Month: August 2024

Some economists warn that central banks, including the Federal Reserve, have pushed their interest rate hiking cycle too far. Meanwhile, Chinese investors are wary of the growth prospects for the world’s second-largest economy. The troubling trends in the world’s two biggest economies have sparked concerns that the global economic landing might be far more turbulent than initially anticipated. 

For instance, this morning, the world’s biggest steel producer in China, China Baowu Steel Group, warned that the steel industry is plunging into a prolonged “harsh winter.” 

This downturn will be “longer, colder, and more difficult to endure than expected,” Baowu Steel Chairman Hu Wangming said at the company’s most recent half-year earnings result meeting. 

“Financial departments at all levels should pay more attention to the security of the company’s funding,” Wangming said. He noted a need to strengthen controls over overdue payments and detect fake trades.

He said, “In the process of crossing the long and harsh winter, cash is more important than profit.” 

Hou Angui, general manager and deputy party secretary at Baowu Steel warned at the meeting, “The current situation in the steel industry is more severe than the downturns of 2008 and 2015.”

For commodities, including steel and copper, the dire warning from Baowu Steel comes as the property market downturn in China continues to worsen. Factory activity in the world’s second-largest economy remains under pressure, and investors are extremely cautious about China’s growth outlook. 

Goldman’s Lisheng Wang recently met with onshore clients in Beijing and Shanghai. These clients include mutual funds, private equity funds, and asset managers in banks/insurance companies. 

Wang said, “Compared with two months ago, local investors viewed signals from the Third Plenum and July Politburo meeting as neutral, remained cautious on China’s growth outlook and policy implementation, and showed increased concerns on the US recession risk, election uncertainty, and potential impact on China.” 

In markets, Goldman’s James Busby said iron ore prices moved lower in Singapore, down nearly 3% with “Macro fund selling.” He noted to clients about Baowu Steel’s warning and pointed out that iron ore prices slid to May 2023 lows. 

BMO analyst Colin Hamilton said, “The entire Chinese steel industry is positioning for a consolidation.” 

As Chinese iron ore inventories swell, steel mills face mounting supply pressures, likely forcing them to cut production. Additionally, these mills are exporting deflation, with steel exports expected to exceed 100 million tons this year—the highest level since 2016.  

Talk of global economic slowdowns is heating up worldwide, with the JPM Global Manufacturing PMI sliding into a contraction (<50) earlier this summer. 

Meanwhile, US interest rate traders are pricing in four 25bps cuts by the end of the year. 

All of this points to the economic storm clouds quickly gathering pace. 

After the rape and murder of a 31-year-old resident doctor at a medical college in West Bengal’s capital Kolkata last week, protests and walkouts by doctors erupted around the country, including in cities like New Delhi, Lucknow and Mumbai.

Violence against doctors isn’t new in India. In a study released in 2017 by the Indian Medical Association, 75 percent of respondents claimed to have experienced some violence at their workplace, with 50 percent saying they suffered physical attacks.

According to recent reporting by DW, one of the reasons could be the state of the medical care sector in the country.

With a rapidly growing population comes the need for improved medical coverage.

However, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, large swathes of the healthcare sector in India are privatized, which experts interviewed by DW said leads to a lack of trust in hospitals and other medical institutions, and, as data by the World Health Organization shows, the country spent just 3 percent of its GDP on public health in 2021.

This is also evident in the number of doctors per 10,000 people, which is drastically below other members of the top 10 economies by nominal GDP. As Zandt’s chart shows, based on data from the Global Health Workforce database, the global average is 20.2, while India only has 7.3 doctors per 10,000 residents.

You will find more infographics at Statista

This places the Asian country at the bottom of the top 10 economies, even though it came in fifth in nominal GDP in 2023.

Brazil is also close to the global average with 21.4, while countries like the United States, Italy and Germany have 36 doctors or more per 10,000 residents. However, high public health spending doesn’t necessarily translate to good medical coverage.

