Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The Global Digital Forum last week in delightful Nizhny Novgorod represented a landmark in the quest for a more equitable media landscape across the whole Global South.

Pride of place was taken by a new ambitious association, the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN). The last session of the forum was focused essentially on how to fight all the toxic declinations imposed by the post-truth anti-cultural ambiance – as in fact-checking an avalanche of fake news coming in most cases from states and official institutions.

Guest of honor was superstar Russian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, relaxed, in great spirits, who went full Deng Xiaoping by urging everyone to “fight for the truth and seek out the facts”.

By a twist of fate, the timeline left me with only two minutes to somehow wrap up our quite enlightening discussion. So I went hardcore and quoted Nietzsche: “There are no facts, only interpretations”. Later on, I was surprised at how that had struck a nerve especially among African delegates.

The key point is that in the artificially fabricated post-truth environment, not only facts are only facts if we say so; most of all, only one interpretation is allowed – be it from the Empire of Chaos, whoever may be in power, or from a Kafkaesque mechanism such as the European Union (EU)/European Commission (EC).

If you deviate from the official interpretation, they will come after you. That has led, for instance, in Europe, to journalists/EU citizens being prevented even from traveling to their own nation-states, and having their accounts frozen, or EU citizens being prevented from covering a supposedly democratic election (in Romania), and immediately deported (outside of the EU).

A startling essay on Nietzsche amplifies the diagnostic of Europe’s current cultural suicide. Nietzsche was an “untimely” outsider, a steppenwolf, pledging allegiance to no one and nothing, silently grappling with “the flat exhaustion of bourgeois modernity”, and searching, in vain, for “silhouettes among shadows”.

Nietzsche, in the late 19th century, was already a symbol of Resistance. Resistance as we see it today – from the Axis of Resistance in West Asia to Orthodox Christian military batallions fighting for the freedom of Novorossiya. No ceremony ever greeted Nitzsche: he was always alone. He shattered illusion after illusion as his solitude “became liturgy” and “his body turned into protest.” He impersonated “the ghost of nobility”. A species in extinction – indeed.

Tech visionaries want it all

That crystal clear Nietzsche intuition – arguably the best definition of truth in the history of philosophy – may be our guide in the labyrinth of post-truth where, to quote post-modernist masterpiece Twin Peaks, “the owls are not what they seem”.

Errol Musk, Elon’s father, showed up early this week in Moscow for the Future 2050 forum. Daddy Musk effusively showered praise on Russia as Ancient Rome 2.0 and Moscow itself as the “capital of the world”. Quite on point – in both cases.

But what really matters is why Daddy Musk is in Russia. That may align with a strategy of luring powerful sectors of Silicon Valley into doing business with Russia. Main actors/participants would be tech visionaries which used to be part of the notorious PayPal Mafia: Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

That may pose a series of serious problems. Martin Armstrong has been instrumental in portraying this band of tech visionaries as a ubiquitous new oligarchy: active in social media, biotech, space, the surveillance industry, engineering policies and influencing monetary systems with their hardcore brand of venture capitalism, and not to mention shaping worldwide-interfering narratives.

The new tech elite shines brightly via the Trump-Musk love affair turned staged catfight. But its tentacles reach much further. J.D. Vance is Peter Thiel’s perfectly positioned candidate to become the next POTUS. Palantir, controlled by Thiel and totalitarian Alex Karp, have been awarded a massive contract to design a U.S. federally centralized database using very sophisticated AI models.

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is heavy on AI – including a 10-year moratorium during which any U.S. state and local government  cannot regulate AI. This will allow free reign for deepfakes and Big Tech doing whatever they feel like to manipulate unsuspecting consumers.

So that’s the key question. How to fact-check the tech elite? How to counterpunch multiple instances of techno-feudalism – when tech companies feed intel to governments, commit unlimited funds to political operations, and set up censorship platforms disguised as “democracy”, drenched in AI-generated fake news?

Go East, to Siberia, young man

At least there are auspicious signs on the other side of dystopia. And right here in Russia. This is a mesmerizing interview by Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan with legendary Prof. Sergey Karaganov, Honorary Chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (Russia’s leading public foreign policy organisation) and academic supervisor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

Welcome to a magic carpet ride through the really deep origins of Russia’s heritage. Starting with the Scythians: “Now we are rediscovering within ourselves these roots that unites us with the peoples of Eurasia.”

