UK Inks Defense Pact With Moldova To Counter 'Russian Aggression'

In yet another development which sets up the Western allies and Russia for a future potential direct military clash, the United Kingdom and Moldova have inked a new defense pact to counter 'Russian aggression'.

It was announced and confirmed by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy while he visited the Moldovan capital of Chisinau on Wednesday. The tiny Eastern European nation bordering Ukraine has experienced the same kind of internal political pro-EU vs. pro-Russia tug of war historically on display in other countries such as Ukraine or Georgia.

The UK foreign ministry described the new defense agreement as about "building on extensive cooperation between the two countries and strengthening Moldovan resilience against external threats."

moldpress, Moldova State News Agency

Lammy said, "Moldova is a vital security partner for the UK, which is why, to reinforce their resilience against Russian aggression and to keep British streets safe, I am deepening cooperation on irregular migration and launching a new defence and security partnership."

The British top diplomat called out Russia directly in his comments, accusing it of interference in Moldova's sovereign affairs. "With Ukraine next door, Moldovans are constantly reminded of Russia’s oppression, imperialism and aggression," he said.

Lammy continued, "Despite unprecedented Kremlin interference, the people of Moldova have chosen freedom, democracy, and independence. A decision we must help them protect."

A broader foreign ministry statement also described that "The Foreign Secretary has committed to working with President Sandu, who won re-election earlier this month, despite unprecedented Russian interference, to bolster Moldova’s resilience against the growing Russian hybrid threats they face. He will also offer UK support to tackle corruption in the region."

An additional £5 million of UK humanitarian funding for Moldova was also announced. The Kremlin has long complained that Western NGOs in Eastern Europe play a dual purpose, using aid as well as their status to spread influence on behalf of foreign powers.

One thing which has long alarmed the West is the presence of Russian 'peacekeeping' troops in Moldova's breakaway Transnistria region. Pressure also heightened after last June the European Union formally launched accession talks with Moldova, putting yet more distance between it and Russia.

Via BBC

As for Transnistria, although it has diverse ethnic demographics almost equally apportioned between Russians, Moldovans, Romanians and Ukrainians, the Russian demographic slightly ekes out its counterparts with a plurality of 29% of Transnistrians belonging to the group.

The pro-Russian cultural sentiment of the region is exemplified by its flag, which has remained the same as it was when Transnistria was a part of the Soviet Union. That representative Russian demographic, coupled with broader dissatisfaction of the Moldovan government, has fostered support for assimilation into the Russian Federation for quite some time.

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/21/2024 - 04:15

UK School Removes All Christmas References From Panto To Make Children Feel "Safe"

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

A school in the UK announced to parents that it was removing all Christmas references from a panto in order to make children feel “safe”.

Yes, really.

The head teacher of Wherwell Primary School in Andover, Hampshire, banned any reference to the festive season from a Jack and The Beanstalk show so as not to offend any non-Christians who were attending.

Mandy Ovenden said the embargo was necessary in order to make children feel “safe” and “valued”.

“When we chose to invite the travelling pantomime to Wherwell, our request was a practical step to ensure all children at the school would be able to attend and enjoy the show,” said the school.

“Our aim, as always, is to foster inclusivity in our school community, and be a place where children and their families feel safe, welcomed and valued.”

Ovenden said the school had requested the company putting on the play “that the show contain no reference to Christmas.”

According to a report by the Telegraph, parents were outraged, asserting that the decision “shouldn’t be allowed” in order to merely ensure that “a few people will not be offended.”

In order to ensure a “fully inclusive event,” the head teacher asked that all Christmas references be eradicated because, “We have a number of families who either do not celebrate Christmas or do so in a different way.”

Chaplins, the company behind the Jack and The Beanstalk play, said it normally included references to Christmas at this time of year.

Because God forbid children in a supposedly Christian country be exposed to anything related in any way to Christmas during Christmastime.

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/21/2024 - 03:30

Prison For Le Pen? French Establishment Desperate To Stop Rise Of Conservatives

EU elites and globalists with extensive political influence have been on the war-path the past several years as it has become increasingly evident that the European populace is shifting more conservative with each new election.  In Germany, leftist officials are attempting an outright ban of the conservative AFD Party, primarily because they stand against mass immigration (a position which progressives claim is "xenophobic"). 

The AFD is currently the second most popular political party in Germany and is expected to gain substantial influence in the 2025 federal elections, unless their candidates are blocked from participation.    

In Austria, the conservative Freedom Party won a parliamentary election victory in September, though left wing and centrist parties are seeking to cement a coalition to nullify the FP's ability to govern.  The European media has consistently compared the success of the Freedom Party to the rise of the Third Reich - The only fallback of failing leftists is to claim their opponents are "literally Hitler."

A similar coalition coup was exploited in France under Emmanuel Macron in order to stop Marine Le Pen's National Rally Party.  The coalition is a fragmented mess but it served its purpose of disrupting the will of French voters seeking smaller government and secure borders. 

Keep in mind, the same people that constantly howl about "threats to democracy" are now trying to silence some of the largest political parties in Europe because they won't submit to progressive ideologies.  For example, if the AFD is banned, who is going to represent the will of millions of conservative German voters?  The leftist establishment does not care about those voters or their concerns, nor do they care about fair elections.  Their vision of democracy is a sham.

There is, in fact, a coordinated effort by the leftist regime in Europe to shut down any and all public dissent, starting with opposition movements and their access to the ballot box.  Recent news from France highlights this reality, as efforts are now underway under the French government to pursue legal actions against Marine Le Pen. 

Le Pen has been accused by Paris prosecutors of using money intended for EU parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for the party between 2009 and 2016.  One problem is that the law Le Pen is being charged with was not created until 2016.  Furthermore, Le Pen argues that National Rally employees can also work within the EU parliament and that the two roles often overlap.  She assert that no laws were broken and no one received EU funds that were not already owed to them.

If convicted Le Pen could receive up to 5 years in prison (3 suspended) and extensive fines of €300,000, but the real kicker is that she could also be banned from participating in elections for five years even if she files an appeal.  Government officials admit that Le Pen might not spend any time in jail (she might become a conservative martyr if that happened), but her inability to run for office would effectively end the chances of the National Rally in the 2027 elections.  It's an election which many analysts suggest could catapult the NR to power in France.   

“It’s no surprise,” Le Pen told reporters after the prosecution's closing arguments. "I note that the prosecutors' claims are extremely outrageous."

Le Pen said she felt prosecutors were "only interested" in preventing her from running for president in 2027. "I understood that well," she said.  The case is set to conclude in early 2025.

Establishment media outlets accuse Le Pen of using "Trump-style rhetoric" to distract from her charges.  The Guardian claims:

"Yet just as January 6 did not stop Trump from being able to move back into the White House, Le Pen’s strategy may well work in her favour. The longer her claims of a political trial get airtime without proper contextualisation, the more likely the French public may think there is some truth to it – it chimes with the widespread anti-elite sentiment among French voters..."

This constitutes considerable gaslighting on the part of The Guardian.  The "contextualization" is that Le Pen is innocent until proven guilty, and there has been a clear and observable pattern of persecution of right-leaning political figures across the western world in order to stop their constituents from having a say in the governmental process.  Trump is just one example of lawfare being used to create accusations of criminality from the thinnest of threads.  The American public was savvy enough to see through the smoke and noise. 

It's undeniable that Le Pen's situation rings rather similar and The Guardian is pretending as if she's being conniving for pointing it out.

The establishment acts as if it is the purveyor of law and order, but only when it serves their purposes and keeps them at the bureaucratic helm.  The will of the people is only acceptable when it aligns with the designs of the elites.  They are actively conjuring a narrative in which the political process is only democratic so long as conservative groups are rejected.  Their mere presence is painted as an abomination and their success is treated as an existential threat to civilization.

The fact that progressives are taking the mask off and going full authoritarian to stop right wing movements from winning fair and square suggests they are deeply afraid and clinging to the last vestiges of their unnatural reign.         

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/21/2024 - 02:45

Trump Names Former AG Matthew Whitaker As US Ambassador To NATO

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he has chosen former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to be the U.S. ambassador to NATO.

Matthew Whitaker, former acting U.S. Attorney General, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference 2020 (CPAC) hosted by the American Conservative Union in National Harbor, MD., on Feb. 28, 2020. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

In a statement released on social media, the president-elect said Whitaker was selected because he is a “strong warrior and loyal patriot, who will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended.”

A former acting attorney general during his first term in office, Whitaker will also “strengthen relationships with our NATO allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to peace and stability,” Trump said.

Whitaker, he also suggested, will promote Trump’s “peace through strength” foreign policy agenda and has “full confidence” in his abilities.

Other than Whitaker, Trump also selected former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be his U.S. ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. All three roles require confirmation in the Senate unless Trump opts to use recess appointments.

Whitaker, a former University of Iowa football tight end, started his role as acting attorney general in November 2018 before leaving in February 2019, after Trump’s then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned at the then-president’s request.

Before that, he served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa between 2004 and 2009. Later, he was Sessions’s chief of staff from October 2017 until November 2018.

So far, Whitaker has not publicly commented on Trump’s announcement.

Since leaving office, Whitaker has frequently appeared on Fox News, giving his opinions on the many of legal issues Trump had faced since he left the White House in early 2021.

About two weeks ago, he told Fox News that he believes Trump should be granted a “clean slate” from his legal cases, following Trump’s election win on Nov. 5.

In that segment, he also responded to questions on whether he would serve as Trump’s attorney general. However, Trump last week named former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to be his attorney general, although some Republican senators have signaled in media interviews that Gaetz’s nomination may turn into a protracted, uphill battle for Trump to get him nominated.

Earlier this week, Whitaker wrote on X that “weaponization of the” Department of Justice will be “rooted out once and for all” under Trump.

As ambassador to NATO, also known as the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, Whitaker will be tasked with advancing the United States’ foreign policy interests within the 32-member military alliance.

“The permanent representative helps formulate and articulate the U.S. position on NATO security matters as well as U.S. policy toward NATO. At National Security Council (NSC) meetings, they outline U.S. policy toward NATO and potential opportunities for cooperation with NATO allies,” the Council on Foreign Relations states. “They further advise NSC participants on the positions and actions of other NATO member states.”

In the past two years, NATO allowed both Finland and Sweden to join its ranks in the midst of the Russia–Ukraine war, which started in February 2022. Members of NATO, including the United States, have been continually supplying Ukrainian troops with weapons in the conflict.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closed down on Wednesday after it received “specific information of a potential significant air attack” and after Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that Ukraine used U.S.-made long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMSs) to strike its territory for the first time since the war began.

On the campaign trail, Trump has said that he wants to quickly end the war in Ukraine after taking office. A member of Trump’s transition team and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., claimed on social media that the current administration provided the ATACMSs to Ukraine to “get World War 3 going.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/21/2024 - 02:00

There Are No "Easy Wars" Left To Fight, But Do Not Mistake The Longing For One

Submitted by Alastair Crooke 

There Are No "Easy Wars" Left To Fight, But Do Not Mistake The Longing For One

Israelis, as a whole, are exhibiting a rosy assurance that they can harness Trump, if not to the full annexation of the Occupied Territories (Trump in his first term did not support such annexation), but rather, to ensnare him into a war on Iran. Many (even most) Israelis are raring for war on Iran and an aggrandisement of their territory (devoid of Arabs). They are believing the puffery that Iran ‘lies naked’, staggeringly vulnerable, before a US and Israeli military strike.  

Trump’s Team nominations, so far, reveal a foreign policy squad of fierce supporters of Israel and of passionate hostility to Iran. The Israeli media term it a ‘dream team’ for Netanyahu. It certainly looks that way.

The Israel Lobby could not have asked for more. They have got it. And with the new CIA chief, they get a known ultra China hawk as a bonus.