The U.S. leads the world in health expenditure in percent of GDP, but only ranks third in doctor density and is the only highly industrialized developed nation without universal basic healthcare.

Zooming out, African countries rank lowest on the list, with the Central African Republic only having 0.2 doctors per 10,000 residents.

Eswatini is first among all African states with 15.9 doctors per 10,000 people.

Topping the list are Cuba (94.3 doctors per 10,000 residents), Monaco (88.9 doctors per 10,000 residents) and Sweden (71.5 doctors per 10,000 residents).

Submitted by Alastair Crooke,

Walter Kirn, an American novelist and cultural critic, in his 2009 memoir, Lost in the Meritocracy, described how, after a sojourn at Oxford, he came to be a member of ‘the class that runs things’ – the one that “writes the headlines, and the stories under them”. It was the account of a middle-class kid from Minnesota trying desperately to fit into the élite world, and then to his surprise, realising that he didn’t want to fit in at all.

Now 61, Kirn has a newsletter on Substack and co-hosts a lively podcast devoted in large part to critiquing ‘establishment liberalism’. His contrarian drift has made him more vocal about his distrust of élite institutions – as he wrote in 2022:

“For years now, the answer, in every situation—‘Russiagate,’ COVID, Ukraine—has been more censorship, more silencing, more division, more scapegoating. It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way,”

Kirn’s politics, a friend of his suggested, was “old-school liberal,” underscoring that it was the other ‘so-called liberals’ who had changed: “I’ve been told repeatedly in the last year that free speech is a right-wing issue; I wouldn’t call [Kirn] Conservative. I would just say he’s a free-thinker, nonconformist, iconoclastic”, the friend said.

To understand Kirn’s contrarian turn – and to make sense of today’s form of American politics – it is necessary to understand one key term. It is not found in standard textbooks, but is central to the new playbook of power: the “whole of society”.

“The term was popularised roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for a governance ‘whole-of-society’ approach” – one that asserts that as actors – media, NGOs,corporations and philanthropist institutions – interact with public officials to play a critical role not just in setting the public agenda, but in enforcing public decisions.

Jacob Siegel has explained the historical development of the ‘whole of society’ approach during the Obama administration’s attempt to pivot in the ‘war on terror’ to what it called ‘CVE’ – countering violent extremism. The idea was to surveil the American people’s online behaviour in order to identify those who may, at some unspecified time in the future, ‘commit a crime’.

Inherent to the concept of the potential ‘violent extremist’ who has, as yet, committed no crime, is a weaponised vagueness: “A cloud of suspicion that hangs over anyone who challenges the prevailing ideological narratives”.

“What the various iterations of this whole-of-society approach have in common is their disregard for democratic process and the right to free association – their embrace of social media surveillance, and their repeated failure to deliver results …”.

Aaron Kheriaty writes:

“More recently, the whole of society political machinery facilitated the overnight flip from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, with news media and party supporters turning on a dime when instructed to do so—democratic primary voters ‘be damned’. This happened not because of the personalities of the candidates involved, but on the orders of party leadership. The actual nominees are fungible, and entirely replaceable, functionaries, serving the interests of the ruling party … The party was delivered to her because she was selected by its leaders to act as its figurehead. That real achievement belongs not to Harris, but to the party-state”.

What has this to do with Geo-politics – and whether there will be war between Iran and Israel?

Well, quite a lot.

It is not just western domestic politics that has been shaped by the Obama CVE totalising mechanics.

The “party-state” machinery (Kheriaty’s term) for geo-politics has also been co-opted:

“To avoid the appearance of totalitarian overreach in such efforts”, Kheriaty argues,“the party requires an endless supply of causes … that party officers use as pretexts to demand ideological alignment across public and private sector institutions. These causes come in roughly two forms: the urgent existential crisis (examples include COVID and the much-hyped threat of Russian disinformation) – and victim groups supposedly in need of the party’s protection”.

“It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way”, Kirn underlines.

