sen. Richard Burr, also lost the rest of the state. Compare those margins to losing Republican candidates. In 2016, the incumbent governor, Pat McCrory, won western North Carolina by 19.3%. Four years later, Republican Dan Forest only eked out an 18.7% margin in the west. McCrory lost the rest of the state by 4.4%, and Forest lost it by 9.5%. In other words, statewide Republicans can’t win North Carolina without soaking up every red vote to the west. As of Oct. 7, absentee ballot requests in western North Carolina totaled 46,094, accounting for 15.7% of statewide requests. Some of those ballots will never reach their intended recipients. That is concerning, but the bigger impact will come from in-person early voting, slated to begin October 17. In 2020, 70% of Trump’s vote in western North Carolina came from in-person early voting sites. It is not yet clear how many early voting sites are damaged, but the wide expanse of Helene’s damage suggests it will be significant. According to Axios, “infrastructure, accessibility to voting sites, and postal services remain severely disrupted” in 13 counties, accounting for 552,514 registered voters. With North Carolina growing increasingly close, hundreds of thousands of Tar Heel voters who are unable to vote could doom Republicans chances here – and nationwide – over the next 27 days. While it is possible for Trump to win 270 electoral votes while losing North Carolina, it makes a narrow path to the White House that much narrower. Playing around with the electoral map produces a number of scenarios in which Trump comes short of 270 electoral votes without North Carolina. One scenario gives Trump Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania while losing Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. He loses that election 265 to 273. Getting western North Carolina back on its feet has to be the priority for the federal and state governments. However, with such an important election at our doorstep, it would be irresponsible to ignore the political implications of this historic disaster. It’s not just about disenfranchising voters – which is important enough. Imagine for a moment that this election comes down to a razor-thin margin in storm-torn North Carolina. Allegations start flying – about lost ballots, late ballots, ballots sent to the wrong precincts, etc. It will be Florida circa 2000 on steroids, and nobody wants to go through that again. Our country is already fraying at the seams with little trust in our democratic institutions. Talk about throwing a match into a powder keg. To prevent this election outcome from being dictated by a 100-year storm, it is incumbent on the Board of Elections to do absolutely everything in its power to make sure western North Carolinians, especially those in rural and most isolated parts of the impacted area, have every opportunity to cast their ballots. It’s also incumbent on Republicans to start tackling this problem now. Don’t wait until Nov. 6 to sound the alarm. No one wants to politicize a storm that has destroyed so many lives, but that’s exactly what will happen if we don’t get this right. Ryan Bonifay is the director of data & analytics at ColdSpark and lives in Lexington, North Carolina. Bonifay has worked and served as data director for several campaigns and organizations across the southeast, including the Republican National Committee, Engage Texas, Texans for Greg Abbott, and former U.S. Senator David Perdue. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 23:00

— FBI Believes US Intel Leak On Israel Was Likely A Government Insider, Not Hacking

 

at 10/21/24 8:35pm

FBI Believes US Intel Leak On Israel Was Likely A Government Insider, Not Hacking The FBI and the Department of Defense are scrambling to uncover how it was that two highly classified intelligence documents related to Israel’s preparation for a potential retaliatory attack on Iran appeared on a Middle East news-related Telegram channel days ago. The White House has described President Biden as "deeply concerned" over the serious breach, and has confirmed there is an intense investigation ongoing to ascertain how it happened and who had access. At this point it's not even confirmed whether the documents were made public via a hack or a leak by an individual who had access to them. The documents were produced by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and were marked "Top Secret" and restricted from distribution from most foreign allies, with the exception of countries belonging to the "Five Eyes". The White House also said Monday that at this point officials do not believe that more documents were breached beyond the two which were made public. CNN meanwhile reports that investigators currently believe the intel docs were leaked by someone within the US intelligence community: The FBI is leading the investigation, working with Pentagon investigators and the intelligence community, according to US officials briefed on the matter. In recent days, investigators have worked to authenticate the documents and determine who could have had access to them, the officials said. That focus is one indication that, for now, the FBI and other investigators are working off the theory that the breach most likely came from a government insider and not from a cyber intrusion. Statements attributed to the FBI further suggest authorities are getting close to tracking down the culprit. While both documents were available among a relatively large pool of US intelligence analysts and officials, CNN has noted that one of them appears to have been scanned from a printed briefing book. "That could provide investigators with a critical jumping-off point: The Defense Department, like other federal agencies, tracks when employees print classified documents. The pool of people who printed these pages would be relatively small, these sources said," CNN details. Another statement by the Telegram channel rejects claims made by Axios and Jerusalem Post that the group is “Iran-affiliated”. And more info on how the leak originated: pic.twitter.com/EJdiLBGyx7 — Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 20, 2024 This is precisely how US Air Force veteran and former NSA translator Reality Winner got caught. She printed a single classified document from her work computer, and then anonymously mailed it to The Intercept. It was an NSA document related to alleged 'Russian interference' in the 2016 United States elections, which involved some phishing scams and efforts at breaching voting software. The document itself was relatively vague. Government investigators were able to very quickly determine which printer was used, and which NSA employee viewed it. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 22:35

— US House Task Force Finds 1st Trump Assassination Attempt Was 'Preventable'

 