But in the domestic sphere the tone is precisely the converse: The key nomination for ‘cleaning the stables’ is Matt Gaetz as Attorney General; he is a real “bomb thrower”. And for the Intelligence clean-up, Tulsi Gabbard is appointed as Director of National Intelligence. All intelligence agencies will report to her, and she will be responsible for the President’s Daily briefing. The intel assessments may thus begin to reflect something closer to reality. 

The deep Inter-Agency structure has reason to be very afraid; they are panicking -- especially over Gaetz.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have the near impossible task of cutting out-of-control federal spending and currency printing. The System is deeply dependent on the bloat of government spending to keep the cogs and levers of the mammoth ‘security’ boondoggle whirring. It is not going to be yielded up without a bitter fight.

So, on the one hand, the Lobby gets a dream team (Israel), but on the other side (the domestic sphere), it gets a renegade team.  

This must be deliberate. Trump knows that Biden’s legacy of bloating GDP with government jobs and excessive public spending is the real ‘time bomb’ awaiting him. Again the withdrawal symptoms, as the drug of easy money is withdrawn, may prove incendiary. Moving to a structure of tariffs and low taxes will be disruptive.

Whether deliberate or not, Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest. We have only glimpses of intent -- and the water is being seriously muddied by the infamous ‘Inter-Agency’ grandees. For example, in respect to the Pentagon sanctioning private-sector contractors to work in Ukraine, this was done in coordination with “inter-agency stakeholders”. 

The old nemesis that paralyzed his first term again faces Trump. Then, during the Ukraine impeachment process, one witness (Vindman), when asked why he would not defer to the President’s explicit instructions, replied that whilst Trump has his view on Ukraine policy, that stance did NOT align with that of the ‘Inter-Agency’ agreed position. In plain language, Vindman denied that a US president has agency in foreign policy formulation.

In short, the ‘Inter-Agency structure’ was signalling to Trump that military support for Ukraine must continue.

When the Washington Post published their detailed story of a Trump-Putin phone call -- that the Kremlin emphatically states never happened -- the deep structures of policy were simply telling Trump that it would be they who determine what the shape of the US ‘solution’ for Ukraine would be.

Similarly, when Netanyahu boasts to have spoken to Trump and that Trump “shares” his views regarding Iran, Trump was being indirectly instructed what his policy towards Iran needs to be. All the (false) rumours about appointments to his Team too, were but the interagency signalling their choices for his key posts. No wonder confusion reigns.

So, what can be deduced at this early stage?  If there is a common thread, it has been a constant refrain that Trump is against war. And that he demands from his picks personal loyalty and no ties of obligation to the Lobby or the Swamp.  

So, is the packing of his Administration with ‘Israel Firsters’ an indication that Trump is edging toward a ‘Realist’s Faustian pact’ to destroy Iran in order to cripple China’s energy supply source (90% from Iran), and thus weaken China? -- Two birds with one stone, so to speak? 

The collapse of Iran would also weaken Russia and hobble the BRICS’ transport-corridor projects. Central Asia needs both Iranian energy and its key transport corridors linking China, Iran, and Russia as primary nodes of Eurasian commerce. 

When the RAND Organisation, the Pentagon think-tank, recently published a landmark appraisal of the 2022 National Defence Strategy (NDS), its findings were stark: An unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the US war machine. In brief, the US is “not prepared”, the appraisal argued, in any meaningful way for serious ‘competition’ with its major adversaries -- and is vulnerable or even significantly outmatched in every sphere of warfare.

The US, the RAND appraisal continues, could in short order be drawn into a war across multiple theatres with peer and near-peer adversaries -- and it could lose. It warns that the US public has not internalized the costs of the US losing its position as the world superpower. The US must therefore engage globally with a presence—military, diplomatic, and economic—to preserve influence worldwide.

Indeed, as one respected commentator has noted, the ‘Empire at all Costs’ cult (i.e. the RAND Organisation zeitgeist) is now “more desperate than ever to find a war it can fight to restore its fortunes and prestige”.  

And China would be altogether a different proposition for a demonstrative act of destruction in order “to preserve US influence worldwide” -- for the US is “not prepared” for serious conflict with its peer adversaries: Russia or China, RAND says. 

The straitened situation of the US after decades of fiscal excess and offshoring (the backdrop to its current weakened military industrial base) now makes kinetic war with China or Russia or “across multiple theatres” a prospect to be shunned.

The point that the commentator above makes is that there are no ‘easy wars’ left to fight. And that the reality (brutally outlined by RAND) is that the US can choose one -- and only one war to fight.  Trump may not want any war, but the Lobby grandees -- all supporters of Israel, if not active Zionists supporting the displacement of Palestinians -- want war. And they believe they can get one. 

Put starkly and plainly: Has Trump thought this through? Have the others in the Trump Team reminded him that in today’s world, with US military strength slipping away, there no longer are any ‘easy wars’ to fight, although Zionists believe that with a decapitation strike on Iran’s religious and IRGC leadership (on the lines of the Israel’s strikes on Hizbullah leaders in Beirut), the Iranian people would rise up against their leaders, and side with Israel for a ‘New Middle East’.  

Netanyahu has just made his second broadcast to the Iranian people promising them early salvation. He and his government are not waiting to ask Trump to nod his consent to the annexation of all Occupied Palestinian Territories. That project is being implemented on the ground. It is unfolding now. Netanyahu and his cabinet have the ethnic cleansing ‘bit between their teeth’. Will Trump be able to roll it back? How so? Or will he succumb to becoming ‘genocide Don’?  

This putative ‘Iran War’ is following the same narrative cycle as with Russia: ‘Russia is weak; its military is poorly trained; its equipment mostly recycled from the Soviet era; its missiles and artillery in short supply’. Zbig Brzezinski earlier had taken the logic to its conclusion in The Grand Chessboard (1997): Russia would have no choice but to submit to the expansion of NATO and to the geopolitical dictates of the US. That was ‘then’ (a little more than a year ago). Russia took the western challenge -- and today is in the driving seat in Ukraine, whilst the West looks on helplessly.

This last month, it was US retired General Jack Keane, the strategic analyst for Fox News, who argued that Israel’s air strike on Iran had left it “essentially naked”, with most air defences “taken down” and its missile production factories destroyed by Israel’s 26 October strikes. Iran’s vulnerability, Keane said, is “simply staggering”.

Kean channels the early Brzezinski: His message is clear -- Iran will be an ‘easy war’. That forecast however, is likely to be revealed as dead wrong. And, if pursued, will lead to a complete military and economic disaster for Israel. But do not rule out the distinct possibility that Netanyahu -- besieged on all fronts and teetering on the brink of internal crisis and even jail -- is desperate enough to do it. His is, after all, a Biblical mandate that he pursues for Israel!

Iran likely will launch a painful response to Israel before the 20 January Presidential Inauguration. Its riposte will demonstrate Iran’s unexpected and unforeseen military innovation. What the US and Israel will then do may well open the door to wider regional war. Sentiment across the region seethes at the slaughter in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon. 

Trump may not appreciate just how isolated the US and Israel are among Israel’s Arab and Sunni neighbors. The US is stretched so thin, and its forces across the region are so vulnerable to the hostility that the daily slaughter incubates, that a regional war might be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down. The crisis would pitch Trump into a financial crisis that could sink his domestic economic aspirations too.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 23:25

Trump Takes His Time With Secret Service Director Choice

Authored by Susan Crabtree via ReaalClearPolitics,

It just might be the most personal hiring decision President-elect Trump will ever make, but if he’s already chosen, he’s keeping the contenders in suspense.

After surviving two assassination attempts in roughly two months, Donald Trump is in the awkward position of owing his life to the Secret Service agents and officers who intervened to protect him, even as he remains deeply critical of the failures that allowed the near-misses to occur.

And the threats against Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and the leaders of the incoming administration aren’t going away. In late September, then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s controversial choice for attorney general, said he was briefed by senior members of the Department of Homeland Security that there were five known assassination teams threatening Trump’s life, three of which he said were foreign. Just three days after the election, the Justice Department charged three people in connection to an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.

Still, just days after the second attempt on this life, Trump heaped praise on the agent for quick action after spotting suspect Ryan Routh’s rifle sticking out of the bushes along the perimeter of his Florida golf course and then opening fire. Trump contrasted that swift intervention with the first attempt July 13 when a bullet grazed his ear.

“And, in this particular case, you had a very sharp agent, as good as you could find, and did a fantastic job,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity.” 

“But somebody could have missed the barrel of that rifle,” he added. “Somebody of lesser talents or somebody that was distracted could have missed or could have been shot, I mean, frankly, could have also been shot.” 

Trump acknowledged the incident at his golf club in West Palm Beach ”worked out very well” but said the July 13 incident in Butler, Pennsylvania, when shooter Thomas Crooks killed rally goer Corey Comperatore and wounded two others before being shot by a Secret Service counter sniper, “was a very different story.”

“Somebody should have been on that building. And that’s a different story. But they also showed great … they were very brave, because, when those bullets were flying, they were … they were … trying to protect me.” 

The dual sentiments no doubt factor into Trump’s decision-making regarding his choice to lead the beleaguered Secret Service. Even before the two assassination attempts, the agency was facing criticism over its DEI hiring priorities, lack of thorough applicant vetting, and the lowering of its training and physical fitness standards. At the same time, Secret Service morale hovered among the lowest of all federal agencies.

The congressional reports and a review panel’s findings also cite the inexperience of two agents in charge of security for the Butler rally, as well as the failure of supervisors to re-check their work and make the necessary changes. They also chronicled a litany of mistakes, including failing to check whether a local law enforcement agent was posted on the building where the Crooks perched, not including that building in the official event perimeter, and maintaining siloed communications between the Secret Service and local law enforcement partners.

Even though Trump was thankful for the eagle-eyed agent who spotted Routh hiding in the bushes at his West Palm Beach golf course, critics faulted his Secret Service detail for failing to sweep the perimeter. The 58-year-old had been camping out on the perimeter of the course 12 hours ahead of time but went unnoticed until Trump was within several hundred feet of his loaded rifle. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe explained the decision not to search the perimeter of the golf course because the golf game was considered off-the-record, or “OTR” in agency parlance, meaning it was not on Trump’s official schedule even though he regularly played the course on the weekends.

After the attempts on Trump’s life, the agency faced an avalanche of criticism from congressional committees, internal agency whistleblowers, and a scathing report from a bipartisan Independent Review Panel recommending a thorough overhaul of the Secret Service leadership.  

The two assassination attempts within two months were the lowest point for the Secret Service since President Ronald Reagan was shot in early 1981. But Trump’s big win has boosted confidence within the agency that major reforms will begin once he names and installs a new director.

Now that Trump has won, and Secret Service employees expect the incoming president to choose new leaders, agents and officers are deeply divided on who is the best candidate to thoroughly overhaul the agency. The top reform many seek is to allow the Secret Service leaders to jettison DEI priorities and return to making hiring decisions instead of delegating recruiting and vetting to administrative personnel unfamiliar with the rigors of the protective assignments.

The top two names circulating among current and retired Secret Service agents and officers are Sean Curran, the leader of Trump’s personal detail, and Dan Bongino, a conservative commentator and host of a popular podcast who previously served for 12 years in the Secret Service.

Both were with Trump Saturday night for the Ultimate Fighting Championship match between Jon Jones and Stipe Mocic at Madison Square Garden. Curran was a part of Trump’s security team that night, and Bongino was part of Trump’s entourage of Cabinet picks, politicians, and celebrities, including Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Dana White, Joe Rogan, Speaker Mike Johnson, Kid Rock, and Jelly Roll.

During the event, according to a Secret Service source, Bongino told other special agents protecting Trump that “Help is on the way.”

During Bongino’s Monday podcast, however, he was far more coy about Trump’s, and his, intentions.

“So, I know a lot of you are interested in a lot of the behind the scenes about who’s what ... I’m just here again to repeat, none of this stuff is my decision, okay – about anything,” he told his listeners.