Just to be clear, the implication is that all geo-strategic critics of the party-state’s ideological alignment must be jointly and collectively treated as potentially dangerous extremists. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea therefore are bound together as presenting a single obnoxious extremism that stands in opposition to ‘Our Democracy’; versus ‘Our Free Speech’ and versus ‘Our Expert Consensus’.

So, if the move to war against one extremist (i.e. versus Iran) is ‘acclaimed’ by 58 standing ovations in the joint session of Congress last month, then further debate is unnecessary – any more than Kamala Harris’ nomination as Presidential candidate needs to be endorsed through primary voting:

Candidate Harris told hecklers on Wednesday, chanting about genocide in Gaza, ‘to pipe down’ – unless they “want Trump to win”. Tribal norms must not be challenged (even for genocide).

Sandra Parker, Chairwoman of the political advocacy arm for the three thousand members of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) was advising on correct talking points, the Times of Israel reports:

“The rise of Republican far right-wingers who spurn decades of (bi-partisan) pro-Israel orthodoxies, favouring isolationism and resurrecting anti-Jewish tropes is alarming pro-Israel evangelicals and their Jewish allies… The break with decades of assertive foreign policy was evident last year when Sen. Josh Hawley derided the “liberal empire” that he dismissively characterised as bipartisan “Neoconservatives on the right, and liberal globalists on the left: Together they make up what you might call the uniparty, the DC establishment that transcends all changing administrations””.

At the CUFI talking points conference, the fear of increased isolation on the Right was the issue:

“You’re going to see that adversaries will see the U.S. as in retreat” – should isolationists get the upper hand: Activists were advised to push back: Should lawmakers claim that NATO expansion is what triggered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Should anybody begin to make the argument that the reason the Russians have moved in on Ukraine – is because of NATO enlargement – can I just say that this is the age-old ‘blame America trope,’” the Chair advised the assembled delegates.

“They have the strain of isolationism that’s – ‘Let’s just do China and forget about Iran, forget about Russia, let’s just do one thing’ – but it doesn’t work that way,” said Boris Zilberman, director of policy and strategy for the CUFI Action Fund. Instead, he described “an intricate fabric of bad actors working hand in hand”.

So, to get to the bottom of this western mind-management in which appearance and reality are cut from the same cloth of hostile extremism: Iran, Russia and China are ‘cut from it’ likewise.

Plainly put, the import of this “behavioural-engineering enterprise (it no longer having much to do with the truth, no longer having much to do with your right to desire what you wish – or not desire what you don’t wish)” – is, as Kirn says: “everyone is in on the game”. “The corporate and state interests don’t believe you are wanting the right things—you might want Donald Trump— or, that you aren’t wanting the things you should want more” (such as seeing Putin removed).

If this ‘whole of society’ machinery is understood correctly in the wider world, then the likes of Iran or Hizbullah are forced to take note that war in the Middle East inevitably may bleed across into wider war against Russia – and have adverse ramifications for China, too.

That is not because it makes sense. It doesn’t. But it is because the ideological needs of ‘whole of society’ foreign-policy hinge on simplistic ‘moral’ narratives: Ones that express emotional attitudes, rather than argued propositions.

Netanyahu went to Washington to lay out the case for all-out war on Iran – a moral war of civilisation versus the Barbarians, he said. He was applauded for his stance. He returned to Israel and immediately provoked Hizbullah, Iran and Hamas in a way that dishonoured and humiliated both – knowing well that it would draw a riposte that would most likely lead to wider war.

Clearly Netanyahu, backed by a plurality of Israelis, wants an Armageddon (with full U.S. support, of course). He has the U.S., he thinks, exactly where he wants it. Netanyahu has only to escalate in one way or another – and Washington, he calculates (rightly or wrongly), will be compelled to follow.

Is this why Iran is taking its time? The calculus on an initial riposte to Israel is ‘one thing’, but how then might Netanyahu retaliate in Iran and Lebanon? That can be altogether an ‘other thing’. There have been hints of nuclear weapons being deployed (in both instances). There is however nothing solid, to this latter rumour.

