Month: August 2024

Authored by Paulo Ferreira via The Mises Institute,

Last month, Britain made a dangerous swing to the left. Private education has been attacked, more public housing, the promotion of environmental Marxism, and much more. But that isn’t to say there wasn’t an unspoken gospel among the main parties concerning the deliberate impoverishment of the British Isles. Merely aesthetic differences separate them.

A distinguished associate of mine told me about his grievances, the attacks against people earning lower wages and the political weaponization used by both major parties to score points from the electorate. He also mentioned the infuriating behavior of leftist Samaritans preaching love, but when people vote contrary to their intentions, spew irascible diatribes.

Disappointing as it is, I am not terribly surprised. It would be a mistake to label the conservatives as oriented by free-market liberalism. Some permitted the organization of market forces; others such as Robert Peel, Margaret Thatcher and John Major were proponents of individual liberty.

The notion of one-nation conservatism, also known as Tory democracy, was conceived by Benjamin Disraeli, espousing the belief of a united nation protecting working classes against alleged abuses of capitalism. As prime minister in the 1870s, his government passed the Employers and Workmen Act and the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, the latter decriminalizing trade unionism. Social reforms were introduced to smooth relations between Capital and Labor.

Despite these inroads into statism, Britain retained a mostly free-market economy, but the seeds were planted for a seditious social revolution to sprout. As one has read, there are overlaps with socialism. Therefore, it comes as no shock that the first socialist party (Social Democratic Foundation) in Great Britain was founded by Henry Hyndman, a former conservative. His political career foreclosed with his death as leader of the National Socialist Party in 1921.

The calamities of World War I quickly brought Labor into the political spotlight, inspired by the guild socialism of Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, and in 1945, Labor imposed price control, expropriated businesses and instituted the welfare state, all acquiesced by Winston Churchill, an irreligious “liberal” who maintained the policies of his predecessor — except for the privatization of steel — and praising the powerful trade unions in the name of Tory Democracy at the Conservative Party Conference in 1953; the same inebriate collaborator of Soviet expansionism.

The following decades would be even worse. The Winter of Discontent and severe inflation followed; unprofitable industries were subsidized, leading to wasteful resources. Entire sectors and industries were crippled by trade disruption. Trash wasn’t taken out and the deceased weren’t buried. Food wasn’t being transported, and hospitals and schools shut down. No doubt the Trades Union Congress — a privileged caste disregarding economic welfare — were following orders from the Kremlin.

The premierships of Thatcher and Major represented a paradigm shift concerning the (reduced) role of the state. Yet despite the successes achieved in 18 years away, it wasn’t enough to keep voters away from New Labor, swayed by the charisma of Tony Blair.

It’s true that his government never pursued Keynesian measures, and the memory of the Soviet Union, omnipotent government control, gulags and poverty was still fresh in the minds of many people. Socialism was deeply unpopular. But Blair set out socialization through the destruction of British cultural values and traditions beset by mass immigration and political correctness now threatening to shake the foundations of people’s livelihoods.

No wonder the left collaborates with Islamists — they prohibit the use of usury, a central pillar of consumer time preferences, signaling a preference of present or future consumption. Low time preferences translate into earning and accumulating capital, which is denounced by adherents of Islam, who merely consume their resources, hence their lower living standards and baseless theology devaluing civilizational advances and standards.

Love requires care and cultivates patience; hatred is opaque, facilitating destruction.

In 2024, hedonistic behavior is encouraged and boundaries are disrespected. It is why those of a lower cultural and religious order refuse to integrate themselves in countries settling them. Bolshevism was born at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in London. And it was under a Labor administration that diplomatic relations were established with the Soviet Union.

The modern man, stripped of his past, can be molded to be anything: at worst a bee worker for Downing Street.

However, it is worth remembering the nearly forgotten 1997 Conservative Manifesto, displaying an outlook consistent with Paleolibertarianism. Let’s transcribe some of it:

“Our aim is nothing less than tariff free trade across the globe by the year 2020.”

“The family is the most important institution in our lives. It offers stability and security in a fast-changing world. But the family is undermined if government takes decisions which families ought to take for themselves. Self-reliance underpins freedom and choice.”

“People are not just saving for themselves but for their children and grandchildren. These savings should not be penalized by the tax system.”

In a short monograph accompanying the manifesto titled “Why I vote Conservative,” we can find the following quote on page 13: 

“The best way to improve the performance of British industries is to expose it to as much competition as possible.”

The conservatives would do well to learn from the past, pages of liberty lost to time. But the massive 1997 defeat conditioned subsequent conservative leaderships advocating policies contrary to freedom: LGBT rights and legalization of same-sex marriage, covid lockdowns, quantitative easing and the highest tax burden on record since the Second World War. Inflation is at an all-time high, and as many are aware, perpetual buzzing of the printing machine erodes savings and destroys all productive jobs in the economy, transferring purchasing power from the worker to the state (a stealth tax).

Some within Europe dream of Britain’s return to the European Union and USSR in tandem with the 2030 agenda. Even continental liberals — who misunderstand liberty — championed Labor’s massive victory. And it’s not a one-sided relationship.

