Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation.
Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds
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Site: AsiaNews.itNot even pro-Beijing trade unions are marching for workers' rights fearing 'unrest'. All the attention is on mainland tourists, for whom the city (weather permitting) will launch a new cycle of fireworks displays at the port with an unprecedented budget.
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Site: LifeNews
The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Idaho/Moyle v. United States regarding Biden’s Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) guidance, a transparent attempt to use existing federal laws to force physicians to perform abortions, especially in states with pro-life protections. As a board-certified obstetrician, I have practiced under EMTALA for over 30 years, and it has never been confusing to me or to any of my peers. We know the purpose of the law is to protect the health of mothers and their unborn children, and that is every obstetrician’s mission, as well.
The Biden administration has disregarded EMTALA’s plain text, which intends to prevent “patient dumping” and requires evaluation, stabilization, and (if necessary) transfer to another medical facility when an “emergency medical condition” places the health of the woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.
The administration’s guidance never mentions the unborn child, implying the child’s needs are not a priority. It requires a provider to perform an abortion “if it is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve the medical emergency,” even though EMTALA does not specify the treatment or stabilization physicians must administer but allows them to use their medical judgment to determine the best course of action. The Charlotte Lozier Institute argued these and other points that undermine the administration’s case with great detail in their amicus brief filed in support of the state of Idaho.
If a pregnancy complication poses a risk to a mother’s life, every state in the country allows the physician to intervene. These laws allow physicians to use their “reasonable” or “good faith” medical judgment to determine when to intervene in an emergency. There is no requirement that a threat be immediate, only foreseeable.
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Physicians spend years developing that judgment in school and practice. While we can’t always predict the risk’s severity, we do know which complications can threaten a woman’s life and when to intervene. We don’t wait until a woman is dying but discuss treatment options with a woman and her family when the diagnosis is made, so that we can prevent her from becoming seriously ill.
This is why I was frustrated by some of the conversations between the solicitor general and some of the left-leaning justices when they discussed complex medical scenarios as overly simplified hypotheticals, assuming that physicians can predict with certainty whether a complication would kill a woman or “merely” cause serious damage to an organ system, implying that Idaho law allows intervention in one scenario but not in the other. Based on their clinical experience and their knowledge of the peer-reviewed literature, physicians have the skills to make judgment calls, and no law is preventing them from doing so. Hospitals usually have protocols to assist physicians in their decision making and to support them in their actions.
We’ve seen news articles highlight women injured in pregnancy emergencies because physicians were afraid to intervene following the Dobbs decision. These actions are not the fault of the laws, which clearly allow intervention. Abortion advocates (including the leadership of some medical organizations) have sown confusion and fear to turn Americans against pro-life laws and expand abortion. These cynical tactics unfortunately have impacted how some physicians practice medicine. This can be remedied by calling on medical organizations to provide more guidance, but some ideologically driven medical organizations have refused to offer it.
Like approximately 90% of obstetricians, I do not perform elective abortions, and most hospital systems do not provide them. Yet I have always felt empowered to intervene if a pregnancy emergency threatened my patient’s life, and I have seen my peers do the same, usually by inducing labor or, in rare circumstances, through cesarean section delivery.
Even in life-threatening situations, abortion is rarely, if ever, necessary. I’ve delivered over 5,000 babies and I have never had to perform an abortion, even though there have been times I have needed to deliver a child to protect his or her mother. Regrettably, the child does not always survive.
I have found the caring approach of perinatal palliative care – a multi-disciplinary, coordinated care strategy, focused on relieving suffering and honoring the life of the unfortunate child – to be preferred in this situation. I’ve never had a mother express a preference for a D&E abortion over induction. When the tragic loss of a desired baby occurs, the mother wants the baby’s body treated with respect and usually will want the chance to say “goodbye,” to hold the child, and bury him or her. This supportive care assists the family in their grief.
The administration’s blatant attempt to highjack a law to promote a pro-abortion agenda should be recognized for the ideological maneuver it is. The Supreme Court should recognize and rebut this cynical misuse of power, and reaffirm the fact that Idaho has the right to protect the lives of all its citizens, including the unborn.
LifeNews Note: Ingrid Skop, M.D., FACOG, is vice president and director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
The post OBGYN Confirms Abortion is Not Health Care, All Pregnant Women Get Care Under Abortion Bans appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT, has provided a forensic analysis of the videos and evidence emerging from Iran’s 13th April swarm drone and missile “demonstation” attack into Israel: A “message,” rather than an “assault.”
The leading Israeli daily, Yediot Ahoronot, has estimated the cost of attempting to down this Iranian flotilla at between $2-3 billion dollars. The implications of this single number are substantial.
Professor Postol writes:
This indicates that the cost of defending against waves of attacks of this type is very likely to be unsustainable against an adequately armed and determined adversary.
The videos show an extremely important fact: All of the targets, whether drones or not, are shot down by air-to-air missiles, [fired from mostly US aircraft. Some 154 aircraft reportedly were aloft at the time] likely firing AIM-9x Sidewinder air to air missiles. The cost of a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is about $500,000.Furthermore:
The fact that a very large number of unengaged ballistic missiles could be seen glowing as they reenter the atmosphere to lower altitudes [an indication of hyper-speed], indicates that whatever the effects of [Israel’s] David’s Sling and the Arrow missile defenses, they were not especially effective. Thus, the evidence at this point shows that essentially all or most of the arriving long-range ballistic missiles were not intercepted by any of the Israeli air and missile-defense systems.
Postel adds, “I have analyzed the situation, and have concluded that commercially available optical and computational technology is more than capable of being adapted to a cruise missile guidance system to give it very high precision homing capability … it is my conclusion that the Iranians have already developed precision guided cruise missiles and drones.”
The implications of this are clear. The cost of shooting down cruise missiles and drones will be very high and might well be unsustainable unless extremely inexpensive and effective anti-air systems can be implemented. At this time, no one has demonstrated a cost-effective defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles with any reliability.
Just to be clear, Postol is saying that neither the US nor Israel has more than a partial defence to a potential attack of this nature – especially as Iran has dispersed and buried its ballistic missile silos across the entire terrain of Iran under the control of autonomous units which are capable of continuing a war, even were central command and communications to be completely lost.
This amounts to paradigm change – clearly for Israel, for one. The huge physical expenditure on air defence ordinance – 2-3 billion dollars worth – will not be repeated willy-nilly by the US Netanyahu will not easily persuade the US to engage with Israel in any joint venture against Iran, given these unsustainable air-defence costs.
But also, as a second important implication, these Air Defence assets are not just expensive in dollar terms, they simply are not there: i.e. the store cupboard is near empty! And the US lacks the manufacturing capacity to replace these not particularly effective, high cost platforms speedily.
“Yes, Ukraine” … the Middle East paradigm interlinks directly with the Ukraine paradigm where Russia has succeeded in destroying so much of the western supplied, air-defence capabilities in Ukraine, giving Russia near complete air dominance over the skies.
Positioning scarce air defence “to save Israel” therefore, exposes Ukraine (and slows the US pivot to China, too). And given the recent passage of the funding Bill for Ukraine in Congress, clearly air defence assets are a priority for sending to Kiev – where the West looks increasingly trapped and rummaging for a way out that does not lead to humiliation.
But before leaving the Middle East paradigm shift, the implications for Netanyahu are already evident: He must therefore focus back to the “near enemy” – the Palestinian sphere or to Lebanon – to provide Israel with the “Great Victory” that his government craves.
In short, the “cost” for Biden of saving Israel from the Iranian flotilla which had been pre-announced by Iran to be demonstrative and not destructive nor lethal is that the White House must put-up with the corollary – an attack on Rafah. But this implies a different form of cost – an electoral erosion through exacerbating domestic tensions arising from the on-going blatant slaughter of Palestinians.
It is not just Israel that bears the weight of the Iranian paradigm shift. Consider the Sunni Arab States that have been working in various forms of collaboration (normalisation) with Israel.
In the event of wider conflict embracing Iran, clearly Israel cannot protect them – as Professor Postol so clearly shows. And can they count on the US? The US faces competing demands for its scarce Air Defences and (for now) Ukraine, and the pivot to China, are higher on the White House priority ladder.
In September 2019, the Saudi Abqaiq oil facility was hit by cruise missiles, which Postol notes, “had an effective accuracy of perhaps a few feet, much more precise than could be achieved with GPS guidance (suggesting an optical and computational guidance system, giving a very precise homing capability).”
So, after the Iranian active deterrence paradigm shift, and the subsequent Air Defence depletion paradigm shock, the putative coming western paradigm shift (the Third Paradigm) is similarly interlinked with Ukraine.
For the western proxy war with Russia centred on Ukraine has made one thing abundantly clear: this is that the West’s off-shoring of its manufacturing base has left it uncompetitive, both in simple trade terms, and secondly, in limiting western defence manufacturing capacity. It finds (post-13 April) that it does not have the Air Defence assets to go round: “saving Israel”; “saving Ukraine” and preparing for war with China.
The western maximalisation of shareholder returns model has not adapted readily to the logistical needs of the present “limited” Ukraine/Russia war, let alone provided positioning for future wars – with Iran and China.
Put plainly, this “late stage” global imperialism has been living a “false dawn”: With the economy shifting from manufacturing “things,” to the more lucrative sphere of imagining new financial products (such as derivatives) that make a lot of money quickly, but which destabilise society (through increasing disparities of wealth); and which ultimately, de-stabilise the global system itself (as the World Majority states recoil from the loss of sovereignty and autonomy that financialism entails).