at 10/21/24 7:45pm

US House Task Force Finds 1st Trump Assassination Attempt Was 'Preventable' Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The House task force investigating the July 13 assassination attempt targeting former President Donald Trump concluded that the incident was “preventable,” releasing new testimony from local law enforcement officials who provided accounts of communications and operational failures at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump is helped off the stage at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024. Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo Released on Monday, the report concluded that there was a “lack of planning and coordination” between the U.S. Secret Service and its local law enforcement partners during the Trump rally. The Secret Service, it found, “did not give clear guidance to the relevant state and local agencies about managing areas outside the secure event perimeter, and there was no joint meeting on the day of the rally between [the Secret Service] and all state and local law enforcement agencies assisting” the federal agency. Monday’s House task force report mostly echoes findings made by the Senate Homeland Security panel report and an internal Secret Service report, both of which were released in September. The report included findings that were already publicly released. But the report contained new interviews with local law enforcement officials in Butler County on how the Secret Service failed to perform on July 13. Unnamed officials in Butler provided more details on how the gunman was first spotted by law enforcement and that nothing was done until he opened fire upon the rally, clipping Trump’s right ear with a bullet while killing a rally-goer and severely injuring two others. As one example, one emergency services official told the panel that he sent a text message to his colleague that the shooter was seen with a rangefinder at around 5:17 p.m. However, the colleague did not see the message until more than 20 minutes later, at around 5:40 p.m. The report also included new testimony from the officer who attempted to climb on the roof of the building where the gunman had perched before he opened fire. Days after the shooting, local officials confirmed that an officer tried to get on the roof but that the shooter pointed his weapon at him, forcing the officer to back down. Police body-camera footage was also released of the incident, showing the officer getting a boost from another law enforcement official in a bid to climb on the roof. The shooter could not be seen in that clip. That unnamed official told the panel that as he attempted to move his way onto the roof, the gunman “slowly turned on his waist” and “slowly turned around.” “And as I came up, that’s when he pointed his firearm in my face,” the official said. “And at that time, I could see, you know, he had a bookbag with him, I could see mags (gun magazines). “I knew he had a long gun, like an AR-platform. And as I’m coming up and he’s got the gun pointed at me, I don’t know if I reach for my gun, if I slip, but all I know from that point is I’m looking at him, and all my weight is on my, like, arms, my hands, and I don’t have a grip.” The officer added, “The next thing I know, I smack against the ground and fall.” “I just start yelling out to the guys that are there, I yell on the radio right away,” the official added. “I start saying, you know, South end, He’s got a long gun. Male on the roof. I just kept repeating, He’s got a gun. He’s got a long gun. I’m telling the guys that are around, like, he’s right up there, guns up, eyes up, still screaming on the radio.” Overall, local and state law enforcement officials who spoke to the House panel were largely critical of the lack of a unified command and communications post to oversee security at the Trump event. They also said that there was no unified briefing between the federal and local partners that could “have led to gaps in awareness among state and local law enforcement partners as to who was stationed where, spheres of responsibility, and expectations regarding communications during the day,” according to the report. The Secret Service has not issued a comment on the House panel’s report. The Epoch Times contacted the agency but received no response by publication time. The acting director of the Secret Service in August conceded that the agency failed in its mission to protect Trump during the rally, did not properly secure the rally site, and that several agency staffers would face punishment over the incident. Two months later, federal law enforcement officials said that Trump was the target of a second assassination attempt, this time at his Florida golf course while he was golfing. The Secret Service said that an agent who was protecting Trump saw the barrel of a rifle sticking out of a perimeter fence on Sept. 15 before he engaged with the suspect and opened fire, prompting him to flee. Ryan Wesley Routh was later arrested and charged with multiple felony counts in connection to the incident and has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say that Routh had authored a note that indicated he wanted to assassinate the former president. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 21:45

— Girl Scout Dues Could Rise As Much As 240% Next Year

 

at 10/21/24 7:20pm

Girl Scout Dues Could Rise As Much As 240% Next Year So much for 2% inflation... The Girl Scouts could be forced to raise yearly membership from $25 to $85, according to a new report from Fox News. That marks a rise of 240%, for those of you keeping inflation score at home.  Girl Scouts of the USA President Noorain Khan and CEO Bonnie Barczykowski said this week: "We have collectively acknowledged that a membership dues increase is needed which is greater than the 25 percent (or $6.25) the National Board has authority to approve in a single triennium." "Over the past few years, costs have increased everywhere, and neither GSUSA nor our councils have been immune to this pressure," it continued. "Operating at a deficit — spending more than we bring in — as we have been doing, is not sustainable." The statement continues: "We can no longer afford to use our financial reserves, and we cannot pass through all escalating costs to our councils." It says: "The additional revenue generated by national annual membership dues of $85 for girls and $45 for adults will enable all of us, together, to deliver our Movement strategy." The Fox News report says that Girl Scouts membership has declined in recent years, partly due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts, now Scouting America, began accepting girls in 2018. The Girl Scouts ended the 2023 fiscal year with a $4.4 million deficit, which is projected to grow to $5.6 million by the end of 2024. Girl Scout troop leader Sally Bertram commented: "I just feel like a triple jump in numbers is going to dissolve the Girl Scouts in southeast Indiana. People out here do not pay that kind of money." "I think that these girls could lose a lifetime of experiences," she continued.  In a statement to Fox, Girl Scouts said: "Ensuring that Girl Scouts can be here for girls (now and in the future) requires financial resources. Girl Scouts has not raised membership dues in over 8 years." "This is not a decision we take lightly, which is why 900 delegates representing Girl Scouts’ membership are coming together to weigh options and vote to ensure that Girl Scouts thrive and that, most importantly, every girl has access to the Girl Scout experience so desperately needed today." Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 21:20

— Ron Paul: Why Should We Fight Wars For Ukraine And Israel?

 

at 10/21/24 6:55pm

Ron Paul: Why Should We Fight Wars For Ukraine And Israel? Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute, When you take on the role of the world’s policeman, don’t be surprised when countries who cannot fight their own wars call “911.” That is exactly what is happening to the United States on two fronts and it is bankrupting our country, depleting the military that should serve our own national interest, and threatening to drag the US into World War III. Last week, Ukraine’s “president” Vladimir Zelensky publicly presented his “Victory Plan.” It was delusional: immediate NATO Membership for Ukraine, NATO strikes against incoming Russian missiles, and permission to use Western long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia including Moscow and St. Petersburg. The real intent was not hard to understand. Ukraine is on the verge of losing its war with Russia and is desperate to draw the United States military into the fight. There were numerous opportunities to avoid this bloody war but at every step the Ukrainian leadership listened to western neocons (like Boris Johnson) and decided to keep fighting Russia down to the last Ukrainian. But now that they are nearly down to the last Ukrainian, they are calling on us to step in and fight the country with the most nuclear weapons on earth -Russia – in a battle that could not be more unrelated to our actual interests. Washington’s answer should be simple but firm: “No more weapons, no more money. You’re on your own. Make peace.” Would the US be mortally wounded if the people in Eastern Ukraine were allowed to secede from Kiev and join Russia? Would anyone except the Russia-obsessed neocons in DC think tanks even notice? Likewise with Israel. Tel Aviv has, in response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, launched a war to annihilate Palestinians from Gaza, invade and occupy southern Lebanon, degrade the military of Iraq and Syria, and take on Iran. But the Israeli military has nowhere near the capacity to fight so many wars on so many fronts, so it has increasingly demanded US involvement in the conflicts. Already the US has provided some $23 billion in additional military aid to Israel and has employed US military assets in the region to shoot down missiles and provide increased weapons and intelligence. But it’s still not enough for Israel. To fight Iran, with its significant military capabilities, Israel appears desperate to drag the US military into the battle. The stationing of one or perhaps two THAAD air defense systems, each with 100 US troops to operate them, is part of that effort. These 100-200 US troops are illegally engaged in combat, but what’s worse is that they are being used as a tripwire. US and Israeli leaders understand that they will be considered legitimate targets for any additional Iranian missile attack, but as soon as American troops start getting killed in Israel there will be a massive push for further US involvement. Imagine the mainstream media war propaganda if such a terrible thing happens. That is no way to use members of the US armed services. It is the opposite of supporting our troops. Washington’s response to Israel trying to drag us into its war with Iran should be just like with Ukraine: “No more weapons, no more money. You’re on your own. Make peace.” That is what a pro-America foreign policy looks like. Our Founders understood it very well and wrote about it often. It’s called “non-intervention.” Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 20:55