Starmer recently announced his intentions of increasing trading ties with the E.U. through a damaging veterinary deal forcing the U.K. into adopting regulations on food and agriculture in accordance with the European Court of Justice, alongside better access for E.U. fishermen within British waters.

It’s ironic that the reinforcement of leftism in Britain came on the Fourth of July, as Americans extricated themselves from the tyranny of King George. Today it’s a new tyranny overwhelming the British population.

Nationalism is truly alive. The new Labor government plans a national renewal by creating Great British Energy, Great British Railway, and the National Healthcare Service — all acrimonious attacks against the British taxpayer and his freedom of choice.

Nationalized industries, not subject to competition, have little incentive for improvement while providing inferior services. The nation does not benefit from these exuberant indulgences of Whitehall. British Airways proudly flies the Union Jack without recourse to public ownership.

A monarchical system of government provides protection of property rights unknown in republican states, where the hands of power are constantly shifting. A monarch will protect his subjects for generations (a low time preference by maintaining a reputable value of the kingdom). This republican stride within the Labor Party is more prevalent given their ambition of abolishing the monarchy.

All this nationalism, after all, goes contrary to King Charles’ genealogical roots: German, Scottish, Greek and Danish (House of Glücksburg). Keir Starmer is just English and plainly boring.

British National Socialism is unfortunately here to stay. Opposition is being extirpated, politically and through social media and traditional media outlets. But the people of these great isles are strong and pragmatic.

The history of Britain is replete with manumissions of her subjects throughout the centuries. The Magna Carta and Glorious Revolution curtailing political absolutism set the precedence for the separation of power that has since been emulated — unsuccessfully — across the globe. A beacon of liberty housing a great line of liberals such as William Hutt, Friedrich Hayek, Edwin Cannan, and Arthur Seldon, among others. The cornerstone to stability is tradition and prosperity through peaceful evolutions.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1919, “Living in the same places and having the same attachment to a state do play their role in the development of nationality, but they do not pertain to its essence. It is no different with having the same ancestry.”

What shapes the nation is our individuality. Without individualism, there is no identity.

Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

At critical moments over the past 25 years, the New York Times has aided the interests of a power faction within the Chinese Communist Party responsible for atrocities against practitioners of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong.

On top of implicating itself ethically, the paper has also, as a result, distorted its China coverage and misled its readers, as revealed by an analysis of The New York Times’ China coverage as well as interviews with half a dozen experts on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politics and geopolitics.

Due to the paper’s disproportionate influence on policy, its skewed coverage has likely led to a loss of life and treasure that is difficult to quantify, some experts said.

The New York Times has for decades positioned itself as a global newspaper, insisting on a necessity of access to China, according to former staffers. That meant convincing the communist regime that the paper’s presence would benefit it.

The paper has never explained what price it has paid for access to the country.

“There’s always the issue of, if you want to be a global newspaper, what do you have to do to keep China happy and stay in business there?” Tom Kuntz, a former editor at the paper, told The Epoch Times.

“There’s always been tensions, and I know they’ve, like a lot of companies, tried to maintain access to China.”

Bradley Thayer, a former senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, expert on strategic assessment of China, and a contributor to The Epoch Times, was more blunt.

“If they don’t cover the regime the way the regime wants to be covered, they’re going to be blackballed. They’re not going to be able to return,” he told The Epoch Times.

“So all of these individuals have a vested interest, if you will, in toeing the Party line.”

Covering Chinese politics, The New York Times has ascribed sincerity where deception is expected and glossed over where it should have dug deeper, all in a pattern of affinity with the interests of a CCP clique aligned with former Party leader Jiang Zemin, multiple experts affirmed.

Jiang’s influence has waned since 2012, when incoming CCP leader Xi Jinping exhibited an unexpected dexterity in eliminating his opponents. Only a minority of Jiang’s acolytes have maintained influence since his death in 2022. Despite the shift in power, however, The New York Times has maintained the pro-Jiang pattern.

The New York Times did not respond to a detailed list of emailed questions for this article.

Privileged Position

The paper developed a special connection with Jiang in 2001, when its then-publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and several editors and reporters were granted a rare audience with the dictator.

The paper ran a flattering interview headlined “In Jiang’s Words: ‘I Hope the Western World Can Understand China Better.’”

Within days, the CCP unblocked access to The New York Times’ website in China.

A month later, the CCP unblocked several other Western news sites, including those of The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the BBC. The sites were blocked again within a week.

The New York Times, on the other hand, remained accessible. Users then reported that content on the site was being blocked selectively, giving the paper a chance to benefit from access to the Chinese market to the degree that it kept within bounds acceptable to the CCP.

The interview came at a sensitive time for Jiang. He had only a little more than a year left before he was supposed to hand over Party control to Hu Jintao, fulfilling the succession line stipulated by Deng Xiaoping, his predecessor.

But things weren’t going well for Jiang. His persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, a political campaign that was supposed to whip the Party and the nation into conformity under his control, was failing to reach its goals. Even worse, foreign media, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, were taking apart the CCP’s anti-Falun Gong propaganda and highlighting accounts of wrongful detention and torture.