All the way to Byzantium: “The Russian princes, who baptized Russia, chose Byzantium ― at that time the richest, the most developed and intellectually flourishing country in Central Eurasia, much more developed than Europe was (…) The Russian princes’ astute choice of Byzantium largely predetermined Russian culture, Russian architecture, and, of course, Russian religion, that is, our Orthodoxy.”

And then reaching Pax Mongolica: “The Mongol Empire left a deep mark on Russian history also, because it was multicultural and very tolerant religiously, and this is where I think (although there is no complete agreement amongst historians on this matter) the Russians ― the dominant people in the former Russian Empire and the USSR ― inherited their unique cultural, religious, and national openness.”

Karaganov forcefully proposes that everything positive about Pax Mongolica should be re-examined to “substantiate the unity of Eurasia.” And “we must rely just as much on the heritage of the Scythians, who were the forefathers of so many peoples in Greater Central Eurasia.”

This is the essence of a true multipolar Russia in action – leading to the fascinating concept of “Siberianization”: a “spiritual, cultural, political, and economic development of Russia in the eastern direction to the Urals and Siberia. The western direction of our policy and economic ties has bleak prospects.”

Karaganov, whose analyses are deeply appreciated by President Putin, is adamant: it all amounts to a “civilizational struggle against techno-barbarism and techno-paganism”, and “against dehumanization”. Against, essentially, techno-feudalism.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Yesterday, in "What's Behind The Recent Surge In Platinum, And Will It Continue", we not only explained in detail what is going on both at the technical and fundamental level, but also answered in the affiramtive and why - yes, it the surge will continue. One day later the surge has indeed continued, and having decisively broken $1200 earlier this week, platinum spiked another $100, touching a session high of $1285, and is now just dollars away from the post-covid high above $1300. 

For some perspective on what comes next, we go to Goldman materials specialist James McGeoch who writes today that having cut through $1200 like a hot knife through butter, Platinum is now clearly targeting $1300, and even though the precious metal is overbought here, it is going to test some resolve to go against the flow.

As McGeoch adds, "I'd say look at the chart, but it will make you cry, as it starts the move comes from Asian hours and we know they cannot get enough precious" and furthermore, it "feels like someone loading up on a flat price position."

Ultimately, to the Goldman trader, it feels like the price of platinum is determined by fundamentals vs momo, but that is markets in a nutshell. To James, his mind "always says has to be a long duration hand, tactical guy cannot buy that shape, but have been wrong before, ask these guys what they think - "Gold, Platinum and Why Everyone Has it Wrong."

In a nutshell, "the issue for most is how does it move the needle, small wins yes, bigger ones harder to capture."  

Unless, of course, the Chinese buyers - who have historicall been very price discriminate no longer are - and this time the melt up momentum only brings with it even more momentum, blasting the metal to parity with gold, if not higher.  

A more sketpical view was published today by Goldman's precious metal analyst Lina Thomas, who notes that the platinum breakout began on May 20, coinciding with the start of Platinum Week (May 20-21) and a bullish World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) report published on the day prior. However, as we subsequently reported and as Goldman also writes today, it was speculative and ETF demand that fueled the rally to $1,280/toz.

We agree with Goldman on this, where we disagree with the bank is its claim that "a sustained breakout is unlikely for three reasons."  Goldman's three reasons to be bearish are the following:

#1 Price-Sensitive Chinese Demand

Chinese buying, which corresponds to about 60% of new annual platinum production, appears highly price sensitive, with increased buying when prices are low but reduced buying when prices are high.

Goldman believes that this strategic buying has likely contributed to platinum’s range-bound trading over the past decade. Nearly 50% of China’s imports are driven by price-sensitive jewelry and investment demand. For instance, lower prices post-the ‘Liberation Day’ US tariff announcement contributed to higher platinum withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), a proxy for Chinese jewelry and, to a lesser extent, investment demand, in April and consequently high Chinese platinum imports that month. But - the bank argues - the rally that started in mid-May appears to have already curtailed Chinese jewelry (and investment) demand for platinum. Which however is irrelevant if speculators have enough firepower to keep pushing the ascent higher, in which case Chinese jewelers will eventually be forced to chase the price again, only this time much higher. 