Further, how might Israel respond towards Russia in Syria, or might the U.S. react through escalation in Ukraine? After all, Moscow has assisted Iran with its air defences (just as the West is assisting Ukraine against Russia).

Many imponderables.

Yet, one thing is clear (as former Russian President Medvedev noted recently): “the knot is tightening” in the Middle East. Escalation is across all the fronts. War, Medvedev suggested, may be ‘the only way this knot will be cut’.

Iran must think that appeasing western pleas in the wake of the Israeli assassination of Iranian officials at their Damascus Consulate was a mistake. Netanyahu did not appreciate Iran’s moderation. He doubled-down on war, making it inevitable, sooner or later.

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

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else… It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”

– George Carlin

Who owns America?

Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?

While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by a presidential election whose outcome is foregone (the police state’s stranglehold on power will ensure the continuation of endless wars and out-of-control spending, while disregarding the citizenry’s fundamental rights and the rule of law), America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.

Consider the facts.

We’re losing more and more of our land every year to corporations and foreign interests. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land has increased by 66% since 2010. In 2021, it was reported that foreign investors owned approximately 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is more than the entire state of Iowa. By 2022 that number had grown to 43.4 million acres. The rate at which U.S. farmland is being bought up by foreign interests grew by 2.2 million acres per year from 2015 to 2021. The number of U.S. farm acres owned by foreign entities grew more than 8% (3.4 million acres) in 2022.

We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests. Although China owns a small fraction of foreign-owned U.S. land at 380,000 acres (less than the state of Rhode Island), Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. As RetailWire explains, “Currently, many brands started by early American pioneers now wave international flags. This revolution is a direct result of globalization.” The growing list of once-notable American brands that have been sold to foreign corporations includes: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM (China).

We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt, both as a nation and as a populace. Basically, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card, spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford. The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is more than $34 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. Foreign ownership makes up 29% of the U.S. debt held by the public. Of that amount, reports the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “52 percent was held by private foreign investors while foreign governments held the remaining 48 percent.”

The Fourth Estate has been taken over by media conglomerates that prioritize profit over principle. Independent news agencies, which were supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda, have been subsumed by a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television and radio. Consequently, a handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public. Likewise, with Facebook and Google having appointed themselves the arbiters of disinformation, we now find ourselves grappling with new levels of corporate censorship by entities with a history of colluding with the government to keep the citizenry mindless, muzzled and in the dark.

Most critically of all, however, the U.S. government, long ago sold to the highest bidders, has become little more than a shell company, a front for corporate interests. Nowhere is this state of affairs more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is the presidential election. As for members of Congress, long before they’re elected, they are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

In the oligarchy that is the American police state, it clearly doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: a Corporate State that has gone global.

So much for living the American dream.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

We’re being forced to shell out money for endless wars that are bleeding us dry; money for surveillance systems to track our movements; money to further militarize our already militarized police; money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts; money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply; and on and on.

This is no way of life.

It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.

There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

Unfortunately, we’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.

The powers-that-be want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only “us versus them” that matters is “we the people” against the Deep State.

The youngest countries in the world are located in Africa.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the youngest of them all is Niger at a median age of just 15 years – meaning that an equal amount of people in the country are older and younger than 15.

In the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific regions, the youngest countries and territories have median ages of around 20 to 22 years, while the youngest in Europe are much older. They are Kosovo at a median age of 32 years, Albania at 36 years and Iceland at 38 years.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The oldest countries in the world, among them Japan, Italy, Spain and Germany, have median ages between 47 and 50 years and are grappling with the demographic issue of a shrinking working-age population and its threat to economic growth.

Meanwhile, very young countries in Africa have the opposite problem, as their economies, institutions and education facilities are not able to provide for the a big number of children and young people they produce.

