Month: February 2024

Via Off-Guardian.org,

Welcome to the UK where it’s now official government policy that you CAN’T publish “misinformation”, but The Guardian, the BBC, Disney and Netflix CAN…

Yes, it’s true – the recently signed “Online Safety Act” brands the publication of “false information” a criminal offense punishable by up to a year in prison…

…unless you’re an MSM outlet, when it’s totally fine.

Think even the corrupt & bloated criminal class that rules over us would never dare be that blatant?

Take a look at section 179 making it illegal to publish false information with intent to cause harm:

…and then look at section 180, which exempts all MSM outlets from this new law :

…and that’s without even getting into OfCom’s “select committee”, or how they choose to define “misinformation” (s. 152)

Welcome to the modern definition of “freedom of speech”, where the MSM are directly and explicitly permitted to “knowingly publish false information with intent to cause non-trivial harm”, and you can be sent to jail for a year for calling out their lies.

Oh, and it looks like our friends across the pond might not be far behind. The Big Tech Senate hearings started yesterday, and social media executives are already throwing their support behind the new “Kids Online Safety Act”.

With the EU’s own Digital Services Act coming into force later this month, and all the focus on “misinformation and disinformation” at Davos two weeks ago, we can see the real crackdown on internet free speech is about to kick into gear.

Good times.

For a more in-depth break down of what exactly the “Online Safety Act” is and how it works, you can read our article from last September.

Two of France’s main farming unions on Thursday agreed to suspend protests and lift road blockades across the country after the government announced measures the deemed “tangible progress” in the ongoing revolt against EU ‘climate-driven’ initiatives designed to wean society off of evil, non-bug-based, carbon-emitting food while China, India, and the rest of the world laughs.

In addition to France, protests have been held in Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Germany and elsewhere. Last week, tensions came to a head in Brussels when farmers threw eggs and stones at the European Parliament building, demanding that European leaders stop punishing them with more taxes and rising costs to finance the so-called ‘green agenda.’

After French farmers stepped up protests earlier in the week, the government promised on Thursday to extend protections – including better controlling imports and giving farmers additional aid, Reuters reports.

“Everywhere in Europe the same question arises: how do we continue to produce more but better? How can we continue to tackle climate change? How can we avoid unfair competition from foreign countries?,” said Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, announcing the new measures.

In response, France’s main farmers union, FNSEA, announced that it was time to lift the blockades and “go home.” Arnaud Gaillot of the Young Farmers’ union echoed the message, however both unions warned that other types of protests would continue, and they’d be back if the government doesn’t make good on their promises.

Meanwhile in Ireland, farmers began protesting Thursday evening.

#BREAKING #Ireland JUST IN: Farmers’ protests began in Ireland. pic.twitter.com/rJ6lsCnkgG

— The National Independent (@NationalIndNews) February 1, 2024

“There’s a general dissatisfaction with the level of environmental regulation that is being heaped on farmers, the low margins, and (the) resulting low income the farmers have been suffering from for a very long time now,” said Cathal MacCarthy, media director for the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, adding “There will be a great deal of sympathy and solidarity with the aim and ambitions of the protests both in Ireland and on the Continent,” EURACTIV reports.

“They feel they are being regulated out of business by Brussels bureaucrats and Department of Agriculture officials who are far removed from the reality of day-to-day farming,” said Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) President Francine Gorman on Wednesday, ahead of the protests.

The concerns of the Irish beef and dairy farmers echo the concerns of other European farmers who have been protesting for weeks.

MacCarthy said Irish beef and dairy farmers also believe they are not being compensated fairly for the agrifood products they cultivate, given the increased costs involved in production as a result of environmental regulations.

“We need senior politicians to face consumers and say, ‘Lads, listen, the cost of producing this food is X, that has to be paid, and the margin that allows farmers to live (has to be paid), but we can’t just be dependent on what the supermarket feels like charging their customers,’” he said. -EURACTIV

“We can either continue to have cheap food, or we can have environmentally sustainable food, but we can’t have both,” said MacCarthy.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A former software engineer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for carrying out the “largest data breach” of classified materials in the agency’s history. He also faced charges related to child abuse imagery, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.

Joshua Schulte, a 35-year-old former CIA programmer, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman in a federal court in New York on Thursday for espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and child pornography charges.

The sentencing follows his convictions at trials that concluded in March 2020, July 2022, and September last year.

