Month: July 2024

The e-commerce leader in Europe is Amazon – but Chinese ventures into international e-commerce, for example AliExpress or more recently Temu, have made inroads. 

The following infographic, via Statista’s Anna Fleck, looks specifically at the example of the Chinese company Pinduoduo, drawing from ecommmerceDB figures.

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to this data, Pinduoduo will only be 13 percent behind Amazon in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2024. To put this in perspective: in 2019, Amazon’s gross merchandise volume was more than twice as large as that of Pinduoduo.

Pinduoduo also owns the online marketplace Temu.

The Temu app went online in the U.S. in autumn 2022, where it went straight to number one in the download charts.

While Temu’s global goods volume of around $30 billion is still quite small compared to the $389 billion of amazon.com, sales forecasts are pointing upwards.

Shortly after the release of the shopping app Temu in autumn 2022, Pinduoduo renamed itself PDD Holdings and has since served as the holding company for both platforms.

In 2023, PDD Holdings recorded record sales of $34.9 billion.

Compared to the previous year, this corresponds to sales growth of almost 90 percent, which, according to the company, is due to an increase in revenue from online marketing services and transaction services.

Authored by Philip Wegmann & Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

Republicans have nominated a hillbilly for vice president. This, by his own admission.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance is the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a New York Times bestseller. He is also a United States Marine who graduated from Ohio State University and, later, Yale Law School by way of the GI Bill, using the veteran benefit to ascend from the Rust Belt, where he has said poverty was a birthright, to Silicon Valley, where his financial disclosure forms reveal that he made a small fortune, and from there to the U.S. Senate.

Vance, only 39, has lived the American Dream in a hurry, a life portrayed in a biopic directed by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, no less. Now he writes the next chapter of his life, and American history, as the vanguard of a populist conservatism entirely unconcerned with the niceties of long-established GOP orthodoxy.

He may well be the Republican future, one not entirely welcomed by the old guard. All the same, or perhaps as a result, Vance is a man after Donald Trump’s own heart.

The former president and presumptive three-time Republican presidential nominee announced Monday that Vance would join him atop the ticket, saying his new No. 2 would focus on the voters “he fought so brilliantly for” in the Senate, namely “the American Workers and Farmers.” The junior senator from Ohio has served in that body for all of a year and a half.

What Vance lacks in legislative experience, he has made up for in energy. He loves the tariff and the union. He loathes the corporate tax cut and the global corporation. He is very “anti-woke.” The Buckeye also does not fear Big Government in the same way many of his more business-friendly colleagues do, a fact that makes him a star of “the New Right.”

A Trump-Vance administration, said Oren Cass, an intellectual godfather of the movement, means “a working-class conservatism that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.”

Vance means change, a transformation in personnel as much as policy. This much was on display Monday when Mitch McConnell arrived at the Republican National Convention here. The Senate minority leader, the legislature most responsible for landmark tax cuts and a conservative Supreme Court, rose to pledge the votes of the Kentucky delegation to Trump. He was booed.

“A lot of Senate Republicans have presided over the decline of their own country, and they’re unable to look themselves in the mirror and admit failure,” Vance told RealClearPolitics in an interview earlier this year. On his way to stump for Trump in New Hampshire at the time, Vance argued that it was time the elderly establishment “use their remaining years in public life to support an agenda that gets the country back on track.”

The most profound difference? Foreign policy. He told RCP earlier this year that the Biden administration was “deceiving the American people” about the financial and human cost of the war in Ukraine. “I gotta be honest with you,” he told Steve Bannon before the Russian invasion. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” His concern? “The fact that in my community right now, the leading cause of death among 18–45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl.”

This strict kind of America First thinking is unpopular among many traditional Republicans, especially those of the neoconservative variety. Vance is neither.

Each of the major vice presidential contenders traveled to Atlanta last month for the first presidential debate, gathering at the home of former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler before boarding a bus to the venue. It was the first time they were collected in one spot. After three glasses of wine the night before, Vance said he was hungover.

The millennial Senator joked with the much older passengers, all of them gunning to be the next vice president, that “age has caught up with me.” Everyone laughed. According to a source with direct knowledge, Vance then pivoted from self-deprecation to theology, turning to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for an esoteric conversation about the schisms inside the Catholic Church.

A spokesman for Vance did not dispute those events.

While fluency in the plight of the white working class first made Vance famous, he joined the ranks of the elite after law school and especially in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Elites, particularly liberal ones on the two coasts, could not fathom how a celebrity billionaire had just defeated Hillary Clinton. A product of the white working class, Vance volunteered as a guide, and through his memoir of life in Appalachia, he provided a picture of alienation, poverty, and drug addiction in middle America made worse by polarization and deindustrialization.