More broadly, the global system is close to massive structural change. As the Financial Times warns,
the US and EU cannot embrace national-security ‘infant industry’ arguments, seize key value chains to narrow inequality, and break the fiscal and monetary ‘rules,’ while also using the IMF and World Bank – and the economics profession– to preach free-market best practice to EM ex-China. And China can’t expect others not to copy what it does. As the FT concludes, the shift to a new economic paradigm has begun. Where it will end is very much up for grabs.
“Up for grabs”: Well, for the FT the answer may be opaque, but for the Global Majority is plain enough – “We’re going back to basics”: A simpler, largely national economy, protected from foreign competition by customs barriers. Call it “old- fashioned” (the concepts have been written about for the last 200 years); yet it is nothing extreme. The notions simply reflect the flip side of the coin to Adam Smith’s doctrines, and that which Friedrich List advanced in his critique of the laissez-faire individualist approach of the Anglo-Americans.
“European leaders,” however, see the economic paradigm solution differently:
The ECB’s Panetta gave a speech echoing Mario Draghi’s call for ‘radical change’: He stated for the EU to thrive it needs a de facto national-security focused POLITICAL economy centered around: reducing dependence on foreign demand; enhancing energy security (green protectionism); advancing production of technology (industrial policy); rethinking participation in global value chains (tariffs/subsidies); governing migration flows (so higher labour costs); enhancing external security (huge funds for defence); and joint investments in European public goods (via Eurobonds … to be bought by ECB QE).
The “false dawn” boom in US financial services began as its industrial base was rotting away, and as new wars began to be promoted.
It is easy to see that the US economy now needs structural change. Its real economy has become globally uncompetitive – hence Yellen’s call on China to curb its over-capacity which is hurting western economies.
But is it realistic to think that Europe can manage a relaunch as a “defence and national security-led political economy,” as Draghi and Panetta advocate as a continuation of war with Russia? Launched from near ground zero?
Is it realistic to think that the American Security State will allow Europe to do this, having deliberately reduced Europe to economic vassalage through causing it to abandon its prior business model based on cheap energy and selling high-end engineering products to China?
This Draghi-ECB plan represents a huge structural change; one that would take a decade or two to implement and would cost trillions. It would occur too, at a time of inevitable European fiscal austerity. Is there evidence that ordinary Europeans support such radical structural change?
Why then is Europe pursuing a path that embraces huge risks – one that potentially could drag Europe into a whirlpool of tensions ending in war with Russia?
For one main reason: The EU leadership held hubristic ambitions to turn the EU into a “geo-political” empire – a global actor with the heft to join the US at Top Table. To this end, the EU unreservedly offered itself as the auxiliary of the White House Team for their Ukraine project, and acquiesced to the entry price of emptying their armouries and sanctioning the cheap energy on which the economy depended.
It was this decision that has been de-industrialising Europe; that has made what remains of a real economy uncompetitive and triggered the inflation that is undermining living standards. Falling into line with Washington’s failing Ukraine project has released a cascade of disastrous decisions by the EU.
Were this policy line to change, Europe could revert to what it was: a trading association formed of diverse sovereign states. Many Europeans would settle for that: Placing the focus on making Europe competitive again; making Europe a diplomatic actor, rather than as a military actor.
Do Europeans even want to be at the American “top table”?
Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe Indian activist, 43, started a movement that saved 445,000 acres of forests in Chhattisgarh from the establishment of 21 coal mines. Awarded the 'Green Nobel Prize' for two decades of commitment to biodiversity and the cultural identity of the Adivasi people. A battle that has become 'a model of environmental justice ninth only in India'.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe Indian activist, 43, started a movement that saved 445,000 acres of forests in Chhattisgarh from the establishment of 21 coal mines. Awarded the 'Green Nobel Prize' for two decades of commitment to biodiversity and the cultural identity of the Adivasi people. A battle that has become 'a model of environmental justice ninth only in India'.
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Site: LES FEMMES - THE TRUTH
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Site: southern orders
Pray for the day when Pope Benedict's common sense is no longer canceled but promoted by the current generation of the Hierarchy and all clergy and laity!
I pray for the day when TC is repealed by a future pope and the pope sets into motion once again Pope Benedict’s vision for a third Roman Missal which will be “renewal in continuity” also known as the “hermeneutic of continuity”.Until that day arrives, I remain miffed that those in the “New Liturgical Movement” aren’t promoting the reform of the reform of the Modern Missal by “reading the black and doing the red.”
There also needs to be a renewed emphasis on traditional piety and devotion during Mass as well as demanding that bishops and priests stop ad-libbing any part of the Mass and to keep their mouth shut when they are tempted to become chatty at any point in the Mass. They must be told that their chattiness at any part of the Mass is destructive to the trajectory of prayer, contemplation and mysticism. If it were done in the Ancient Latin Mass, that chattiness would destroy liturgical prayer too!
Bishops and priests must be trained to “read only the black and do the red”! That will go a long way in implementing the Modern Roman Missal as Vatican II envisioned it within generalities!
Apart from that, these things must be recovered:
1. Gregorian Chant for the propers of the Mass, introit, offertory and Communion antiphons
2. A recovery of the style and ethos of chanting the Mass
3. A recovery of distinctions in the style of the Mass, with the concepts of Low, High and Solemn High and what all that means
4. A recovery of kneeling for Holy Communion
5. A recovery of sacred silence while liturgical action is occurring not independent of it
6. A recovery of ad orientem at least for the Liturgy of the Eucharist
7. A recovery of appreciation and promotion of liturgies of the Church with more than a 1,000 year tradition
8. Overcoming the Balkanization of the Liturgy by language and culture thus dividing Catholics even in the same parish rather than uniting them!
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Cars Used to Make Us Happy
Paul Craig Roberts
I attended a classic car show recently and realized why my generation was so happy compared to the current ones. Cars in those days were beautiful and the muscle car element had glorious sounds. Beginning in 1954 but especially with the advent of the 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air coup and Ford Fairlane coup you were looking at beauty enhanced by two-tone paint jobs. Some were a combination of pastels. Others were combinations of strong colors–red and black, yellow and black, red and white, and some were a combination of a strong color and a pastel–navy blue and French blue, pink and black.
In 1955 Chevrolet brought back the V-8 for its cars, and it was a performer. A stock ’55 Chevy V-8 was a match for our souped up 1950 Ford flatheads. What you could do to that 55 Chevy V-8 was something else.
So many of the cars, not only Chevrolets and Fords, but also Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Dodges had beautiful two-tone paint jobs and delightful styling. The cars also offered wonderful visibility. You could see where you were going, backing up, and what was on either side. For us what constituted safety was visibility, good brakes, and maneuverability.
The mid to late 60s into 1972-73 was the muscle car era. The cars had appealing design as they were designed by designers and not by safety bureaucrats. Some of the colors were outrageous–plum crazy purple, bright lime green, triple black, orange. Such outstanding colors usually indicated potent performance. How fast were the muscle cars of a half century ago?
Very. Plymouth Barracudas, Superbirds, Dusters, Roadrunners, Dodge Daytonas, Chargers, Ford Torinos, Oldsmobile Cutlasses, 442s, Pontaic GTOs, Firebirds, Chevrolet Chevelles, Cameros could compete in quarter mile times with the supercar of the era, a Lamborghini Miura S (1970). The muscle cars would leave in the dust James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, Ferrari’s 250 GT Lusso, and even beat fast cars from 20 and 30 years later such as the Lotus Esprit Turbo (1988) and Subaru’s 2001 WRX.
Moreover, a muscle car could be souped up to high heaven. Some of them run 9 and 10 second quarter mile times, which beats the entire range of today’s supercars, such as Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Corvettes, and Shelby Mustangs. Not many of the souped up muscle cars from a half century ago can beat the present day Dodge Demon, but they can run with it.The thing about muscle cars is that they were so fast that you didn’t need to soup them up like you did a 1950s Ford flathead or a 55 Chevy.
Muscle cars date from the days of 30 cents per gallon gasoline, and in those days it was 100 octane. The combination of low purchase cost (a Plymouth Barracuda with a Hemi engine cost $4,000), operating cost, style, and performance made them a deal that no longer exists.
Today’s cars are loaded down with electronics and “safety” that you don’t need and that is difficult to live with and costly. If the tire pressure in my safe car drops from 32 to 31 on come warning lights and notices on my screen. You have to go through a pointless exercise and then spend half an hour figuring out how to turn off the warning indicators.
Moreover, the accepted safety style comes from federal safety bureaucrats. Consequently, unless you can see the Mercedes star, you can’t tell one from a Toyota.
Today all cars look alike. And you have 4 color choices–white, black, gray, and a dark red. Mopar performance cars, Corvettes, and performance Mustangs are bringing back striking colors and their performance products have a striking appearance. They certainly get your attention, but they are not beautiful.
At a large car show cars from the past and present will be on display. The older cars are beautiful. The new ones are aggressive and heavy in appearance. They don’t inspire. They drive well but they don’t make you happy. They look brutish, like American foreign policy.
In my teenage years driving down a road was like driving along a rainbow. Colors everywhere. Distinctive styles with no possibility of confusing one make with another, glorious sounds if a muscle car passed you, and wonderful visibility.