Prosecutors initially sought a life sentence for Mr. Schulte, accused of stealing classified CIA documents and leaking them to the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks began publishing the classified data, known as “Vault 7,” in March 2017.

The files were dated 2013–2016 and concerned tactics and tools used by the CIA to surveil foreign governments, alleged extremists, and others by compromising their electronics, including smartphones, computers, smart TVs, and messaging applications.

Mr. Schulte had helped develop the hacking tools used by the agency as a coder at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Schulte repeatedly denied any involvement in the leak and refuted being the source of it. Instead, he was accused of “spinning fake narratives about ways the stolen CIA files could have been obtained from CIA computers,” in an attempt to deflect suspicion from himself and divert law enforcement resources toward false leads.

Breach Cost CIA ‘Hundreds of Millions of Dollars’

Mr. Schulte has consistently maintained his innocence, claiming that the CIA and FBI have scapegoated him for the March 2017 leak. He insists that it was the result of a hack.

However, prosecutors say the leak of the files “immediately and profoundly damaged the CIA’s ability to collect foreign intelligence against America’s adversaries” and placed CIA personnel, programs, and assets directly at risk while costing the agency hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Schulte has been detained, pending trial, since 2018.

The former CIA worker has also been charged with receiving, possessing, and transporting child pornography after prosecutors said a search of his home led to the discovery of “layers of encryption hiding tens of thousands of videos and images of child sexual abuse materials” on his computer.

That included 3,400 images and videos of “disturbing and horrific child pornography” as well as “images of bestiality and sadomasochism,” prosecutors said.

Mr. Schulte collected the images during his employment with the CIA via the dark web, according to prosecutors.

Schulte’s ‘Information War’

They further claimed that Mr. Schulte made plans to wage what he called an “information war” against the government after his arrest. He obtained contraband cellphones while in jail, which he used to create anonymous, encrypted email and social media accounts.

He allegedly used the cellphones to transmit more of the materials to WikiLeaks and “planned to use the anonymous email and social media accounts to publish a manifesto and various other postings containing classified information about CIA cyber techniques and cyber tools,” the DOJ said.

“Joshua Schulte betrayed his country by committing some of the most brazen, heinous crimes of espionage in American history. He caused untold damage to our national security in his quest for revenge against the CIA for its response to Schulte’s security breaches while employed there,” U.S. attorney Damian Williams said in a statement announcing Mr. Schulte’s sentencing.

“When the FBI caught him, Schulte doubled down and tried to cause even more harm to this nation by waging what he described as an ‘information war’ of publishing top secret information from behind bars. And all the while, Schulte collected thousands upon thousands of videos and images of children being subjected to sickening abuse for his own personal gratification,” Mr. Williams continued.

Prosecutors praised the “outstanding investigative work” of the FBI and prosecutors in unmasking Mr. Schulte for “the traitor and predator that he is.”

Their work ensured that he would spend 40 years behind bars, “right where he belongs,” Mr Williams added.

In addition to the 40 years in prison, Mr. Schulte, who represented himself in court, was also sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release.

Mimi Nguyen Ly and Reuters contributed to this report.

Russia has condemned the Friday night large-scale US strikes on Syria and Iraq, saying it was an illegal ‘aggression’ and that an urgent United Nations Security Council meeting must be convened to address it.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Saturday of the American operation which killed some 40 people, including civilians, that it “once again demonstrated to the world the aggressive nature of US policy in the Middle East and Washington’s complete disregard for international law.”

According to TASS, “A UN Security Council meeting in connection with the US strikes is scheduled for February 5”; however, the UN has yet to confirm or publish details of the upcoming emergency session. 

Additionally Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said: “We just demanded an urgent sitting of the UN Security Council over the threat to peace and safety created by US strikes on Syria and Iraq.”

The Pentagon said it struck over 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, and there are likely more bombing waves to come in the next days. 

In fresh Saturday remarks, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said “This is the start of our response.” Some unnamed US officials have even said the operation could continue for days or even weeks, in response to the Sunday drone attack on the Jordanian border base which killed three Americans.

While Russia has over several years repeatedly condemned US operations over Syria, and especially the troop occupation in the northeast, it has never responded with an anti-air intercept, or at least this has never been publicly disclosed. 

But this remains a possibility so long as major US aerial operations continue. Russian jets and convoy patrols are present especially in Syria’s northwest, but have also been known to stretch near Deir Ezzor, the other side of which the Pentagon has a presence.