“You guys know what I’m talking about. And there’s a lot to think about if that decision were to happen, and you guys will be the first to know,” he added. “Because I love you, and you guys matter. And so just hang with me, you know?”

Curran was caught that night at the Madison Square Garden fight in an elevator pic with Trump and Musk. Curran usually tries to operate behind the scenes, though his image is immortalized in the iconic photo of Trump in the immediate aftermath of the first assassination attempt. Curran appears to Trump’s left as the then-GOP nominee pumps his fist in the air, blood trickling down his cheek and an American flag fluttering in the background.

The choice between Curran and Bongino is highly competitive, and each have constituencies pulling for them. Trump is very close to Curran, who served as the assistant special agent in charge of Trump’s security detail while he was president and then moved to lead the detail in 2021, when Biden won and Trump was out of office. That top leadership role continued while Trump was running for reelection. Curran’s supporters for the director job credit him for pushing back against the outmoded protocol that because Trump is technically a former president, he shouldn’t therefore be allotted more security assets.

Instead, Curran continually tried to persuade Secret Service top brass to allocate higher security resources because Trump obviously faced far more threats as one of the most well-known and controversial political figures in the world and could not be treated like other former presidents. Until the assassination attempts, however, Secret Service leaders rejected those requests, and sources say Curran has the receipts – a long-running written record of those leadership denials.

Curran was successful in obtaining more security resources for Mar-a-Lago even before the assassination attempts, although the agency was so slow in installing them that a juvenile managed to enter the property and jump into a pool late last year.

Secret Service sources say that just a few days after Trump’s decisive election win, Curran told fellow agents that he believed Trump would tap him for the top role. Many veteran agents have reached out to RCP to back Curran’s candidacy, arguing that he’s an even-keeled leader and exceptional agent regarding his training, drilling, and performance levels.

But others have faulted him for allowing an inexperienced female agent to serve as one of two agents in charge of security plans for the Butler rally, without supervisors modifying the plan after required walk-throughs and extra scrutiny. Others, including Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who runs the security firm Blackwater, have criticized the Secret Service leadership for a “lack of seriousness” in securing Trump throughout this campaign. He also said the perimeter should have been extended to 1,000 meters from the stage because that’s how far an expert sniper can accurately shoot.

Trump has repeatedly praised the agents who put themselves in the line of fire to protect him in the moments after he was shot in Butler, but Prince wasn’t as impressed.

“The Secret Service detail did an awful job getting Trump off the X and let him stand up again,” Prince told a panel of Republican House members at the Heritage Foundation in August.

“[It showed] great instincts of the president to come back defiant, having just been shot in the head to come back and say, ‘Fight, fight, fight,’” Prince acknowledged. “But he never should have had the opportunity to do that because his detail should have put him horizontal and moved him off there immediately.”

If Trump taps Curran to lead the Secret Service, he will reject the recommendations of two bipartisan blue-ribbon commissions who recommended in 2015 and again this year that the next president choose someone outside the agency to fill the director role.

Dan Bongino for many years has been highly critical of the Secret Service, and he was especially so after the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life. Bongino also sat on the Heritage panel to Prince’s left and took a broader view. The conservative commentator argued that the problems in the Secret Service were systemic and directly related to DEI initiatives and the lowering of meritocracy and training standards.

Rep. Cori Mills, a Florida Republican who had served as a member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division before becoming a security specialist in the private defense sector, appeared on the same panel.  

Responding to Bongino’s testimony, Mills said, “I think you’re saying DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy, with regards to the current culture that has been fostered [at the Secret Service.]

Bongino provided a terse response: “Not a [role] – but the major role,” he stressed.

The former Fox News host has a solid following on social media and among active and retired Secret Service agents and officers who argue that he would go to the mat to overhaul the agency and end DEI and other non-meritocracy hiring priorities. But some fear Bongino has been away from the Secret Service too long to know how to sort out the bad apples in leadership. Others argue that it depends on who Bongino would tap as his deputy to run the day-to-day agency operations while he’s dealing with the bigger picture and broad reforms.

Because Trump will continue to face threats from Iran throughout his time in the Oval Office, the Secret Service director will no doubt have an elevated role in the Trump administration and will likely be constantly interacting with the intelligence community to assess the threat levels. If confirmed, that elite group of national security Cabinet members would likely include Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence, or DNI, and John Ratcliffe, who previously served as DNI and whom Trump nominated to become his CIA director, as well as whomever Trump names as FBI director.

Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official in the last Trump administration, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who had served as an FBI agent for several years, are contenders for the FBI director job. Bongino’s brash style may be better equipped to square off with those outsized egos and cut through the agency’s bureaucracy and woke policies. Some in the Secret Service community are hoping Trump appoints a leader who is listening to the rank-and-file to distinguish the bad actors from the hard-working agents and push out the ineffective and manipulative leaders.

Besides Bongino and Curran, there are several other top contenders to lead the Secret Service and the necessary reforms, including Tom Armas, a U.S. Marine general who also previously served several years as a Secret Service agent but spent the majority of his career in the military. Armas worked with Bongino in the Secret Service’s New York Field Office and has received high praise for his 9/11 bravery. Armas ran into the collapsing World Trade Center buildings and carried many people to safety amidst the chaos, dust, and debris.

If selected, Armas would follow in the footsteps of Randolph “Tex” Alles, a formerU.S. Marine Corps general and the first Secret Service director selected from outside the agency in its 159-year history. Trump chose Alles to lead the agency from 2017 to 2019. During that time, Alles built a good rapport among rank-and-file agents, but many believed several agency leaders successfully sabotaged him. Alles was swept out of the agency when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson left her post in April 2019.

Secret Service sources are also touting Michael D’Ambrosio, a respected senior career agent and former platoon commander in the U.S. Marines, for a leadership post. D’Ambrosio aggressively helped rush Trump off stage during a Nevada campaign rally eight years ago when a protester rushed the stage.

Other names in the mix include Jim Lewis, a former Secret Service agent who now serves as a senior Department of Homeland Security official, and Billy Davis, a high-performing agent who retired in 2015 after 29 years with the Secret Service (Davis is also known as a former Clemson University football player).

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 23:00

Unity, But Not Compromise, Is The Path Forward

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics,

It really happened. Donald Trump won convincingly, just as I predicted. So I don’t need to publish a retraction or correction today like we are due from so many liberals for their substitution of wishful thinking for reasoned analysis in the leadup to the election.

But, on the other hand, I don’t want to waste your time and mine rehashing all the reasons why Trump won, or more significantly, why Kamala Harris lost. In retrospect, the possibility of a Harris victory seems as remote as Trump winning the Hispanic male vote. Oh wait!

So instead, let’s look forward. In particular, the example of Rodney King seems appropriate. King was famously the victim of a televised police beating in Los Angeles in 1991. When four officers were found not guilty the following year, the city erupted in violence, leading King to make his appeal for calm: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

King was a victim who became a leader, a man who put aside his own pain and embraced the possibility of a better world – a world where we can all get along.

That world seems as distant as ever today, but maybe that’s because we haven’t fully understood what it means to get along. For Rodney King, it meant simply, can we stop killing each other? Can we stop spiraling out of control, looking for revenge and expecting perfection from others while we ourselves are less than perfect?

Those were big questions. But for us American citizens, in the wake of the 2024 election, it also means confronting just how far apart we are – in philosophy, in goals, in tactics – and then deciding if we want to stay together or get a divorce. The possibility of a shooting civil war is remote at best, but if we continue to move in opposite directions, it will be hard to achieve the unity that many of our leaders espouse.

And if this is a national crisis, it is also a personal one. I doubt I’m the only one who has been confronted with friends and family members who are so disheartened by the nation’s rejection of the Democratic presidential candidate – and particularly the elevation of Donald Trump – that they hold me personally responsible. This, despite the fact that I rarely talk politics except in my own home, or in my columns.

I believe those personal relationships can be healed by time because politics is only a small part of how we get along on an individual level. But when it comes to bringing together two political parties that are diametrically opposed on border policy, taxes, military readiness, spending, crime, abortion, lawfare and government expansionism, it is much harder to put aside our daggers.

So the question becomes, how do we restore normalcy to our civic discourse? How do we avoid recriminations and self-congratulation? And most importantly, how can President-elect Trump, with his MAGA mandate, govern in order to bring about the unity that he says he wants?

What exactly would that unity even look like? Is it possible to unify abortion-rights advocates with anti-abortion stalwarts? Proponents of globalism with America-first nationalism? Those who protect illegal immigrants with those who mourn the needless murders and rapes that an open border has caused?

The common idea of unity is bipartisanship or compromise. The winning side will generously surrender a portion of its power in order to let the losing side claim some victories as well. The idea is that the losers will repay the favor by giving the winners respect and honor. This is the fantasy version of unity. No party in power will surrender its ability to promote its agenda if it has true principles rather than duplicitous pragmatism. Nor should it.

A more realistic view of unity is the Civil War model. Two sides are diametrically opposed. One side will prevail. You fight like hell to make sure it is yours. President Lincoln’s goal wasn’t to crush the South, but that result was necessary in order to ensure that his vision of “one nation indivisible” would quash the secessionist movement and stop the spread of slavery. Unity was his goal, but compromise was not – at least until the war was decisively won and Reconstruction would begin.

So it must be for Donald Trump in the wake of his historic victory. The public has given him his marching orders, and he intends to follow them relentlessly – bringing real change to the way government works. His first term provided mostly ephemeral results, with the exception of three Supreme Court justices. The wall was built – and then unbuilt. American energy was unleashed – and then leashed again. Peace was on its way to the Middle East with the Abraham Accords – and then dashed into a million pieces by Hamas.

This time around, Trump knows he only has four years to fulfill his plans. So he’s moving with lightning speed to do exactly what Abraham Lincoln accomplished in his four years in the White House: unite the country by demonstrating strength, wisdom and patriotism.

This ambitious goal perhaps explains Trump’s seemingly antagonistic selection of Cabinet secretaries. Matt Gaetz for attorney general? Robert Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services? Pete Hegseth for Defense? Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the intelligence agencies, including the CIA? There were other qualified candidates for all those positions, but would they have fought as fiercely as these picks to revolutionize the agencies they would helm?

Turning back to our Civil War model, after first selecting traditional generals who were consensus choices, Lincoln decided to go with his gut and promoted Ulysses S. “Unconditional Surrender” Grant and “scorched earth” William Sherman to bring the enemy to their heels. Trump seems to be after the same kind of unsparing determination. Go big or go home.

To his enemies, that translates as Trump’s “authoritarian tendencies,” but leveraging one’s political capital to push the nation inexorably in one direction is not necessarily the act of a dictator. That kind of insistent progress is the very definition of unity as exemplified by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the force of his personality and his political vision to reshape politics for three decades and beyond.

Trump has certainly dominated the political conversation for the last decade. By not compromising with his enemies, I think it is safe to say he believes he can eventually persuade them to accept his unifying MAGA vision for America just as FDR convinced the nation to celebrate his transformative New Deal.

And any Republican senator who stands in Trump’s way had better be prepared to reap the whirlwind.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 22:35

Hezbollah Chief Vows More Attacks On Tel Aviv While Awaiting Israel's Response To Ceasefire Plan

In his third major address since becoming Hezbollah's Secretary General in the wake of Hassan Nasrallah's death, Naim Qassem threatened to target Tel Aviv in response to recent Beirut strikes.

"We will not leave the capital under Israeli enemy attacks. When Beirut is under attack by the enemy, the response must be in Tel Aviv," he said. The Hezbollah chief added that "The enemy must understand that things will not remain as such when Beirut is attacked."

He laid out that Israel must pay a "heavy price" for the assassination of Hezbollah media relations chief Mohammed Afif this week, which happened in Beirut.

Drones and rockets fired from Lebanon into Tel Aviv have already begun ramping up in the past days, even though such targeting that deep into Israel remains rare.

Monday saw a Hezbollah missile strike Tel Aviv, near a shopping mall and busy area, which wounded five people and caused extensive damage.