The New York Times, by contrast, appeared most helpful to Jiang’s campaign. By the time of the 2001 interview, the paper ran several dozen articles on Falun Gong, almost all of them profusely parroting the propaganda portraying the practice as a “cult” or a “sect.”

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline consisting of slow-moving exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was introduced to the public in China in 1992, and by the end of the decade, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people were practicing it.

When in January 2001 CCP state media claimed that several people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing were Falun Gong practitioners, The Washington Post dispatched a reporter to fact-check the story. The New York Times, on the other hand, immediately took the CCP line as fact.

If the paper employed its much-touted investigative acumen, it would have discovered, as others have, that the incident was staged. After the first man allegedly set himself alight in the middle of the square, four policemen somehow managed to obtain several fire extinguishers, rush to the scene, and put out the fire, all in less than one minute.

Given the distances involved on the giant square, that wouldn’t have been physically possible—unless the officers already had the fire extinguishers ready and knew in advance where on the square they would be needed that day, several independent investigations concluded, pointing out dozens of other inconsistencies.

Even without any investigation, the incident made little sense. The victims supposedly followed a belief that burning themselves alive would bring them to heaven. But Falun Gong includes no such belief. In fact, its literature treats suicide as killing a human life, which it explicitly prohibits.

The New York Times didn’t even find it strange that since Falun Gong’s public introduction in 1992, of the tens of millions of people practicing it, none of them had publicly set themselves on fire until that day, and none had done so since.

Even after The Washington Post investigation traced several of the alleged victims back to their hometown and found that none had ever been seen practicing Falun Gong, The New York Times continued to parrot the CCP’s propaganda.

Jiang was apparently pleased with The New York Times, calling it during the 2001 interview “a very good paper.”

Getting in Jiang’s good graces on the Falun Gong issue would have been particularly critical, as it struck at the heart of a core principle of CCP politics, several experts affirmed.

Partners in Crime

One of the bedrocks of the CCP’s internal politics is ensuring one’s own safety, particularly upon retirement. Cadres are well aware of the pitiful fate of many high-ranking comrades. Infamously, Liu Shaoqi, once No. 2 to the CCP’s first leader, Mao Zedong, was purged during the Cultural Revolution, arrested, and tortured to death.

When Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, looked for somebody to helm the CCP after him in 1989, he picked Jiang Zemin, the Shanghai Party secretary who supported the CCP’s deployment of military to crush the 1989 student protests.

“Because Jiang was implicated in the repression of the students, Deng could trust Jiang to be his successor. Jiang could not in the future use the massacre against Deng without implicating himself,” explained Matthew Little, a senior editor of The Epoch Times, in a 2012 analysis.

The persecution of Falun Gong played much the same role for Jiang, who encouraged his cronies to build “political capital” by backing the campaign. Some did so with fervor, escalating the persecution to a point of unspeakable barbarity, particularly in encouraging torture to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith, The Epoch Times previously reported.

These officials, tied by shared complicity in the atrocities, were at the core of Jiang’s power faction, sometimes called the “Shanghai gang.”

In exchange for their support, Jiang let the gang abuse their offices and plunder state-owned assets, setting the tone for a nationwide culture of corruption.

That culture served a dual purpose for Jiang. On one hand, it allowed him to buy supporters, especially in the 1990s, when he struggled to form a power base among CCP cadres, who generally saw him as incompetent, according to an unofficial biography of Jiang published by The Epoch Times.

On the other hand, he could eliminate his rivals in the name of “anti-corruption.”

But the sword of anti-corruption cuts both ways. As Xi later demonstrated, it could be applied selectively against the Jiang faction, too.

The bond through culpability in the Falun Gong repression was more solid. The crimes became so extensive that none of the culprits would have risked their revelation, some China experts said.

There was a problem, though: Jiang’s designated replacement, Hu Jintao, showed little enthusiasm for the Falun Gong campaign.

“Jiang tried to push Hu to persecute Falun Gong and found he was quite reluctant,” said Li Linyi, a China commentator, expert on CCP internal politics, and Epoch Times contributor.

“Their relationship started to deteriorate after that. Jiang just felt more and more concerned about Hu.”

Just as the CCP under Deng redressed some victims of the Cultural Revolution, Hu could, at least theoretically, redress Falun Gong, blame Jiang, and purge his faction.

In reality, this was unlikely to happen, Li said.

“There was a huge price for redressing the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “Not only did some top CCP leaders get purged, but the CCP admitted they made a big mistake. That is not good for them in order to hold power in China in the long term. The CCP is still criticized for what they did during the Cultural Revolution.”

CCP leaders would only backtrack on Falun Gong as a last resort, if they felt it would save the regime, he said.

That didn’t mean, however, that Hu and his supporters couldn’t use the Falun Gong issue to endanger Jiang and his faction in other ways. Indeed, there’s evidence that they have.

“All [Jiang’s] policies could have continued to be carried out by Hu Jintao, except this one. … The only thing Jiang Zemin worried about was the policy of persecuting Falun Gong,” said Heng He, a veteran China commentator with NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times.

Jiang was thus extremely motivated to constrain Hu and prop up his own image, several experts confirmed.

The New York Times proved helpful in this pursuit.