Whilst the US strikes on Syria and Iraq are illegal and an act of aggression, 1) The US would have given Russia advance notice of the strikes; 2) Russia would have forewarned the intended targets; 3) Damage will be limited; and 4) The US is maintaining its thuggish reputation.

— Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos (@DrMarcusP) February 2, 2024

Moscow says that the US is there illegally, while Russian military intervention was invited in by the Assad government, to stave off externally-sponsored jihadist and terror attacks on the Syrian population.

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

Ten Republican senators in Oregon cannot run for reelection, the state’s top court ruled on Feb. 1.

The court found that the senators are banned from running for reelection under a constitutional amendment approved in 2022.

The amendment, Ballot Measure 113, states that lawmakers who miss at least 10 legislative days without an excuse cannot seek reelection.

The ruling upheld a decision from Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, a Democrat.

Ms. Griffin-Valade said in 2023 that the senators, under the measure, could not try for another term after their current term.

“My decision honors the voters’ intent by enforcing the measure the way it was commonly understood when Oregonians added it to our state constitution,” she said at the time.

The decision sparked a lawsuit from some of the Republican senators, but the Oregon Supreme Court sided with the secretary of state.

“Because the text is capable of supporting the secretary’s interpretation, and considering the clear import of the ballot title and explanatory statement in this case, we agree with the secretary that voters would have understood the amendment to mean that a legislator with 10 or more unexcused absences during a legislative session would be disqualified from holding legislative office during the immediate next term, rather than the term after that,” the new ruling reads.

Justices said they used their typical methodology in construing the amendment “by determining how the voters who adopted the amendment most likely understood its text.” The method included considering the information presented to voters, which stated that voting yes would disqualify legislators with 10 unexcused absences for the term “following current term in office.”

“Those other materials expressly and uniformly informed voters that the amendment would apply to a legislator’s immediate next terms of office, indicating that the voters so understood and intended that meaning,” the justices wrote.

The ruling applies to 10 Republican senators in the 30-seat body.

“I’ve said from the beginning my intention was to support the will of the voters,” Ms. Griffin-Valade said in a statement. “It was clear to me that voters intended for legislators with a certain number of absences in a legislative session to be immediately disqualified from seeking reelection. I’m thankful to the Oregon Supreme Court for providing clarity on how to implement Measure 113.”

Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner, a Democrat, said that the ruling “means that legislators and the public now know how Measure 113 will be applied, and that is good for our state.”

The senators in question, including state Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, missed more than 10 days in 2023 while protesting Democrat-sponsored bills on abortion and other issues. Their walkout of about six weeks delayed voting because it resulted in a lack of quorum, or the minimum number of senators needed to be present to hold a vote.

“We obviously disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling. But more importantly, we are deeply disturbed by the chilling impact this decision will have to crush dissent,” Mr. Knopp said on Feb. 1.

Oregon voters approved Measure 113 by a wide margin following Republican walkouts in the Legislature in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

The measure says disqualification applies to “the term following the election after the member’s current term is completed.”

Mr. Knopp and others had challenged the interpretation of the measure.

Lawyers for the senators said they viewed the measure language as meaning that the lawmakers could run in 2024, since a senator’s term ends in January while elections are held the previous November. They argued the penalty doesn’t take effect immediately, but rather, after they’ve served another term.

All parties in the suit had sought clarity on the issue before the March 2024 filing deadline for candidates who want to run in this year’s election.

Mr. Knopp and three other Republican senators had already launched reelection bids before the case was considered, while two other senators have said that they’re retiring at the end of their terms. The remaining GOP senators were elected in 2022 for terms that end in early 2027, so they will be barred from running in 2026.

Justice Aruna Masih didn’t participate in the consideration of the case or the decision, the Oregon Supreme Court stated.

All justices on the Oregon Supreme Court were appointed by Democrat governors, either Gov. Kate Brown or Gov. Tina Kotek.

“I’m disappointed but can’t say I’m surprised that a court of judges appointed solely by Gov. Brown and Gov. Kotek would rule in favor of political rhetoric rather than their own precedent,” said state Sen. Suzanne Weber, another lawmaker affected by the ruling. “The only winners in this case are Democrat politicians and their union backers.”

Another challenge from Republicans, this one in federal court, is still pending. The court recently denied a preliminary request that would have let three of the Republicans run, a decision the Republicans have appealed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Authored by Peter Reagan via Birch Gold Group,

As it stands right now, it appears like Biden’s entire first term will have been plagued by varying degrees of unacceptable price inflation (some of which was historic).