Tehran Times reports, "An Israeli media outlet reported among the missiles that landed in Tel Aviv was a Fateh 110 missile, which is a surface-to-surface missile recognized for its significant destructive power. It is engineered to strike critical targets with pinpoint accuracy within a margin of up to ten meters."

Currently, Biden's Middle East envoy Amos Hochstein is going between warring capitals, seeking to finalize a US-proposed peace plan.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government are said to be backing the ceasefire, and are awaiting Israel's response. However, the prospect that a ceasefire will be reached soon doesn't look promising. Below is what Secretary-General Qassem said in his speech regarding the plan:

"We got the negotiation document, we examined the document and we transferred our notes about it," he said. This comes as Hochstein delayed his arrival in Israel as he attempts to smooth over more details of the deal.

In Qassem's opinion, "Israel expects to get through the agreement what it did not get on the ground," referring to the Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon. Several attempts to reach an end to hostilities have failed, including those proposed by US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.

"In the past, we agreed to the Biden-Macron proposal on the basis of ending the war, but they killed Nasrallah," Qassem said. "We went through a real crisis after his assassination, but after 10 days we managed to recover and heal our wounds."

Hezbollah has been revealing an ever-more sophisticated drone arsenal...

⚡️Hezb-Allah publishes first footage from onboard a Kamikaze drone pic.twitter.com/4FdGE6D8Jd

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) November 18, 2024

Many details of the plan remain secret. At this moment, the skies over Lebanon are as dangerous as ever, with Israeli warplanes pounding Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, Tyre and the south, and especially the capital suburb of Dahieh.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 22:10

This Is How It Begins: The Deep State Wants To Terminate The Constitution

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary.”

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

This is how it begins.

This is how it always begins, justified in the name of national security.

Mass roundups. Raids. Indefinite detentions in concentration camps. Martial law. The erosion of habeas corpus protections. The suspension of the Constitution, at least for select segments of the population. A hierarchy of rights, contingent on whether you belong to a favored political class.

This is what you can expect in the not-so-distant future.

Once you allow the government to overreach the restraints imposed  by the Constitution, no matter what that threat might be, it will be that much harder to restrain it again, no matter which party is at the helm.

We’ve seen this played out time and again.

Some years ago, for instance, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and deploy the National Guard “to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.”

In other words, they wanted the government to use the military to round up and lock up the unvaccinated in concentration camps.

That didn’t happen, but it so easily could have.

Now the script has been flipped, and it’s the soon-to-be Trump Administration promising to use the military to round up and lock up undesirables in concentration camps.

At this moment in time, those so-called “undesirables” are illegal immigrants, but given what we know about the government and its expansive definition of what constitutes a threat to its power, any one of us could be next up in the police state’s crosshairs.

Once you give the government a taste of that kind of power—to disregard the Constitution, even for a day; to use the military for domestic policing; to rely on mass deportations and concentration camps in order to sidestep due process procedures—it won’t be so easy to rein it in when it runs amok.   

And it will run amok.

You don’t have to be an illegal immigrant or a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to be worried about what lies ahead. You just have to recognize the truth in the warning: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This is why significant numbers of people are worried: because this is the slippery slope that starts with supposedly well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate.

We’ve already allowed the government to significantly undermine our constitutional republic.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be seduced by the false siren song of politicians promising safety in exchange for relinquished freedom. We placed our trust in political saviors and failed to ask questions to hold our representatives accountable to abiding by the Constitution. We looked the other way and made excuses while the government amassed an amazing amount of power over us, and backed up that power-grab with a terrifying amount of military might and weaponry, and got the courts to sanction their actions every step of the way. We chose to let partisan politics divide us and turn us into easy targets for the government’s oppression.

Consider for yourself.

We are in the grip of martial law. We have what the founders feared most: a “standing” or permanent army on American soil. This de facto standing army is made up of weaponized, militarized domestic police forces which look like, dress like, and act like the military; are armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; are authorized to make arrests; and are trained in military tactics.

We are in the government’s crosshairs. The U.S. government continues to act as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence. Consequently, we are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.” With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by the government’s standing army of militarized police who shoot first and ask questions later.

We are no longer safe in our homes. This present menace comes from the government’s army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized SWAT teams who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.

We have no real freedom of speech. We are moving fast down a slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts. In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American who criticizes the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

We have no real privacy. We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors. This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

We are losing our right to bodily privacy and integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws and forced breath-alcohol tests to forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no real privacy, no real presumption of innocence, and no real control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. The groundwork being laid is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

We no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have allegedly been associated with some criminal scheme.

We have no due process. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

We are no longer presumed innocent. The burden of proof has been reversed. Now we’re presumed guilty unless we can prove our innocence beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Rarely, are we even given the opportunity to do so. The government has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database. Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government coupled with artificial intelligence will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

We have lost the right to be anonymous and move about freely.  At every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Likewise, digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

We no longer have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

We have no guardians of justice. The courts were established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the courts have become the guardians of the American police state in which we now live. As a result, sound judgment and justice have largely taken a back seat to legalism, statism and elitism, while preserving the rights of the people has been deprioritized and made to play second fiddle to both governmental and corporate interests.

We have been saddled with a dictator for life. Secret, unchecked presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—now enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

We are one crisis or state of emergency away from having the Constitution terminated.

Mind you, the powers-that-be want the Constitution terminated.

They want us to be censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down.

They want our speech and activities monitored for any sign of “extremist” activity.

They want us to be estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us. They want taxation without representation. They want a government without the consent of the governed.

Connect the dots.

This was never about politics, populist movements, or making America great again.

This is what happens when good, generally decent people—distracted by manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring “us vs. them” camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains.

It’s what happens when any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and a disregard for the rights of the individual.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the slippery slope begins in just this way, with propaganda campaigns about the public good being more important than individual liberty, and it ends with lockdowns and concentration camps.

The danger signs are everywhere.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 21:45

American Dream? Depends... Home Price-to-Income Ratio By State

With steadily increasing home prices and stagnating wages among lower-wage workers, home ownership for many Americans has become increasingly unaffordable.

The home price-to-income ratio measures the relationship between the median home price and the median household income. This metric is often used to gauge housing affordability, accounting for variations in the cost of living.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Kayla Zhu, shows home price-to-income ratio of each U.S. state, using data from a Construction Coverage analysis of Zillow and U.S. Census Bureau data as of June 2024.

Hawaii and West Coast Have the Most Unaffordable Homes

The table below shows the home price-to-income ratio for each U.S. state, where Hawaii (9.1) and California (8.4) at the top—both well over the national average of 4.7.

Rank State Ratio 1 Hawaii 9.1 2 California 8.4 3 Montana 6.6 4 Oregon 6.4 5 Massachusetts 6.3 6 Washington 6.3 7 Idaho 6.1 8 Washington 6 9 Colorado 6 10 Nevada 5.9 11 Utah 5.7 12 New York 5.7 13 Arizona 5.7 14 Florida 5.7 15 Maine 5.5 16 Rhode Island 5.4 17 New Jersey 5.2 18 New Hampshire 5.1 19 Vermont 5 20 New Mexico 4.9 21 Wyoming 4.8 22 North Carolina 4.8 23 Tennessee 4.8 24 Delaware 4.6 25 South Carolina 4.5 26 Virginia 4.4 27 Georgia 4.4 28 Maryland 4.3 29 Connecticut 4.3 30 South Dakota 4.2 31 Texas 4.1 32 Alaska 4 33 Wisconsin 4 34 Minnesota 3.9 35 Missouri 3.7 36 Alabama 3.7 37 Pennsylvania 3.6 38 Nebraska 3.6 39 Arkansas 3.6 40 Michigan 3.5 41 Indiana 3.5 42 Louisiana 3.5 43 North Dakota 3.4 44 Illinois 3.3 45 Ohio 3.3 46 Oklahoma 3.3 47 Kentucky 3.3 48 Mississippi 3.3 49 Kansas 3.2 50 Iowa 3 51 West Virginia 2.9

Despite Hawaii and California ranking in the top five for median income (adjusted for cost of living), both states also consistently rank first and second respectively when it comes to median home prices.

Hawaii and California also rank second and third, respectively, when ranking states by the highest salary needed to live comfortably for a single working adult.

According to ATTOM, Hawaii has the highest median house prices in the U.S., at around $852,000.

The Aloha State’s limited land availability, strict housing regulations, and high demand for housing in a desirable climate, are some contributing factors to its high home prices.

Californian cities Los Angeles, San Jose, Long Beach, and San Diego are the top four large U.S. cities with the highest home price-to-income ratios.

Home prices in California have reached unprecedented highs due to a persistent imbalance between high demand and limited supply, which is exacerbated by strict zoning laws, geographic constraints, and a robust economy attracting high-income residents.

To learn more about housing affordability, check out this graphic that shows the top 10 global markets by median price-to-income ratio.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 21:20

Food Lobbyists Plot To Have It Their Way With RFK Jr.

Authored by Lee Fang via RealClearInvestigations,

America’s most famous fast-food fan may be an unlikely candidate to make America healthy again, but Donald Trump seems willing to tackle the eating habits that have led to skyrocketing rates of obesity. The junk food industry is not lovin’ it.

RealClearInvestigations has learned that representatives of companies that make snack foods, sugary beverages, and cooking oils are already meeting to discuss how to thwart the reform agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former consumer rights attorney Trump has said he will nominate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Their response provides an early example of what experts predict will be a massive effort by D.C. lobbyists to position their clients in response to Trump’s pledge to change how Washington does business.

Although much of the early criticism of Kennedy’s nomination has focused on his skepticism regarding some vaccines, the nominee is a longtime critic of the food industry, which he says is a leading contributor to America’s obesity epidemic. In recent months, he has called for a crackdown on food additives, limits on certain crop protection chemicals, stronger guidelines regarding what he says are conflicts of interest among regulators and business, and a review of any substance causing, what he argues, Americans to be “mass poisoned by big pharma and big food.”

Kennedy’s nomination sets up what may turn out to be the biggest reversal between the first Trump administration and the second. The last time around, Trump’s appointees, acting in deference to traditional business interests, moved to reverse regulations on neurotoxic insecticides and added delays to updates for school lunch nutritional standards. 

In videos that have gone viral this year, Kennedy has singled out ultra-processed food as a priority for what Kennedy has called his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda. In one video devoted to the potential dangers of Yellow 5 food dye, Kennedy stands before a table with Doritos chips and Cap’n Crunch cereal and claims the ingredients used in such products are one reason more than 40% of American adults are classified as obese by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The dye, also known as tartrazine, has been linked to behavioral problems in children and other health risks. The European Union requires child warning labels for products with tartrazine. 

Kennedy has made similar arguments about the widespread use of seed oils – including those from corn, soybeans, sunflowers, and peanuts – especially in highly processed foods. Research suggests that high levels of seed oils, rich in polyunsaturated fat, can cause inflammation. America's overreliance on seed oils in fast food and snack products, Kennedy claims, is a major overlooked factor in the health crisis. 

Food industry leaders began sounding the alarm even before the election. In October,  Invariant, a powerful government relations firm that advises many food companies on how to shape policies in Washington, D.C., warned clients of Kennedy’s growing sway over Trump and the Republican Party.

"Increasing number of voices on the right target the food industry," an October memo stated, which went out to clients that include McDonald’s and America’s largest candy makers. The lobbyists warned that Kennedy’s MAHA movement “had gained increasing momentum among conservative figures who have taken a more vocal interest in the way food is produced and regulated.”

Those initial alarm bells have become a siren among snack food makers and agribusiness representatives, according to records obtained by RCI. Last Friday, lobbyists for major processed food producers huddled over Zoom to discuss the rise of MAHA and how best to handle Kennedy’s recently announced nomination.