All of this ended when the fools up high decided to make us safe. One of the consequences has been that we can’t see out of our cars. My safety designer car has great forward vision unless I turn left down hill. Then the massive pillar that makes me safe blocks all vision. There could be a dog, a child, a huge pothole in the road and I am unable to see it.
Rear vision depends on cameras, but they are useless when you are backing out of a parking slot in a shopping center. You can see behind you but not on your side as the enormous pillar blocks all vision. When the massive trucks of today are parked along side of you, it is a game of Russian Roulette to back out.
The emphasis on safety has homogenized car design. There is no distinction, and there are no shapes that work with two-tone paint. The modern car world is drab, and drabness produces depression.
Thus, the cost of our bureaucratic imposed safety is depression. We are mired in sameness and brutal shapes.
When did you last see a happy American?
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
McCarthyism Returns in a New Guise
The Israel Lobby rules the US government and US universities.
If you oppose genocide you are an anti-semitic Jew-hater.
Michael Hudson explains
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Another Consequence of Globalism
The avocados and berries are for export.
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Does Biden’s Campaign Depend on a Taylor Swift Endorsement?
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Site: Mises InstituteAlthough mainstream economists hold that Adam Smith is the father of modern economics, it was Richard Cantillon that recognized the centrality of entrepreneurship in economic development.
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusWhen an American pilgrim visits the ancient cities of Italy today, he may easily fail to realize that his own country is older than the modern state of Italy by nearly a century. From the fall of the Roman Empire until the mid-19th century, the Italian peninsula was divided into many countries, of varying size and importance, and the Pope himself ruled a fairly large one, with Rome as its capitalGregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeBig Government's Crackdown On Hedge Fund Home-Buying LoomsTyler Durden Tue, 04/30/2024 - 06:55
"I strongly support free markets," but this "corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home," Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote on X in March. He added, "This must be added to the legislative agenda to protect Texas families."
I strongly support free markets.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 15, 2024
But this corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home.
This must be added to the legislative agenda to protect Texas families. https://t.co/VBs6Rluh3KInstitutional ownership of single-family homes has surged in recent years, with many firms turning the bulk of these homes into rentals. This has triggered a massive uproar with some lawmakers who want to end Wall Street's home-buying mania.
The Wall Street Journal reports that several lawmakers in Nebraska, California, New York, Minnesota, and North Carolina have sponsored bills requiring large single-family hedge fund owners to dispose of their portfolios or risk hefty fines.
The bill mentioned the most in the corporate press, called the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, was introduced in the Senate by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley with companion legislation introduced in the House by Rep. Adam Smith.
The Merkley/Smith bill could force hedge funds to divest their single-family home portfolios over the course of ten years.
Lawmakers argue that "investors that have scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are contributing to the dearth of homes for sale and driving up home prices," according to WSJ, noting that limited housing supply has made housing unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans.
Data from John Burns Research and Consulting shows that the share of institutional buying of single-family homes topped 25% in the first quarter—near a record high. The data goes back to 1Q16.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Calls to block hedge funds from buying single-family homes predominantly come from Democrats, but some conservatives, such as Texas Gov. Abbott, also show support.
In an election year, blocking hedge funds from buying single-family homes might be popular with middle-class and working-poor voters battered by the era of high inflation under failed Bidenomics. Many have been financially paralyzed in today's economy, unable to afford a home, and stuck in a doom loop of renting and no savings with maxed-out credit cards.
However, institutional investors have a different view of the bills being proposed by lawmakers. They're overwhelmingly frustrated with signs that the government could step into a free market and break something.
During a recent interview on Fox Business, Kevin O'Leary shared his stance on the proposed legislation.
"Very bad idea. Very bad policy when you try to manipulate markets or sources of capital," O'Leary said, adding, "I don't care if they're Democrats or Republicans, whoever they are, stay out of the markets. Let the markets be the markets."
The real problem isn't the hedge funds but the Federal Reserve, which has distorted markets with record-low rates over the years. Great job, Yellen/Powell.
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Site: Zero HedgeHow EU Law Has Made The Internet Less Free For Everyone ElseTyler Durden Tue, 04/30/2024 - 06:30
Authored by Mustafa Ekin Turan via The Mises Institute,
If you have been using the internet for longer than a couple of years, you might have noticed that it used to be much “freer.”
What freer means in this context is that there was less censorship and less stringent rules regarding copyright violations on social media websites such as YouTube and Facebook (and consequently a wider array of content), search engines used to often show results from smaller websites, there were less “fact-checkers,” and there were (for better or for worse) less stringent guidelines for acceptable conduct. In the last ten years, the internet’s structure and environment have undergone radical changes. This has happened in many areas of the internet; however, this article will specifically focus on the changes in social media websites and search engines.
This article will argue that changes in European Union regulations regarding online platforms played an important role in shaping the structure of the internet to the way it is today and that further changes in EU policy that will be even more detrimental to freedom on the internet may be on the horizon.
Now that readers have an idea of what “change” is referring to, we should explain in detail which EU regulations played a part in bringing it about. The first important piece of regulation we will deal with is the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market that came out in 2019. Article 17 of this directive states that online content-sharing service platforms are liable for the copyrighted content that is posted on their websites if they do not have a license for said content. To be exempt from liability, the websites must show that they exerted their best efforts to ensure that copyrighted content does not get posted on their sites, cooperated expeditiously to take the content down if posted, and took measures to make sure the content does not get uploaded again. If these websites were ever in a place to be liable for even a significant minority of the content uploaded to them, the financial ramifications would be immense.
Due to this regulation, around the same period, YouTube and many other sites strengthened their policy regarding copyrighted content, and ever since then—sometimes rightfully, sometimes wrongfully—content creators have been complaining about their videos getting flagged for copyright violations.
Another EU regulation that is of note for our topic is the Digital Services Act that came out in 2023. The Digital Services Act is a regulation that defines very large online platforms and search engines as platform sites with more than forty-five million active monthly users and places specific burdens on these sites along with the regulatory burden that is eligible for all online platforms. The entirety of this act is too long to be discussed in this article; however, some of the most noteworthy points are as follows:
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The EU Commission (the executive body of the EU) will work directly with very large online platforms to ensure that their terms of service are compatible with requirements regarding hate speech and disinformation as well as the additional requirements of the Digital Services Act. The EU Commission also has the power to directly influence the terms of conduct of these websites.
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Very large online platforms and search engines have the obligation to ban and preemptively fight against and alter their recommendation systems to discriminate against many different types of content ranging from hate speech and discrimination to anything that might be deemed misinformation and disinformation.
These points should be concerning to anyone who uses the internet. The vagueness of terms such as “hate speech” and “disinformation” allows the EU to influence the recommendation algorithms and terms of service of these websites and to keep any content that goes against their “ideals” away from the spotlight or away from these websites entirely.
Even if the issues that are discussed here were entirely theoretical, it would still be prudent to be concerned about a centralized supragovernmental institution such as the EU having this much power regarding the internet and the websites we use every day. However, as with the banning of Russia Today from YouTube, which was due to allegations of disinformation and happened around the same time the EU placed sanctions on Russia Today, we can see that political considerations can and do lead to content being banned on these sites. We currently live in a world with an almost-infinite amount of information; due to this, it would be impossible for anyone or even any institution to sift through all the data surrounding any issue and to come up with a definitive “truth” on the subject, and this is assuming that said persons or institution is unbiased on the issue and approaching it in good faith, which is rarely the case.
All of us have ways of viewing the world that filter our understanding of issues even when we have the best intentions, not to mention the fact that supranational bodies such as the EU and the EU Commission have vested political incentives and are influenced by many lobbies, which may render their decisions regarding what is the “truth” and what is “disinformation” to be faulty at best and deliberately harmful at worst. All of this is to say that in general, none of us—not even the so-called experts—can claim to know everything regarding an issue enough to make a definitive statement as to what is true and what is disinformation, and this makes giving a centralized institution the power to constitute what the truth is a very dangerous thing.
The proponents of these EU regulations argue that bad-faith actors may use disinformation to deceive the public. There is obviously some truth in this; however, one could also argue that many different actors creating and arguing their own narrative with regard to what is happening around the world are preferable to a centralized institution controlling a unified narrative of what is to be considered the “truth.”
In my scenario, even if some people are “fooled” (even though to accurately consider people to be fooled, we would have to claim that we know the definitive truth regarding a multifaceted complex issue that can be viewed from many angles), the public will get to hear many narratives about what happened and can make up their own minds.
If this leads to people being fooled by bad-faith actors, it will never be the entirety of the population. Some people will be “fooled” by narrative A, some by narrative B, some by narrative C, and so forth. However, in the current case, if the EU is or ever becomes the bad-faith actor who uses its power to champion its own narrative for political purposes, it has the power to control and influence what the entirety of the public hears and believes with regard to an issue, and that is a much more dangerous scenario than the one that would occur if we simply let the so-called wars of information be waged. The concentration of power is something that we should always be concerned about, especially when it comes to power regarding information since information shapes what people believe, and what people believe changes everything.
Another important thing to note is that just because it is the EU that makes these regulations does not change the fact that it affects everyone in the world. After all, even if someone posts a video on YouTube from the United States or from Turkey, it will still face the same terms of service. Almost everyone in the world uses Google or Bing, and the EU has power over the recommendation algorithms of these search engines. This means that the EU has the power over what information most people see when they want to learn something from the internet. No centralized institution can be trusted with this much power.