#2 Downside Pressures on Auto Sector’s Demand for Platinum

Here, Goldman repeats the trite and familiar "fundamental" case why platinum demand is evaporating because very soon nobody will be driving ICE cars, and yada, yada. To wit: China’s rapid shift towards EVs is eroding long-term autocatalyst demand for platinum (which depends on ICE and hybrid car sales) while simultaneously increasing scrap availability as ICE vehicles are retired. Which is a lovely, if categorically false thesis, because China is already facing a resistance threshold in its power grid, beyond which it will no longer be able to support all the EVs on the road. What happens then? And what happens when Chinese EV subsidies finally run out. 

Meanwhile, in the West, Goldman's autos equity analysts expect the ICE and hybrid vehicle fleet to remain relatively stable, with no large impact on the platinum balance

#3 Stable-to-Moderately Higher Global Supply

In an attempt to re-engage at the fundamental level, Goldman expects stable-to-moderately higher global platinum supply... unless South African power constraints re-emerge, which they will. Platinum production is highly geographically concentrated, with South Africa accounting for 70% of primary platinum production, with most of the remainder coming from Russia.

In South Africa, which is a country that has rolling blackouts for half the day, guidance from the major PGM miners points to moderate increases in PGM supply (12% year-over-year in 2025). The supply resilience is most likely fabricated as it defies the impact of years of low platinum prices and compressed margins, and so expect declining South African production in the coming years. 

Platinum production is primarily a byproduct of other metals, such as copper, and is co-mined with other Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) such as palladium and rhodium. Consequently, the PGM basket price (denominated in ZAR) and revenue derived from associated metals — rather than just the platinum price — heavily influence the overall profitability of these mining operations. Periods of high prices for byproduct metals, such as the near-record chrome prices in 2024, can provide financial relief and offset downward profit pressure from lower platinum prices

Here Goldman admits that PGM production cannot be easily increased due to capacity constraints, which is bullish for the price; alternatively, significant curtailments are also rare due to a high proportion of fixed costs inherent in these operations, particularly energy and labor. The heavily unionized nature of South Africa’s mining sector makes layoffs "politically sensitive" and doing so could increase the risk of strikes, social unrest and reputational damage. These socialist factors support a strategy in which mines operate at a high capacity utilization without materially increasing output; in other words just churning. Lower capex guidance - similar to the US shale patch - suggests producers are focused on extracting more from existing assets

Goldman's optimistic view notwithstanding, the main risk to production remains operational disruptions and thus South African power outages and labor strikes represent the most significant threats to supply. Such events can halt production entirely and lead to substantial, albeit often temporary, supply deficits.

More in the full Goldman note available to pro subscribers.

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In an interview with China’s state-run People’s Daily, Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, downplayed his company’s chip technology and accused the US of overstating its capabilities as trade talks between Washington and Beijing continue, according to FT.

Ren said Huawei’s Ascend chip, China’s main alternative to Nvidia, “still lags behind the US by one generation” and added: “The US has exaggerated Huawei’s capabilities — we’re not that strong yet.”

His comments follow Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s recent concerns about Huawei’s advances in AI chips, claiming that US export restrictions have fueled a “formidable” competitor challenging America’s AI leadership.

FT writes that trade discussions between the US and China began Monday in London, with export controls on key tech now on the table. During the first round in Geneva, these controls weren’t discussed, but Beijing’s export curbs on rare earths essential for car manufacturing have since drawn attention.

Huawei has benefited from the US ban on Nvidia chip shipments, as Chinese tech giants now buy more Ascend chips. However, most Chinese AI firms, including DeepSeek, still prefer Nvidia chips for training large language models.

Analysts and Huawei engineers have previously noted technical challenges with Ascend chips, especially in distributing workloads for AI training. On Tuesday, Ren suggested Huawei was improving, saying cluster computing could help offset performance issues: “Using clustering and stacking, our computing results are comparable to the world’s best,” he said.

Huawei’s new CloudMatrix 384 AI server aims to rival Nvidia by linking 384 AI processors with Huawei’s optical tech. Some customers are already testing the server, though challenges remain with heat and weight, said a source involved in testing. One key challenge is building “an ecosystem” of developers, since Nvidia’s Cuda software is widely preferred.

Ren said Huawei spends Rmb180bn ($25bn) annually on R&D, with Rmb60bn on basic research. He noted China’s strengths in infrastructure: “AI depends on abundant electricity and advanced network infrastructure,” he said. “China’s power generation and grid systems are world-class. Our telecoms infrastructure is the most advanced in the world.”