He was a celebrity, albeit a decidedly anti-Trump one. He quipped to Terry Gross during an NPR interview in 2016 that he couldn’t vote for Trump and wouldn’t vote for Clinton. “I might write in my dog,” he said, “because that’s about as good as it seems.”

“Everybody loved me back then,” Vance said in an interview with Russ Douthat. His conversion came at an event hosted by the Business Roundtable. An unnamed CEO was complaining about the cost of wages after Trump’s immigration crackdown, Vance told the New York Times columnist, when he turned to the author from Appalachia. 

“Well, you understand this as well as anybody,” Vance recalled the businessman saying. “These people just need to get off their asses, come to work, and do their job.” He recoiled at the suggestion that he was “sympathetic” to the inhumane calculus. The only solution: “Alienating and offending people who liked my book.”

Vance alienated plenty, running a hard-nosed, America-first campaign on his way to the Senate. The venture capitalist regularly rails against the political elite who lack empathy and whose policies, he believes, harm the forgotten man. “There are a lot of people with cushy positions who have made a lot of money off the decline of this country who don’t like him,” the senator told RCP in Atlanta, “but I think that their lack of endorsement is the best endorsement for Donald Trump.”

He entered politics as an anti-Trump pundit. He came to Congress a MAGA disciple with the endorsement of the former president, a development reportedly facilitated by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance had criticized Trump publicly, but after a correspondence and dinner in 2021, the former president took a shine to the populist with an Ivy League diploma.

Advisors urged him not to make a big deal out of the Yale Law degree, Trump admitted during a 2022 rally in Vandalia, Ohio. “Well, yeah, he’s elite! He’s elite in intelligence,” Trump said riling up the crowd, and that’s what we want, right? He will bring the toughness and intellectual firepower we need to champion our movement.

More important than brains? Loyalty. “J.D. will never be owned by the establishment,” Trump bellowed. Then, an unscripted aside: “He won’t be owned by me either, unfortunately.” The former president said of the man he would pick as his running mate two years later, “I’d love to own the guy, but I don’t think he’ll be there for me.” Vance, he explained, was “a very independent guy.”

But Vance turned out to be loyal. Very loyal. Once in the Senate, He embraced the Trump agenda while Trump remained in a sort of exile, advanced the argument that the 2020 election was rigged, and endorsed the former president early when the 2024 GOP field was still crowded. Vance told RCP earlier this year, “I wish Donald Trump wasn’t term-limited,” explaining that four years of Trump was preferable to eight of any other Republican.

The independence Trump bellowed about in Ohio remained. It is manifest in his willingness to buck the old ways, and has made Vance an anathema to more traditionally conservative voices. If Vance’s praise of FTC Commissioner Lina Kahn’s aggressive use of anti-trust law to police corporations made them raise an eyebrow, his embrace of industrial policy makes their skin crawl.

Washington Post columnist George Will reacted to news that Vance would be joining the ticket by calling him “the serrated edge of MAGA politics.” David French of the New York Times, meanwhile, saw something more sinister, writing that “Trump has impulses, whereas Vance has an ideology” and worrying that Vance would “create something coherent out of MAGA’s concerns and MAGA’s grievances.” Phil Klein of National Review declared that with his VP pick, Trump has pounded another “nail in the coffin for Reagan Republicanism.”

Vance is no insurgent, argues Ryan James Girdusky, a populist-minded operative who advised a pro-Vance super PAC during the 2022 Senate race. Instead, he follows in the footsteps of a different set of conservatives: President Calvin Coolidge, the late Ohio Senator Robert Taft, and failed presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. Like Vance, Girdusky said, all of them “supported protecting American industry from foreign regimes, measured immigration levels, and a foreign policy that doesn’t seek to be the world’s policemen.”

How did Vance muscle past governors, more senior senators, and at least one ambassador? Simple, said Tucker Carlson, who sat next to Vance and the Trump family in the former president’s box on the first night of the convention. “He was the one VP contender who actually agreed with Trump on the big issues,” the former Fox News host told RCP. “That seemed significant.”

Outside the convention hall, delegates gushed, not about the policy views of the newly announced nominee, but about his biography.

Robert Lawson, a former Marine and current Missouri delegate in his 70s, said he was thrilled with Vance because “he has a very good background, has the education, served in the Armed Services, and I think he has a big heart for the United States.”