Danielle Beck, a participant on the call who represents PepsiCo, makers of Doritos and Cap’n Crunch, and the Corn Refiners Association, a trade group for the largest producers of corn-based seed oils, noted that Congress could limit Kennedy’s abilities. 

The "traditional agriculture and food stakeholders," Beck noted, "might look to leverage, you know, the appropriations process" to curb what Kennedy is allowed to "initiate or implement."

Congressional appropriators often use the annual funding process to limit federal authorities. In 2010, under sway from industry sources, the House Appropriations Committee inserted a provision into federal funding that forced tomato paste on frozen pizzas to be counted as a vegetable under dietary regulations. 

The lobbyists noted that Kennedy’s lengthy set of demands could also be exploited to stymie his overall agenda. "If RFK Jr. is focused on twenty different things, chances of success are likely limited," observed Ken Barbic, another Invariant lobbyist representing processed foods firms and farming interests. 

Invariant, though founded by Heather Podesta, a prominent Democratic fundraiser, boasts bipartisan influence. Barbic, for instance, served during the first Trump administration in the Department of Agriculture and the firm employs a number of former GOP aides. 

The Senate confirmation process, the lobbyists added, could be another process through which industry may shape the MAHA list of priorities. As Kennedy meets with individual senators, Beck noted, "serious conversations and commitments can be made to secure those votes that might end up resulting in some shifts in RFK’s overall agenda."

In other words, in order to line up more than 50 votes in the Senate, the lobbyists suggest Kennedy may be convinced to trade away some of his MAHA demands. 

Similar strategy sessions have percolated across Washington Beltway lobbying shops representing food, beverage, and drug industries. The American Farm Bureau, which represents pesticide companies and farming interests, recently said it was working to “combat misinformation that has been spread by several sources including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding critical crop protection tools and agricultural practices.” 

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents Kellogg, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills, and other processed foods firms, has also met with lawmakers, preparing for a fight over MAHA agenda items, according to a report from Politico.

Other Kennedy proposals could spark a ferocious backlash from corporate America, particularly his suggestion that the U.S. fall in line with most of the industrialized world and ban direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Drug firms spend more than $1 billion per year on television spots. Shutting off the gusher of ad dollars would likely mobilize stark opposition from media conglomerates and the drug lobby. 

But it is RFK’s ideas around wellness and nutrition that have percolated most with the new Trump coalition. The farm and processed food lobby must contend with a sea change within the Republican Party, which now relies on populist vigor increasingly receptive to the idea of reforming the way American food is produced and sold.

In September, Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, led a roundtable discussion with popular food industry critics. During the hearing, the stars of this nascent movement, including Dr. Casey Means and her brother Calley Means, food blogger Vani Hari, and author Max Lugavere, took turns at the microphone to pin the blame for America’s poor health mainly on the influence of processed food companies. 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Kennedy ally, was scheduled to host a similar roundtable but had to cancel at the last minute due to Hurricane Helene flooding in North Carolina.

Such rhetoric suggests a political realignment on food and wellness issues. Bernie Sanders, perhaps the Senate’s most liberal lawmaker, has held a series of hearings on chronic disease, focusing on the influence of corporate actors, and departing Biden administration officials have called for an overhaul of the dietary guidelines. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to provide a new definition of the "healthy " food label with stronger limits on saturated fats, sodium, and added sugars, a proposal that might find continuity under a Kennedy-controlled agency.

Kennedy himself is a former Democrat-turned-independent who was briefly floated as the Environmental Protection Agency chief for President Barack Obama in 2008. He has worked on several successful litigation efforts that have challenged the safety of widely used chemicals. Kennedy was part of the team that challenged glyphosate, sold as Roundup, over its links to cancer, a case that led to a $290 million verdict for the plaintiffs.  

While such regulatory interventions were once the province of the left, the MAHA movement capitalizes on a shift in media consumption by those in the Trump orbit. 

Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the country, has emphasized the dangers posed by high fructose corn syrup, seed oils, and sugary, processed foods. He has hosted many of the most vocal activists aligned with the MAHA movement, including the Means siblings. 

"I love this idea of you teaming up with Robert Kennedy, and I love this 'Make America Healthy Again' idea," said Rogan during his sit-down with Trump during the campaign, which garnered over 50 million views on YouTube. 

"There are chemicals and ingredients in our food that are illegal in other countries because they've been shown to be toxic,” Rogan added during the interview. 

Trump, in response, pledged to give Kennedy wide latitude over health policy, though he said he disagreed with his views on energy and the environment. In the past, Kennedy has opposed expanded oil and natural gas fracking and previously supported a moratorium on new nuclear energy – priorities of the new administration.

Yet Kennedy’s focus on health taps into a rich vein of new populist energy that defies easy ideological definition. The outreach to podcasters and wellness influencers has been credited with helping Trump secure the young male vote, which swung away from Democrats by nearly 30 percentage points.

It is a dynamic agribusiness interests have noticed. The Invariant team credited the rise of RFK’s influence to the growing prominence of podcasts and independent media. 

"Trump appeared on more than 35 different podcasts," noted Jenny Werwa, a strategic communications consultant with Invariant.

When seeking influence with policymakers, the food and beverage industry typically focuses advertising dollars on insider Beltway media, such as Politico and Punchbowl News, added Werwa during the call with clients last Friday. Instead, she suggested, the industry should “think about how you might be able to partner with non-traditional media for content,” adding that Rogan and certain independent Substack publishers should be considered moving forward. 

Consumer brands generally seek to avoid public engagement in politics, typically working through third parties and industry groups. 

Invariant is one of many lobbying firms in the middle of the conflict. The firm not only represents highly processed snack producers, corn refiners, and fast food establishments like McDonald's, but also Campbell Soup, McCain Foods, and the American Beverage Association, the lobby group for sugary sodas.

The lobbyists at the firm shared a memo outlining additional steps. Clients in the “food and agriculture space need to continue both defensive efforts – including legislative and regulatory efforts – while also considering offensive approaches that engage positively in the broader health focused debate.” The offensive approaches, however, are yet to be seen. 

In the meantime, food industry giants might also hang some hope on the influence and taste of Kennedy’s boss. In a viral post-election photo, Trump is shown having dinner on his private plane with his son Don Jr., Kennedy, and Elon Musk. The menu: Big Macs and fries.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 20:55

Nvidia Drops After Revenue Forecast Disappoints Exuberant Expectations

Earlier today we wrote an extensive preview of what to expect from Nvidia's Q3 earnings (here), but for those who missed it here is the summary: sky high expectations, which only go higher in 2025 and beyond when the full rollout of Blackwell is expected to hit the P&L, with everyone already long (Goldman desk positioning is 9 out of 10) and anything less than perfection would be punished by the market. The bull/bear case summarized by Goldman was as follows:

• Bulls playing for a ‘break-out’ trade on an expected beat/raise (with downside arguably cushioned by the upcoming Blackwell launch)
• Bears playing for a reset in the stock driven by a growing list of moving parts (Blackwell noise, scaling laws, custom ASICs/silicon, ROICs, etc) vs valuation back at ~15-mo highs.

In terms of expectations, Q3 revenue was projected to come in at $33.25BN, while the median analyst estimate for Q4 revenue is $37.1BN but buyside bogeys were $38BN+ and some were as high as $41BN. Keep in mind that that number has moved around a lot in the past few days as analysts have made last-minute tweaks to their models. While the current high sales estimate for the third quarter is $41.2 billion, some investors have have said that the whisper number may be even higher than that!

Beyond the headlines, JPM says that the key near-term bogeys are the following:

1. The margin guide (with a few saying JPM's 73.8% buyside bar is too high),
2. The possibility of hiccups in the Blackwell ramp which - given the steep ramp - could push revenues to the April quarter;
3. Any guidance on F26 and beyond.

Other things to look out for when the company starts speaking will include how much supply it’s getting from its manufacturing partners. Like most chipmakers, Nvidia outsources production. Taiwan Semiconductor is the best in the business, and Nvidia’s pace of growth heavily depends on how well TSMC is able to provide Nvidia with the capacity it needs.

Amusingly, Nvidia shares actually closed down today, though far from session lows, ahead of the earnings report. Still, shares are up nearly 200% so far this year, and one of the best performers on the S&P 500 Index. Nvidia’s market cap north of $3.6 trillion makes it the biggest weighting in the S&P 500, meaning that any move in the stock could swing the entire market.

With that in mind, here is what NVDA reported moments ago:

• Revenue $35.08 billion, up +94% y/y, beating the median estimate of $33.25 billion (but in line with Goldman's expectations of $35BN).
  • Data center revenue $30.8 billion vs. $14.51 billion y/y, beating estimates of $29.14 billion
  • Gaming revenue $3.3 billion, +15% y/y, beating estimates of $3.06 billion
  • Professional Visualization revenue $486 million, +17% y/y, beating estimates of $477.7 million
  • Automotive revenue $449 million, +72% y/y, beating estimates of $364.5 million
     
• Adjusted gross margin 75% vs. 75% y/y, and in line with estimates of 75%
  • Adjusted operating expenses $3.05 billion, +50% y/y, beating estimates of $2.99 billion
  • Adjusted operating income $23.28 billion vs. $11.56 billion y/y, beating estimates of $21.9 billion
     
• Adjusted EPS 81c, beating estimates 74c

The revenue trend, as expected, is impressive especially at the Data Center level where all the growth is.

Here is a full breakdown of recent results:

But while the Q3 results were stellar, the company's guidance came in on the weak side of the buyside expectations we discussed in our premium preview.

• Revenue is expected to be $37.5 billion, plus or minus 2%: The “plus or minus 2%” means Nvidia expects 4Q revenue between $36.75 billion and $38.25 billion. The low end is ugly, and even the high end is below the median buyside bogey.

Oops: while this was above the median consensus of $37.1BN, it was far below the buyside expectations of $38.8BN; It was also well below Goldman's Q4 revenue expectations of $39BN and close to where the bank saw the stock dropping -10%.  In fact, some estimates for Q4 revenue were as high as $41 billion!

The rest of the guidance was in line but far less important:

• Gross margins are expected to be 73.0% and 73.5%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.
• Operating expenses are expected to be approximately $4.8 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively.
• Other income and expense are expected to be an income of approximately $400 million, excluding gains and losses from non-affiliated investments and publicly-held equity securities.
• Tax rates are expected to be 16.5%, plus or minus 1%, excluding any discrete items.

Nvidia has only missed analysts’ estimates on quarterly revenue once in the past five years. And it has exceeded expectations by as much as 20% in recent periods, creating a very high bar for its performance.

The muted outlook suggests that AI excitement may be getting ahead of reality according to Bloomberg. Nvidia investors had bid up the shares nearly 200% in 2024, turning it into the world’s most valuable company at $3.6 trillion in market cap. But the chipmaker has had trouble keeping up with demand for its products and struggled with production snags this year.

To be fair, even with the disappointing outlook, Nvidia’s growth over the past two years has been staggering, simply because not one chipmaker has been able to take its market share (Intel unprecedented collapse in recent years can be largely to blame for that). Its sales are poised to double for a second year in a row, and it now notches more money in profit than it used to generate in total revenue (thanks to that 75% profit margin).

Nvidia's data center division alone now has more revenue than its two nearest rivals, Intel and AMD combined. Net income this year is on course to exceed revenue at Intel, a company that was the chip industry’s titan for decades.

The company’s biggest moneymaker is its accelerator chip, which helps develop AI models by bombarding them with data. Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot debuted in 2022, a frenzy of artificial intelligence services has created insatiable demand for the product.

Other recent earnings reports have given strong signals for AI. Major Nvidia customers, including Microsoft, Amazon's AWS and Meta have reaffirmed their commitment to spend on AI infrastructure, even if few have actually done the spend, as we noted during the recent Meta earnings call.