— Visualizing The Rise Of Antibiotic Resistance

 

at 10/21/24 6:30pm

Visualizing The Rise Of Antibiotic Resistance Bacterial infections are becoming more dangerous. When you’re fighting a bacterial infection, a doctor will typically prescribe you an antibiotic to help you recover. Unfortunately, rising antibiotic resistance means these drugs are becoming less effective. In part one of this series on antimicrobial resistance, Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross partnered with the MSCI Sustainability Institute to highlight the increase in bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics. What is Antibiotic Resistance? Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria evolve and become resistant to the drugs used to treat them. To some extent, this occurs naturally due to genetic changes in pathogens.  However, people have misused and overused drugs to prevent, control, and treat infections in humans, animals, and plants. This is the primary cause of more resistant bacteria. Resistance Rates Over Time Based on the latest available data, the resistance rates of key antibiotics increased from about 16% in 2001 to 44% in 2020. In other words, nearly half of infections are not responsive to the antibiotics typically used to treat them.  Unfortunately, the majority of experts believe that some of these key antibiotics—including amoxicillin and cephalexin, some of the most prescribed drugs in the U.S.—will very likely be lost to resistance within the next 15 years. The Impact of Antibiotic Resistance With treatments no longer working for illnesses like pneumonia or urinary tract infections in some cases, the risk of disease and death increases. Every year, antibiotic resistance directly leads to nearly 1.3 million deaths. On top of this, rising resistance creates investment threats. For instance, companies failing to address antimicrobial resistance might face reputational damage. However, there are also opportunities for investors when it comes to the development of new antibiotics and alternative treatments. In the second part of this series, we highlight the gap between infection-related deaths and research efforts.  Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 20:30

— The Neo-Liberal Consensus Is Coming Apart

 