Jo Broughton, a 73-year-old delegate from Ohio, said it was wonderful to have a fellow Buckeye on the ballot. “He’s come such a long way from his humble beginnings,” she said, referring to “a rough life growing up” defined by an absent mother in the throes of addiction. “I think that gives him perspective as to what happens in America and how families have troubles,” she continued, “and I think he’s going to do everything he can to help people.”

Trump now hopes the Midwestern son can deliver the rustbelt from which he came. Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a steel town unbolted by deindustrialization and smelted by globalization. It could easily serve as ground zero for American carnage, and three years before entering politics, he told RCP he did not think “most coastal Democrats care enough, or have enough empathy, for what’s going on in the heartland to turn it into a font of votes.”

Turning that region into a MAGA well-spring will be his immediate task as Vance works to return Trump to the White House. And then, perhaps Vance will carry the populist torch forward once Trump is gone.

Two days after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Venture Capitalist David Sacks gave an impassioned speech in front of the former president at the Republican National Convention – where he slammed Democrats for their disastrous policies which have led to chaos and decay both domestically and abroad.

“They’re in disarray after shielding President Biden from a vigorous primary and gaslighting the entire country about his fitness to serve,” Sachs said, pointing out that Democrats are now the kids in their own proverbial cages (that Obama built).

Sacks – no doubt doing a victory lap over the ascension of JD Vance to Trump’s running mate, also noted how Democrat policies have ruined San Francisco.

“In my hometown of San Francisco, Democrat rule has turned the streets of our beautiful city into a cesspool of crime, homeless encampments, and open drug use.”

He then slammed their open border policies.

“Democrats — led by Border Czar Kamala Harris — have allowed millions of illegal migrants to invade our country. They tasked Homeland Security not with stopping the illegal aliens, but with busing them all over our country,” adding “But worst of all, the Biden-Harris administration has taken a world that was at peace under President Trump, and they lit it on fire.“

To that end, Sacks blamed the Biden administration for provoking the war in Ukraine.

“Then, he provoked — yes, provoked — the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion. Afterward, he rejected every opportunity for peace in Ukraine, including a deal to end the war just two months after it broke out,” he opined.

Sacks ended by calling for “a president who can be president and lead, not a puppet controlled by his or her staff,” adding “We need order in our cities, order at our border, and order restored to a world on fire.”

Watch:

David Sacks Torches the Biden Administration at the 2024 Republican National Convention (Full Speech)

“The Biden / Harris administration has taken a world that was at peace under President Trump and they lit it on fire…Rather than bolstering confidence in American leadership… pic.twitter.com/r9xZDddP3h

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 16, 2024

As we noted on Monday, Sacks has come under heavy fire from the corporate media for using his ‘megaphone’ to spread ‘narratives’ about the assassination attempt on President Trump. Sacks’ response: an artfully worded ‘go fuck yourself.’

Authored by Danny Ervin via RealClearEnergy,

I am generally pessimistic about the future of the U.S. due to recent energy policies at the federal and state levels that favor “green” energy technologies, primarily solar and wind.

These policies often distort the economics of power production, leading to a massive misallocation of capital and overinvestment in unreliable solar and wind projects. Reliable electricity supply requires consistency every second of the day, not just minute-by-minute, but also over weeks, months, and years. My past experience in forecasting electricity demand for a five-year horizon showed that wind and solar forecasts fail to meet this requirement.

Economies and standards of living hinge on having an adequate, economic, and reliable energy source—attributes that are non-negotiable for an optimal energy infrastructure. Our current trajectory risks creating inadequate, unaffordable, and unreliable energy supplies, which would devastate the U.S. economy and standard of living.

Is there any hope? Yes. I recently attended The Energy Future Forum sponsored by RealClear and RealClearEnergy. I was impressed by the thoughtful and comprehensive discussion on energy issues in the U.S. and globally. While these insightful voices are currently ignored by the administration in Washington and many states, there is hope for future change.

The forum’s speakers covered a variety of topics, including renewable energy and the sources of materials for solar panel manufacturing, electric vehicles and the future of transportation, petroleum exploration and production, small modular nuclear reactors, and federal energy policy. Most speakers understood the physics and engineering realities of energy production. Mark Mills, in particular, emphasized the three requirements for a successful energy system: adequacy, reliability, and economic viability. He noted that society is more adept at finding new uses for energy than producing it and highlighted the dynamic nature of energy demand over time. He also stressed that AI will significantly increase electricity demand, concentrated in specific regions.

To meet this new demand, much of the supply will come from natural gas plants, as AI and data centers require a reliable source of electricity every second of every day. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are currently the best technologies to meet this need. However, new nuclear power plants, my favored generating technology, are currently uneconomical.