Nvidia hopes to stay ahead of rivals by accelerating its pace of innovation. That includes a commitment to updating its lineup annually; the company is currently introducing a design called Blackwell, which is faster and has an improved ability to link up with other chips, and which is expected to hit the company's P&L early next year, as a bevy of manufacturing challenges have slowed the Blackwell rollout. For now, Nvidia can’t fill all the orders it’s receiving, the company has said. After production improves, supplies will be plentiful, according to CEO Jensen Huang. For his sake, hopefully by then no competitors will have been able to come out with a faster, cheaper chip.

The Santa Clara, CA-based company has rapidly expanded its product lineup to include networking, software and services, as well as fully built-out computer systems. Huang is traveling the world lobbying for a broader adoption of his technology and trying to spread its use by corporations and government agencies.

Shares of Nvidia fell as much as 5% in after hours trading following the announcement, before settling about 2% lower, far below the 8.8% straddle. They previously closed at $145.89 in New York.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 20:39

Wealthy Private Schools In Upscale Miami Are Starting To Price Out Their Teachers

The rich neighborhoods in Miami are getting so rich, they're starting to price out the teachers.

For example, Ransom Everglades, a top private school in Miami’s upscale Coconut Grove, serves the city’s wealthy families, including new Wall Street South transplants.

It boasts amenities like an Olympic pool, sailing, and a waterfront football field, it offers 24 varsity sports, 62 arts courses, and a cutting-edge science center. And with a 10-to-1 student-teacher ratio, admission is highly competitive—only one in seven sixth-grade applicants were accepted this year, according to parents.

But the school is struggling to retain teachers due to the increasing cost of living in the area. So much so that it has been building an endowment to help give teachers stipends to offset their living expenses, according to Bloomberg.

Ransom Everglades' board, led by chair Miguel Dueñas, is creating a $30 million endowment to help its 132 teachers with living costs in Miami’s pricey market. They’ve raised $15 million so far from parents and alumni, aiming to provide each teacher at least $11,000 annually for housing expenses through the fund’s returns.

Dueñas commented: “The biggest issue that schools are facing right now in South Florida is the cost of living for teachers. So trying to solve that, or help it, is something that is strategic in nature for all schools.”

Bloomberg writes that Ransom Everglades faces a challenge in balancing competitive teacher pay with affordability for families, all despite charging $52,000 in annual tuition—less than elite New York schools like Dalton, which cost $65,000.

While offering perks like tuition discounts for teachers' children and free meals, salaries are constrained by housing costs in Miami, where prices have surged 75% over five years.

Head of school Rachel Rodriguez emphasized that housing affordability is the biggest obstacle in recruiting top talent, as Miami ranks poorly for both affordability and income inequality.

Private school teachers nationwide earn about 25% less than their public-school counterparts, and Florida ranks second-to-last for public-school teacher pay.

Compounding this, Miami’s private-school teacher salaries trail cities like New York by 17%. Gulliver Prep, another Miami-area private school, is exploring higher tuition for wealthy families and donor-funded stipends to close the pay gap.

Without these adjustments, teachers like Jonathan Scholl, who left Ransom for a more affordable life in Denver despite lower pay, may continue to seek opportunities elsewhere, exacerbating a crisis for South Florida’s elite schools.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 20:30

"Some Of Them Are With Pedophiles": Trump's Border Czar To Prioritize Locating 300,000 Unaccounted-For Children

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar said he would prioritize locating or rescuing 300,000 unaccounted-for children who entered the United States as illegal immigrants and are at risk of exploitation.

Then-acting ICE Director Tom Homan speaks at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, on June 5, 2018. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

“The third rail is we got over 300,000 missing children,” Tom Homan told Fox News on Monday, likely referring to a government report issued earlier this year. “Over half a million children have been trafficked into the United States. This administration released them to unvetted sponsors, and they can’t find 300,000. And based on three-and-a-half decades, some of these children are in forced labor.”

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) inspector general released a report finding that 323,000 illegal immigrant children are unaccounted for inside the United States. As of May 2024, more than 32,000 children who were served notices to appear in court did not appear, while the safety of an additional 291,000 could not be verified because they were not placed into removal proceedings, making monitoring their status challenging, according to the report.

Those figures came from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and covered the period from October 2018 to September 2023

“We already found some in forced labor, some of them are in for sex trafficking, some of them are with pedophiles,” Homan said. “We need to save these children. That’s going to be the third rail.”

The DHS report noted that ICE, which Homan had overseen under the first Trump administration, should “take immediate action” to ensure those unaccounted-for children are safe.

Two other priorities, or “rails,” Homan said, are to secure the U.S.–Mexico border as well as deport illegal aliens who are criminals and “national security threats” still residing in the United States.

Both Homan and Trump have said they will initiate a wide-ranging mass deportation plan after the president-elect takes office on Jan. 20, 2025. Trump said on Monday he would be prepared to declare a national emergency to move things forward.

Some pro-immigration groups and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have said they are opposed to Trump’s deportation proposals, while the ACLU has signaled it will file lawsuits to block such plans from being initiated.

On Monday, the ACLU said it sued ICE to seek records on how “privately chartered deportation flights run by ICE ... could be expanded to carry out a mass deportation and detention program.”

What DHS Report Says

The DHS inspector general said in the August report that unaccounted-for children who don’t show up for immigration court dates can be “considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

The office faulted ICE for failing to consistently “monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children” once they are released from federal government custody.

During the period from October 2018 to September 2023, 448,820 unaccompanied children were released by ICE to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The U.S. government defines an unaccompanied migrant child as someone under 18 who lacks lawful immigration status and has no parent or guardian in the country to take custody of them. When they’re apprehended by DHS, they’re transferred to the HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.

ICE and the Department of Justice may initiate removal proceedings. However, some children are able to stay in the United States legally if they qualify for asylum, special visas for victims of abuse, trafficking, and other crimes, or other types of immigration relief. In those cases, removal proceedings may never start.

By some estimates, there are around 11 million illegal immigrants who currently live in the United States, some being able to do so under temporary protected status orders issued by DHS.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 20:05

Col. MacGregor: Trump & The Storm Of The Century

Authored by Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.)

The fear in many nations’ capitals is that President Donald Trump’s return to Washington might make Israel feel more confident in attacking Iran. According to Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, "There is no world leader Trump respects more than Netanyahu."

The evangelical leader also confides that President Trump would support an Israeli attack before his inauguration on the assumption that the destruction of Iran’s oil production facilities would devastate Iran’s economy, inducing Iran to end the war with Israel before President Trump assumes his office. This thinking by no means excludes an Israeli decision to strike Iran’s nuclear development sites as well. 

What Trump will or will not do is unknown. When the illusive stillness in the standoff between Tehran and Jerusalem will end is also unknown. 

One thing is certain: If America joins Israel in its war against Iran, the outcome will be a geopolitical showdown that could dramatically alter the world as we know it. It is the storm of the 21st century and, for the moment, the American ship of state is sailing right into it.

At a minimum, Trump should demand answers from his civilian and military advisors to four important questions.

Question 1. What is the American purpose in waging war against Iran? Is Washington’s purpose to destroy the Iranian state? To destroy its capability to wage war against Israel? To eliminate Iran’s developing nuclear capability? Or to decapitate the Iranian state in the hope that the Iranian people will overthrow their national government? 

All these goals demand serious study and analysis. In some cases, they overlap; in others they do not. The answers require identifying resources, manpower, capabilities, and the time needed to achieve these goals. 

It is obvious that America’s air and naval forces will have to deliver powerful disabling strikes through dense Iranian air and missile defenses while potentially defending themselves and American military bases against attacks by Iranian and allied forces in the region. How long can these forces operate before their stocks of munitions are exhausted and their human and materiel losses are replaced? 

Based on these answers, the stated objectives may or may not be attainable. National political and military leaders habitually plan and organize to achieve short, decisive outcomes, but wars always last longer than anticipated.

Question 2. How will U.S. military power achieve the objectives? 

What is the right mix of weapon systems and munitions? What targets promise effects that profoundly shape Iran’s ability to fight? In the aftermath of the Second World War, studies of bombing effectiveness revealed that the most important contribution air power made to Germany’s defeat was the destruction of Germany’s fuel production and the transportation network to move it. Its second-most important contribution was to cause German air forces to defend Germany’s cities and industries, thus stripping the German army of its close air support. But thousands of tons of bombs were still dropped on thousands of targets with minimal impact on the German war machine. 

Can air and missile power alone compel the Iranian State to submit to Israeli and American demands? To date, no amount of precision-strike forces linked to space-based and terrestrial, persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities has delivered victory in war. 

The Kosovo air campaign inflicted enormous damage on the Serbian economy, but its impact on Serbian ground forces was minimal. Yet once Moscow withdrew its promise of energy and food support to the Serbian people, the destruction of power plants and civilian and commercial infrastructure did induce the Serbian leadership to remove its forces from Kosovo. 

Read the full article here.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 19:40

Fiat Everything: When Decree Replaced Reality

Authored by Josh Stylman via The Brownstone Institute,

We live in a world where every essential human need—money, food, health, education, and even information—is controlled and manipulated by artificial systems. This matrix of artifice began with central bankers creating fiat currency: declaring something’s value, enforcing its use, and creating dependency. This template manufactured scarcity where none naturally exists, ensuring reliance on their systems. We see this pattern everywhere: money created from nothing yet always in short supply, abundant food made artificially scarce, natural healing rebranded as ‘alternative,’ wisdom replaced by credentials.

The Money Matrix

The Federal Reserve conjures currency through debt monetization, each new dollar stealing value from every existing one. Through inflation, they silently rob almost all of your savings, turning your productive energy into their power. In 1913, a solid month’s work could buy a fine suit. Today it barely covers a week’s groceries. The labor didn’t change—the money did. Fiat currency itself is a kind of enforced dependency. Since the gold standard was abandoned in 1971, there has been no limit on their monetary manipulation.

This isn’t just about currency—it’s about energy harvesting. Banks create money through keystrokes, then demand repayment in real human time and labor. When the Fed printed $6 trillion in 2020, they didn’t create value—they diluted every dollar in your savings account. It’s modern financial alchemy: transforming your productivity into their power. As Brownstone’s Jeffrey Tucker aptly puts it, ‘The Federal Reserve is the engine of one of the most sophisticated forms of theft in the history of mankind.’

As central banks race to implement Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), promising convenience while building the architecture for total financial surveillance, the endgame becomes clear. Hard money—constrained by natural or mathematical limits—can’t be summoned into existence. Gold and silver face physical extraction constraints. Bitcoin is hard-capped at 21 million coins. Land cannot be added to the map. Even these aren’t perfect, but they share one critical feature: they cannot be created like monopoly money by central planners. These limitations mean true value is earned, not fabricated, which is why they’re attacked—they can’t be inflated away.

Just as the financial system shapes our economic reality through artificial scarcity, the information landscape engineers our perception through concentrated control.

The News Nexus

Six corporations control 90% of media outlets, down from 50 companies in 1983. Further exacerbating this consolidation, it’s not about false stories—it’s about manufacturing false reality and engineering social division. Fiat currency has created a fiat news system, where the same principles apply: declare something, repeat it, enforce it, and it enters the consciousness of the masses. The illusion of media choice masks concentrated ownership: BlackRock and Vanguard are top shareholders in every major media company (incidentally, they own the major banks too). The same firms own shares in defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and the very corporations making headlines.

As former CBS News president Richard Salant admitted, “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”

By slicing society into endless opposing camps—left vs right, black vs white, vaxxed vs unvaxxed—they ensure people keep fighting each other instead of looking up to see who’s pulling the strings.

This isn’t simply about silencing dissent but shaping belief. Remember how quickly “Trust the science” became “Don’t question authority”? How “Two weeks to flatten the curve” became two years of shifting goalposts? Even the most trusting citizens began noticing the narrative management.

The Information Factory doesn’t just control what you see—it shapes how you think about what you see. Content curation algorithms create echo chambers while coordinated messaging manufactures the illusion of consensus. Media outlets are owned by corporations dependent on government contracts and regulated by the agencies they report on. When you follow the money—from pharmaceutical ads to defense contractor ownership—you see that they’re not reporting on the system; they are the system.