at 10/21/24 6:05pm

The Neo-Liberal Consensus Is Coming Apart Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute, The global Covid response was the turning point in public trust, economic vitality, citizen health, free speech, literacy, religious and travel freedom, elite credibility, demographic longevity, and so much more. Now five years following the initial spread of the virus that provoked the largest-scale despotisms of our lives, something else seems to be biting the dust: the postwar neo-liberal consensus itself.  The world as we knew it only a decade ago is on fire, precisely as Henry Kissinger warned in one of his last published articles. Nations are erecting new trade barriers and dealing with citizen uprisings like we’ve never seen before, some peaceful, some violent, and most that could go either way. On the other side of this upheaval lies the answer to the great question: what does political revolution look like in advanced industrial economies with democratic institutions? We are in the process of finding out.  Let’s take a quick march through modern history through the lens of US-China relations. From the time of China’s opening in the 1980s to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the volume of trade imports from China only grew, decade after decade. It was the most conspicuous sign of a general trajectory toward globalism that began following the Second World War and accelerated with the end of the Cold War. Tariffs and trade barriers fell ever more, as dollars as the world reserve currency filled the coffers of world central banks. The US was the global source of liquidity that made it all possible.  It came at a huge cost, however, as the US through the decades lost its manufacturing advantages in dozens of industries that once defined the American commercial experience. Watches and clocks, pianos, furniture, textiles, clothing, steel, tools, shipbuilding, toys, household appliances, home electronics, and semiconductors all left US shores while other industries are on the rocks, most especially cars. Today, the much-celebrated “green energy” industries seem fated to be outcompeted as well.  These industries came to be largely replaced by debt-financed financial products, the explosion of the government-backed medical sector, information systems, entertainment, and government-funded education, while the primary exports of the US became debt and petroleum products.  Many forces combined to sweep Donald Trump into office in 2016 but resentment against the internationalization of manufacturing was high among them. As financialization replaced domestic manufacturing, and class mobility stagnated, a political alignment took shape in the US that stunned the elites. Trump got busy on his pet issue, namely erecting trade barriers against countries with whom the US was running trade deficits, primarily China.  By 2018, and in response to new tariffs, the volume of trade with China took its first huge hit, reversing not only a 40-year trajectory of growth but also dealing the first the biggest blow against the 70-year postwar consensus of the neo-liberal world. Trump was doing it largely on his own initiative and against the wishes of many generations of statesmen, diplomats, academics, and corporate elites.  Then something happened to reverse the reversal. That something was the Covid response. In Jared Kushner’s telling (Breaking History), he went to his father-in-law following the lockdowns and said:  We’re scrambling to find supplies all over the world. Right now, we have enough to get through the next week—maybe two—but after that it could get really ugly really fast. The only way to solve the immediate problem is to get the supplies from China. Would you be willing to speak to President Xi to de-escalate the situation? “Now is not a time to be proud,” said Trump. “I hate that we are in this position, but let’s set it up.” It’s impossible to imagine the pain that decision must have caused Trump because this move meant a repudiation of all that he believed in foundationally and all that he set out to accomplish as president.  Kushner writes: I reached out to Chinese ambassador Cui Tiankai and proposed that the two leaders talk. Cui was keen on the idea, and we made it happen. When they spoke, Xi was quick to describe the steps China had taken to mitigate the virus. Then he expressed concern over Trump referring to COVID-19 as the ‘China Virus.’ Trump agreed to refrain from calling it that for the time being if Xi would give the United States priority over others to ship supplies out of China. Xi promised to cooperate. From that point forward, whenever I called Ambassador Cui with a problem, he sorted it out immediately. What was the result? Trade with China soared. Within a matter of weeks, Americans were wearing Chinese-made synthetic coverings on their faces, having their noses stuck with Chinese-made swabs, and being tended to by nurses and doctors wearing Chinese-made scrubs.  The chart on China’s trade volume looks like this. You can observe the long rise, the dramatic fall from 2018, and the reversal in the volume of PPE purchases following the lockdowns and Kushner’s interventions. The reversal did not last long as trade relations broke down and new trade blocs were born.  The irony, then, is a salient one: the aborted attempt to restart the neo-liberal order, if that is what it was, occurred in the midst of a global bout of totalitarian controls and restrictions. To what extent were the Covid lockdowns deployed in service of resisting Trump’s decoupling agenda? We have no answers to that question but observing the pattern does leave room for speculation.  Regardless, the trends of 70 years came to be reversed, landing the US in new times, described by the Wall Street Journal in the event of a Trump victory in 2024:  If it turns out that the tariff on China is 60% and the rest of the world is 10%, the U.S.’ average tariff, weighted by the value of imports, would leap to 17% from 2.3% in 2023, and 1.5% in 2016, according to Evercore ISI, an investment bank. That would be the highest since the Great Depression, after Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1932), which triggered a global surge in trade barriers. U.S. tariffs would go from among the lowest to highest among major economies. If other countries retaliated, the rise in global trade barriers would have no modern precedent. Talk of the Smoot-Hawley tariff really does plunge us into the wayback machine. Back in those days, trade policy in the US followed the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8). The original system granted Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among other powers. This was intended to keep trade policy within the legislative branch to ensure democratic accountability. As a result, Congress responded to the economic/financial crisis by imposing huge barriers against imports. The Depression worsened.  It was a widely accepted belief among many in elite circles that the 1932 tariffs were a factor in the deepening of the economic downturn. Two years later, efforts began to transfer trade authority to the executive so that the legislature would never do something so stupid again. The theory was that the president would be more likely to pursue a free-trade, low-tariff policy. That generation never imagined that the US would elect a president who would use his power to do the opposite.  In the waning days of the Second World War, a group of extremely smart and well-intended diplomats, statesmen, and intellectuals worked to secure the peace in the aftermath of the wreckage in Europe and around the world. They all agreed that a priority in the postwar world was to institutionalize economic cooperation as broadly as possible, under the theory that nations that are dependent on each other for their material well-being were less likely to go to war against each other.  Thus was born what came to be called the neo-liberal order. It consisted of democratic nations with limited welfare states cooperating in trading relationships with ever-lower barriers between states. In particular, the tariff was deprecated as a means of fiscal support and industrial protection. New agreements and institutions were founded to be the administrators of the new system: GATT, IMF, World Bank, and the UN.  The neo-liberal order was never liberal in the traditional sense. It was managed from the outset by states under US dominance. The architecture was always more fragile than it appeared to be. The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, tightened through the decades, involved nascent institutions of global banking and included a US-managed monetary system that broke down in 1971 and was replaced by a fiat-dollar system. The flaw in both systems had a similar root. They established global money but retained national fiscal and regulatory systems, which thereby disabled the specie-flow mechanisms that smoothed and balanced trade in the 19th century.  One of the consequences was the manufacturing losses mentioned above, which coincided with a growing public perception that the institutions of government and finance were operating without transparency and citizen participation. The ballooning of the security state after 9-11 and the stunning bailouts of Wall Street after 2008 reinforced the point and set the stage for a populist revolt. The lockdowns – disproportionately benefitting elites – plus the burning of cities with the riots of the summer of 2020, the vaccine mandates, and combined with the onset of a migrant crisis, reinforced the point.  In the US, the panic and frenzy all surround Trump but that leaves unexplained why almost every Western country is dealing with the same dynamic. Today the core political fight in the world today concerns nation-states and the populist movements driving them versus the kind of globalism that brought a worldwide response to the virus as well as the worldwide migrant crisis. Both efforts failed spectacularly, most especially the attempt to vaccinate the entire population with a shot that is only defended today by manufacturers and those in their pay.  The problem of migration plus pandemic planning are only two of the latest data points but they both suggest an ominous reality of which many people in the world are newly aware. The nation-states that have dominated the political landscape since the Renaissance, and even back in some cases to the ancient world, had given way to a form of government we can call globalism. It doesn’t refer only to trade across borders. It is about political control, away from citizens in countries toward something else that citizens cannot control or influence. From the time of the Treaty of Westphalia, signed in 1648, the idea of state sovereignty prevailed in politics. Not every nation needed the same policies. They would respect differences toward the goal of peace. This involved permitting religious diversity among nation-states, a concession that led to an unfolding of freedom in other ways. All governance came to be organized around geographically restricted zones of control.  The juridical boundaries restrained power. The idea of consent gradually came to dominate political affairs from the 18th through the 19th century until after the Great War which dismantled the last of the multinational empires. That left us with one model: the nation-state in which citizens exercised ultimate sovereignty over the regimes under which they live. The system worked but not everyone has been happy with it. Some of the most high-status intellectuals for centuries have dreamed of global government as a solution to the diversity of policies of nation-states. It’s the go-to idea for scientists and ethicists who are so convinced of the correctness of their ideas that they dream up some worldwide imposition of their favored solution. Humanity has by and large been wise enough not to attempt such a thing beyond military alliances and mechanisms to improve trade flows. Despite the failure of global management last century, in the 21st century, we’ve seen the intensification of the power of globalist institutions. The World Health Organization (WHO) effectively scripted the pandemic response for the world. Globalist foundations and NGOs seem to be heavily involved in the migrant crisis. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, created as nascent institutions for a global system of money and finance, are exercising outsized influence on monetary and financial policy. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is working to diminish the power of the nation-state over trade policies. Then there is the United Nations. I happened to be in New York City a few weeks ago when the United Nations met. No question that it was the biggest show on planet Earth. Vast swaths of the city were shut down to cars and buses, with diplomats and heavy-hitting financiers arriving via helicopter on the roofs of luxury hotels, all of which were full for the week of meetings. The prices of everything were jacked up in response since no one was spending his own money in any case. The attendees were not only statesmen from all over the world but also the biggest financial firms and media outfits, along with representatives of the largest universities and nonprofits. All of these forces seem to be coalescing at once, as if they all want to be part of the future. And that future is one of global governance wherein the nation-state is eventually reduced to pure cosmetics with no operational power. The impression I had while there was that the experience of everyone in town that day, all swarming around the big United Nations meeting, was one of deep separation of their world from the world of the rest of us. They are “bubble people.” Their friends, source of financing, social groupings, career aspirations, and major influence are detached not only from normal people but from the nation-state itself. The fashionable attitude among them all is to regard the nation-state and its history of meaning as passe, fictional, and rather embarrassing. Entrenched globalism of the sort that operates in the 21st century represents a shift against and repudiation of half a millennium of the way governance has worked in practice. The United States was initially established as a country of localized democracies that only came together under a loose confederation. The Articles of Confederation created no central government but rather deferred to the former colonies to set up (or continue) their own structures of governance. When the Constitution came along, it created a careful equilibrium of checks and balances to restrain the national state while preserving the rights of the states. The idea here was not to overthrow citizen control over the nation-state but institutionalize it. All these years later, most people in most nations, the United States especially, believe that they should have final say over the structure of the regime. This is the essence of the democratic ideal, and not as an end in itself but as a guarantor of freedom, which is the principle that drives the rest. Freedom is inseparable from citizen control of government. When that link and that relationship are shattered, freedom itself is gravely damaged. The world today is packed with wealthy institutions and individuals that stand in revolt against the ideas of freedom and democracy. They do not like the idea of geographically constrained states with zones of juridical power. They believe they have a global mission and want to empower global institutions against the sovereignty of people living in nation-states. They say that there are existential problems that require the overthrow of the nation-state model of governance. They have a list: infectious disease, pandemic threats, climate change, peacekeeping, cybercrime, financial stability, and the threat of instability, and I’m sure there are others on the list that we’ve yet to see. The idea is that these are necessarily worldwide and evade the capacity of the nation-state to deal with them. We are all being acculturated to believe that the nation-state is nothing but an anachronism that needs to be supplanted. Keep in mind that this necessarily means treating democracy and freedom as anachronisms too. In practice, the only means by which average people can restrain tyranny and despotism is through voting at the national level. None of us have any influence over the policies of the WHO, World Bank, or IMF, much less over the Gates or Soros Foundations. The way politics is structured in the world today, we are all necessarily disenfranchised in a world governed by global institutions. And that is precisely the point: to achieve universal disenfranchisement of average people so that the elites can have a free hand in regulating the planet as they see fit. This is why it becomes supremely urgent for every person who aspires to live in peace and freedom to regain national sovereignty and say no to the transfer of authority to institutions over which citizens have no control. Devolving power from the center is the only path by which we can restore the ideals of the great visionaries of the past like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and the entire generation of Enlightenment thinkers. In the end, governing institutions must be in citizen control, and pertain to the borders of particular states, or it necessarily becomes tyrannical over time. As Murray Rothbard put it, we need a world of nations by consent.  There are plenty of reasons to regret the collapse of the neo-liberal consensus and a strong rationale to be concerned about the rise of protectionism and high tariffs. And yet what they called “free trade” (not the simple freedom to buy and sell across borders but rather a state-managed industrial plan) also came at a cost: the transference of sovereignty away from the people in their communities and nations to supranational institutions over which citizens have no control. It did not have to be this way but that is how it was constructed to be.  For that reason, the neo-liberal consensus built in the postwar period contained the seeds of its own destruction. It was too dependent on the creation of institutions beyond people’s control and too reliant on elite mastery of events. It was already crumbling before the pandemic response but it was the Covid controls, nearly simultaneously imposed all over the world to underscore elite hegemony, that exposed the fist under the velvet glove.  The populist revolt of today might someday appear as the inevitable unfolding of events when people become newly aware of their own disenfranchisement. Human beings are not content to live in cages.  Many of us have long predicted a backlash to the lockdowns and all that was associated with them. The full scale of it none of us could have imagined. The drama of our times is as intense as any of history’s great epochs: the fall of Rome, the Great Schism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the fall of the multinational empires. The only question now is whether this ends like America 1776 or France 1790.  Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 20:05