Small modular reactor (SMR) designs might offer a way forward, providing virtually unlimited electricity with no carbon dioxide emissions. This topic was discussed extensively at the forum and has garnered much attention over the past 12-18 months. Both nuclear proponents and opponents recognize that licensing regulations must be revised for these reactors to become financially viable. The political battle over these regulations will determine the future of nuclear power.

The Energy Future Forum provided reasons for optimism about the future of the U.S. If the political class listens to the facts and understands the physical laws governing energy production, our children and grandchildren could inherit a foundation for a plentiful, reliable, and affordable energy system.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity,news,

In the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, GOP Senator Rand Paul has called for Joe Biden to “tone down” his language.

“People say ‘oh, we need to have unity and the rhetoric needs to be toned down.’ Of course it does,” Paul said Monday, adding “But I think we could be more specific.”

“I think it would be helpful if President Biden would tone his rhetoric down, frankly,” Paul emphasised, specifically singling out “The fact that he’s saying all of the time that somehow President Trump is a threat to democracy.”

“The Soviet Union was a threat to democracy. Hitler was a threat to democracy. But comparing Trump to the Soviet Union, and to Hitler, isn’t helpful,” Paul urged.

Sen. Rand Paul’s thoughts on the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump:@LEX18News pic.twitter.com/oDxIeXJFx7

— Karolina Buczek (@Karolina_Buczek) July 15, 2024

“And it’s instigating people to think ‘oh my goodness, if President Trump wins, democracy will end.’ When you say such hyperbolic things, I think crazy people somehow can be incited by it. So, I hope President Biden will tone down his rhetoric,” the Senator reiterated.

Asked if both parties should tone it down, Paul responded “Well, really, the violence was directed toward President Trump, so I think it’s mostly incumbent on President Biden to tone down the rhetoric.”

“Are there people on the right who probably have over the top rhetoric? They need to tone it down too,” he added, clarifying “But I’m very much aware of the rhetoric coming from the left now, and from President Biden, because this turned out to be an anti-Trump assassination attempt.”

An example of Biden’s over the top rhetoric from just last week was flagged by, of all people, NBC’s Lester Holt during an interview aired Monday.

“You called President Trump ‘an existential threat’ and said it’s time to put him ‘in the bullseye,’ Holt told Biden.

“I didn’t say ‘crosshairs,’” Biden oddly responded, forcing Holt to repeat the phrase ‘bullseye’.

Biden attempted to pass it off as meaning ‘in focus’.

How many times does the interviewer have to say ‘bullseye’ before Biden understands the thing HE said? https://t.co/mLNCPDe7kH

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) July 15, 2024

“Have you taken a step back and done a little soul-searching on things that you may have said that could incite people who are not balanced?” Holt further asked Biden.

“I have not engaged in that rhetoric,” Biden falsely claimed.

NBC: “Have you taken a step back and done a little soul searching on things that you may have said that could incite people who are not balanced?”

BIDEN (LYING): “I have not engaged in that rhetoric.” pic.twitter.com/sdEtYvKIW2

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 15, 2024

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Lots of thinking these days about Rome and its fall. Maybe we should be thinking about Weimar and the inflation that wrecked Europe.

Following the Great War, now known as World War I, the victorious allies forced the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who would be the last German emperor, and thus ending a 300-year dynasty that had ruled Prussia. The Weimar Republic was born as a new experiment in democracy. The result was utterly catastrophic for the country and the world. The trigger was war reparations and the means by which they were paid.

“The depreciation of the mark of 1914–23,” wrote the brilliant economist Lionel Robbins in 1937 (therefore two years before World War II) “is one of the outstanding episodes in the history of the twentieth century. Not only by reason of its magnitude but also by reason of its effects, it looms large on our horizon. It was the most colossal thing of its kind in history: and, next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear responsibility for many of the political and economic difficulties of our generation.”

“It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements in German society,” he wrote, “and it left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, apt breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the foster-child of the inflation. The financial convulsions of the Great Depression were, in part at least, the product of the distortions of the system of international borrowing and lending to which its ravages had given rise. If we are to understand correctly the present position of Europe, we must not neglect the study of the great German inflation. If we are to plan for greater stability in the future, we must learn to avoid the mistakes from which it sprang.”

Consider the prescience here. It was not possible for Robbins or anyone to anticipate the ghastly scale of destruction of Europe that would follow in the coming years. The costs of the Nazi political movement were very apparent. The full implications were inconceivable.