The manipulation of information serves as a precursor to perhaps the most devastating expression of centralized power—the machinery of endless war.

The Banker’s War Machine

War is the ultimate racket, and bankers have perfected it since the Napoleonic Wars. Create the conflict, fund all participants, profit from the destruction, and then finance the reconstruction. The same financial interests collect blood money regardless of who “wins.”

The military-industrial complex needs endless enemies to justify endless spending. When one boogeyman falls, they manufacture another. They don’t sell weapons—they sell fear. Each missile launched represents schools not built, hospitals not funded, communities not supported. The people always pay, while bankers collect the dividends.

They call it “foreign policy”—it’s really population control and resource theft. They destroy independent nations that dare create their own money systems or trade outside their control while calling it “spreading democracy.” Young people die in foreign lands while suit-wearing vultures redraw maps around oil fields and trade routes. Look at Ukraine: BlackRock is already planning the “reconstruction,” buying up land and resources while people die. 

While physical warfare destroys bodies, the credentialing system wages a quieter battle for minds, determining who can speak with authority and what truths are deemed acceptable.

The Credential Cartel

We’ve created a class of experts who mistake institutional approval for wisdom. The average medical student graduates with $241,600 in debt—how likely are they to challenge a system they’re indebted to? Fiat education produces fiat expertise, reliant on institutional validation instead of true understanding. Studies show that medical education frequently emphasizes pharmaceutical interventions, while lifestyle and dietary approaches receive comparatively little attention. When PhDs questioned lockdown policies, they were silenced while social media companies became overnight “public health experts.

The student loan crisis reveals the scam: $1.7 trillion in debt while real wages for graduates have stagnated. Real expertise comes from results, not degrees. A farmer who grows nutrient-dense food understands health better than many nutritionists. A mechanic who fixes engines grasps complex systems better than many economists. Theory without practice is just sophisticated guessing. Their degrees don’t measure intelligence—they measure obedience. The longer you stay in their system, the harder it becomes to see beyond it.

The same institutional capture that turns education into indoctrination extends into healthcare, where healing wisdom is replaced by patented interventions.

The Medical Matrix

They’ve transformed medicine from healing art to subscription service. Purdue Pharma made $35 billion selling OxyContin while calling addiction “pseudoaddiction” requiring higher doses. The FDA approves synthetic THC while natural plants are federally illegal, despite legalization in some states. The difference? One can be patented. Here again, fiat principles: replace the natural with the engineered, at a steep price. 

The corruption is measurable: The pharmaceutical industry has faced substantial financial penalties over the past two decades due to various legal violations. Among the most significant cases are:

• Pfizer: $2.3 billion in 2009, for illegal marketing of prescription drugs.
• Johnson & Johnson: $2.2 billion in 2013, for promoting drugs for unapproved uses and providing kickbacks.
• GlaxoSmithKline: $3 billion in 2012, for the illegal marketing of drugs and failing to report safety concerns. Collectively, these settlements contribute to a broader total of over $122 billion in penalties imposed on pharmaceutical companies since 2000. Yet, these fines are just a cost of doing business—a small price to pay in exchange for untouchable influence over human health. Meanwhile, insulin costs have risen 1,200% since 1996 despite no significant changes to this century-old drug.

These same companies now claim exclusive authority over human health, hooking children on SSRIs instead of teaching them to process emotions naturally. Natural healing—through sunlight, clean food, movement, and rest—gets labeled “alternative” while synthetic drugs become standard care. Your body’s innate healing power becomes suspect while their patented molecules become essential. Our bodies know how to recover when we remove the obstacles.

The medicalization of health represents just one front in a broader war against natural systems—one that extends to our most basic needs for nourishment.

The War on Natural Vitality

Look at their war on our most nutrient-dense traditional foods: They demonize meat and butter—the very foods that built our brains and sustained humanity for millennia. Dr. Weston Price’s extensive research of indigenous populations in the 1930s documented zero instances of modern chronic diseases among groups eating their traditional diets, finding rates of dental caries less than 1% and virtually no heart disease. Yet they push processed soy patties and lab-grown protein while attacking regenerative grazing that could heal our planet.

Raw milk, nature’s perfect food, becomes “dangerous” the moment it leaves the cow. Despite regulatory opposition, demand has surged, with buying clubs and small farmers facing scrutiny and even armed raids for selling fresh milk. This once-simple food choice has turned political, embraced by those questioning government authority, while ultra-processed ‘milk alternatives’ made from water and seed oils flood supermarket shelves.

Even the sun, the source of all life on Earth, has been turned into an enemy. Instead of teaching proper sun exposure for optimal vitamin D, they push chemical sunscreens that disrupt hormones and poison coral reefs.

As our connection to natural systems is severed, we’re ushered into an artificial realm that promises connection while delivering isolation.

The Digital Prison

The path to our current isolation was carefully engineered. First, they separated us physically—”Just stay 6 feet apart.” Then they confined us—”Just stay home.” Finally, they sold us the ultimate fiat substitute: the metaverse—where digital avatars replace human touch. Ironically, as social connection grows artificial, real human presence becomes rarer.

As someone who spent two decades as a technologist, I know these tools are powerful and should be universally accessible to all. The issue isn’t technology itself—it’s whether it’s deployed to centralize or decentralize power. Like electricity, which can power a community or an electric fence, digital tools can either connect and empower people or surveil and control them. The question isn’t the technology—it’s who controls it and how it’s used.

We’ve become alone together—constantly surrounded yet deeply alone. Meta’s own research shows Instagram makes body image issues worse for 32% of teen girls. Average screen time has skyrocketed to over 7 hours daily in 2023, while rates of depression doubled. We broadcast our lives to strangers while avoiding eye contact with neighbors. We share our deepest thoughts with algorithms while struggling to have real conversations. We’re drowning in communication while starving for communion.

Yes, virtual worlds can be fun escapes—there’s joy in games and digital play. But the metaverse isn’t just entertainment—it’s an attempt to replace reality itself with an artificial construct they control. A thousand TikTok friends can’t replace one real conversation. A million likes can’t substitute for one genuine hug.

We’re bioelectric beings who literally resonate with each other. Human proximity affects our:

• Heart rate variability

• Brain wave patterns

• Hormone production

• Immune system function

• Emotional well-being

They fear real human connection because it breaks their control matrix. When people gather, share stories, and exchange energy, the programming breaks down.

The Path to Liberation

The implementation starts locally: If you live in an urban area, join or start a food-buying club. If you have access to farmers, buy directly from them. Create a neighborhood skill-sharing network where people teach what they know—from food preservation to basic repair skills. Start a community garden or join an existing CSA. Build relationships with like-minded neighbors. Each small step builds resilience and weakens dependency on artificial systems.

The beautiful truth is that every artificial system has a natural counterpart that sets us free. Artificial systems rely on your participation, belief, and, ultimately, obedience. Their money only has value if we believe in it. Their authority only has power if we accept it. Their narratives only work if we consume them.

The solution isn’t complex:

• Build real friendships
• Share real meals
• Have real conversations
• Create real community
• Exchange real value
• Trust natural law

No one returns to fiat systems once they’ve experienced the real thing. You don’t go back to processed food after tasting nature’s abundance. You don’t trust fiat currency once you understand sound money. You don’t accept artificial authority once you’ve found your own sovereignty.

The revolution isn’t coming—it’s here. Every garden is a rebellion against their food system. Every bitcoin is a rebellion against their money system. Every real conversation is a rebellion against their control system. Every home cook is a rebellion against their processed food empire. Every parent teaching real history is a rebellion against their education system. Every local market is a rebellion against their corporate monopolies. Every neighborhood gathering is a rebellion against their isolation agenda.

Our ancestors thrived without fiat systems. Our descendants will view this artificial era as a dark age of manufactured limitation. The transition back to natural law isn’t just possible—it’s inevitable. Truth doesn’t need enforcement. Reality doesn’t need decree.

Your DNA remembers what your mind was programmed to forget. Freedom isn’t granted by authority—it’s your natural state.

What real thing will you choose today?

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 19:15

Archegos Capital Founder Bill Hwang Sentenced To 18 Years In Prison

Archegos Capital founder Bill Hwang was sentenced to 18 years in prison for fraud and market manipulation linked to the 2021 collapse of his $36 billion family office today.

The sentence, handed down by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York, was less than the 21 years prosecutors requested. Hwang's lawyers had argued for no prison time, according to Bloomberg.

The judge said during sentencing: “The amount of losses that were caused by your conduct are larger than any amount of losses I’ve deal with as a judge.”

Bloomberg wrote that during Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Alvin Hellerstein signaled he would impose a harsh sentence on Bill Hwang, dismissing his request for no jail time as “utterly ridiculous”.

Comparing Hwang to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who received 25 years for fraud, Hellerstein questioned: “What was worse? Mr. Bankman-Fried’s fraud or Mr. Hwang’s fraud?”

Hwang’s lawyer, Dani James, adjusted her request to a four-to-five-year sentence, citing his charitable work and modest lifestyle, though the judge was skeptical, noting his luxury apartment in Hudson Yards. Hwang briefly expressed regret, thanking supporters and asking for a sentence that would allow him to continue serving society.

Prosecutor Andrew Thomas called for a tougher sentence, highlighting Hwang’s prior insider trading conviction with Tiger Asia in 2012. The judge acknowledged Hwang’s history and dismissed claims that his actions at Archegos didn’t directly cause banks' losses.

Bloomberg noted that Archegos’ case stood out as the victims were mainly Wall Street banks. Hwang’s lawyers argued the banks knowingly took risks for lucrative fees, but Judge Hellerstein barred a “blame the victim” defense, a key issue in Hwang’s planned appeal.

The jury found Hwang misled banks about Archegos’ holdings, claiming large stakes in tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, while actually concentrating in a few illiquid stocks like ViacomCBS.

As Reuters noted earlier this year, Archegos faced crippling margin calls in March 2021 due to falling stock prices. This, in turn, led to significant losses for Archegos and its lenders, including Credit Suisse and Nomura Holdings.

Hwang and CFO Patrick Halligan, charged with racketeering conspiracy and multiple counts of fraud and market manipulation, had pleaded not guilty.

At trial, they contested the prosecutors' claims of market manipulation, which some legal experts viewed as a challenging case for the government.

Hwang was arrested in April 2022 and charged with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to manipulate the share prices of public companies in order to boost profits. He was then released on $100 million bail. 

According to the 40-page indictment, Hwang engaged in a "fraudulent scheme" that included "interlocking deceptive acts and misconduct, through false and misleading statements to security-based swap ("SBS") counterparties and prime brokers and manipulative trading designed to artificially move the market, which, in tandem, increased Archegos’s assets under management from around $4 billion to over $36 billion in just under six months."

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 18:50

Here's Why Asian Americans Shifted Right

Authored by Neetu Arnold via RealClearPolitics,

The 2024 election season featured an unprecedented number of Asian Americans, from Vivek Ramaswamy’s rise in the Republican primary to soon-to-be second lady Usha Vance, to the Democratic candidate herself, Kamala Harris. Just a few years ago, this would have been a cause for celebration on the political left: Asian Americans have reliably voted for Democrats for decades. But the election results revealed that racial and ethnic minorities are not as loyal to the Democratic Party as previously believed. Much like Hispanics, Asian American voters made a major shift to the right.

Nationally, 2020 and 2024 exit polls from the Washington Post show a 9-point shift to the Republicans in the presidential race among Asian American voters relative to 2020. In some states, such as Nevada and Texas, the polls suggest that Trump won the Asian American vote outright. The NBC News exit poll found a 5-point shift to the right nationally among Asian Americans relative to 2020. And in their survey of Asian American voters prior to the election, Asian Americans Advancing Justice saw a 7-point shift away from the Democrats relative to 2020.