Shoring Up a Dictator’s Legacy

By 2002, The New York Times was in pro-Jiang mode. Parroting the Party propaganda, the paper declared that Falun Gong had been successfully “crushed.”

Citing CCP sources, it suggested that Falun Gong was already passé and that it only ever had 2 million practitioners. It went as far as claiming that the figure cited by Falun Gong sources, 70 million, was baseless.

Yet a few years earlier, before the persecution began, multiple Western and Chinese media, including The Associated Press and The New York Times, provided figures of 70 million or 100 million, generally attributing them to estimates by the Chinese State Sports Administration, which had the best insight due to a massive survey of Falun Gong practitioners it conducted in the late 1990s.

Read more here…

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the US didn’t know about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia’s Kursk Region, but that’s unbelievable since there’s no way that its intelligence services didn’t even catch a hint of it, not to mention likely participate in the preparations.

Putin even reaffirmed during a meeting on Monday with high-ranking government officials about this crisis that Ukraine is the West’s proxy for waging war on Russia. Here are the five reasons why the US is still playing dumb:

1. Maintain Plausible Deniability For Escalation Control

Admitting complicity in Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s universally recognized territory would make the US a direct participant in these unprecedented hostilities and thus place enormous pressure upon Moscow to respond against it and/or other NATO countries like Poland. The US doesn’t want that to happen, ergo why it also forced Ukraine to call off its reportedly planned assassination of Putin last month as explained here, so dishonestly denying knowledge of its proxy’s plans is par for the course and not unexpected.

2. Avoid Embarrassment & Responsibility Once Ukraine Fails

It’s unlikely that Ukraine will be able to indefinitely hold the territory that it captured inside of Russia so it’s a question of when and not if it fails. Accordingly, the US wants to avoid the embarrassment associated with that once it happens and also reduce the chances that Russia feels pressured to respond against it and/or other NATO countries as written above. The US is basically letting Ukraine hold the bag after everything inevitably fails apart so that Russia’s full fury is directly solely against its proxy.  

3. Propagate David-vs.-Goliath Optics For Boosting Morale

By pretending to be caught off guard by what just happened, the US is lending false credence to the optics that the latest phase of the already decade-long Ukrainian Conflict that began almost two and a half years ago is a modern-day David vs. Goliath story. This is meant to boost morale inside of Ukraine amidst its drastic slump caused by the ramping up of forcible conscription there and increase support among the Western public for continuing to fund this proxy war in the face of growing fatigue.

4. Keep Up The Charade Of A “Gentlemen’s Agreement” Gone Bad

RT’s Sergey Poletaev introduced an intriguing theory into the global information ecosystem earlier this week when he wrote that “The relative calm along the 1,000-kilometer border for two and a half years likely wasn’t coincidental. We can suggest there were agreements between Moscow and Washington, specifically with the administration of US President Joe Biden.” If there’s any truth to that, then lying about not being aware of Kiev’s plans could be an attempt by the US to try to hoodwink Putin yet again.

5. Troll Russia After It Previously Denied Supporting Donbass

Russia always denied militarily supporting Donbass throughout the eight years between “EuroMaidan” and the special operation, but the US insisted that this was a lie and that Russia had “invaded” Ukraine, albeit at a limited scale. Whatever the truth may be, playing dumb about its support for Ukraine’s indisputable invasion of Russia is also an attempt to troll Russia for denying the dubious claim that it “invaded” Donbass before 2022.  

There’s no truth to the US’ denial that it knew nothing about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia, but claiming otherwise advances its escalation control and soft power interests.

Those who play along with this are insulting the intelligence of their targeted audience, some of whom might feel pressured not to call them out though due to fear of being aggressively harassed online and “canceled”.

All objective observers know the truth, especially those in the Global South, which is all that matters for Russia.

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is calling on the Commerce Department to open an investigation into the business practices of Chinese budget online retailer Temu.

In a letter dated Aug. 14 to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Scott warned that the fast-growing Temu represents “a new challenge” to efforts to ensure fair trade practices in the United States.

“To protect our nation’s economic interests and the well-being of our citizens, I believe it is imperative that we address this issue promptly,” Scott wrote.

Temu’s platform, which began in the United States in September 2022, is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, which also operates the Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo. In January, the research firm Marketplace Pulse estimated that more than 100,000 China-based sellers were operating on Temu.

Scott identified five areas of concern surrounding Temu—product safety and quality, labor practices, unfair competition, data privacy, and counterfeit goods—as reasons why the Commerce Department must take action against the shopping platform.

The Florida senator warned that products sold on Temu “are not subject to the rigorous safety tests and inspections that other competitor products made elsewhere around the world undergo.”

“There are concerns that Temu may be a conduit for counterfeit products,” he added.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Aug. 14 that toxic substances were found on women’s accessories, such as hats and sandals, being sold on three Chinese online platforms, including Temu, citing the South Korean city government of Seoul.

“There are reports of unsafe working conditions, labor abuses, and human rights violations associated with [the] production of products for Temu,” Scott wrote. “We need to ensure that the products sold on Temu are not manufactured using forced labor or other unethical practices that violate international labor standards.”

In June last year, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published a report warning consumers that “there is an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labor.”