No matter how the corporate media spins it, he just can’t seem to lead the country out of this persistent economic trend. The rate of price inflation is easing, but core inflation remains at a pace not seen since the early 1990s.

You can see both consumer price inflation (blue line) and core price inflation (red line) reflected on the official graph below:

Unfortunately, the Fed’s efforts to ease inflation and the easing rate of inflation are both about to get some resistance.

That’s because the Biden Administration is actively working against these efforts. While the Fed tries to rein in the money supply, the White House is digging in the spurs instead…

The Trojan Horse hidden in “The Tax Relief” act

A recent article published on The Daily Signal revealed that legislation claiming to provide tax relief for the middle class doesn’t quite do what it says it will:

checking inside this Trojan horse known as The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act instead reveals a mixed bag that includes welfare expansions, corporate windfalls, and inflationary deficits.

Here’s exactly what this “Tax Relief” entails for those of us trying to plan for our taxes:

The only individual tax cut in the bill is a slight cost-of-living adjustment to the child tax credit – likely from $2,000 to $2,100 – that would apply to taxpayers’ 2025 and 2026 tax filings before expiring.

The bulk – 91.5% to be exact – of what is being described as “middle-class tax relief” is, in fact, an expansion of welfare benefits.

Okay, look, just calling it “welfare” doesn’t automatically make it a bad idea. We don’t usually think of “welfare” as something the middle class needs, certainly.

But times are tough! People are struggling! Maybe everyone needs a little welfare these days?

Well, there’s a catch.

Another report provided by the Heritage Foundation revealed exactly what you might expect from this bill:

The JCT’s formal estimate shows a 10-year deficit impact of only $399 million. However, the 10-year aggregate estimate obscures the uneven distribution of the bill’s deficits. According to the JCT, the bill would generate increased federal deficits of $117.5 billion in FY 2024 and an additional $37.8 billion in FY 2025.

In other words, this welfare expansion will cost three times more than the White House is willing to admit in the first year alone!

Okay, so why am I getting so worked up about this?

Why does it matter if the child tax credit is bumped up 5% in a half-hearted attempt to match the soaring cost of living?

Here’s how the Heritage Foundation explains the problem:

These deficits can be expected to drive further inflation and increasing interest rates as the government generates new money… divorced from increases in real productive capacity and as it crowds out private borrowing.

A lot of Americans (and far too many of our political leaders) seem to believe that the government has a magical treasure chest of wealth hidden somewhere.

Furthermore, they believe they’re entitled to their “fair share” of government-hoarded wealth. When their expenses go up, they want the government to compensate them for the difference.

Price of gas too high? Get a “gas tax rebate” (this was a real thing!).

Can’t afford a house? Don’t worry, there’s a government-sponsored entity that’s ready and willing to loan as much as it costs. Whether or not payments are affordable.

All they want is their share of the secret wealth in the government’s treasure chest.

But there’s no magic treasure chest.

The government cannot make wealth! The government’s revenue comes from one of two things:

• Taxation

• Debt

In an economic sense, taxation just shuffles dollars around. You pay your taxes and the government passes your dollars on to someone else. You have fewer dollars, they have more dollars, but the overall number of dollars doesn’t change.

Issuing debt, though? That doesn’t make wealth – it just makes more dollars. Since the value of currency, like everything else, is based on supply and demand, making more dollars simply decreases the purchasing power of all dollars everywhere.

It means more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services.

During the Covid panic, the federal government handed Americans tidy little piles of cash. Everyone was happy – at first. Then everyone got angry when prices rose – that free money didn’t go as far as it used to.

That’s how inflation works.

This is not a situation the government can spend its way out of! Goodness knows the Biden administration has tried…

Over the past three years, President Biden has added $6 trillion to the national debt. That is a truly shocking amount of money!

Let me put it in perspective…

• Adjusted for inflation, $6 trillion is 20% more than the U.S. spent fighting World War II

• It’s twice as much as the entire national debt of Germany (in just three years!)

• By itself, $6 trillion would be the third biggest national debt in the world

So it’s no surprise that the annual cost of living has risen, on average, $11,400 for the typical American family.

Giving them more dollars doesn’t help!

The Biden administration hasn’t figured this out yet. They see there’s a fire, they hear people complaining about the smoke – and so they dump another bucket of gasoline on the blaze. No, the last 6 trillion buckets of gasoline didn’t put the fire out – but maybe this one will!