One final issue of importance is the fact that the EU is investing in new technologies such as artificial intelligence programs to “tackle disinformation” and to check the veracity of content posted online. An important example of this is the InVID project, which is in its own words “a knowledge verification platform to detect emerging stories and assess the reliability of newsworthy video files and content spread via social media.”
If you are at all worried about the state of the internet as explained in this article, know that this potential development may lead to the EU doing all of the things described here in an even more “effective” manner in the future.
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Site: non veni pacemSaint Catherine of Siena’s disputation to the traitorous Cardinals who supported an obvious antipope
(Key passages featured here, for anyone who thinks those of us speaking up for truth are somehow in sin. God forbid. Link to the whole thing at the end. Wishing you a blessed Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church. -nvp)
Dearest brothers and fathers in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood: with desire to see you turn back to the true and most perfect light, leaving the deep shadows of blindness into which you are fallen. Then you shall be fathers to me; otherwise not. Yes, indeed, I call you fathers in so far as you shall leave death and turn back to life (for, as things go now, you are parted from the life of grace, limbs cut off from your head from which you drew life), when you shall stand united in faith, and in that perfect obedience to Pope Urban VI., in which those abide who have the light, and in light know the truth, and knowing it love it…
Oh, human blindness! Seest thou not, unfortunate man, that thou thinkest to love things firm and stable, joyous things, good and fair? and they are mutable, the sum of wretchedness, hideous, and without any goodness; not as they are created things in themselves, since all are created by God, who is perfectly good, but through the nature of him who possesses them intemperately. How mutable are the riches and honours of the world in him who possesses them without God, without the fear of Him! for to-day is he rich and great, and to-day he is poor. How hideous is our bodily life, that living we shed stench from every part of our body! Simply a sack of dung, the food for worms, the food of death! …
Oh, wretched man, the darkness of self-love does not let thee know this truth. For didst thou know it, thou wouldst choose any pain rather than guide thy life in this way; thou wouldst give thee to loving and desiring Him who Is; thou wouldst enjoy His truth in firmness, and wouldst not move about like a leaf in the wind; thou wouldst serve thy Creator, and wouldst love everything in Him, and apart from Him nothing. Oh, how will this blindness be reproved at the last moment in every rational being, and much the more in those whom God has taken from the filth of the world, and assigned to the greatest excellence that can be, having made them ministers of the Blood of the humble and spotless Lamb! Oh me, oh me! what have you come to by not having followed up your dignities with virtue? …
Now you have turned your backs, like poor mean knights; your shadow has made you afraid. You have divided you from the truth which strengthens us, and drawn close to falsehood, which weakens soul and body, depriving you of temporal and spiritual grace. What made you do this? The poison of self-love, which has infected the world. That is what has made you pillars lighter than straw. Flowers you who shed no perfume, but stench that makes the whole world reek! No lights you placed in a candlestick, that you might spread the faith; but, having hidden your light under the bushel of pride, and become not extenders, but contaminators of the faith, you shed darkness over yourselves and others. You should have been angels on earth, placed to release us from the devils of hell, and performing the office of angels, by bringing back the sheep into the obedience of Holy Church, and you have taken the office of devils. That evil which you have in yourselves you wish to infect us with, withdrawing us from obedience to Christ on earth, and leading us into obedience to antichrist, a member of the devil, as you are too, so long as you shall abide in this heresy.
Ah, foolish men, worthy of a thousand deaths! As blind, you do not see your own wrong, and have fallen into such confusion that you make of your own selves liars and idolaters…
https://www.virgosacrata.com/saint-catherine-of-siena-letter.html
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe denunciation by opposition MP Eran Wickramaratne of the Sjb. The large quantities coming from India are a cause for concern. A significant part of the smuggled heroin allegedly comes from the so-called 'Golden Triangle' region in South-East Asia. The ruling class accused of ignoring the emergency (also) because of the involvement of local politicians.
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Site: Real Investment Advice
Over the last two weeks, the bullish sentiment index has reversed from extreme greed to fear. The composite net bullish sentiment index, comprised of professional and retail investors, fell from 38.15 to 9.9 in two weeks. The previous drop between July and October last year was similar and marked the bottom of the correction.
While the bullish sentiment index can indeed fall further, what is notable is the sharp reversal of market “exuberance” in such a short span. However, as discussed in “Just A Correction,” there was a significant gap between buyers and sellers.
“However, at some point, for whatever reason, this dynamic will change. Buyers will become more scarce as they refuse to pay a higher price. When sellers realize the change, they will rush to sell to a diminishing pool of buyers. Eventually, sellers will begin to “panic sell” as buyers evaporate and prices plunge.”
Like clockwork, that correction came quickly, with the market finding initial support at the 100-DMA. With solid earnings from GOOG and MSFT, the market rallied to initial resistance at the convergence of the 20- and 50-DMA. It would be unsurprising if the market failed this initial resistance test and ultimately retested the 100-DMA soon. Such a pullback would solidify that support and complete the reversal of the bullish sentiment index.
“Whatever trigger causes a reversal in the bullish signals, we will act accordingly to reduce risk and rebalance exposures. But one thing is sure: investor sentiment is extremely bullish, which has almost always been a good “bearish signal” to be more cautious.
While we have warned of a potential correction over the past few weeks, it reminds us much of June and July last year, where similar warnings for a 10% correction went unheeded. We are now seeing many individuals ‘jumping into the pool’ in some of the most speculative areas of the market. Such is usually a sign we are closer to a market peak than not. As such, we want to make adjustments before the correction comes.”
Very quickly, as supported by the bullish sentiment index, those bulls are turning bearish and are now calling for a more profound decline.
While such is possible, I suspect most of this correction is complete for two reasons.
Earnings Continue To Remain Strong
The first reason is that despite higher interest rates, earnings growth continues to remain robust, at least among the “Magnificent 7,” where Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT), in particular, exceeded estimates by a wide margin. However, overall, and most importantly, earnings growth has continued since the October lows of 2022. Notably, the support for improving earnings comes from the increased fiscal policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act.
While those policies will eventually fade, making forward estimates subject to downward revisions, the current earnings environment remains relatively robust. Furthermore, forward estimates remain optimistic that the Federal Reserve will cut rates later this year, lowering borrowing costs and supporting economic activity.
Notably, the increase in earnings, at least for now, remains a strong indicator of rising asset prices. The risk of a deeper market correction (greater than 10%) is significantly reduced during previous periods of improving earnings. While such does not mean a deeper correction can not happen, historically, corrections between 5% and 10% in an earnings growth environment tend to be buying opportunities and limit deeper reversal in the bullish sentiment index.
Improving earnings also precedes improving CEO confidence, which has provided pivotal support to financial markets since 2000.
Buybacks Returning
We discussed the most critical reason we expected a market correction in mid-March. To wit:
“Notably, since 2009, and accelerating starting in 2012, the percentage change in buybacks has far outstripped the increase in asset prices. As we will discuss, it is more than just a casual correlation, and the upcoming blackout window may be more critical to the rally than many think.” – March 19, 2024
Furthermore, the “blackout” of corporate buybacks coincided with more extreme readings in the bullish sentiment index. Buybacks are crucial to the market because corporations have accounted for roughly 100% of net equity purchases over the last two decades.
Here is the math of net flows if you don’t believe the chart:
- Pensions and Mutual Funds = (-$2.7 Trillion)
- Households and Foreign Investors = +$2.4 Trillion
- Sub Total = (-$0.3 T)
- Corporations (Buybacks) = $5.5T
- Net Total = $5.2 Trillion = Or 100% of all equities purchased
Unsurprisingly, that blackout window coincided with a sharp contraction of more than $367 billion in buybacks over the last 4-weeks. Consequently, when you remove a critical “buyer” from the market, the ensuing correction is unsurprising.
However, corporate share buybacks will resume in the next couple of weeks, and with more than $1 trillion slated for 2024, many buybacks remain to complete. Such is particularly the case with Google adding another $70 billion to that total.
As noted above, improving earnings and a decent outlook for the rest of this year also boost CEO confidence. (If you don’t understand why buybacks benefit insiders and not shareholders, read this.)
With robust economic activity supporting earnings growth, that improvement boosts CEO confidence. As CEOs are more confident about their business, they accelerate share buybacks to increase executive compensation.
The liquidity boost from buybacks and stronger earnings will likely provide a floor below the market. This doesn’t mean the current correction doesn’t have more work to do. However, it is unlikely that it will resolve into something more significant.
At least for now.
The post Bullish Sentiment Index Reverses With Buybacks Resuming appeared first on RIA.
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Site: Zero Hedge$3.5 Billion Slipped Into Ukraine-Israel Aid Bill To 'Supercharge Mass Migration From The Middle East'Tyler Durden Tue, 04/30/2024 - 05:45
Tucked away in the $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a $3.5 billion slush fund to open new processing centers for Muslim migrants, in what Sen. Eric Schmitt described as a bid to "supercharge mass migration from the Middle East."
Muslims pray during the "Islam on Capitol Hill 2009" event at the West Front Lawn of the US Capitol September 25, 2009, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Not only did the “Foreign Aid” package do nothing to secure our own border it included $3.5 Billion to supercharge mass migration from the Middle East. https://t.co/bsbYapsaE2
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) April 24, 2024And as Breitbart points out, the $95 billion package does not include any funds to help rebuild America's border defenses against illegal migration - but it does contain $481 million to settle migrants in US cities, and of course, the $3.5 billion to expand migration programs worldwide.