“Temu does not have any system to ensure compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA),” the report reads.

The law bans imports from China’s far-western region of Xinjiang—where the Chinese regime has been accused of committing genocide against Uyghurs—unless companies can prove products weren’t produced with forced labor.

Scott also questioned Temu’s ability to sell products at lower prices than U.S. retailers, suggesting that it could result from “unfair trade practices or the exploitation of loopholes in our import regulations.”

In February, Scott and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking his administration to end the “de minimus” trade rule because it’s a loophole that “unfairly benefits foreign companies and overseas e-commerce platforms such as Temu.” Under the rule, imports under $800 in valuation can enter the United States without paying duties and taxes and with little or no customs inspection.

“De minimis shipments, now numbering 3 million a day, are at an elevated risk of violating UFLPA, containing counterfeit goods, exacerbating the fentanyl crisis, or posing a serious health danger to consumers,” the two senators wrote in their letter.

Scott pointed out in his Aug. 14 letter that data security should be another concern.

“Given Temu’s Chinese ownership, we must investigate potential risks to American consumers’ data privacy and security,” Scott wrote. “Concerns regarding exploitation of Temu application users lead U.S.-based companies to announce warnings and ‘how-to’ guides on removing the Temu application from its application purchasing platform and user devices.”

In China, there are different laws, including the National Intelligence Law, that can compel Chinese companies to hand over data collected within China and elsewhere to Beijing’s intelligence agencies.

Scott asked the Commerce Department to “launch a comprehensive investigation” into Temu, work with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to assess potential risks, evaluate the need for new regulations, and submit a detailed report to Congress on its findings.

The Florida senator also requested a meeting with Raimondo to discuss the issue.

The Commerce Department and Temu officials didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Neighbors in Oakland have had enough with reckless driving and, since their years of complaints are going unnoticed, they’re banding together and doing something about it.

Frustrated by years of reckless driving, Oakland homeowners took action by placing dirt- and rock-filled tires on busy streets.

On Tuesday, city crews faced hecklers while removing the tires from East 21st Street, according to Fox KTVU.

Odelson Souza said his 2 year old son was almost hit by a speeding car on the sidewalk, telling Fox: “Look, please help us. Who else we gonna call? Superman?”

Three months ago, neighbors created makeshift roundabouts with reflective tape on 18th Avenue. On Tuesday, they illegally parked two cars to prevent city crews from dismantling one.

Neighbor Lauren Blanchard said: “Well, we are protesting this. It feels crushing. We want the city to pay attention to our neighborhood.”

One neighbor said: “They almost killed someone. There’s a school up there. Kids have been hit on this street. There are people whose cars have been crashed into and totaled.”

He continued: “Enough of the performative, you know, making everyone feel better, renaming streets after dead rap artists. Do your [expletive] job.”

“So disappointed with the city’s inability or unwillingness to respond to clear and present danger,” another neighbor, Wendy Jung, said.

Sean Maher, Oakland’s Citywide Communications and Engagement Director responded: “We all want safer streets, but increasing the risk to the public by installing hazards is not the solution. The city will be promptly removing these unauthorized, dangerous installations.”

The report says neighbors have committed to installing more barriers until the city acts.

Via The Cradle

In a ceremony earlier this week, CIA Director William Burns awarded the head of the Qatari State Security Agency the George Tenet medal for his work on strengthening intelligence cooperation between the US and Qatar, Axios reported Thursday. The two intelligence agencies especially during the decade-long proxy war to oust Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Both Burns and Al-Khulaifi have played important roles in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas for a potential ceasefire in Gaza and prisoner exchange.

One reason for the award is Qatari efforts to release the remaining 111 Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza, one source with knowledge of the issue told Axios.

Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in its prisons and detention camps, where recent reports suggest that torture and rape is common.

Another source said Burns gave the award to his Qatari counterpart in “appreciation of his role in maintaining national and regional security, and the exceptional support he provided to the CIA in preserving the interests and security of the US and Qatar.”

Another important reason for the award was the cooperation between the CIA and Qatari intelligence in counterterrorism and the ability of the Qatari State Security Agency to prevent and foil threats and attacks in West Asia, the source told Axios.

Both the US and Qatar have long been known for their support of terrorist groups in the region.

Starting in 2011, the US and Qatar worked closely with other regional states to support Al-Qaeda in Syria.

Saudi & Qatari governments funded and gave logistical support to ISIS confirms email from Hillary Clinton to the man who was to become her campaign chair, John Podesta https://t.co/tlWxkEZ8FN pic.twitter.com/mpyIb7QchL

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 22, 2018

The Syrian branch of the terror group, the Nusra Front, led a jihadist insurgency against the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad under the cover of US-sponsored anti-government protests.

Baltimore-based Under Amour has been undergoing a broad multi-year restructuring plan. Earlier this year, founder Kevin Plank returned to the helm, hoping to reverse the sales slump and boost profits.

Given that UA shares have been a trainwreck since the company was accused of defrauding shareholders about revenue growth in a bid to beat Wall Street’s forecasts in 2017, Plank, the third largest shareholder, has seen his paper wealth evaporate. 