Hoping for relief? Well, it looks like the White House’s 2024 budget will rack up at least another $1.7 trillion in debt.

Don’t ask yourself how many dollars you’ve saved, or how many you earn. Ask yourself instead what you can do with those dollars. What are they worth?

More importantly, how much less with they be worth tomorrow?

Inflation-proof your savings

Dollars are essentially IOUs from the federal government. They have no intrinsic value – which means their purchasing power is subject to the whims of supply and demand (and nothing else).

Some assets have intrinsic value due to their utility or other benefits they provide.

Tangible assets are the only financial assets you can own and hold in your hand. They aren’t an IOU or a promise to pay. They can’t be printed, hacked or inflated into worthlessness.

Physical gold and silver have served throughout human history as safe haven assets, immune from the whims of governments or central bankers. The price of physical gold has been relatively stable in the face of the economic turmoil that Bidenomics has wrought upon everyday Americans during his first term. In fact, the price of gold grew almost 13% overall in 2023 (easily beating inflation).

Of course, getting your hands on some precious metals is just one of many different ways to bolster your resistance to inflation. Now might be a good time to take a look at your retirement plan, and reconsider how your assets are diversified.

There’s been yet another major attack against a Russian oil refinery. In this fresh Saturday incident, a drone launched by Ukraine’s SBU security service slammed into Lukoil refinery in Volgograd, which is among the country’s largest refineries.

Regional reports say two drones in total hit the primary refining unit, “without which the plant will lose a significant part of its production capacity.”

Ukrainian sources declared that the “The SBU continues to systematically destroy the infrastructure used by Russia to wage war in Ukraine.” A large fire at the plant resulted. “By attacking oil refineries that support Russia’s military-industrial complex, we not only disrupt fuel logistics for enemy vehicles but also reduce funds flowing into the Russian budget,” the SBU said. 

The extensive fire has since been extinguished, but not before doing significant damage, apparently:

The fire has already been extinguished, but at its peak, it spread over 300 square meters. Despite this, the governor of Volgograd Oblast, Andrey Bocharov, claimed that the drone attack was repelled.

The Security Service of Ukraine has lately claimed responsibility for a string of drone attacks on Russian refineries over the past several weeks.

The range of Ukraine’s drone and missile arsenal appears to have significantly increased of late, leading the Kremlin to suspect these are Western-supplied weapons being used on Russian territory. It’s also likely that Kiev could have targeting help from the US, UK, or France. Moscow has also of late complained especially that French mercenaries are on the ground in northern Ukraine.

This new drone attack is believed to have been launched from Kharkiv, like other recent attacks. The distance from Kharkiv to the southern city of Volgograd is over 600km, which is a significant flight time for the suicide drone. Russian oil exports have remained strong throughout nearly two years of war, despite US-led sanctions, in large part due to countries like China and India.

The Ukrainian Army launched suicide drones at Volgograd (formerly known as Stalingrad) last night.

A massive fire started in one of the largest oil refineries in the country.

It was the first time Ukraine struck Volgograd this war. pic.twitter.com/TlTaibhI2W

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) February 3, 2024

These stepped up efforts by Kiev to target Russian energy is dangerous trend which looks to only continue, but which will invite greater Russian retaliation on Ukrainian cities, given also that Ukraine is receiving longer range missiles which were pledged last year:

Washington plans to ship its first batch of ground-launched long-range bombs to Kiev this week. The arms were designed for the Ukrainian military and will give Kiev another option for deep strikes. 

The new weapon was developed by Boeing and Saab. It combines a 250-pound guided bomb intended to be launched by an aircraft and straps it to a rocket motor. Washington believes it has a range of 90 miles. 

Boeing and Saab pitched combining the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor in November 2022. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the long-range bomb to Ukraine in February 2023. However, the delivery of the munitions was delayed because it needed to be developed and tested. 

Politico spoke with four officials who confirmed the first batch would arrive in Ukraine this week. The officials touted the weapons as giving Ukraine “a significant capability.” “It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the US official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”

This spate of attacks has also raise questions about the quality of Russian air defense systems around key infrastructure facilities, or if they are present at all for that matter.

Russian oil exports made up about 30% of the country’s budget revenues. As of 2023, Russia became China’s number one oil supplier, taking the top spot long held by Saudi Arabia.