— Pentagon Chief Visits Ukraine, Unveils New Aid Package, Ahead Of US Election

 

at 10/21/24 5:40pm

Pentagon Chief Visits Ukraine, Unveils New Aid Package, Ahead Of US Election Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Ukraine's capital by train on an unannounced visit Monday, at a moment Ukraine's forces are getting steadily pushed back in the east, and as President Zelensky expresses frustration at the lack of large-scale new military aid. "It’s been absolutely remarkable that Ukraine has been able to do what it’s done," Austin told reporters as he went into Ukraine Sunday night. "It’s been able to do that, of course, because of the fact that we have supported them from the very beginning, and we’ve rallied some 50 countries to be a part of that support." In Kiev, Austin announced $400 million in new arms for Ukraine but did not acquiesce to the Ukrainians' main ask - the greenlight to strike Russia with US-supplied weapons. The Wall Street Journal also emphasized of the package, "It was one of the smaller aid packages the Biden administration has announced and included no new types of weapons systems." This trip to Ukraine is likely to be Austin's last one there as Pentagon chief. CNN noted that it came amid a dark and pessimistic backdrop:  The secretary’s visit was also meant to serve as a moment for him to “step back” and look at the “arc” of the US-Ukraine relationship over the last two and a half years of war, a senior defense official said. It was not a victory lap, however. The Ukrainians are in a “very tough” situation against the Russians heading into winter, the official noted. There was one moment in Austin's remarks clearly aimed at Trump and Republican lawmakers back home. Amid ongoing GOP criticisms, including calls to take care of Americans first amid natural disasters instead of handing billions over to Ukraine, the defense secretary tried to brush back these arguments... "For anyone who thinks that American leadership is expensive, well, consider the price of American retreat," Austin said. "Not since World War II has America systematically rallied so many countries to provide such a range of industrial and military assistance for a partner in need." Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin has arrived in Kyiv on an unannounced visit. He will meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Defense Minister Rustem Umierov to discuss Ukraine's arms needs. pic.twitter.com/TPWU3CMRdc — NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 21, 2024 Zelensky last month lashed out at Trump running-mate J.D. Vance, calling him "too radical" for his stance on the war. The Ukrainian leader expressed that "the idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable." Clearly Austin's Monday words were framed in response to that controversy, and some GOP operatives are not going to be happy that the Pentagon chief used an official visit abroad to weigh in. But one question that remains is: How much for North Carolina? Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 19:40

— Elon Musk Says He's "Upgrading Security" After Being Named "Enemy Number Two" By Media

 

at 10/21/24 5:15pm

Elon Musk Says He's "Upgrading Security" After Being Named "Enemy Number Two" By Media Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, X owner Elon Musk says he is increasing his security after receiving “vitriolic” threats for endorsing president Trump. Appearing at a town hall event in Pittsburgh Sunday, Musk told the crowd about being pictured on the cover of Der Spiegel magazine, which labeled him ‘Public Enemy No. 2’ – behind Trump. German SPIEGEL hates freedom. Mainstream journalism is a complete joke – citizen journalism is the future. Thank god, Elon Musk bought Twitter and made it X. pic.twitter.com/NE3nZcMJSd — Miró (@unblogd) October 20, 2024 “I’m like, enemy number 2 of what? Uh, democracy?” Musk told the crowd, adding “I mean I’m pro-democracy. I’m literally trying to uphold the Constitution and ensure we have a free and fair election.” Musk added, “I’m definitely upgrading my security,” quipping “Guess I better cancel that open-car parade.” The Tesla CEO admitted that he is a “little shook” by the “level of vitriolic hatred on the left.” ?ELON MUSK: "I hope I don't get shot. I was just on a German magazine saying I was 'enemy number two.' Enemy number two of what? I'm definitely upgrading my security. Maybe I should put an inflatable dummy of me in a motorcade. Just troll them." ?? pic.twitter.com/bxocA7K5Mt — Autism Capital ? (@AutismCapital) October 20, 2024 “They claim they’re tolerant. And yet, they’re incredibly intolerant and spewing hate,”Musk said, adding “Whereas on the right I see people who tend to regard people on the left as, well, misguided. But they don’t hate them.” “But the amount of hate coming from the left is like, wow, next level,” he continued. Here’s the full event: Musk is no stranger to threats since taking over Twitter in an effort to preserve free speech. Musk has come under sustained attack since coming out for Trump. Deranged leftists, such as Mark Cuban, are openly advocating sanctioning Musk’s companies because of his political opinions. This is insane. Joe Scarborough and Mark Cuban are openly arguing that Elon Musk deserves to have his businesses punished because of his political opinions. It really is Donald Trump or communism. pic.twitter.com/ezTRIBJVFF — ??Travis?? (@Travis_4_Trump) October 19, 2024 Musk has repeatedly warned that if Trump doesn’t win the election, it could be the last and that civilisation is on the line. *  *  * Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 19:15