The $3.5 billion was granted to the Department of State, which works with many international groups that feed and transport migrants on their way to the United States.
Biden’s deputies are now using the refugee programs as an adjunct to their diversity-expanding “equity” migration policy. For example, Biden’s deputies used the program in March to import 3,009 migrants from the safe and democratic countries of El Salvador and Guatemala.
They are also using the refugee funds to expand migration routes from many African and Muslim countries. In March, they pulled in 12,018 people from the Congo, plus 16,732 migrants from the Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and Eritrea, according to a report by Stacker.com. -Breitbart
Tucked into the folds of the new foreign aid package is $3.5 billion for mass immigration NGOs.
— Theo Wold (@RealTheoWold) April 25, 2024
America Last Republicans voted to supercharge mass immigration while approving ZERO $$ for the U.S. border.According to an April 23 release from the Biden DHS visa-granting agency, "The Biden-Harris administration set the refugee admissions ceiling for fiscal year 2024 at 125,000 refugees," adding "With the opening of the Doha Field Office on May 7, 2024, and the Ankara Field Office on May 9, 2024, USCIS will have 11 international field offices. Other international field offices include Beijing; Guangzhou, China; Guatemala City; Havana; Mexico City; Nairobi, Kenya; New Delhi; San Salvador, El Salvador; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras."
So - we have the US government encouraging migration, both legal and illegal - which hurts low-income Americans the most, while neglecting to the borders. Seems we've learned nothing from Europe.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper - Remnant Articles“Walter Matt's courageous decision to found The Remnant in the 1967 could, to all intents and purposes, be said to have given birth to the Traditionalist movement in the United States. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, were it not for Walter Matt, there would be NO Traditionalist movement in the United States.” - Michael Davies
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Site: Crisis Magazine
Did spiritual beings help man develop the atomic bomb? Did they warn us in advance of 9/11 through Alex Jones? Tucker Carlson seems to think so, as he indicated while on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently. The three-hour conversation between the two media giants covered a whole host of topics, including the atomic bombing in Japan, the collapse of Building 7 on 9/11, and Richard Nixon’s resignation.
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Site: Padre PeregrinoBefore looking at the Synod of Pistoia, let's define Archaeologism (also called antiquarianism.) Unam Sanctam defines it: Archaeologism is not so much a heresy as a fad, a certain approach to Catholic liturgy and practice. Its distinguishing characteristic is an excessive value placed on those Catholic practices which came earlier in historical-chronological succession. For the [...]
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Site: Crisis Magazine
The April edition of Life Extension magazine contains an article called “The Death of Death,” subtitled “The Scientific Possibility of Physical Immortality and its Moral Defense.” To say that its “moral defense” lacks any teeth would be a laughable understatement. The article bears the same title as a book authored by Jose Cordeiro, Ph.D., and David Wood and comes in the form of an interview…
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Site: Mundabor's blogCardinal Ravasi, who at 81 will, blessedly, not allowed to do damage at the next conclave, is on record with saying that Christ was “a layman”. It really is quite disconcerting with these idiots. I do not think this is age playing tricks with the man’s mind. In fact, Ravasi seems to be still quite […]
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Site: AsiaNews.itToday's news: The Afghan Talibanlauncha nationwide anti-polio campaign;US court sentences Chinese student to prison for stalking threats against compatriot 'pro-democracy' campaigner;Casualties and new school closures due to heat wave in India and Bangladesh;Another two-year sentence for Thai activist in prison for lese majesty.
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Site: AsiaNews.itKazakhstan is seeking more than $150 billion in foreign funding for the exploitation of fields on the Caspian. But Moscow does not fail to mention often that its northern territories are 'originally Russian' and Russian-speaking, as is claimed for the Donbass.
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Site: 4Christum
Gloria TV News
Francis Praises Runaway Sister Who Was a Regime Artist
On 28th April Francis became the first Pope to visit the Biennale, a cultural event in Venice, Italy, where the decadent Vatican presented the works of Corita Kent (+1986), an ex-nun from the United States.
Kent began as a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), taught for 30 years at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, but then styled herself as a "pop art nun". She left her order in 1968 and became a left-wing activist masquerading as an "artist".
Cardinal James McIntyre (+1979) of Los Angeles called Immaculate Heart College "communist" and Sister Corita's work "blasphemous". Immaculate Heart College was dissolved in 1981.
After Vatican II, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary hired Carl Rogers, a "psychologist", to run "encounter groups" to share "real feelings". The IHM were among the first religious communities in the USA to implement Vatican II. The result was a disaster.
Then-Superior Anita Caspary left religious life with about 300 IHM sisters to form an independent sect which is now dying. The 68 sisters who did not follow her split into three smaller communities, two of which are about to close, and one, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Wichita, Kansas, is thriving.
Corita Kent's serigraphs are heavily text-based, with scriptural passages and emotive quotes. One shows John XXIII after the Second Vatican Council with the slogan 'Let the sun shine in'. Another shows a rainbow and the word "love".
Today in Venice, Francis said that "joy and suffering come together in the feminine in a unique way", adding: "I think of artists like [the communist] Frida Khalo, [the blasphemous] Corita Kent and [the homosex-propagandist] Louise Bourgeois, and so many others. I sincerely hope that contemporary art can open our eyes and help us to appreciate the contribution of women as co-leaders of the human adventure". Khalo, Kent and Bourgeois were all closely associated with the regime and praised by the oligarchic media. -
Site: Voltaire NetworkThe comparison is shocking: the organization of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 uses propaganda tricks from those of Berlin 1936. Yet it is nevertheless possible to explain: President Emmanuel Macron, like Chancellor Adolf Hitler, is pursuing the same "New European Order" project.. Unlike his predecessor, he is going about it peacefully, but like him, he will fail because, like him, he despises the people. What's more, his project is out-dated: it no longer corresponds to the structures of the digital age.
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Site: Mises InstituteThe enemies of individual liberty are numerous, from leftists who see freedom as interfering with the “positive freedoms” offered by the state to conservatives that believe too much freedom destroys community relationships.
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Site: Zero Hedge"Remarkable Turn Of Events" - Alleged Chinese Spy Working For AfD MP Was Informant For German Intelligence For YearsTyler Durden Tue, 04/30/2024 - 02:00
Authored by John Cody via ReMix News,
The news about Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEP Maximilian Krah’s assistant and his arrest for suspected espionage on behalf of China continues to make national headlines, but as more information comes out, the more German intelligence and the political establishment continue to look worse and worse.
Now, news reports have revealed that Krah’s employee, Chinese-German national Jian G., worked for the German domestic intelligence service for years before joining the AfD politician.
Krah has since commented on the new bombshell information, writing on X:
“Remarkable turn of events!”
https://twitter.com/KrahMax/status/1783917894159458787
Much is at stake, as Krah is the top candidate for the AfD in the run-up to the EU parliamentary elections in June. The latest report shows that the powerful Office for the Protection of Constitution (BfV) not only recruited Jian G. as a spy, but also dropped him as an informant because there were concerns he was a double agent for China.
However, despite these suspicions, Jian G. gained German citizenship, became a member of the Social Democrats (SPD), and even passed the EU parliament’s security clearance.
Former minister Mathias Brodkorb questioned the story on X, writing:
They are really funny. Let’s assume the story is true:
1. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is working with the man.
2. Then, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution ends the collaboration because the man could be a double agent.
3. Then the German state naturalizes this agent.
Intermediate question: Where was the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at that time?
4. Then, Krah wants to hire the man as an employee of the EU parliament. That cannot be done without a security check. So the EU parliament should actually have asked the German security authorities whether there was anything against the man. But apparently they didn’t. Otherwise, the man would not have been cleared and could not have been hired.
Intermediate question: Where was the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at that time? And you are now seriously asking what the problem is? Seriously?
One of the main questions is why the Office for the Protection of the Constitution never informed Krah or the AfD about their suspicions, which is standard operating procedure, and one designed to protect the country’s parties from foreign infiltration. Notably, allowing Jian G. to work for Krah created a favorable political scenario for the establishment to later arrest him in order to smear the AfD. Notably, Jian G. was arrested right before EU parliamentary elections.
The question now is whether the BfV purposefully kept the AfD in the dark for years about the information it knew in order to damage the party.
Working for the BfV all the way back in 2007
According to Bild newspaper, Jian G. was an informant for the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since 2007 at the earliest. Previously, he had unsuccessfully offered to work for the federal branch of the BfV, but he was rejected, and referred back to the Saxon branch of the BfV.
Jian G. reportedly worked with the intelligence service on his own initiative, including supplying information that dealt with Chinese state actors taking action against Chinese exiles in Germany. Eight years after joining the Saxon BfV as an informant, the Saxon branch was informed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution that G. could be a double spy.
In 2015 and 2016, G. was then directly observed by the counterintelligence department of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Officers also questioned him about their suspicions but were unable to prove that he was a spy for China. He was therefore listed as a “suspected case” during that period.
In 2018, G. was finally removed as an informant by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
However, by that time, Jian G. had already made contact with Krah and then went on to work as his employee in the EU parliament beginning in 2019. He was then intensively monitored by the domestic intelligence service from 2020 and finally arrested in April 2024.
As noted above, despite the suspicion of espionage, the Chinese national was granted a German passport, was also a member of the SPD for a time, and was able to pass the security check for the EU parliament.
In addition, the BfV under Thomas Haldenwang (CDU), who is notoriously anti-AfD and publicly working against the party, failed to inform Krah or the AfD about the suspicion of espionage against Jian G.