Exit polls are far from perfect measures of voting behavior, though. A spokesperson for APIAVote, a group that focuses on encouraging Asian American political engagement, pointed out when asked for comment that the exit polls may not be a “representative sample of the Asian American electorate.” For instance, the exit polls were not conducted in any Asian languages, which would preclude some Asian American voters with poor English skills from participating.

My analysis of precinct-level voting data in four major urban areas shows that the exit polls may actually be understating the degree to which Asian Americans shifted to the right. Using census data, I identified majority-Asian precincts in these areas and compared the Republican margin of victory (or loss) between the 2024 and 2020 elections. The results are much more stark: Majority-Asian precincts in New York City, for instance, saw a rightward shift of 31 percentage points. Precincts in Dallas and Fort Bend counties in Texas both saw rightward shifts between 17 and 20 points. And precincts in Chicago saw a 23-point shift to the right.

If the rightward shift among Asian American voters is real and significant, what is behind it?

When asked, neither APIAVote nor Asian Americans Advancing Justice were able to provide an explanation. But several Republican-leaning Asian American voters I spoke with were not surprised by the shift.

“I had so many [South] Asians, who are registered Democrats, let me know specifically that they voted for TRUMP this year,” South Asian Coalition Chairwoman for New Jersey’s Republican Party Priti Pandya-Patel said. “I believe most were always ‘closet Republicans’ and now they are starting to come out.”

The economy

The voters I spoke with repeatedly mentioned a few key reasons why they and others they knew voted for Trump this election. The first was a dissatisfaction with the Democrats’ handling of the economy, particularly inflation.

“Many of us expressed discontent towards Biden’s energy policies that skyrocketed the costs of grocery prices and gas prices,” Nevada voter Lisa Noeth said. “Las Vegas specifically is like an island in the middle of the desert, the increase of fuel costs trickled down to the pockets of consumers at the grocery stores with goods being transported from California to Las Vegas.”

Rudy Pamintuan, chief of staff for Nevada’s lieutenant governor, said inflation was tough on Asian American entrepreneurs. “Many households had to take an extra part-time job to make ends meet.”

The data backs up Noeth and Pamintuan’s perceptions. John Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said economic-related concerns, healthcare, and housing costs were some of the top issues the organization found in its 2024 survey of Asian Americans. And a July AAPI Data survey indicated that Asian Americans thought Republicans had a slight edge on handling inflation over Democrats.

Public safety

While voters across all racial and ethnic lines felt the impacts of inflation, Asian Americans grew dissatisfied with poor Democratic leadership on crime and safety in major cities. As disorder grew after the pandemic, Asian Americans soured on Democrats as they watched their quality of life decrease. Asra Nomani, author of “Woke Army,” said many Asian Americans felt “unprotected amid rising violence and harassment.”

In New York City, a 2023 survey found substantial portions of Asian Americans adopted some kind of “avoidance behavior” to deal with crime – 48% avoided going out late at night, and 41% avoided taking public transportation. Meanwhile, Democrat-run city governments have taken more relaxed approach to handling crime, even spending thousands of dollars to protect criminals by humanizing them as “justice-impacted individuals.”

“You only understand what you signed up for after they [Democrats] win and you have to put up with crime and squalor,” Pennsylvania voter Teesta Dasgupta said.

Asian Americans increasingly oppose soft-on-crime policies. The majority of Asian Americans in California supported the passage of Proposition 36, which imposes harsher penalties for certain types of crimes. A disproportionate Asian American voter base also recalled former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who infamously declined to prosecute the murder of an elderly Thai immigrant as a hate crime and instead chalked it up to a “temper tantrum” of the perpetrator.

‘Wrong side of brown’

Asian American voters also told me that they were turned off by the Democrats’ racial equity policies. The Democratic Party heavily leaned into racial equity following George Floyd’s death and the riots that followed in 2020. Democrats made bold promises to reduce racial disparities in economic and other outcomes, arguing that current racial disparities are the result of decades of systemic discrimination that must be addressed. However, race-conscious policies like affirmative action often ended up pitting Asian Americans against other minority groups. For many Asian Americans, they end up on the “wrong side of brown,” as Nomani puts it.

Noeth told me that Asian American parents were “fed up” with affirmative action policies in school admissions. Sue Ghosh Stricklett, a former Trump administration appointee, said the Harvard affirmative action case and the removal of merit-based admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia both “ignited passionate activism” among Asian American parents. In Fairfax County, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology changed its merit-based admissions policy in a bid to “decrease the representation of Asian Americans” in favor of other racial minorities.

“The injustice of being labeled as ‘privileged,’ ‘selfish,’ ‘cheaters,’ ‘overrepresented,’ ‘white adjacent,’ and ‘resource hoarders’ hurt very deeply,” Nomani, who is also a parent of a Thomas Jefferson graduate, said. It led to “political mobilization and a reconsideration of long-standing political loyalties.”

Is this a permanent shift?

According to the Asian Americans I spoke with, many factors will determine if the momentum remains.

Kenny Xu, author of “An Inconvenient Minority,” believes the growth to the right is limited.

“There is a definite ceiling in Asian American rightward support due to their highly educated demographics, and the tendency of highly educated people to vote Left.”

Dasgupta believes growth is dependent on messaging.

“If Dems move to the center, Asian Americans stay where they are right now but if the allegiance to gender ideology and soft on crime remains then they [Asian Americans] will move right.”

Pamintuan says engagement with Asian American voters “could make a difference between winning or losing” in tight races, particularly at the local level.

Time will tell if Asian Americans will fully shift right. But an alliance is emerging. And both Democrats and Republicans should pay attention.

Neetu Arnold is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute and a Young Voices contributor. Follow her on X @neetu_arnold

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 18:25

"Solar Powerhouse" China Is Leading Asia's Green Energy Movement

If you're trying to implement green energy solutions in Asia, chances are you're going to need to rely on China one way or another. 

Southeast Asia’s demand for renewable energy is rising, driven by tech manufacturing and data center growth, according to Nikkei. Solarvest, the region's leading renewable energy provider, plans to capitalize on this boom by increasing imports from China, according to a local manager.

That manager told Nikkei: "We aim to invest more in the next couple of years. Buying equipment and components from Chinese suppliers, who have mastered the supply chain and solar tech, gives us the best opportunity to generate green energy with a price that is low enough to compete against fossil fuels."

Through its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has extended its influence over power infrastructure in countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Pakistan. However, the U.S. has criticized China for subsidizing manufacturers and underpricing goods, leading to tariffs and trade barriers.

The Nikkei report says that despite U.S. opposition, China maintains an edge with economies of scale and growing climate urgency. Solar energy, seen as the most accessible renewable source, attracted $500 billion in investment in 2024, surpassing all other energy types, according to the International Energy Agency.

Offshore wind projects take over eight years to complete, while solar plants can be built in under two, making solar a faster choice for companies transitioning to renewables, industry leaders told Nikkei.

This urgency is especially pronounced in emerging Asian economies like Malaysia and Thailand, which rely on fossil fuels but aim to attract tech giants like Apple and Google, committed to 100% renewable energy through the RE100 initiative.

China dominates the global solar energy market, housing leading players like Longi Green Energy, Tongwei, and Jinko Solar, as well as the top three inverter makers: Huawei, Sungrow, and Ginlong.

Despite efforts by the U.S. and India to localize production, China is projected to maintain over 80% of global photovoltaic manufacturing capacity by 2030, with its solar products costing 20-30% less than competitors, according to the IEA.

Analysts attribute China's edge to its economic scale, advanced technology, and cost efficiency. Even as countries impose trade barriers to curb dependence on Chinese products, demand for China’s affordable solar solutions remains strong globally.

Companies like Foxconn highlight that Chinese solar energy rivals fossil fuels in cost, driving its adoption worldwide, particularly in markets eager to expand renewable energy capacity.

China’s dominance in solar wasn’t always guaranteed. In the 2000s, Japanese and Taiwanese firms led the photovoltaic industry, but China’s massive scale and government subsidies allowed it to outpace competitors.

Now, China controls over 90% of the solar supply chain, from polysilicon production to module manufacturing.

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 18:00

Indian Billionaire Gautam Adani Indicted For 'Massive Fraud' And 'Multi-Billion Dollar' Bribery Scheme

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has been indicted in New York for 'massive fraud' and a 'multi-billion dollar' bribery scheme, according to multiple reports Wednesday afternoon. 

According to NBC, Gautam Adani and others are accused of paying over $250 million in bribes to Indian officials to secure solar energy contracts expected to yield $2 billion in profits over 20 years. Prosecutors allege Adani personally met with officials as part of the scheme.

Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and Vneet Jaain, both Adani Green Energy executives, also face wire and securities fraud charges for misleading U.S. investors and lenders to obtain funding, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn stated.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace commented: "The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors."

A DOJ press release reads: “These offenses were allegedly committed by senior executives and directors to obtain and finance massive state energy supply contracts through corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.  The Criminal Division will continue to aggressively prosecute corrupt, deceptive, and obstructive conduct that violates U.S. law, no matter where in the world it occurs.” 

“Gautam S. Adani and seven other business executives allegedly bribed the Indian government to finance lucrative contracts designed to benefit their businesses. Adani and other defendants also defrauded investors by raising capital on the basis of false statements about bribery and corruption, while still other defendants allegedly attempted to conceal the bribery conspiracy by obstructing the government’s investigation,” stated FBI Assistant Director in Charge Dennehy.  “The FBI maintains its steadfast mission to expose all corrupt agreements, especially with international governments, and protect investors from related harm.”

The indictment also charges former Azure Power executives Ranjit Gupta and Rupash Agarwal, along with three ex-employees of Canadian investor Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as part of Adani's bribery scheme.

U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research issued a report in early 2023 claiming Adani Group conducted a "brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades." Hindenburg called Adani Group "the largest con in corporate history". 

"Today we reveal the findings of our 2-year investigation, presenting evidence that the INR 17.8 trillion (US $218 billion) Indian conglomerate Adani Group has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades," the report said in 2023. 

Adani "has amassed a net worth of roughly $120 billion, adding over $100 billion in the past 3 years largely through stock price appreciation in the group's 7 key listed companies, which have spiked an average of 819% in that period," the report said. 

Bloomberg provided a quick snapshot of Hindenburg's main allegations at the time, many of which haven't even been addressed in this indictment (yet?):

• Identified 38 Mauritius shell entities controlled by Adani's brother, Vinod Adani, or his close associates plus entities controlled by him in other tax havens.
• The offshore shell network seems to be used for earnings manipulation
• Adani Group has previously been the focus of 4 major government investigations relating to allegations of fraud
• Adani Enterprises and Adani Total Gas Ltd. appear to be audited by a tiny firm, with no current website, only 4 partners and 11 employees which has audited just one other listed firm
• The auditor "hardly seems capable of complex audit work" when Adani Enterprises alone has 156 subsidiaries and many more joint ventures.

Hindenburg's Nathan Anderson

Hindenburg's report initially led to a $50 billion selloff in Adani's corporate empire. Adani, in response, called Hindenburg's short report "bogus" and threatened legal action. At the time, Adani Group's legal team released a statement that said it was exploring legal action against Hindenburg for its "maliciously mischievous, unresearched" report.

Then, Dan McCrum, famous for helping unveil the fraud at Wirecard, followed up in late 2023 stating Adani "appears to have imported billions of dollars of coal at prices well above market value".

Adani called McCrum's article a "renewed attempt" by the paper to "rehash old and baseless allegations to tarnish the name and standing" of the company. At the time they denied any wrongdoing and said the story was based on an “old, baseless allegation”, and is “a clever recycling and selective misrepresentation of publicly available facts and information”.

"Adani is attacking journalist Dan McCrum at the Financial Times (FT) over an upcoming article," Hindenburg's Anderson wrote late last year after Adani's press release. "The last company that tried that was Wirecard, later found to be the largest fraud in German history."

Tyler Durden Wed, 11/20/2024 - 17:40