— "Democratic Party Big Gov't Machine" Explained In Flow Charts 

 

at 10/21/24 4:50pm

"Democratic Party Big Gov't Machine" Explained In Flow Charts  Tyler O'Neil, managing editor of The Daily Signal, has done a deep dive on the radical left's complex, dark money networks - what Elon Musk calls the "Democratic Party big government machine" - which heavily influence the administrative state on issues like education, borders, climate change, transgender ideology, elections, foreign policy, and the weaponization of federal agencies against political enemies, like former President Trump and Musk. In a series of posts on X, O'Neil provides a 10,000 ft. view of this vast network which he details in his upcoming book, "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government."  O'Neil begins with the question:  "Why is the Biden-Harris administration so woke? Didn't Biden campaign as a moderate?"  ?Why is the Biden-Harris administration so woke? Didn't Biden campaign as a moderate?? This chart explains what happened. Bear with me: I know it looks like a conspiracy theory, but I have the receipts. In short: The Left's dark money network funds a system of woke… pic.twitter.com/FR4KWQ7CYE — Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 21, 2024 Continued from X: "This chart explains what happened. Bear with me: I know it looks like a conspiracy theory, but I have the receipts. In short: The Left's dark money network funds a system of woke nonprofits that staff and advise the administrative state, getting their far-left policy agenda implemented in the federal government."  One primary concern O'Neil has is the weaponization of federal law enforcement against conservatives, driven in part by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here's how that works:  One of the biggest issues for me has been the weaponization of federal law enforcement against conservatives. At the center of this is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left smear factory that puts mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a "hate map" with the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC targets organizations that oppose its far-left agenda on critical race theory, immigration, transgender issues, and more. SPLC President Margaret Huang has bragged that federal law enforcement reached out to the SPLC for advice on combatting the "domestic terror threat," and FOIA documents reveal the extent of the SPLC's influence in government. SPLC leaders and staff have visited the White House at least 18 times, according to visitor logs. The SPLC has also received funding from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Proteus Fund, the New Venture Fund, and the Tides Foundation. O'Neil shows the complex web of how Democrats and their billionaire funders, like Soros, and their leftist groups are trying a takeover of federal elections:  The vast influence campaign I call the Woketopus has also monkeyed with election rules. The leftist group Demos has extensive ties to the Biden-Harris administration. When the Senate failed to advance the Democrats' H.R. 1 bill that would have amounted to a federal takeover of elections, Biden instead signed an executive order that echoed a Demos paper nearly word-for-word. This executive order enlisted federal agencies in registering voters, and early in the administration's implementation of the order, the government convened a host of Woketopus groups — including SPLC, the Tides Foundation, and many others — to a "listening session." Conspicuously absent was any conservative group or any group warning about election integrity. Here's the influence network of how Democrats and their billionaire donors, such as Soros and Rockefeller Family Fund, push climate change policies via nonprofits that then influence federal agencies:  President Biden and VP Harris have repeatedly bragged about the "Inflation Reduction Act" as an historic investment in climate initiatives. The Biden-Harris administration has seen green activist groups infiltrate the federal government, using the bureaucracy as a revolving door and getting bureaucrats to implement their pet policies. One of the most notorious strategies they use is called "sue and settle." An environmentalist group will sue a federal agency, claiming the agency failed to enforce the law by not regulating oil and gas enough. The agency, which is supposed to represent the American people, actually wants to regulate oil and gas more, so it denies the people a seat at the table. The agency admits fault, implements the green group's preferred policy, and — to top it all off — often pays the green group money in a settlement. The Trump administration tried to crack down on this scheme, but the Biden-Harris administration reversed his efforts. And, of course, how billionaire donors use nonprofits to push foreign policy - including Israel, which is a horseshoe issue that both the progressive left and the libertarian-right agree on for somewhat overlapping reasons. While the Biden-Harris administration often favors the Woketopus' agenda, some Woketopus groups have attacked Biden, and he has faced a deep state effort to undermine his policy supporting Israel. Of course, Biden's record on Israel is far from perfect — he enriched Iran by loosening sanctions and trying to resurrect the Iran Nuclear Deal — but many bureaucrats rose in revolt when he publicly took Israel's side after Oct. 7. Anti-Israel groups that tie in with the Woketopus network have pressured Biden to oppose Israel and to issue sanctions on Israelis. Many of the same dark money groups that funded organizations supporting the anti-Israel protests on college campuses have also bankrolled the Woketopus, and I detail their connections in my chapter on this effort.  But there's more. Wonder where all the woke gender stuff came from??  Why did the administration go all-in on transgender pronouns (even for illegal aliens), experimental "gender-affirming care," and transgender rules for foster care? Well, the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index helps explain why Corporate America went woke, and HRC had a blueprint for federal policy, as well. Biden, Harris, and many others in the administration not only spoke at HRC event, but also met with HRC staff at the White House. How's Biden's equality score? I've got the answers in my book. O'Neil unravels the tangled web of far-left Democrats who exert influence the federal government via nonprofits to drive all sorts of policies nobody voted for - from green to woke to gender to foreign policy - the list goes on and on. More: Remember that fancy Constitution you learned about in school, with its nice checks and balances empowering the popular majority while protecting the rights of the minority? That's not how it works today. Instead, a fourth branch of government writes reams and reams of regulations that dictate how you live your life. This system allows the woke elites to shove their ideology down our throats in the name of scientific progress. ?Who's really in control of Washington? Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the presidential race revealed that he's essentially a figurehead, but a figurehead for what?? My new book? "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government" reveals how the… pic.twitter.com/MrsmwifJoo — Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) September 19, 2024 Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 18:50

— These Homeschooling Parents Are Raising Their 6 Kids Without Devices

 

at 10/21/24 4:25pm

These Homeschooling Parents Are Raising Their 6 Kids Without Devices Authored by Anna Mason and Daksha Devani via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Instead of slurping from their cereal bowls and scrolling through their phones, Glade and Bethel Smith’s children start their day by eating breakfast as a family followed by a reading of the Bible. Illustration by The Epoch Times, Courtesy of Glade Smith The Smith kids—Madeline,13, Everett, 11, Annabeth, 10, Vivian, 7, Penelope, 6, and Henry, 3—are eager to read the verses but wait for their turn, after which they clean up the kitchen and get ready to start their day. “We homeschool our kids,” 41-year-old Glade, from Nebraska, told The Epoch Times. “None of our kids have a phone or any electric devices. None of our kids play video games. [Instead] our kids love to read and love to use their imagination.” The Smith Family. Courtesy of Glade Smith Homeschooling and Helping Out at the Farm The kids begin their homeschooling day at 8.30 a.m. with their stay-at-home mom reading novels aloud that align with what they are learning at school, followed by a fun session of singing together. The Smith children, who read at least 25 to 30 books per year, are always begging for one more chapter to be read, said Glade, who owns Family Beef Farm Box—their family business that ships dry-aged, hand-cut beef across the country. The Smith Kids. Courtesy of Glade Smith If they complete their school work by lunchtime, the kids are encouraged to help their dad on the farm—with 3-year-old Henry, who isn’t in school yet, spending most of his time doing just that. “He’s probably our most animal lover of any of the kids,” Glade said, adding that the little boy loves milking cows and is not afraid of getting in there. Henry helping out at the farm. Courtesy of Glade Smith On Mondays, the older kids join Glade to pack beef boxes. In the last couple of years, the parents have instituted the idea of paid jobs, with each child getting paid some money for completing their daily chores. “My oldest daughter is in charge of some calves that need to be fed,” said Glade, who is also a multi-generational cattle producer and bred cattle marketing specialist with Wright Livestock. “My son is in charge of caring for 60 chickens. One of my younger daughters is in charge of gathering and washing eggs.” Courtesy of Glade Smith The Smith kids—who were introduced to farm life at birth— have shown a strong work ethic despite being young. Their proud father recalled a work trip to Oklahoma with his son, Everett, who won a fellow cattleman’s heart with his diligence. “We’re gathering several hundred head of cattle, sorting and loading trucks. One of these hard-working, blue-collar cattlemen was blown away watching my [son] running cattle around doing a good job and gave him a $20 bill,“ he said. ”A year later, my boy still has that $20 bill. That meant so much to him.” Packaging farm beef. Courtesy of Glade SmithCourtesy of Glade Smith Over the last year, Everett has worked laboriously in the muddy fields laying out heavy 30-foot-long tubes for irrigating crops in the scorching heat. His tireless efforts have won neighbors’ hearts with many asking Glade for his son’s assistance in irrigating their fields. “I was amused because I found myself being my son’s secretary, as neighbors were calling, [asking] ‘Can your son come help me today?’” Glade said, adding that he believes his hardworking son will become a “hot commodity” to farmers in the near future. Read the rest here... Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 18:25