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

It was just about two years ago that I wrote an article detailing how the mainstream media was losing the fight of its life against Joe Rogan. In 2022, I also wrote about how CNN had basically crumbled at the hands of alternative media.

On Friday, news broke that Rogan was renewing his contract with Spotify, and that it would likely be worth (another) $250 million.

The hilarious thing is that this renewal and the continued success of alternative media sources, like the very blog you are reading right now, come at a time when legacy media corporations are engaging in mass layoffs and losing both subscribers and viewership.

When I started my podcast in 2018 and this blog in 2021, something Joe Rogan once said echoed in my ears:

“You don’t have to be everything for everybody; you just have to be something for somebody.”

And that was exactly why I wanted to start a podcast. The people that I wanted to hear from in the world of finance, like Peter Schiff and Bill Fleckenstein, were given zero time in the mainstream media.

When they were invited on, they were heckled, ridiculed, and used as punching bags, despite often being the only people correctly predicting how the economy would go and representing the only counterbalance to an always bright, sunny, and cheery mainstream financial media.

I didn’t really care if anybody ever listened to my podcast; I just wanted to have an excuse to invite people on whose perspectives I wanted to hear but wasn’t getting from the mainstream media. In other words, I became part of a media free market that wanted to test to see if my needs were similar to those of other people who followed the news in the industry.

Lo and behold, about five years later, my podcast has over 6 million plays/downloads across platforms. It’s definitely not The Joe Rogan Experience, but it’s something for somebody. It’s the same with my blog. Those who are subscribers here know that I write to discuss issues that are on the fringe—issues specifically not covered by the mainstream media. They are not always worth covering, but some times they are — that’s the risk I run. Regardless, for the most part, you wouldn’t be getting it anywhere else so that makes it worth it for me to hash out. I don’t mind sorting through the muck on “the fringe.”

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🔥 6 Months Free: For those of you that are not yet subscribers, this link will afford you a year’s paid subscription for the price of just 6 months. It’s a discount that never expires for as long as you wish to remain a subscriber: Get 50% off forever

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The crumbling of the once-great media establishments like the LA Times, who announced massive layoffs last week, and CNN, who has fired most of the key staff that was on board a few short years ago, goes to show that the free market has determined there is a significant need for other types of media.

Back in the days of cable news, before streaming video and podcasts, there was really only one way to get your news. Today, the internet has revolutionized the industry and has become the vehicle for us in alternative media. No matter how “fringe” your view of the world is, there is now generally a media echo chamber of some sort you can go lock yourself in when you want to. From there, the free market and consumer dollars will determine who will be raging successes and who won’t.

Generally, when you sign your second $200 million deal in less than a decade, it’s a pretty good sign that the free market has deemed you a success — especially when your biggest former critics, people like Brian Stelter, are walking around unemployed while you do it.

And it isn’t some secret as to why the Joe Rogan Experience has been a success; rather, it’s quite simple: he has a range of guests, explores topics that are off-limits elsewhere, takes things in a calm, relaxing and jovial, humorous fashion, asks genuine, open-minded questions, and generally broaches serious topics with a healthy dose of lightheartedness and common sense.

In other words, Joe Rogan approaches things with good faith and honesty.

And this, pray tell, has been the main differentiating factor between a lot of the alternative media and giant media empires. The world is becoming aware of the fact that the giant media conglomerates all have a narrative—whether it is left, right, or otherwise—and they are all doing the bidding for their respective powers that be. And don’t get me wrong, there is a place for this, but it is among lobotomized automatons who are happy to have somebody else do their thinking for them, not the rest of us.

A free market in any industry does well to allocate resources to where they belong. The mainstream media monolith is seeing its foundation crack because its viewership, the “resources” of the industry, is drifting to other sources.

The beautiful thing about alternative media is that the overhead can be super low, and, in my case, I’ve been lucky enough to not really have to engage in any type of major marketing, save for a couple of emails that I send out each weekend. For the most part, it’s a one-man show. No producers, no multi-million dollar budget, no sponsors to bow to and no “guidelines” about what I can and can’t talk about.

My friend Phil Bak casually asked me on Friday what I thought the marketing budget was for big media corporations.

“Like fifty million a year or something,” I guessed.

“Exactly,” Phil replied to me. “Fifty million f*cking dollars. And they can’t find a single interesting thing to say.”

Unlike the dolts eating from the trough of their sponsors to determine their content, I’m lucky enough to get incredible content from friends of mine voluntarily because they, too, have been ignored by the mainstream. If they had opinions that were useless, there wouldn’t be a market for them. Instead, my subscriber list continues to grow.