What is this inflation to which he refers? Sadly, it is hardly understood today, even though, as Robbins said, it was then “the most colossal thing of its kind in history” until that point.

My first exposure to the historical incident came when looking through the bookshelf of my college roommate. He had a book called “The Age of Inflation” by Hans Sennholz. The chapter on this episode is precisely what led me to study economics. It made the point: economics is a technical science but with profound implications on all of human societies and life.

Since then I found this masterwork: “The Economics of Inflation,” by Constantino Bresciani-Turroni, professor of economics at the University of Milan, published in 1931 and later translated into English. It’s a hugely important book, the first and probably still the most definitive work on the topic. What he covers in some technical detail is a turning point in the history of civilization.

Let’s back up before the Great War when this all began. Enamored of the prospects for scientific economic planning and the rise of new technologies, governments of the West created what were called central banks. They began in Germany but were quickly copied by England and finally the United States. The idea of the central bank was to end the banking crisis, smooth out the business cycle, and, if you can believe it, finally conquer the problem of inflation.

The trouble was that central banking gave governments a new tool they had never had in the modern age: the ability to print their way out of new levels of spending without having to resort to taxation. The tariff had fallen out of favor as a revenue stream and the income tax was then very low, so the printing press offered quite the temptation. Or we might just say it: it was a moral hazard.

The traditional way of settling conflicts between nations was diplomacy. War was and is costly, and the citizens won’t shell out unless they are convinced it is essential to national security. In the 1910s, with central banks available to make up the difference, new national conflicts could too easily turn to a shooting war. The old multinational monarchies had broken down in any case, and the burning question of what would replace them was everywhere present. In addition, government had other new tools: new forms of munitions, the potential for air combat, larger guns and bombs, and even poison gas. There was an itch in politics to try them out, and the central banks stood in wait to make it all possible.

During the Great War, every major power resorted to the printing press but Germany even more than the others. Upon defeat, the German currency was already weak. Once presented with the rough peace terms of Versailles in 1919, which required that Germany pay reparations in hard currency, gold, or gold-backed marks, the temptation to run the presses proved too great.

This is when the action really began. German industry and agriculture were seriously in debt, and the post-war government was in constant negotiations with war victors. As a result, they turned to the printing press, and ultimately drove the full demise of the currency and the society behind.

But that was not the first effect. The first effect was a wild economic frenzy of 1920 in which the stock market boomed 70 percent over the course of one year. There was no shortage of jobs, no shortage of chances to make money, no limits to speculative opportunities. It seemed at that time like money itself would save Germany when everything else had failed.

That sense of frenzy and excitement did not last as monetary depreciation set in, slowly at first and then with a fury never before seen in modern times. It picked up in 1921 but raged through all things in 14 months between late 1922 and the end of 1923, during which time a loaf of bread went from 160 marks to 200 billion marks. That is to say, the currency was worth less than the paper on which it was printed.

Stories include people carrying paper money in wheelbarrows to the store, only to have the wheelbarrow stolen and the money left on the table. In the winter of 1923–24, it was commonly used as heating fuel.

Bresciani-Turroni comments:

“There is no doubt that the paper inflation would not have assumed such vast proportions if it had not been favored in many ways by the people who drew a large profit from it. It is clear from the discussions held in 1922 and 1923 in the Economic Council of the Reich, that representatives of those classes used their influence on the Government to impede the reform of the public finances and to sabotage all proposals for the stabilization of the German exchange, which they only accepted when, at last, an economic catastrophe threatened Germany and it was evident that the consequences of the inflation would rebound against their authors. Without making the exaggerated statement that the depreciation of the mark was due to a conspiracy of the industrial classes, it is certain, nevertheless, that they contributed largely to it, aided by the agriculturists who saw the lightening of the burden of their mortgages, which before the war was very heavy, and by all the other people who prospered owing to the continued depreciation of the national money. Such obvious and conspicuous advantages for producers could be derived from this phenomenon, that naturally they became the most convinced supporters of monetary inflation.”

The effect on politics was devastating. The draft and war had already slaughtered many young men, and left wounded survivors with a demoralized sense of how the system works. No one believed anymore in much of anything. They had survived on patriotism for years but now that had collapsed in the face of evidence that the old regime had led the country to ruin. The moral compass of the country was largely shattered, and institutions of faith bankrupted, and the once-robust cultural infrastructure briefly replaced by a brief confidence in money-making.

The money failed, shockingly and abruptly. When that was gone, the culture was hungry for a new answer and a scapegoat for the terrible sufferings. Hitler easily stepped into the breach with a full story of the racial heroics of the Aryan race and a wickedly cruel demonization of Jews as a people. A full 15 years passed before the second world war broke out, leading to another and worse round of ruin for the country and the world.