— SCOTUS Ends Michael Cohen's Latest Attempt To Take Down Trump

 

at 10/21/24 4:00pm

SCOTUS Ends Michael Cohen's Latest Attempt To Take Down Trump This morning, the Supreme Court rejected former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s appeal to bring back his civil rights claim against the former president. Cohen alleged former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and other federal officials put him back in prison as retaliation for promoting a book critical of Trump. “[A]s it stands, this case represents the principle that presidents and their subordinates can lock away critics of the executive without consequence,” Cohen’s petition states. As Sam Dorman reports for The Epoch Times, Cohen had argued that two lower courts wrongly dismissed a claim that former President Donald Trump violated his rights by ending his prison furlough during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Cohen’s petition, he had objected to a federal form that probation officers asked him to sign, which prohibited him from engaging with the media, including posting on social media. At the time, he was writing a book critical of the former president. Cohen’s attorney, Jon-Michael Dougherty, said the ruling “signals a dangerous moment in American democracy,” and raises questions about free-speech rights. Both Trump and the Justice Department filed briefs opposing Cohen’s petition. Cohen had attempted to claim a private right of action under the Supreme Court’s 1971 precedent in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents. While that case upheld a cause of action related to unlawful search and seizures, Cohen asked the Supreme Court to consider whether it should apply to his circumstances. He alleged that he faced “retaliation for his refusal to waive his right to free speech.” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar similarly raised concerns about separation of powers and argued that Cohen could have pursued alternative remedies such as the Bureau of Prisons’ Administrative Remedy Program. Trump told the court that Cohen’s attempt to expand the precedent under Bivens would disrupt the constitution’s separation of powers. He added that the doctrine of presidential immunity presented an “insurmountable obstacle” to Cohen’s claim. Trump attorney Alina Habba said the Supreme Court had correctly denied Cohen’s petition, and “he must finally abandon his frivolous and desperate claims.” Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 18:00

— Left McTriggered After Trump Does Fun Publicity Stunt

 

at 10/21/24 3:45pm

Left McTriggered After Trump Does Fun Publicity Stunt On Sunday, Donald Trump poked fun at Kamala Harris' dubious claim that she 'worked at McDonald's and made fries,' by going to a McDonald's and making fries, plus working the drive-thru. President Trump serves fries to a Fox 29 Philly crew in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/hUnVM4b9OR — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 20, 2024 Ding, fries are done! HAPPENING NOW: President Trump is killing it on his first day on the job at McDonalds. Perfectly salted hot crispy fries. pic.twitter.com/DTH2cdGkEI — Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) October 20, 2024 Memes have been made. ?BREAKING: New McDonalds ad featuring Trump just dropped! pic.twitter.com/frJN5yQz3s — Jason Rink (@TheJasonRink) October 20, 2024 pic.twitter.com/MWEUVcY6YG — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2024 McTriggered! While most on the right thought it was a fun pre-election publicity stunt, it really triggered the left - which didn't know what to do. If @McDonalds will hire adjudicated rapists and 34x convicted felons, I'm never eating there again. https://t.co/YR0uvZdHxQ — Eccentrical Foodie☮️???️‍????? #TeamHarris (@FoodieEccentric) October 21, 2024 The sourpusses even posted a gotcha! Suggesting that because the McDonald's closed for Trump's event, the whole thing was staged. Well, duh. The guy was only almost assassinated twice (or thrice) and this is for fun. Reeeee!!! Perhaps no stunt in the history of U.S. politics deserves more ridicule than the grotesquely embarrassing mummery Trump put on at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s today The whole country got sh*ttier because of this The McDonald’s was closed, the customers were fake, Trump did nothing pic.twitter.com/qseSiRf2Hp — Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 21, 2024 So awesome! @realDonaldTrump working at McDonald’s today (something Kommiela never did) has triggered the worst people on the left! The meltdown is WILD. https://t.co/dgnrJLBplM — Jase (@JaseSTL) October 20, 2024 Cope and seethe https://t.co/hG9Tee3gW5 — Jack Poso ?? (@JackPosobiec) October 20, 2024 Tim Walz had jazz hands of fury - and despite all the lies, insisting that Kamala Harris actually worked there. We're sure he's not lying this time too. This guy spent decades stiffing workers pay, cut overtime benefits for millions of people, and opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage. You know who has actually worked at McDonald's, joined workers on picket lines, and fights for working people? @KamalaHarris. https://t.co/QzFMVLiuaj — Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) October 20, 2024 Even Matt Drudge opined (2016 Matt, blink twice if you need help). pic.twitter.com/0sXg5izMmN — Matt Drudge (@DRUDGE) October 20, 2024 Hilariously, The Atlantic's David Frum revealed he doesn't know the difference between grilling and frying (and earned a nice ratio). “Frying” pic.twitter.com/By5VmOCjqC — Gummi (@gummibear737) October 20, 2024 Exactly. https://t.co/eqZ3ojEDxy — Catturd ™ (@catturd2) October 21, 2024 This is how you know the publicity stunt worked... Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 17:45

— Quantum Computer 'Threat' To Crypto Is Exaggerated... For Now

 