New numbers from the California Department of Education show a continued drop in public school enrollment in the 2024–2025 school year. Despite fewer students, TK-12 education spending continues to increase, begging the question of whether taxpayers are getting value for money.

The 5.8 million students counted for the just-concluded school year represents a reduction of 31,000 from 2023–2024 and 380,000 (or 6 percent) from before the pandemic. But the drop in traditional public school enrollment is even worse than these headline numbers suggest. The totals include charter schools which added 75,000 students since the 2018–19 school year.

Netting out charters yields an enrollment drop of 8 percent, and this is despite the fact that a new grade, Transitional Kindergarten, was added during the period.

However, as Marc Joffe reports for The Epoch Times, the declining student population required much more taxpayer money. According to state budgets, total K-12 educational funding rose from $97.2 billion in 2018–19 to $133.8 billion in 2024–25. That represents a 10 percent increase even after adjusting for inflation. And that only represents operating costs. Voters approved over $40 billion in local K-12 school bonds last year as well as a state school bond which will provide matching funds for school construction.

While some capital expenditure is needed to renovate older school buildings, we should rarely need to add new buildings in this time of declining enrollment. Yet California continues to build new schools, sometimes at staggering cost. In Los Angeles County, a new 31-acre facility replacing Compton High was recently completed at a cost of $225 million to accommodate about 1,400 students. In Alameda County, Dublin Unified’s new Emerald High School is costing $374 million. Although the school has a capacity of 2,500 students, it remains to be seen how much of that capacity will be used.

To save money, districts suffering declining enrollment should consolidate low-attendance schools, but school closures often meet heavy stakeholder resistance. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) alone, three dozen schools saw enrollment fall below 200 between 2018–19 and 2024–25, making them good candidates for consolidation.

But when asked about school consolidation, LAUSD’s Board President said, “I’m kind of fearing talking about it, because people are just going to go berserk,” according to education news website The 74.

That’s unfortunate, because low enrollment schools cannot spread their fixed costs such as administrator salaries and utilities across a large number of students, and because they lack the critical mass to offer sports and other extracurricular activities.

California’s high education spending does not produce strong learning outcomes. Despite per pupil expenditures well above the national average, California fourth and eighth graders perform below the national average on standardized math and reading exams. Utah outperforms California on all national comparisons even though its per pupil spending is 45 percent lower, and even Mississippi, America’s poorest state, is outperforming California on some of the tests.

Instead of helping students, California’s extra education spending seems to mostly benefit special interests such as unions, contractors, election consultants, and financial intermediaries.

While we normally hear about teacher unions, other categories of school employees have their own unions. At LAUSD, administrators, financial analysts, and even playground aides all bargain collectively and pay union dues. Unions have an incentive to maximize their membership (and thus their dues revenue), so they naturally oppose reforms that might lower headcounts or constrain employee compensation.

As a result, California’s overinvestment in school infrastructure is actively supported by a complex of service providers seeking to improve their bottom lines. Election consultants poll voters and craft ballot language to maximize the odds of school bonds. Financial advisors, bond underwriters, and construction contractors often contribute to school bond campaigns, thereby increasing their chances of getting new business.

Indeed, the California school construction industry has its own lobbying group in Sacramento, ironically named CASH, short for the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, which was involved in passing last year’s state school facilities bond measure, Proposition 2.

While unions and construction advocates couch their advocacy in terms of what’s good for pupils, the facts are clear: California is spending a lot of money to provide a middling education to a dwindling number of public school students.

Authored by Mark E. Jeftovic via bombthrower.com,

“In the future there will be only one occupation: managing one’s wealth.

…and most people are going to be unemployed.”
— Mark E. Jeftovic, ‘The Great Bifurcation’

It’s been a minute since I last wrote anything here, owing to a combination of a slightly heavier than usual travel schedule, and frankly, burnout, after that last Canadian election.

I’ve truly underestimated the gullibility of the Canadian public – after being predictably on-track for a massive pendulum swing to a Conservative super-majority from 10 years of Liberal policies demolishing Canada, the entire dynamic reversed and was nullified within a few short weeks by the entire “Elbows Up” mind-fuck.

The irony behind all this is that the public largely switched their vote for the candidate Donald Trump wanted to win because of their own Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Watching it from the outside was demoralizing.