The lesson from this experience in Germany brought about a postwar dedication to tight money and a strong German currency. With European monetary integration, even this began to fade, and the European Central Bank joined the Federal Reserve in the great money-printing bonanza of 2020–21, fully one hundred years following the trigger of the greatest calamity of the century.

Our author concludes as follows. The great German inflation “annihilated thrift; it made reform of the national budget impossible for years; it obstructed the solution of the Reparations question; it destroyed incalculable moral and intellectual values. It provoked a serious revolution in social classes, a few people accumulating wealth and forming a class of usurpers of national property, whilst millions of individuals were thrown into poverty. It was a distressing preoccupation and constant torment of innumerable families; it poisoned the German people by spreading among all classes the spirit of speculation and by diverting them from proper and regular work, and it was the cause of incessant political and moral disturbance. It is indeed easy enough to understand why the record of the sad years 1919–23 always weighs like a nightmare on the German people.”

The history and practice of monetary policy is not ancillary to history but central. The Weimar-Era inflation is Exhibit A. This is not ancient history.

It’s also true that many countries in the world experienced suffering from their wartime money printing, including the United States. From 1915 and following, the United States dealt with serious inflation and finally a recession from 1921 to 1923 that knocked 8.7 percent off the gross domestic product (GDP).

The Coolidge administration responded by letting the correction happen with no major fiscal or regulatory interventions. By the following year, economic recovery was underway. This is the model, the proper way to fix man-made economic problems: first stop making more problems.

Would that all governments followed this path, then and now.

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

Authored by Denes Albert via ReMix News,

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his country needs more missiles and fighter planes than promised to defend its airspace.

“In order to ensure the full protection of Ukraine, in the opinion of our soldiers, we need 25 Patriot systems,” the head of state stressed at a press conference in Kyiv.

However, Zelensky did not mention how many Patriot air defense systems Ukraine currently has. He claimed that his country needs other weapons systems of different ranges and capabilities for comprehensive air defense; he also noted that at the NATO summit in Washington, Ukraine’s allies had offered five additional Patriot systems with similar capabilities.

A month earlier, during the G7 summit in Italy, he had said that at least seven Patriot systems were needed. One Patriot battery costs $1 billion, while missiles are at least $3 million apiece.

Since the start of the war on Feb. 24, 2022, Ukraine has received at least four Patriot systems.

However, according to press reports, several launch sites have been damaged or destroyed by Russian air strikes.

As for the F-16 fighter jets, Zelensky said they would be delivered in two waves, in the summer and by the end of the year. However, the Ukrainian leader acknowledged that the fighter jets alone will not change the course of the war, given the much larger Russian air force.

Zelensky also said that Russia should attend the second international peace summit, for which a date has not yet been set, after Moscow was not represented at the first such meeting in Switzerland.

Read more here…

Global wealth growth has slowed in the past decade compared to the one before, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, published today.

Where the average annual growth was 7 percent between 2000 and 2010, it cooled to just over 4.5 percent between 2010 and 2023.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, wealth growth is far from uniform.

In Mainland China and India, average annual wealth development has more than halved since 2010.

It’s a similar story in Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Australia, where annual wealth growth has dropped by over two-thirds.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While none of the 56 markets analyzed by UBS experienced negative growth in average annual wealth between 2000-2010, four markets did during the second decade – Greece, Japan, Italy and Spain.

According to the report, the demographic changes of shrinking populations and aging societies likely played a role in reducing the level of economic activity in cases such as Japan and Italy.

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

For the second time in three weeks, a political event actually mattered. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, evaded only by a short turn of the head, has created a rare moment of national reflection about the current state of American politics. Whether or not it is a moment that has true historical relevance beyond simply influencing a single election or canonizing a new iconic photo in future school textbooks will be decided by how seriously its lessons are internalized by the public.

First of all, the most noteworthy aspects of this attempted attack are precisely how unsurprising such an extraordinary act was. If one takes the regime’s opposition to Donald Trump seriously and recognizes how weakened, the regime’s hold on political opinion is, then the long expectation has been for some sort of black swan event to emerge to prevent a democratic process from dictating who holds the presidency of the next four years.

Acknowledging this does not require a belief that the shooter himself was some sort of regime asset.

The environment for violence has been stoked for years, with every major institution – from the corporate press to the Supreme Court – pushing into the zeitgeist the idea that Donald Trump, a relative political moderate, represented a fascist threat that would destroy all that is sacred in American politics.