As Remix News has documented, Haldenwang has made numerous remarks against the AfD, including on state-funded television, all in violation of neutrality. Haldenwang belongs to the CDU party.
Notably, this is standard procedure in such cases, which means the Office for the Protection of the Constitution withheld this information from the AfD in violation of past precedent and procedure.
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Site: The Unz ReviewBarack Obama was the affirmative-action president. Salman Rushdie is the affirmative-action literary giant. Like Obama, Rushdie didn’t get to the top of his profession thanks to the depth of his talent and power of his intellect. No, he got there thanks to the color of his skin and the leftism of his politics. Separated by...
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Site: The Unz ReviewThe roots of the “Hitler-Controlled-Opposition” myth go back to the 1920s and 1930s in the circles of Hitler’s political rivals, namely the German and Soviet Communist Parties, the leftists of the West and the hard left faction of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP).[1] The intention was obviously to prevent Hitler and the NSDAP...
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Site: The Catholic Thing
Hamas operates under a charter that demands the destruction of the state of Israel. And given last year’s brutal Hamas attack on Israel, you would think that the moral, political, historic, military, and economic repercussions of the attack on Israel and of Russia’s war on Ukraine would inspire productive discussions, analyses, debates, and seminars at America’s colleges. What we have seen instead is a wave of rage-driven primitivism and reptile-brain ‘ethical’ rhetoric.
The post Gaza vs. Ukraine: Selective Outrage at America’s Colleges appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: The Catholic Thing
Never was leaf so green,
for you branched from the spirited
blast of the quest
of the saints.When it came time
for your boughs to blossom
(I salute you!)
your scent was like balsam
distilled in the sun.And your flower made all spices
fragrant
dry though they were:
they burst into verdure.So the skies rained dew on the grass
and the whole earth exulted,
for her womb brought forth wheat,
for the birds of heaven
made their nests in it.Keepers of the feast, rejoice!
The banquet’s ready. And you
sweet maid-child
are a fount of gladness.But Eve?
She despised every joy.
Praise nonetheless,
praise to the highest.The post Song to the Virgin appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: The Catholic Thing
A state appeals court has found that an insurer for the Archdiocese of New York is not required to cover costs for hundreds of sex abuse claims, a ruling the archdiocese calls “extremely disappointing.” The insurer, Chubb, argued that Church officials knew about the abuse and failed to act accordingly, violating the state’s “known loss doctrine,” by which an insured party cannot secure insurance to cover a loss known before the policy’s effective date.
The post NY court: archdiocesan insurer not required to cover abuse costs appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: The Catholic Thing
According to a statement from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the pope will take part in a session of the June G7 summit Puglia (June 13-15) dedicated to artificial intelligence, a subject of mounting concern to this papacy. The pope’s participation will mark the first time a pontiff has taken part in a G7 summit.
The post Pope to take part in G7 Summit to talk about Artificial Intelligence appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: The Catholic Thing
[Note: In 1938, Britain’s leading Catholic journal asked young Catholics to give an account of their faith. Among those who responded was philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe.]The time has surely come for a turning outwards, an aggression, a separation, a proclamation of the Church not as one of a row of candidates for the chooser’s approval, but as utterly distinct from all else: so that every man and woman in England should be conscious of the one significant choice: to be, or not to be, Catholic.
The post A rallying cry to the Church by one of 20th century’s great intellectual converts appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: The Catholic Thing
I should pray more. And I definitely need to be a better person.
Since I am now a Catholic, I believe there is an important relationship between prayer and becoming a better person. But as a Catholic, I don’t believe that becoming a better person is something that God will do in me without me. I need to do my part. My part is made possible by God’s grace, but the operations of God’s grace are not contrary to my free will, nor do they preclude my own efforts. Grace, as Thomas Aquinas was fond of saying, does not violate nature but perfects it.
So I need to pray and work on developing the virtues. They’re not mutually exclusive; they’re mutually inclusive. You pray for more virtue. And if and when you feel a little of the freedom that comes with having developed the virtue, you turn your eyes to heaven like you were turning to address the doctor who just put your dislocated shoulder back into its socket, and you say, “Thank you, God. That’s much better now.”
On the Catholic understanding of grace, it would be a mistake to imagine that I do something truly charitable, truly good, apart from God’s grace, such that I can turn to God and say, “See how good I am! I did that! You should show me some respect!” This would be like a child who asks for money from his father to buy him a Father’s Day gift – then asking him for privileges because he bought his father a gift. Everything we have we got from God. What God wants in return is that we love our blessed, saintly mother and get along with our brothers and sisters.
And yet it would also be a mistake to imagine that we can depend on piety alone without virtue. If you’re an alcoholic, you can’t say, “Well, I do the rosary every day, so I don’t need to go to AA meetings.” That would be a big mistake. People in AA know that their sobriety depends on a “higher power.” But they also know that they must do the work and go to meetings. It’s not an either-or; it’s a both-and.
So too, it would be a mistake to imagine, “I have a deep devotion to Mary; I visit her shrine all the time; so I don’t need to work on my marriage.” I am repeatedly saddened and confused when I see pious, devoted Catholics simply dump their spouse, saying little more than, “That just wasn’t working out,” or, “I wasn’t fulfilled in that relationship,” much the way any non-Catholic or non-Christian would. Piety is no substitute for virtue. Saying the rosary is great, but it makes no sense to say it and then abuse your employees or support abortion. It’s like saying, “I love my mother” and then kicking her down the stairs.
It is classic among evangelicals to find someone who says he has “devoted his life to Jesus,” and who believes he has, but is still getting drunk and cheating on his wife. Just because a person has “given his life to Jesus” one day in an altar call doesn’t necessarily mean that all the temptations will miraculously go away or that now he will suddenly be caring and responsible in a way he never was before.
Saint Francis in Meditation by Caravaggio, c. 1606 [Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome]Faith is not magic. It’s not a magic wand that touches you and, in an instant, turns you, a frog, into a prince. God’s grace works in God’s own time. He rescues the Jewish people from their slavery in Egypt, but it’s forty years before they get to enter the Promised Land. In the meantime, they must work and sacrifice and prepare themselves. They must worship at the Tabernacle in the desert and fight their enemies. It required years of struggle. But God was there every step of the way.St. Augustine would not have become the great preacher and bishop he became had he not trained endlessly to develop the skills of rhetoric. And St. Thomas would not have written the Summa had he not spent countless hours in study.
Some say: “Pray as though everything depended on God, and act as though everything depended on you.” I prefer to say that we should act knowing that, if we want to be better, God is already working in us, and pray knowing that God will not work in us without us.
If you want God’s help and God’s grace, He will give it to you. But it won’t necessarily transform you overnight. Not that this doesn’t ever happen, but don’t lose hope if it doesn’t. We must walk by faith and not by sight, the way Abraham did when he set out for God knows where, and the way Mary did when the angel told her something beyond understanding.
If we do our work each day and pray constantly, God will help us develop the virtues. But if you don’t do the work of developing the virtues, don’t expect God to rescue you miraculously when the time comes.
If you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, God might save you from disease, but remember, “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” You cannot say: “God, I’m now going to do something utterly self-destructive, and later I will depend upon you to rescue me.” Or, “I won’t discipline myself to develop the virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, or justice; I won’t discipline myself to be other than my spoiled, arrogant, greedy, and spiteful self; I will do everything contrary to God’s wisdom and guidance; and yet I still want God to make me flourish.” You can’t get heavenly happiness if you’re living a hellish life.
God can turn water into wine, but He can’t make creatures designed for selfless love flourish if they say no to being transformed by that love.
The post Piety and Virtue appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: The Unz ReviewI attended a classic car show recently and realized why my generation was so happy compared to the current ones. Cars in those days were beautiful and the muscle car element had glorious sounds. Beginning in 1954 but especially with the advent of the 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air coup and Ford Fairlane coup you were...
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Site: AntiWar.com
President Biden’s campaign will continue using the popular social media site TikTok even though the president supported a provision in the military aid bill he recently signed forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within the required time, TikTok will be banned in the USA. … Continue reading "TikTok Ban Exposes Hypocrisy in Congress"
The post TikTok Ban Exposes Hypocrisy in Congress appeared first on Antiwar.com.
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Site: AntiWar.com
The US Congress authorized a $95 billion military aid package for continuing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as for war preparations against China. This represents, in effect, a downpayment on World War III. US President Joe Biden, reading from a playbook that could well have been scripted by George Orwell, announced: “it’s … Continue reading "US Congress Makes Downpayment on World War III"
The post US Congress Makes Downpayment on World War III appeared first on Antiwar.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeDoes The CIA Run America?Tyler Durden Mon, 04/29/2024 - 23:40
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,
We’ve all surely had dark thoughts that the CIA is really running the United States, including many media venues. Maybe that’s been true for decades and we just didn’t know it. If so, let’s just say that it would explain a tremendous amount of what has otherwise been clouded in secrecy.
How would this be possible? Knowledge is power while secret knowledge is full control. Even fake knowledge means power and control, such as we found out in the phony Russiagate investigation early in Trump’s term. They hounded the new administration for years under a completely fake scenario in which Russia somehow got Donald Trump elected.
Yes, that was an intelligence operation all along, one directly designed to overthrow an election, a “color revolution” on our own soil.