This means people are thirsty for an honest, open discussion and debate about the merits — especially in the world of finance, where modern monetary theorists proclaim themselves God while in the background their “theory” is self-immolating in plain sight.

And so, less than a decade in to Rogan’s Spotify push, we have seen a major mutation of the media landscape, and my guess is that it is going to continue shifting as the days, weeks, and months go by. There will be more Rumbles, there will be more Barstool Sports, there will be more independent podcasts, there will be more grassroots news organizations, and, generally, there will be more honesty, candor, and fearlessness in the way news is reported. Some of the most important stories over the last two years, including ones about Covid and censorship, have been broken by independent investigative journalists like Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi.

It is no mistake that these fearless individuals, bringing truth to light for those who seek it, have been welcomed onto the very same podcast platform that is earning Joe Rogan another $200 million contract. The poplace is thirsting for truth.

And Rogan is personifying what the free market is telling the mainstream media machine: we’re done with authoritarianism, we can handle the truth, don’t infantilize us, you don’t know what’s best for us, let us make up our own minds and, in not so many words, treat us as adults with sovereignty over our own liberty.

Congrats on the new contract, Joe, and thanks for the inspiration.

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Next week, the GOP-led House will vote on a new, $17.6 billion Israel aid package that won’t include IRS funding cuts contained in their original bill, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on Saturday.

What’s more (oh boy!), the new House bill includes $3.3 billion to support US military operations in the Middle East as regional conflicts break out on multiple fronts, Axios reports.

Johnson’s announcement comes as Senate negotiators prepare to roll out a comprehensive package that would fund Israel, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific (oh, and border security funds are in there somewhere!).

In a letter to House Republicans obtained by Axios, Johnson wrote that Senate leadership has “eliminated the ability for swift consideration” of an emergency spending package by refusing to include House leadership in the talks.

“Given the Senate’s failure to move appropriate legislation in a timely fashion, and the perilous circumstances currently facing Israel, the House will … take up and pass a clean, standalone Israel supplemental package,” Johnson’s letter reads.

Johnson noted that the IRS offset was the “primary objection” Democrats had to the previous Israel bill, and that the Senate will “no longer have excuses … against swift passage of this critical support for our ally.”

More via Axios:

The backdrop: The House passed a $14.3 billion aid package to Israel in November, shortly after Johnson took office, but Democrats and even some Republicans were upset that its spending was paired with cuts to the IRS.

• Just a dozen of the most staunchly pro-Israel House Democrats voted for the bill, many vocally criticizing the IRS piece, and it was blocked from consideration in the Senate.
• The Senate has spent months trying to craft a comprehensive package that would pair Ukraine funding with border security provisions, but Republicans’ openness to such a deal has waned as the talks dragged on.

Authored by Tarik Solmaz via RealClear Wire,

The recent victory of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Lai Ching-te in Taiwan’s presidential election has heightened tensions between China and Taiwan, renewing the debate on a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan. While most defense analysts do not perceive a war in the Taiwan Strait as imminent, some notable figures have often warned that China might be tempted to launch a military offensive against Taiwan anytime soon. A four-star U.S. Air Force general even suggested last year that Beijing might take military action against the island by 2025.

Undoubtedly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been relentless in its pursuit of control over Taiwan. Since the presidency of Beijing-skeptic Tsai Ing-Wen began in 2016, the Chinese state has employed a large-scale hybrid warfare campaign against Taipei to subvert Taiwan’s independence-leaning government. China’s hybrid warfare efforts have comprised isolating Taipei diplomatically, undermining public trust through propaganda and fake news, cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and military intimidation through air defense identification zone (ADIZ) incursions and large-scale military exercises.

Despite China’s prolonged hybrid warfare campaign, the pro-independence DPP’s candidate emerged victorious in the recent election. This victory prompts a reevaluation of China’s approach and raises questions about the potential for the escalation of hybrid warfare to a full-scale military operation. The fact that the Kremlin turned its protracted hybrid warfare campaign against Ukraine into a full-scale military operation on February 24, 2022, reveals that the hybrid model of warfare is not the sole element in the revisionist powers’ national security toolkit, and traditional warfare is here to stay. On paper, Chinese hybrid warfare activities against Taiwan may also escalate to conventional military operations at any time in the future. To assess the likelihood of a military invasion of Taiwan by China, it is crucial to understand the four key factors that led Beijing to adopt the hybrid warfare approach over the past eight years and whether those factors remain relevant.