(Steve Bannon told me before the election that Trump’s “51st State” riffs were done on purpose to get the libs re-elected and Trump himself took a victory lap afterwards – Canadians were had. Why? Because the Americans want Alberta, and they think they’ll get it through de facto economic or political integration within a few years after #WEXIT happens).

We’ll see how long this administration lasts – nominally a minority, but functioning as a quasi-majority, and already introducing truly horrific legislation like Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act – which is more of a mass surveillance and war on cash bill than anything else.

The number of Canadians who now feel politically homeless is at an all-time high. The rapidly waning productive class of society watches, unable to intervene – as insular technocrats implement overtly destructive policies (i.e 865,000 new immigrants admitted YTD into an economy that squeaked out 8,800 new jobs) and seem to be intentionally cultivating divisiveness and polarization.

Why am I surprised?

When I look back on my own writings, and my overall theory that the era of nation state primacy is coming to an end, that the single most impactful phenomenon driving the world today is the accelerating rate of change,  it was naive of me to expect anything different.

We’re moving from the top-down, centralized model of a hierarchical Industrial Age  and transitioning into an amorphous and mercurial, rapidly shifting, network topology that blurs the lines between sovereigns and systems, crowns and corporations, that serves as a super-conductor for data, information, and memetic constructs – not to mention: disinfo, bad news and mass formation psychosis.

Add to this mix, AI – the third major technological disruption of this century after the internet (decentralized non-state communications) and Bitcoin (decentralized non-state money).

Via

Now we have decentralized, non-state intelligence and I mean intelligence in a number of ways, including:

• access to the sum total of human knowledge, instantly and at effectively zero marginal cost.
• each individual possessing the means, motive and opportunity to create their own personal think-tanks, advisory boards and even “spycraft”-style intelligence services using osint and agentic AI that can act strategically and agentically on anybody’s behalf (servitor swarms, if you will).
• every node, device, piece of software and  network connected “thing” having the ability to access and act on information from everything else.

There’s a sub-cult of Bitcoin maxis who actually welcome outcomes like the aforementioned Canadian election because they think having nations run by the most out-of-touch, behind the curve technocrats will hasten the collapse of the fiat money era and bring about a Bitcoin Standard. They are awaiting a kind of monetary eschaton – and they are called accelerationists.

I am not an accelerationist, but you may have noticed I have been writing a lot about this but find the word itself being inadequate to the task – what’s happening now is beyond acceleration. In physics, there is a derivative order and their ascension forms a kind of kinematic spectrum:

I’ve been trying to come up with a word that captures this accelerating acceleration that’s a bit sexier than “jerk” – and this exponentially intensifying derivative expansion beyond “snap”, “crackle” and “pop” (oh those nerd physicists) – so far I can really only make something up (actually, it was the best chatGPT could think of): tachyosis (tachy- = fast, -osis = condition/process), to wit:

Tachyosis (n.)
A state of recursively compounding acceleration — where systems evolve faster than they can stabilize, perception fragments, and causality begins to blur. Considered the experiential threshold of the kinematic continuum.

“Civilizations in tachyosis cease to distinguish between signal and noise — they become pure velocity.”

This seems to fit the bill, and I like it because the word is reminiscent of “psychosis”, which is what a society undergoing this induces at a mass level.

What tachyosis does to society

While we know what happens during hyper-inflations, technological quantum leaps or breakdowns in the social contract – as separate phenomenons. If you follow Ray Dalio, he’ll tell you that the USA is following a template outlined his own research putting squarely on the path to Civil War –

“That template led me to believe that there was a high chance of a convergent breakdown of the monetary order, the domestic political order, and the international geopolitical order. Unfortunately, events are transpiring consistent with that template. “

But with all due respect to Mr. Dali, his framework only covers two of the three drivers we’re looking at here: it’s missing compounding affects of technological overclocking, and there are no history books to describe all three of these forces hitting an inflection point at the same time  and all over the world.

The Rise of Tribalism

As societal institutions break down the economy enters a state of perpetual disruption, people start forming associations with like-minded individuals and families, both in their own communities and remotely.

Tribes may overlap with geopolitical boundaries but their center of gravity is what it stands for, not the political unit they may (for a moment) intersect with.