In June, UA agreed to pay $434 million to settle the lawsuit that accused Plank of intentionally deceiving investors about the company’s financial health between Sept. 16, 2015, and Nov. 1, 2019. UA will use cash and a revolving credit facility to pay the settlement. 

With UA in the dumps, about 21 miles north of the company’s headquarters in Baltimore City, situated in some of the best steeplechase country in the US, Plank’s 530-acre horse farm, called “Sagamore Farm,” was “briefly listed for $22 million,” according to local media Baltimore Banner. 

Here’s more from the local media outlet: 

The listing by the real estate firm Compass was publicly available online on Monday morning. Denie Dulin, the listing agent, said the Glyndon estate might be sold privately and declined to comment further.

“It’s not publicly being marketed yet,” Dulin said.

Plank bought Sagamore Farm from a developer in 2007 through an LLC. It’s unclear how much he paid. Property records do not disclose a sale price.

In 2010, several years after Plank bought the race farm, he told the Baltimore Sun paper that he planned to win a ‘Triple Crown.’ 

The real estate agent did not explain why Plank decided to sell the race farm. Plank has been locked in a zoning dispute with local conservation groups after he proposed building a whiskey distillery on the historic farm. The timing of the sale also comes amid UA restructuring efforts.

Meanwhile, Plank, who previously supported former President Trump, hosted a closed-door fundraiser for far-left Democrats at Sagamore’s main house in mid-May.

See Gov. Wes Moore clapping on the right side of the image. And no, this is not a deep fake. 

The nearly two-decade partying at the Plank family’s ‘frat house’ at Sagamore is coming to an end—better start focusing on turning around the sinking UA ship.

Authored by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals,

Many central banks are opting for a “stateless currency” – gold.

That’s how a recent article published by Nikkei Asia put it, noting that “central banks are diversifying away from the dollar and yuan.”

The article notes that the proportion of greenbacks in foreign reserves has dropped significantly from over 70 percent in the early 2000s to a historic low of around 58 percent today.

Meanwhile, central banks are loading up on gold. Central banks globally added a net 483 tons of gold through the first six months of this year, 5 percent above the record of 460 tons in H1 2023.

Last year, central bank gold buying fell a mere 45 tons short of 2022’s multi-decade record.

Last year, central banks’ net gold purchases totaled 1,037 tons. It was the second straight year central banks added more than 1,000 tons to their total reserves.

Central bank gold buying in 2023 built on the prior record year. Total central bank gold buying in 2022 came in at 1,136 tons. It was the highest level of net purchases on record dating back to 1950, including since the suspension of dollar convertibility into gold in 1971.

A Stateless Currency 

Why are so many countries turning to gold? 

Because it is a stateless currency. In other words, gold isn’t controlled by any government. That means countries holding gold maintain a higher level of independence than those holding dollars or other government fiat currencies. 

The U.S. has hastened de-dollarization by aggressively using the greenback as a foreign policy tool.

The United States projects power around the world with its mighty military, but that’s not America’s only source of strength. It also uses the dollar to achieve foreign policy goals.

The U.S. government utilizes a “carrot-stick” approach. It showers billions of dollars of foreign aid on its friends. But enemies can have access to their dollars cut off, as Russia recently learned.

As the Nikkei Asia article pointed out, the U.S. and other Western countries aggressively sanctioned Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. America and her allies locked Russia out of the SWIFT financial system and froze around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets. The U.S. even threatened to sell frozen Russian assets and give the money to Ukraine.

Other countries were paying attention. Nikkei Asia said U.S. policy persuaded emerging economies to “accumulate gold, and “the shift from currency holdings reflects global fragmentation.”

This is a classic example of people responding to incentives.

Think about it; if you recognize something makes you vulnerable, what do you do?

You take steps to eliminate or at least minimize the vulnerability.

So, if you’re worried that the U.S. and its allies might cut off your access to dollars, what would you do?

Minimize your dependence on dollars.

In other words, if you are concerned that the U.S. could pull the “dollar rug” out from under you, why not pull out from the dollar system first?

As a stateless currency, gold is the perfect reserve asset. Its value is recognized around the world, it’s liquid, and most importantly, it exposes the owner to very little counterparty risk.

What exactly is counterparty risk?

In simple terms, it is the possibility that the party on the other side of a transaction might not fulfill its obligation or will change the terms of the deal.

For instance, if I loan you $200, there is always a chance that you won’t pay me back. That possibility represents the counterparty risk that I’m taking on.

When you own physical gold and store it safely at home, there isn’t another party involved. Nobody can default on gold. Its value will never go to zero. It remains liquid under virtually any market conditions. And gold will likely increase in value if there is a significant economic collapse because it is real money.

This is precisely why so many countries are turning to this stateless currency and bringing their gold home.

On Saturday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that his forces are “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region. The invasion into Russian territory shocked the world and has left Kremlin officials shocked, with some expressing frustration that the border was apparently so poorly guarded.

“As of this morning, we have replenished the exchange fund for our country,” Zelensky said, after his army reportedly captured hundreds of POWs since the Aug.6 invasion of the southern Russian oblast.

“I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer,” he added, according to official government social media channels.