How dare an agency not elected by the people, and evading oversight and public accountability, put itself ahead of the Constitution and the rule of law? It’s been going on for many decades as the agencies have gained ever more power, even to the point of forcing a full lockdown of America and even the world under false pretense.
None of this is verifiable precisely because of the secrecy involved. It’s not as if the intelligence community is going to send out a press release: “Democracy in America is an illusion. We know because we control nearly everything, plus we aspire to control even more.”
The incredulous among us will shoot back: look at what you are saying! Your conspiracy theory is non-falsifiable. The less evidence you have for it, the more you believe it. How in the world can we argue with you? Your position is not really plausible but there is nothing we can do to convince you otherwise.
Let’s grant the point. Still, let’s not dismiss the theory completely. Based on a New York Times (NYT) piece that appeared last week, it contains more than a grain of truth. The article is titled: “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course.”
Quote: “Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized ‘deep state’ out to get him. And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.”
Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?
Further, it is proven many times over that the Deep State is in fact out to get him. This is not even controversial. Indeed, there is no reason for these journalists to write the above as if Donald Trump is somehow consumed by some kind of baseless paranoia.
Let’s keep going here: “Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community .... The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again.”
Wait just a moment. You are telling us that all previous presidents have had a happy relationship with the CIA? That’s rather interesting to know. And deeply troubling too, since the CIA has been managing regime change the world over for a very long time, and is now directly involved in U.S. politics at the most intimate level.
Any president worth his salt should absolutely have a hostile relationship with such an agency, if only to establish clear civilian control over the government, without which it’s not possible to say that we live in a Constitutional republic.
And now, according to the NYT, we have one seeking the Presidency who does not defer to the agency and that this is destabilizing and deeply problematic. Who does that suggest really rules this country?
Is the NYT itself guilty of the most extreme conspiracy theory imaginable, or is it just stating facts as we know them? I’m going to guess that it is the latter. In this case, every single American should be deeply alarmed.
Crazy huh? As for the phrase “never seen before,” we have to push back. What about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Calvin Coolidge? They were all previous presidents, according to the history books that people once read.
There was no CIA back then. If you doubt this, I’m pretty sure that your favorite AI engine will confirm it.
One must suppose that when the NYT says “never seen before,” it means in the post-war period. And that very well might be true. John F. Kennedy defied them. We know that for certain. The mysteries surrounding his murder won’t be solved fully until we get the documents. But the consensus is growing that this murder was really a coup by the CIA, a message sent as a lesson to every successor in that office.
Think of that: we live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing.
It’s intriguing to know at this late date that the Watergate “scandal” was not what it appeared to be, namely an intrepid media holding government to account. Even astute observers at the time believed the mainstream narrative. Now we have plenty of evidence that this too was nothing but a deep state attack on a president who had lost patience with it and provoked another coup.
All credit to my brilliant father who speculated along these lines at the time. I was very young with only the vaguest clue about what was happening. But I recall very well that he was convinced that Richard Nixon was set up in a trap and unfairly hounded out of office not for the bad things he was doing but for standing up to the Deep State.
If my own father, not a particularly political person, knew this for certain at the time, this must have been a strong perception even then.
You hear the rap that these agencies—the CIA is one but there are many adjacent others—are not allowed by law to intervene in domestic politics. At this point and after so much experience, this comes across to me like something of a joke. We know from vast evidence and personal testimony that the CIA has been manipulating political figures, narratives, and outcomes for a very long time.
How involved is the CIA in journalism today? Well, as a traditionally liberal paper, you might suppose that the NYT itself would be highly skeptical of the CIA. But these days, they have published a long string of aggressively defensive articles with titles like “It Turns Out that the Deep State Is Awesome” and “Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.” We can add this last piece to the list.
So let’s just say it: the NYT is CIA. So too is Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Slate, Salon, and many other mainstream publications, including major tech companies like Google and Microsoft. The tentacles are everywhere and ever more obvious. Operation Mockingbird was just the beginning. The network is everywhere and the practice of manipulating the news is wholly normalized.
Once you start developing the ability to see the markings, you simply cannot unsee them, which is why people who think and write about this can come across as crackpot crazy after a while.
Have you considered that maybe the crackpots are exactly right? If so, shouldn’t we, at bare minimum, seek to support a Presidential candidate with a hostile relationship to the intelligence community?
Indeed, that ought to be a bare minimum standard of qualification. There is simply no way we can restore civilian control of government and constitutional government until this agency can be thoroughly reigned in or abolished completely.
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Site: The Unz ReviewJews control the gods, meaning they decide what is holy and unholy, what is sacred and what is taboo. Now, if only half the nation accepts those gods and demons, the other half would at least be free to worship its own gods. But what if the entirety of the nation worships those same gods....
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Site: Real Jew News
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Site: Zero HedgeHave Fun Staying Poor: Washington Announces $45 Million Subsidy For Low Income Families To Buy EVsTyler Durden Mon, 04/29/2024 - 23:20
Just when you thought you've already witnessed a lifetime's worth of examples of the government being excellent capital allocators with your tax money, one more shining example comes along.
Last week it was reported that Washington Governor Jay Inslee has announced $45 million worth of subsidies that is going to allow "low income" families to purchase an electric vehicle.
The initiative offers families the opportunity to receive financial assistance for either leasing or purchasing electric vehicles, with up to $9,000 allocated for leasing and $5,000 for purchasing, according to Must Read Alaska.
The program is open to individuals earning 300% or less of the federal poverty level and extends to both new and used EVs. Approximately 9,000 people can benefit from the grant, with the potential for either 9,000 individuals to opt for the $5,000 deal or 5,000 individuals for the $9,000 option.
“Washingtonians really get it when it comes to electric vehicles,” Inslee said at a press conference last week.
Governor Inslee characterized the initiative as a means to "democratize EVs," emphasizing a broader goal of advancing the electrification of transportation. He expressed optimism about widespread adoption, anticipating significant participation and benefit from the program.
However, the program has faced criticism, notably from Washington Policy Center Environmental Director Todd Myers. Myers contends that the subsidies fail to effectively curb carbon emissions and represent a misallocation of taxpayer funds that could be better utilized for other environmental priorities like (we swear we are not making this up) salmon recovery.
Hey Todd, two wrongs don't make a right! But we digress. Despite the controversy, the grant funds are slated to become available to eligible low-income residents in August.
Myers wrote in a blog post: “This is one more example of how wasteful and ineffective Washington’s climate policy is."
He continued: “It also reveals the disingenuousness of claiming that climate change is an ‘existential crisis’ while wasting tens of millions of dollars on projects that do nothing to address that crisis.”
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Site: AntiWar.com
Two people were wounded.
The post <I>Iraq Weekly Roundup</I>: 56 Killed appeared first on Antiwar.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeVon Greyerz: The Real Move In Gold & Silver Is Yet To StartTyler Durden Mon, 04/29/2024 - 22:20
Authored by Egon von Greyerz via VonGreyerz.gold,
Since the October 2023 gold low of just over $1,600 gold is up but is anyone buying?
Well no, certainly none of the normal players.
Gold Depositories, Gold Funds and Gold ETFs have lost just under 1,400 tonnes of their gold holdings in the last 2 years since May 2022.
But not only gold funds are seeing weak buying but also mints such as the Perth Mint and the US Mint with its coin sales down 96% year on year.
Clearly gold knows something that the market hasn’t discovered yet.
RATES MUCH HIGHER
For the last few years I have been clear that there will be no lasting interest rate cuts.
As the chart shows below, the 40 year down trend in US rates bottomed in 2020 and since then rates are in a secular uptrend.
I have discussed this in many articles as well as in for example this interview from 2022 when I stated that rates will exceed 10% and potentially much higher in the coming inflationary environment, fuelled by escalating deficits and debt explosion.
“But the Fed will keep rates down” I hear all the experts call out!
Finally the “experts” are changing their mind and believe that cuts will no longer happen.
No central bank can control interest rates when its government recklessly issues unlimited debt and the only buyer is the central bank itself.
PONZI SCHEME WORTHY OF A BANANA REPUBLIC
This is a Ponzi scheme only worthy of a Banana Republic. And this is where the US is heading.
So strongly rising long rates will pull short rates up.
And that’s when the fun panic starts.
As Niall Ferguson stated in a recent article:
“Any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defence will not stay great for very long. True of Habsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire”.
So based on the CBO (Congressional Budget Office), the US will spend more on interest than defence already at the end of 2024 as this chart shows:
But as often is the case, the CBO prefers not to tell uncomfortable truths.
The CBO forecasts interest costs to reach $1.6 trillion by 2034. But if we extrapolate the trends of the deficit and apply current interest rate, the annualised interest cost will reach $1.6 trillion at the end of 2024 rather than in 2034.
Just look at the steepness of the interest cost curve above. It is clearly EXPONENTIAL.
Total Federal debt was below $1 trillion in 1980. Now, interest on the debt is $1.6 trillion.
Debt today $35 trillion rising to $100 trillion by 2034.
The same with the US Federal Debt. Extrapolating the trend since 1980, the debt will be $100 trillion by 2036 and that is probably conservative.
With the interest trend up as explained above, a 10% rate in 2036 or before is not unrealistic. Remember rates back in the 1970s and early 1980s were well above 10% with a much lower debt and deficit.
US BONDS – BUY THEM AT YOUR PERIL
Let us analyse the current and future of a US treasury debt (and most sovereign debt):
-
Issuance will accelerate exponentially
-
It will never be repaid. At best only deferred or more probably defaulted on
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The value of the currency will fall precipitously
HYPERINFLATION COMING
So where are we heading?