Woke, MAGA, AnCaps, BLM, Proud Boys, MS-13, Bitcoin, and Scientology are all examples of tribes now, regardless of what they started out as. Some with more staying power than others. But they will all acquire more relevance and gravitas in their members’  lives than their nation state citizenship. Why? Because no nation state can keep up with the process of tachyosis, while tribes are informed by it.

(To that end, there’s a new tribe forming for politically homeless Canadians over at Ready.ca)

Neo-Feudalism & The Vise of Technology

By this, I mean the effect this technological hyper-acceleration is having at both ends of your own personal lifespan.

If you have kids under the age of 30, especially if they’re under the age of 20 – their path forward will be very different from all those who came before.

Put bluntly: they probably won’t have jobs, much less careers. The time for each generation accumulating their own wealth and building personal fortunes will be – for most participants – over.

Your kids, your grandchildren and beyond, (hold that thought) would do better to be raised in preparation for maintaining the wealth and managing any assets you leave to them. Anybody who doesn’t inherit anything faces a real risk of being permanently priced out of the asset acquisition game in perpetuity.

Especially if they follow the path laid out in Industrial Age textbooks: go to school, then university, then go find a job with a big company and parlay that into a series of mid-management posts that culminate in a career and a payday. Most of those positions will have been automated away and the majority of younger generations are looking at UBI and endless leisure – so long as they spend most of their time confined to a metaverse-connected pod stacked somewhere in a 15-minute city and take up as little space and oxygen in the real world as possible.

Meanwhile, if you have managed to amass assets and a non-negative net worth, be prepared to live longer – a lot longer. 150, 160 will probably be normal for anybody under 60 or so now. That’s how fast biotech – and soon nanotech – is moving.

A number of my peer group – mostly technology and business operators in their mid-50’s to late-60’s are looking to take their chips off the table, sell the businesses they founded and retire, assuming they’ll need to clear enough money to last them another 20 or 30 years.

That could be a huge mistake because there’s a real possibility they find themselves facing the prospect of heading into their 90’s and early 100’s having outlived their retirement funds.

The old model was (again, bluntly), “Die before your money runs out.” Now, it’s not just about planning for 30 years post-retirement. Plan for a century.

Meanwhile, you’re kids won’t have careers, neither will theirs – and you’ll still probably be around to see your great- and great-great-grandchildren be born into the same post-bifurcation world.

This is the neo-Feudal aspect. Your fortune will have to be subdivided across each generation, like the fiefdoms of yore – and the only way to keep everybody living in the real world (instead of being tucked away in those pods, being intravenously fed liquid crickets and soy protein) will be to leave them with a vastly larger fortune than the one you thought was enough to get just you through retirement.

I wish I had better news than this, because the world we’re headed into – while technologically fantastic – will also be economically bleak for too many people. It’s not fair, it’s not egalitarian and there is no stopping it – short of a Tower of Babel 2.0 type event, which will be a total buzzkill in even less preferable ways.

I’ve called this scenario “The Great Bifurcation” – where the world’s middle class disintegrates and we head into a hellscape of mind-boggling wealth disparity.

Lately I’ve come to suspect that this will play out beyond the economic sphere and also occur at the level of mental abstraction (see my earlier notes about W R Clemens) – and by this I don’t mean that the “haves” will have brain chips and poors won’t (probably the other way around, if anything) – but that the underclass will be operating at a cognitive disadvantage that resembles a different species entirely.

More on that in the next piece. Jump on The Bombthrower mailing list to catch that when it drops.

One of the things we endeavour to do here at the Bitcoin Capitalist is to help you build the generational wealth that can last the rest of your own life and setup your descendants – take a one month trial today »

Mark E. Jeftovic is the founder of Bombthrower Media and CEO of easyDNS.com, a company he co-founded in 1998 which has been operating along the lines described within these pages.

Authored by Rachel Acenas via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) on Monday announced his intent to resign from Congress before his term ends.

Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, revealed his plans to retire after the final vote on President Donald Trump’s massive budget package that has become known as the “big, beautiful bill.”

House Homeland Security Chair Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) speaks about U.S.-China Relations at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington on Dec. 17, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Tennessee Republican originally announced his intent to resign at the end of the previous Congress, but changed his mind.

Green said that he wanted to ensure that Trump’s priorities, including the border security component of the reconciliation package, made it through Congress.

The congressman said that after he retires, he'll work in the private sector for an opportunity that was “too exciting to pass up.”