Zelensky acknowledged that the Russian side is responding with a fierce fight: “(There were) dozens of Russian assaults on our positions over the last day. But our soldiers and units are doing everything to destroy the occupier and repel the attacks,” he continued.

Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrsky simultaneously “reported on the strengthening of the positions of our forces in the Kursk region and the expansion of stabilized territory” in a public statement.

Kiev is also presenting that its forces are in better shape along the eastern front in the Donbass, after in prior days asserting that Russia was forced to remove some its front line fighting forces in order to defend Kursk and Belgorod. 

In Ukraine’s Sumy, there are Saturday reports of a large blaze after a fresh Russian missile attack:

A Russian missile sparked a blaze in the city of Sumy that injured two people and also damaged cars and nearby buildings, said Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. It said that the hit had involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.

Ukraine’s air force also said it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv region.

Likely Russia’s aerial assaults on other major cities, including the capital of Kiev, will only increase as a way of retaliation. 

Harrowing videos of the fighting in Kursk reveal that the Ukrainians have already established trenches and physical defenses in the region, planning for an attempt to indefinitely occupy Russian territory…

As for Zelensky’s claim of having captured large masses of Russian troops during the Kursk incursion, the AP observed, “On Friday, the AP visited a detention center in Ukraine, the location of which cannot be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of POWs were seen, some of them walking with their hands tied behind their backs while a guard led them down a corridor. Some had rations of a thin soup with cabbage and onions.”

Regardless of all the current pro-Kiev optimism, many analysts warn there are real limits and the likelihood Ukraine forces will soon be in worse shape than before due to this ultra-risky cross-border operation…

A very good analysis with several important points here. Among them: “There is a limit to how successful Ukraine can be. It was suffering from a shortage of troops to rotate and hold the line prior to its operation in Kursk. Now it has pulled together what was available as an… https://t.co/gqGvQefDwJ

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) August 17, 2024

The Zelensky government has been touting that it plans to hold onto a “buffer zone” in Kursk, to prevent Russia from launching cross-border mortar and missile strike on Ukraine. The Kremlin’s retaliation is expected to grow big at some point soon.

Authored by By Kevin Stocklin & Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the United States continues its rush to shutter the nation’s remaining coal plants, energy analysts are debating what should fill the gap to meet the growing need for electricity. Increasingly, many are pointing to nuclear energy as the solution.

According to the Department of Energy (DOE), nearly one-third of existing U.S. coal plants are scheduled to be shut down by 2035.

This is happening as demand from data centers, electric vehicles, electric home heating, and other products are pushing ever more consumption onto the grid.

A regulatory agency charged with assessing grid reliability stated that its key measures of electricity peak demand “are rising faster than at any time in the past five or more years.”

The agency, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), cited “clear evidence of growing resource adequacy concerns over the next 10 years” in its December 2023 Long-Term Reliability Assessment.

The rapid retirement of functional coal plants, which generated more than 16 percent of U.S. electricity production in 2023, is projected to leave large gaps in the country’s ability to meet projected demand for electricity, leaving most regions of North America at high or elevated risk of shortages and blackouts, according to the NERC .

How can the U.S. electricity industry fill this ever-widening hole? The options on the table are wind, solar, natural gas, and nuclear energy—each with its advantages and shortcomings.

Many who consider climate change to be an existential threat have pushed wind and solar energy as the best alternatives, arguing that they are the cheapest, cleanest option.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted in January that “wind and solar energy will lead growth in U.S. power generation for the next two years.”

Critics say adding ever more wind and solar capacity could be paying more for less, as additional weather-dependent capacity falls short of producing electricity when consumers need it.

“We built a heck of a lot of wind capacity in 2023 in the United States, but the actual amount of wind electricity produced went down, simply because you have wind droughts,” energy economist Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), told The Epoch Times.

“The windiest spots have been hit pretty hard with wind turbines, so now they’re going to places that are less prolific in terms of wind, and the result is you’re getting less wind per installed megawatt of wind power than you did before.”

According to the EIA, while overall “renewable” energy production grew by 2 percent in 2023, largely because of increases in biofuels and solar energy, consumption of wind energy declined for the first time in 25 years.

“Our entire grid has been built with the goal of moving power to people when they need it,” Kish said, but noted that, increasingly, this is shifting to providing electricity “whenever the wind blows or the sun shines.”

Natural Gas Steps Up, Falls Down

Wind and solar require expensive backup power generation, typically gas or batteries, to fill the gaps when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, driving up costs to consumers.

Coal plants, while emitting more carbon dioxide (CO2), have provided an affordable, reliable, and flexible supply of “dispatchable” electricity, which can be ramped up or down to meet demand.

To date, while installed wind and solar capacity have increased, natural gas has been the prime beneficiary of the transition away from coal—both as a supplier of base-load power and as a backup to wind and solar when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

U.S. natural gas consumption reached a record 89.1 billion cubic feet per day in 2023 and has increased by an average of 4 percent per year since 2018, according to an April report by the EIA.

The EIA reported that natural gas consumption set new records every month between March 2023 and November 2023, as coal-fired electric-generating capacity declined.