If one sincerely believes that Trump is a modern Hitler, one has the moral obligation to attempt to kill such a figure if one has the chance.

From such a worldview, doing so would be a true act of righteous self-sacrifice, a rare incident of heroism in value in a time when such qualities are in low supply.

The problem, of course, is the absurdity of this comparison. It is Trump’s allies and supporters that have faced the brunt of prosecutions, not his enemies. It is Trump’s enemies that have actively worked to undermine political norms related to the conduct of elections, legislative procedure, and the treatment of courts. It is Trump’s greatest critics, in both parties, that have advocated for a more muscular America abroad, both via the military and the abuse of the dollar.

Trump’s failings, and there are many, have always been those areas where he most resembles his political critics.

A smarter regime would have been more successful at co-opting Trump’s populist appeal for their own. Instead, their refusal to ever embrace Trump has served to make him a symbol of radical rejection of the ruling class. His immediate response to a bullet tearing a hole in his ear is a reminder of why that is, his bravado and rhetorical patriotism are a constant and striking reminder of how unimpressive the regime’s leaders are and just how much they despise the public they plunder.

This unimpressive nature of the modern regime makes it all the more difficult to discern the true story about Trump’s potential assassination. Government agents have demonstrated they have no problem using assets to terminate pesky political figures. At the same time, it is equally believable that the regime simply lacks the competency to properly protect those they are charged to protect.

As such, it becomes difficult to figure out whether obvious questions, such as how was a young man with a rifle able to take a sniper position at an identified high-priority station, are answered best by incompetency or sinister conspiracy. Just as Trump’s bloodied fist pump illustrates why he inspires so much of America, the image of a female agent charged with his protection cowering behind the former president and struggling with her holster is the perfect illustration of the modern American state.

Thankfully for Americans, the FBI has been charged with doing a thorough investigation into the matter.

Going forward, the question is what lasting impact this brush with death has on the ever-more-likely second Trump Administration.

Going into the well-timed Republican National Convention, Trump has talked about his desire to “unify” the country.

Unity in the hands of most politicians is a word that should send shivers down one’s spine. Political unity means bipartisanship, the triumph of the regime. National unity gave us the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War, among other disasters. It is wrapped up in the state’s most powerful propaganda, usually some form of paternal patriotism.

If war is the health of the state, political unity has been the instrument for applying the medicine.

It should also give us pause that the closest Trump came to a “unity” moment during his first term was the nation’s response to covid-19, resulting in the canonization of Fauci and prompting the greatest wealth transfer in modern history.

A defense of this moment, however, would highlight that Trump’s response to covid, beyond the economic response, was largely a federalist moment in terms of state action. It was the ones who decried him as an authoritarian fascist who demanded a more robust unleashing of federal power to crush those who demanded medical freedom.

What Trump could mean by “unity” going forward is, however, still an open question. One suggestion he has already made is to drop criminal cases against him.

What national unity could look like is a consolidation of public resentment against the regime that has been so determined to destroy the likely next president. 

Already, Trump avoided a major pitfall by announcing J.D. Vance, not a “respectable” neoconservative such as Nikki Haley, as his Vice Presidential nominee, which is a step in the right direction. While some of Vance’s economic views are valid reasons for concern, he does better complement, as Daniel McCarthy has noted, the populist America First agenda that is so anathema to the worst elements of the Republican Party.

Similarly, to the extent that something resembling a substantial platform for Trump’s campaign exists, there is a consistent drumbeat of attacking the administrative state, undermining federal agencies, and even providing greater monetary freedom. It is noteworthy that along with Trump’s newfound appreciation for Bitcoin (or at least, political donations from the industry), the infamous Project 2025 has even suggested the need for considering “alternatives to the Federal Reserve.”

The great value of these reforms is that they are all necessary to striking at what is ultimately the root of the toxic nature of modern politics: the consolidation of power in the hands of a decadent and delusional imperial city. So long as moments of crisis result in political unity, these moments will only serve to continue to fuel the cancer that plagues the nation.

It is quite likely that the attempted assassination of Donald Trump will be viewed as a defining moment in the re-establishment of a Trump Administration and whatever lasting impact on American politics that comes with it. Should Trump’s call for “unity” result in further moderation of his politics, the result could ultimately still provide a win for the regime that either desired his death or was at least disinterested in preventing it.

If, however, it serves as a moment to fuel a Trump Administration that better acts on the themes of his candidacy, then it could achieve something that is truly worth celebrating: a nation better unified as a result of a diminished national government.