The first one is Taipei’s preference for the status quo. Beijing has long warned Taiwan that any attempt to declare formal independence from the mainland means war. Even though Taiwanese policymakers repeatedly asserted that Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent country and, thus, there is no need to proclaim independence, it is evident that they have refrained from making a formal declaration to avoid provoking Beijing. Due to Taipei’s hesitant position, China’s perception of the threat stemming from the Taiwanese independence movement has not reached the alarm threshold. Since the perceived threat has been significant but not vital, Beijing has preferred to employ the hybrid model of warfare, which falls somewhere between diplomacy and conventional warfare. Taiwan’s new president-elect, Lai Ching-te, has frequently emphasized during the electoral campaign that he desires to maintain the status quo with the mainland and has offered dialogue with Beijing. Lai’s emphasis on maintaining the status quo suggests this factor will likely persist.

The second factor is the U.S. support for Taiwan. Although Washington cut off its diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1979, it continued to maintain a robust informal relationship with Taiwan and to sell weapons to its army in the decades that followed. Furthermore, during the previous decade, China’s rise to become the world’s second-largest economic and military power has been perceived as a significant threat to its global interests by the United States. As a result, it has sought to create alliances to restrict its role in Asia-Pacific. In that regard, Washington has seen Taiwan as an important strategic partner and often stated that it will protect Taiwan if China carries out an outright invasion campaign on the island. Therefore, direct military intervention in Taiwan could prompt Washington to impose serious sanctions on China. Moreover, it could spark an all-out war between China and the United States. As such, in recent years, China has prioritized hybrid warfare operations against the island to avoid Washington’s possible countermeasures. The United States has not altered its position regarding a possible Chinese invasion campaign over Taiwan. Indeed, recently, as tension from China intensified, Washington approved a $300 million sale of equipment to help Taiwan upgrade its tactical information systems.

The third factor involves China’s portrayal as a peaceful actor. Despite seemingly asserting a stance against the pursuit of regional or global hegemony and opposing the use of military force in international relations, China’s rapid economic growth raised concerns about potential dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. In response, Beijing introduced the ‘peaceful rise’ concept in the early 2000s to allay suspicions and assure the global community that its expanding political, economic, and military capabilities would not jeopardize international peace and security. This policy remains essential for China to sustain economic growth and enhance diplomatic influence globally. An overt military operation against Taiwan would significantly damage China’s international image, as has been case with the Russian Federation. Hence, the Chinese leadership has opted for a hybrid warfare model to achieve political objectives concerning Taiwan, avoiding direct military confrontation. Ensuring China’s economic development still depends on its commitment to a peaceful rise, and there is no urgency for Beijing to veer away from the trajectory of peaceful development.

The fourth and last key factor is that occupying the island might not be that straightforward in military terms. Beijing has consistently modernized and enhanced its military forces over decades, making the People Liberation Army (PLA) currently possess the world’s largest active-duty military personnel. Despite this, undertaking a potential invasion of Taiwan poses significant challenges for China’s military. China has not fought a conventional war since the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. The absence of recent experience in conventional warfare has left the Chinese military without an opportunity to test its doctrine and capabilities. Additionally, a prospective Chinese invasion of Taiwan would require a large-scale amphibious warfare operation. However, currently, the PLA lacks the military capability and capacity to conduct a full-blown amphibious operation against Taiwan.

In conclusion, China’s reasons for adopting a hybrid warfare approach against Taiwan remain valid. Therefore, hybrid warfare operations still fit better into China’s cost-benefit calculus. China’s invasion of Taiwan seems unlikely in the short term. Instead, China would prefer to step up its hybrid warfare activities. The military aspects of China’s hybrid warfare operations may be more visible in the near future. Beijing may use maritime militias called ‘little blue men’ on a broader scale to harass and intimidate Taiwan.

One day, Taiwan might experience a fate similar to Ukraine. However, the timing of such a scenario will depend on evolving circumstances, including Beijing’s perceptions of the threat posed by the Taiwanese independence movement, Washington’s stance on the Taiwan issue, and China’s military and economic posture. Changes in these factors may either heighten the probability of an all-out invasion campaign or contribute to the maintenance of peace.

Tarik Solmaz is a Ph.D. Candidate and research assistant at the University of Exeter.