“The combination of [artificial intelligence] and increased reliance on intermittent renewables means more natural gas—both because solar and wind can’t easily provide electricity with low harmonic distortions that delicate data center kit needs—but also because unreliable power sources infiltrate the grid, assuring 24×7 supply relies ever more on dispatchable, traditional energy, which is gas,” Simon Lack, founder and managing partner of SL Advisors LLC, told The Epoch Times.

Unlike coal, however, gas is not stored onsite at power plants but rather delivered just in time via pipelines. During winter storm Uri in Texas, for example, freezing temperatures and electricity outages disrupted gas deliveries, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported, exacerbating the crisis that ended with widespread blackouts and the deaths of an estimated 246 people.

While natural gas is abundant, affordable, and burns cleaner than coal, it doesn’t satisfy net-zero goals of “decarbonizing” energy and reducing global emissions by at least 43 percent by 2030, 60 percent by 2035, and reaching net-zero by 2050.

Given that, nuclear energy is increasingly being touted as the ideal solution.

A Nuclear Renaissance?

The 54 U.S. nuclear plants and 93 U.S. nuclear reactors, located across 28 states, currently generate about 19 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the EIA.

A nuclear plant’s capacity factor, which measures the amount of usable energy it produces as a percentage of the maximum it could potentially produce, is the highest of all power sources, averaging more than 92 percent, according to the DOE.

By comparison, the capacity factors for wind and solar are the lowest of all major U.S. energy sources, at 35 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

Nuclear power plants are designed to run 24 hours per day, seven days per week, making them ideal for reliable, base-load electricity.

Energy economist Ryan Yonk, a director at the American Institute for Economic Research, said the safety of nuclear plants has improved with time, and although risk has not been completely eliminated, this leaves nuclear as the “no-carbon energy” of the future, provided that the industry can build plants that address risk concerns and regulatory concerns.

“If you really care deeply about CO2 and view it as a substantial problem, we have an established technology that doesn’t produce CO2, that produces large amounts of low-cost energy at relatively low risk,” he said.

The Biden administration appears to have also come around to that point of view, and the Inflation Reduction Act enacted by the administration offers a 30 percent federal investment tax credit for new nuclear projects.

The White House announced in March that it was “signing on to last year’s multi-country declaration at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050; developing new reactor designs; extending the service lives of existing nuclear reactors; and growing the momentum behind new deployments.”

Among the government initiatives was $6 billion in new loans, grants, and tax credits for nuclear facilities to keep aging plants up and running and restart some that had been shut down. This included $1.5 billion in loan guarantees to Holtec Palisades, LLC, to bring the shuttered 800 MW Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township, Michigan, back online through 2050.

“Alongside renewable power sources like wind and solar, a new generation of nuclear reactors is now capturing the attention of a wide range of stakeholders for nuclear energy’s ability to produce clean, reliable energy and meet the needs of a fast-growing economy,” a White House fact sheet reads.

This comes on top of new legislation to streamline the approval process for nuclear plants, specifically the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act (ADVANCE Act) of 2023.

The bill includes more staffing for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which would theoretically speed the licensing process, reduce fees for plant applicants, and update the NRC’s mission statement, stipulating that it will not “unnecessarily limit” the production of nuclear energy.

Partnering With Nuclear Industry

The DOE is also working to ease the conversion of existing coal plants to nuclear.

According to the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, “we’ll need an additional 200 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and some of that could take place at or near retiring coal plants.”

The agency stated that more than 300 existing and retired coal plants could be converted to nuclear energy, and this would increase the U.S. nuclear capacity by more than 250 gigawatts, nearly tripling its current capacity of 95 gigawatts.

Borrowing land, plant, transmission connections and roads from existing coal plants could save up to 35 percent of construction costs for new nuclear plants, the DOE predicted.

States that are considering replacing coal plants with nuclear include Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

The DOE is also collaborating with private industry through an initiative called the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN), which provides government support to commercialize nuclear energy technologies and to “educate those new to nuclear on its benefits, applications and role in our clean future energy transition,” the organization’s website states.

“By 2030, the U.S. nuclear industry will be equipped to lead the world in the deployment of innovative nuclear technologies to supply urgently needed abundant clean energy both domestically and globally,” GAIN reads.

Some analysts say it amounts to one government agency spending money to try to get another government agency out of the way.

“We’ve got the NRC that can’t seem to issue a permit or give a thumbs up to a project, and to compensate for that, we’ve got the Department of Energy pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into helping them get a permit,” Kish said.

The U.S. fleet of nuclear plants is approaching retirement age, raising questions about how much longer existing plants can continue to operate. The average life of a nuclear power plant is about 40 years, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

As of April, the average age of U.S. commercial nuclear reactors was 42 years old. The oldest operating reactor is Nine Mile Point Unit 1 in New York state, which started operating in 1969.

The U.S. nuclear construction industry, having been shunned for decades, appears now to be showing new signs of life.

Based on its annual assessment at the end of 2023, the IAEA stated that, worldwide, it “now sees a quarter more nuclear energy capacity installed by 2050 than it did as recently as 2020, underscoring how a growing number of countries are looking to this clean and reliable energy source to address the challenges of energy security, climate change and economic development.”

Read more here…