Authored by Susan C. Olmstead via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The antioxidant n-acetylcysteine (NAC) is emerging as a promising treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, offering new hope for the approximately 50 percent of adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who do not respond to customary treatments.

Researchers have been accumulating evidence over the last few years that NAC, a derivative of the amino acid cysteine, available as an over-the-counter supplement, could help people with OCD. It’s also showing promise in the treatment of patients with the hair-pulling disorder trichotillomania and is being investigated as a treatment for compulsive gamblers and drinkers.

However, research into NAC has been slow, in part because the drug, now available without a prescription, has limited commercial potential, according to Dr. Massimo Caroll,  a pharmacologist and clinical toxicologist in the Department of Diagnostics and Public Health at the University of Verona in Italy.

Currently, first-line treatments for OCD are usually selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). However, “approximately 40 percent to 60 percent of OCD patients do not achieve adequate symptom relief from first-line treatments or experience adverse events/reactions that preclude continuation of the therapy,” Dr. Carollo told The Epoch Times.

“This high rate of treatment resistance underscores the complexity of OCD and the need for alternative therapeutic approaches,” he said. This complexity, he wrote in a letter in the February issue of the journal CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, “likely emerges from a multifaceted interplay of factors, encompassing neurochemical imbalances, genetic predispositions, environmental triggers, and psychological influences.”

Dr. Carollo and colleagues published the letter to raise awareness of the use of NAC to treat OCD.

In it, they wrote that to the best of their knowledge, despite NAC’s potential effectiveness, “only five randomized controlled trials have tested the potential efficacy of NAC as an adjunctive treatment in OCD.” Four of these studies reported significant symptom improvement as measured by Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores at dosages of 2,000 milligrams (mg) to 3,000 mg per day, they wrote.

NAC has been proven to be safe even at these high dosages, they claim. But because the NAC products now available on the market typically contain 200 mg to 600 mg, the practicality of achieving a therapeutic dose is limited.

OCD and Serotonin

NAC’s potential effectiveness in treating OCD suggests that the disorder’s cause may arise in the body’s glutamatergic system, according to Dr. Carollo.

OCD may be due to problems with the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, not the inhibitory neurotransmitter serotonin, some researchers believe, and so it may be better treated with NAC than with SSRIs. But investigation into the role of glutamate in OCD has been limited, Dr. Carollo said.

“The majority of OCD treatments have traditionally focused on modulating serotonin levels, as evidenced by the widespread use of SSRIs [to treat OCD],” Dr. Carollo told The Epoch Times. “This emphasis on SSRIs is not unique to OCD, but extends to other psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, where serotonergic dysfunction is also a key target.”

Abnormal levels of glutamate have been observed in specific brain regions of people with OCD, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, crucial for attention allocation and emotion regulation, Dr. Carollo said.

These findings, along with documented altered functioning of glutamate receptors and transporters, suggest that glutamatergic dysfunction plays a significant role in OCD, he explained, although it likely does not explain the entirety of the disorder. “More research is needed to explore glutamate-targeted treatments,” he said.

More Evidence, Funding Needed

Dr. Carollo cited three reasons for the lack of large-scale trials on the use of NAC for OCD:

1. Limited financial incentives for conducting expensive large-scale trials. “Pharmaceutical companies typically fund large trials for new drugs with strong commercial potential, a scenario less applicable to NAC,” he said.
2. The need for more conclusive evidence regarding NAC’s optimal dosages, long-term efficacy, and safety in the treatment of OCD. “This necessitates phase II and III studies, which require considerable time and resources,” he said.
3. The historical focus on serotonergic mechanisms behind OCD, which may have diverted attention and resources away from exploring alternative pathways.

Does NAC Help Children With OCD?

NAC may be less helpful for children with OCD, according to a review article published in the June issue of the journal Pediatric Drugs.

In children, the practice guidelines recommend CBT monotherapy for youth with mild to moderate OCD, and combined treatment for those with more severe presentations, according to coauthor Eric Storch, a professor, vice chair, and head of psychology in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

“NAC should not be a first-line treatment, given the very limited supporting data for youth with OCD (as well as adults with OCD),” Mr. Storch, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology, told The Epoch Times.

“I certainly hope that there is more research, but at the same time what has been reported has not been supportive of NAC for pediatric OCD treatment,” he said. “Understanding underlying mechanisms better would be a helpful avenue. Researching dissemination of effective treatments would also be helpful.”

About 10 percent of children are refractory to treatment, he said, and a recent study (published in May in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) showed that 90 percent of youth with OCD were either in remission or much improved three years later.