Most probably we are facing an inflationary period leading to probable hyperinflation
With global debt already up over 4x this century from $80 trillion to $350 trillion. Add to that a Derivative mountain of over $2 quadrillion plus unfunded liabilities and the total will exceed $3 quadrillion.
As central banks frenetically try to save the financial system, most of the 3 quadrillion will become debt as counterparties fail and banks will need to be saved with unlimited money printing.
BANCA ROTTA – BANKRUPT FINANCIAL SYSTEM
But a rotten system can never be saved. And this is where the expression Banca Rotta derives from – broken bench or broken bank as my article from April 2023 explained.
But neither a bank nor a sovereign state can be saved by issuing worthless pieces of paper or digital money.
In March 2023, four US banks collapsed within a matter of days. And soon thereafter Credit Suisse was in trouble and had to be rescued.
The problems in the banking system have just started. Falling bond prices and collapsing values of property loans are just the beginning.
This week Republic First Bancorp had to be saved.
Just look at US banks’ unrealised losses on their bond portfolios in the graph below.
Unrealised losses on bonds held to maturity are $400 billion.
And losses on bonds available for sale are $250 billion. So the US banking system is sitting on identified losses of $650 billion just on their bond portfolios. As interest rates go up, these losses will increase.
Add to that, losses on loans against collapsing commercial property values and much more.
EXPONENTIAL MOVES
So we will see debt grow exponentially as it has already started to do. Exponential moves start gradually and then suddenly whether we talk about debt, inflation or population growth.
The stadium analogy below shows how it all develops:
It takes 50 minutes to fill a stadium with water, starting with one drop and doubling every minute – 1, 2, 4, 8 drops etc. After 45 minutes the stadium is only 7% full and the last 5 minutes it goes form 7% to 100%.
THE LAST 5 MINUTES OF THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM
So the world is most probably now in the last 5 minutes of our current financial system.
The coming final phase is likely to go very fast as all exponential moves do, just like in the Weimar Republic in 1923. In January 1923 one ounce of gold cost 372,000 marks and at the end of November in 1923 the price was 87 trillion marks!
The consequences of a collapse of the financial system and the global economy, especially in the West can take many decades to recover from. It will involve a debt and asset implosion plus a massive contraction of the economy and trade.
The East and South and especially the countries with major commodity reserves will recover much faster. Russia for example has $85 trillion in commodity reserves, the biggest in the world.
As US issuance of treasuries accelerate, the potential buyers will decline until there is only one bidder which is the Fed.
Even today no sane sovereign state would buy US treasuries. Actually no sane investor would buy US treasuries.
Here we have an already insolvent debtor that has no means of repaying his debt except for issuing more of the same rubbish which in future would only be good for toilet paper. But electronic paper is not even good for that.
This is a sign in a Zimbabwe toilet:
Let us analyse the current and future of a US treasury debt (and most sovereign debt):
-
Issuance will accelerate exponentially
-
It will never be repaid. At best only deferred or more probably defaulted on
-
The value of the currency will fall precipitously
That’s all there is to it. Thus anyone who buys US treasuries or other sovereign bonds has a 99.9% guarantee of not getting his money back.
So Bonds are no longer an asset of value but just a liability for the borrower that will or can not be repaid.
What about stocks or corporate bonds. Many companies won’t survive or experience a major decline in the stock price together with major cash flow pressures.
As I have discussed in many articles, we are entering the era of commodities and especially precious metals.
The coming era is not for speculation but for trying to keep as much of what you have as possible. For the investor who doesn’t protect himself, there will be a wealth destruction of an unprecedented magnitude.
There will no longer be a question what return you can get on your investment.
Instead it is a matter of losing as little as possible.
Holding stocks, bonds or property – all the bubble assets – are likely to lead to massive wealth erosion as we go into the “Everything Collapse”.
THE NEW ERA OF GOLD AND SILVER
For soon 25 years I have been urging investors to hold gold to preserve their wealth. Since the beginning of this century gold has outperformed most asset classes.
Between 2000 and today, the S&P, including reinvested dividends, has returned 7.7% per annum whilst gold has returned 9.2% per year or 8X.
In the next few years, all the factors discussed in this article will lead to major gains in the precious metals and falls in most conventional assets.
There are many other positive factors for gold.
As the chart below shows, the West has reduced its gold reserves since the late 1960s, whilst the East is growing its gold reserves strongly. And we have just seen the beginning of this trend.
The US and EU sanctioning of Russia and the freezing/confiscation of the Russian assets in foreign banks are very beneficial for gold.
No sovereign states will hold their reserves in US dollars any more. Instead we will see central bank reserves move to gold. That shift has already started and is one of the reasons for gold’s rise.
In addition, gradually the BRICS countries are moving away from the dollar to trading in their local currencies. For commodity rich countries, gold will be an important part of their trading.
Thus there are major forces behind the gold move which has just started and will reach further both in price and time than anyone can imagine.
HOW TO OWN GOLD
But remember for investors, holding gold is for financial survival and protection of assets.
Therefore gold must be held in physical form outside the banking system with direct access for the investor.
Also gold must be held in safe jurisdictions with a long history of rule of law and stable government.
The cost of storing gold should not be the primary consideration for choosing a custodian. When you buy life insurance you mustn’t buy the cheapest but the best.
First consideration must be the owners and management. What is their reputation, background and previous history.
Thereafter secure servers, security, liquidity, location and insurance are very important.
Also, high level of personal service is paramount. Many vaults fail in this area.
Preferably gold should not be held in the country where you are resident, especially not in the US with its fragile financial system.
Neither gold nor silver has started the real move yet. Any major correction is likely to come from much higher levels.
Gold and silver are in a hurry so it is not too late to jump on the gold wagon.
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Site: Zero HedgeMajor Dollar Tree Warehouse Demolished By Tornado, May Spark Supply Chain ChaosTyler Durden Mon, 04/29/2024 - 22:00
A tornado outbreak on Saturday night across southern Oklahoma decimated a major distribution center for budget retailer Dollar Tree. The facility supplies stores across the Oklahoma-Texas area, plus other surrounding states, which may spark supply chain issues.
Professional storm chaser Aaron Rigsby posted several aerial images of the Dollar Tree distribution center in the Marietta area on X. The photos show the damage left behind after a tornado ripped through the center of the massive warehouse.
Images from Marietta, OK Tornado. Would appear as if cars and semis were tossed off the interstate last night next to the Dollar Tree DC that was impressively shredded to bits. #OKwx pic.twitter.com/2y46FeJfdF
— Aaron Rigsby (@AaronRigsbyOSC) April 28, 2024Another storm chaser, Brandon Clement, posted an up-close drone video of the wreckage, showing millions of products that won't arrive on store shelves anytime soon.
A tornado hit Matietta, OK. Destroying the Family Dollar Distribution center. It also hit a Dollar store, hospital and flipped cars and semis on I-35. #Tornado #Damage #OKWX #Oklahoma #WXTwitter pic.twitter.com/7AF7bgBcQ0
— WxChasing- Brandon Clement (@bclemms) April 28, 2024Marietta is located in Love County. The country's sheriff's office posted on Facebook that "power lines everywhere and buildings have been destroyed."
"Significant damage to dollar tree warehouse, homeland, dollar general, nursing home, and part of the hospital," the sheriff's office said.
With the Marietta distribution center offline, this may spark significant disruptions in the supply of goods to stores located in Texas, Oklahoma, and surrounding states.
Dollar Tree operates 25 distribution centers nationwide, serving over 15,500 stores.
There is no official statement from the company specifying supply chain impacts.
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Site: Novus Ordo Watch
“Called by God a high priest according to the order of Melchisedech” (Heb 5:10)…
Heresy from ‘Cardinal’ Ravasi: ‘Christ Was a Layman’
The Vatican’s recently-retired president of the so-called Pontifical Council for Culture (since 2022 the Dicastery for Culture and Education), ‘Cardinal’ Gianfranco Ravasi (b. 1942), has made news again, and not in a good way.
The 81-year-old Ravasi was ordained a priest in 1966 in the traditional rite of priestly ordination. In 2007, ‘Pope’ Benedict XVI personally conferred the invalid Novus Ordo rite of episcopal ordination on him, and three years later he made him a ‘cardinal’. Ravasi has been working in the Roman curia since at least 2007, when Benedict appointed him president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.… READ MORE
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Site: Novus Ordo Wire – Novus Ordo Watch
“Called by God a high priest according to the order of Melchisedech” (Heb 5:10)…
Heresy from ‘Cardinal’ Ravasi: ‘Christ Was a Layman’
The Vatican’s recently-retired president of the so-called Pontifical Council for Culture (since 2022 the Dicastery for Culture and Education), ‘Cardinal’ Gianfranco Ravasi (b. 1942), has made news again, and not in a good way.
The 81-year-old Ravasi was ordained a priest in 1966 in the traditional rite of priestly ordination. In 2007, ‘Pope’ Benedict XVI personally conferred the invalid Novus Ordo rite of episcopal ordination on him, and three years later he made him a ‘cardinal’. Ravasi has been working in the Roman curia since at least 2007, when Benedict appointed him president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.… READ MORE
Source: The Wall Street Journal 
Muslims pray during the "Islam on Capitol Hill 2009" event at the West Front Lawn of the US Capitol September 25, 2009, in Washington, DC.
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