His next election would have been held in 2026.

“I am grateful to Speaker Johnson and House Leadership for placing their trust in me to chair the Committee on Homeland Security, lead the effort to impeach former Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and to pass H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, the strongest border security legislation in history to ever pass the House,” Green said in a statement. “However, my time in Congress has come to an end.”

Trump’s mega policy bill passed the lower chamber in a narrow 215-214 vote.

The bill is now under consideration by the Senate. If the upper chamber makes any changes, the House must approve the Senate’s modified version before it goes to the president to sign into law.

Green’s delayed departure could help the GOP pass the massive budget package in the House since Republicans, with their already narrow majority, needed every vote.

There will be 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the House when Green’s resignation takes effect.

Green, 60, has served Congress since 2019. Border security has been a key focus of his congressional tenure.

In addition to overseeing the border security section of Trump’s bill, he also led the effort on the Homeland Security Committee to write the border security section of the Secure the Border Act.

Before leading efforts on Mayorkas’s impeachment, Green led the committee through a nearly year-long investigation into the causes, costs, and consequences of the border crisis, which resulted in a five-phase report that covered the whole investigation.

In addition to leading the Homeland Security Committee, the congressman also served as a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

“It was the honor of a lifetime to represent the people of Tennessee in Congress,” Green said. “They asked me to deliver on the conservative values and principles we all hold dear, and I did my level best to do so.”

Green previously served as an Army surgeon and in the state Senate and is from Montgomery County. During his military service, he was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The congressman didn’t disclose any further details about what he will do in the private sector.

A special election will be held to replace him, but the timing of that election depends on when he leaves office. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee must call a special election within 10 days of the seat’s official vacancy.

Green’s seat is expected to stay Republican as Trump won his district by 22 points in the November 2024 presidential election.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

From NTD News

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Wisconsin’s health department is keeping in place its recommendation that pregnant women and all children receive one of the currently available COVID-19 vaccines, diverging from guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A health care worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccine in an undated file photograph. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said on June 4 it is continuing to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for people aged 6 months and older.

Officials also said the state’s Medicaid would keep covering the vaccine for eligible members, including pregnant women.

“The current COVID-19 vaccine was thoroughly reviewed for safety and effectiveness and continues to be an important tool in preventing severe illness and death,” Kirsten Johnson, secretary of the department, said in a statement.

The CDC in late May stopped recommending that pregnant women receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The agency also now says that healthy children should only receive one of the shots after consulting with doctors and parents.

“Their decision should be based on informed consent through the clinical judgement of their healthcare provider,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email at the time.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that the previous recommendations, which said that children should receive a vaccine regardless of prior vaccination and infection, were put into place “despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”

Wisconsin officials said the changes “were not made based on new data, evidence, or scientific or medical studies” and that they were keeping in place the recommendations following an independent review.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not return a request for comment on Wisconsin’s move.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services did not respond when asked for evidence the vaccines prevent severe illness and death.

The current versions of the vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax were cleared by federal regulators in 2024 based on animal data and antibody data from humans, rather than data from human clinical trials. The CDC then issued its recommendations, which were unchanged from the advice for previous formulations.

Data from CDC systems presented to the agency’s vaccine advisers in April pegged a dose of one of the currently available vaccines as providing 21 percent to 36 percent additional protection to adults when measuring emergency department and urgent care visits, and 42 percent to 48 percent additional protection for immunocompetent adults aged 65 and up when measuring COVID-19 associated hospitalizations.

No other states appeared to react to the recent CDC updates apart from Florida, which praised the narrowed recommendations. The move “is an important advancement for parents, physicians, and children across the country,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, said in a statement. He added that “ultimately, scientific evidence dictates that the use of these products should end for all populations.”

The American Pharmacists Association said on June 9 that it was not endorsing the updated adult immunization schedule. The group said that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy “has been proven safe and effective” and that it views pregnancy as a condition that places women at higher risk of severe COVID-19.

The group, which did not respond to a request for comment, said that it hopes future updates to the schedule are “based on scientific evidence” and that they are based on advice from the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

A subgroup of that panel said in the spring that they supported shifting the CDC’s universal recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines to a non-universal recommendation.

The panel, whose members were all later terminated by Kennedy, is scheduled to convene later in June to discuss matters including COVID-19 vaccination.