at 10/21/24 3:40pm

Quantum Computer 'Threat' To Crypto Is Exaggerated... For Now Authored by Andrew Singer via CoinTelegraph.com, A report that Chinese researchers have employed a D-Wave quantum computer to breach encryption algorithms used to secure bank accounts, top-secret military data and crypto wallets is at first glance a matter for deep concern.  “This is the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN [Substitution-Permutation Network] structured algorithms in use today,” wrote Shanghai University scientists in a peer-reviewed paper, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Oct. 11. The paper talks about breaking RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) encryption, one of the oldest and widely used public-key cryptosystems.   Details about the latest research have been slow to emerge so it’s difficult to say for sure how dire the threat is to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. The paper had yet to be released in English as of Oct. 11, and researchers weren’t taking any interviews, supposedly “due to the sensitivity of the topic,” according to SCMP. But if the researchers’ results hold up, and can be duplicated by others, “it is a step forward” in the evolution of quantum computing, Marek Narozniak, a physicist with a background in quantum computing, and founder at sqrtxx.com, told Cointelegraph. Would it mean that the password-protection mechanisms used in many industries, including banking and cryptocurrencies, might soon be vulnerable, as many fear, however? “From the paper many details are missing, so it is difficult to provide a definite answer” with regard to its possible significance, Massimiliano Sala, Full professor and head of the Laboratory of Cryptography at the University of Trento, told Cointelegraph. Much depends on whether the scientists were able to break RSA keys of a certain size — i.e., keys as large as those used by banks to secure customer’s savings and checking accounts today. “There is no evidence of that,” said Sala. But if they had, it would be “huge,” he said. Quantum computing, (QC), which uses atomic “spin” instead of an electrical charge to represent its binary 1’s and 0’s, is evolving at an exponential rate, many believe. But full purpose QC devices have yet to emerge at scale. The D-Wave machines used in Shanghai, sometimes called quantum annealers, are really proto-quantum computers, or forerunners, capable of conducting specialized tasks only.  D-Wave 2X 1000 Qubit quantum annealing processor chip mounted and wire-bonded in its sample holder. Source: Mwjohnson0 However, if and when universal quantum computers do emerge, they could threaten the elliptic curve cryptographic structure which has served Bitcoin and other cryptos very well until now, some worry. It could be only a matter of time before quantum computers will be able to identify the enormous prime numbers that are key constituents of a BTC private key — assuming no countermeasures are developed.   “However, we must keep in mind that D-Wave quantum computers are not general-purpose quantum computers,” added Sala. Moreover, D-Wave’s “ability to factor RSA keys was already established by one of my colleagues a few months ago,” he said. Takaya Miyano, professor of mechanical engineering at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University, also questioned the significance of the scientists’ results — and along similar lines as Sala.  The length of the integer that the Shanghai researchers factorized, 22 bits, “is much shorter than that of actual RSA integers, which is usually equal to or greater than 1024 bits, e.g, 1024, 2048, and maximally 4096 bits,” he told Cointelegraph. Moreover, “the D-wave machine is a kind of quantum simulator for solving optimization problems, not a universal computer,” Miyano added. It isn’t clear that it would be able to conduct rapid factorization of large RSA integers in the real world. Why prime factorization is important Factorization is a mathematical process where a number can be written as the product of smaller whole numbers. For instance, 12 can be factorized, or written, as 3 x 2 x 2. Efficient prime number factorization has been called “the holy grail” of breaking a RSA public-key cryptosystem. RSA is more than encryption, after all. It is also a ‘key’ generation scheme that typically involves multiplying large prime numbers. Two parties — a bank and its customer, for example — typically receive a set of prime numbers that are used to compute their private and public keys, Narozniak explained. The process of actually generating private and public keys is complex, but if ‘p’ and ‘q’ are prime numbers, and ‘n’ is the product of those two prime numbers (i.e., n = p x q), then one can say that p and q are related to the private keys and n is related to the public key.  The basic mathematical principle behind RSA encryption is that while it is easy to multiply two prime numbers, it is very difficult to do the reverse, i.e., find the two prime numbers that are factors of a product — and this becomes harder as the numbers get larger.  Sala’s University of Trento colleagues earlier this year used a quantum annealer to uncover the two prime factors of the number 8,219,999 (i.e., 32,749 and 251) “which, to the best of our knowledge is the largest number which was ever factorized by means of a quantum device,” wrote the researchers. In Sala’s view the recent Shanghai University paper is significant “only if they have found a way to factorize huge numbers.”  The University of Trento researchers also cited the great potential of quantum computing to solve complex problems that have long remained “intractable” for classical computers.  Prime factorization — i.e., the problem of breaking down a number into its prime factors — in particular, “is a good candidate to be effectively solved by quantum computing, in particular by quantum annealing.”  Crypto keys are safe — For now Let’s assume, however, that the Shanghai scientists really did find a way to use a quantum annealer to successfully breach cryptographic algorithms, including those like SPN which are foundational for the advanced encryption standard (AES) widely used in the military and finance. What would that do to the crypto industry? “Symmetric ciphers such as AES-128 used for data encryption are not vulnerable to this kind of attack as they do not rely on number factorization,” said Narozniak. There might be exceptions, of course, like if the cipher is a shared secret derived via RSA-based key exchange protocol, he continued. But “properly encrypted passwords and other data in general will remain encrypted even if the approach presented in that research scales up and becomes widely available — and if true,” he said.  A history of unproven RSA claims Narozniak cautioned against rushing to conclusions. “Before we re-evaluate our level of optimism, let us wait for someone to repeat and confirm this result,” he said. “Claims of breaking RSA are not so uncommon.”  In early 2023, for instance, Chinese researchers said they had factorized a 48-bit key on a 10-qubit quantum computer, a claim “which still has not been peer reviewed,” commented Narozniak.  “And two years before that Claus Schnorr, who is an authority in the community, made an honest mistake and claimed RSA to be broken. I personally take such big claims with a grain of salt.” According to Sala: “Breaking RSA would mean that a lot of software should be updated, but not drastically changed,” because there are already-implemented standards that provide alternatives including elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), used to secure Bitcoin. He added:   “More drastic would be the impact on credit cards and the like, which would have to be withdrawn massively, to radically change their software.”  One might wonder why cryptocurrencies are not using RSA widely — as banks do. The crypto industry favors elliptic-curve cryptography because ECC makes it possible to achieve the same level of security with much smaller keys using fewer bytes, said Narozniak. This opens up digital space which enables chains to grow faster.  Is Buterin’s ‘hard fork’ solution viable? Elsewhere, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested in March that a “hard fork” could subvert a quantum attack on Ethereum were it to arise. “We are already well-positioned to make a pretty simple recovery fork to deal with such a situation,” he posted on Oct. 17. Users might have to download new wallet software, but few would lose funds. Is it really so easy, though? “I disagree that such a hard fork would be ‘simple,’” said Narozniak. And looking ahead, quantum-safe signatures, such ML-DSA, would need to have significantly larger keys and signatures compared with those used today. This could slow on-chain performance and raise gas fees, he suggested. Executing a hard fork would “be complex, require broad community consensus, and may not restore all lost assets or fully repair trust in the network,” Samuel Mugel, chief technology officer at Multiverse Computing, told Cointelegraph. “Therefore, it’s crucial to implement quantum-resistant cryptography before such an attack happens to avoid this situation.” Safeguards are needed “We most certainly need to revisit our current cybersecurity defenses,” Christos Makridis, associate research professor at Arizona State University and CEO/Founder of Dainamic, told Cointelegraph.  More attention needs to be paid to network capacity loads (i.e., defending against distributed denial of service attacks) and to passwords (e.g., to protect data from hackers) in a world with quantum computing. He further observed: “One of the emerging views is that the expansion of quantum computing and generative AI has enabled offensive cyber more than defensive.” The industry can’t become complacent. “Dangerous quantum computers will come, it’s just a matter of time,” Sala warned.  “The blockchain world must get ready as soon as possible, by planning a roadmap towards a transition to post-quantum cryptography,” he added, developing safeguards able to resist attack even by a “fully-fledged quantum adversary.” Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2024 - 17:40

As of 10/22/24 5:17am. Last new 10/22/24 1:57am.