In the Central African nation of Niger, poverty and child marriage continue to pose problems and the World Bank observes that high fertility in poor countries will worsen health outcomes, reduce investments in human capital and lessen economic growth. The country is working to reduce child marriage and fertility, which is traditionally been associated with the chance at a wealthier life in the country and the region.

The 21 youngest countries are in Africa, also including Uganda, Angola and Mali with median ages of just 16 years.

The youngest territory outside of Africa is Palestine, with an median age of 19.5 in Gaza and 21.9 in the West Bank. This is followed by Afghanistan at 20 years, Timor-Leste at 20.6 years and Papua New Guinea at 21.7 years.

While the economic and development outlook in many African nations still being poor and with large families remaining the norm as a result, very young countries outside of Africa often had their developmental outlook startled by prolonged conflict or war, also including Yemen, Iraq and Haiti.

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

A California sheriff is slamming Kamala Harris over her ‘misleading’ political ad that fraudulently touted her border security record while using his image without permission.

The video features Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux and other local and state law enforcement officers flanking then Attorney General Harris during her visit to the Central Valley in 2014.

“In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the Sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office,” the sheriff said in a statement issued to Fox News Digital.

Boudreaux has spent 37 years in the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and is currently president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association.

“As a matter of fact, I would like to point out the misleading information projected in that same political ad. In the ad, Harris claims to have spent decades fighting violent crime as a ‘border state prosecutor,’” Boudreaux stated.

The ad claims:

“As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border.”  Harris’ campaign ad also dubiously states that she will “hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.”

Boudreaux and other law enforcement officials in Southern California were outraged that Harris would take credit for fighting crime at the border when she allegedly only “undercut” their efforts.

“How can you go in and promote that you were this tight border person when all the troops are coming across the border, and you literally are eliminating all these task forces? I mean, that completely made us mad,” Boudreaux told Fox News.

“When you see that advertisement, if you do a little research, you’ll find that what she’s (Harris) touting goes completely against what was happening at the time, so when she put that picture out there with me in it, I got really upset, that ad is all smoke and mirrors,” Boudreaux said. “I do not support her.”

Harris reportedly came to the Valley in 2014 to take credit for “a years-long investigation into a multi-national drug operation, with ties to Mexican drug cartels and prison gangs,” that was done by local law enforcement.

According to the sheriff,  11 people were arrested, including suspected “kingpin” Jose Magana of Dinuba in that case.

“The truth is, Harris never cared about the cartels and did nothing to stop people from illegally crossing the border,” Boudreaux said.

The sheriff made note of Harris’ haughty attitude during the 2014 visit.

“We were in the green room. She never came in and said hello to any of us. She walked up front, gave her presser, literally walked out, never said hi to any of us,” Boudreaux said. “I’m disgusted because, you know, she didn’t shake hands. She didn’t say hello. And she’s taken credit for all this work that the locals did.”

Boudreaux’s political action committee, Golden State Justice, also issued a scathing statement blasting Harris’ new campaign ad.

“As Attorney General, Kamala Harris undercut efforts by California law enforcement officials to stop criminals from flooding our state with guns and drugs across the border,” the statement read.

“She repeatedly defunded and shuttered task forces designed to protect our residents, leaving the Valley and our state vulnerable,” the statement continued. “Kamala’s sad attempt to paint herself as tough on the border by implying my support – and the support of neighboring law enforcement leaders—is pathetic.”

The statement concluded by saying “a politician crowding the podium at a press conference clearly hasn’t solved our border crisis. Neither has Kamala Harris.”

Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward, who is also featured in the ad, was also enraged by the video.

“The hypocrisy knows no bounds. It’s disingenuous and her campaign ad, somehow now, touting her reputation as a prosecutor as a positive thing, she was attorney general under three of the worst tragedies that had befallen the citizens of the state of California,” Ward told Fox News.

Ward concurred with Boudreaux about using their images in a campaign ad without permission, saying that it should have been a “professional courtesy” to let them know about it.

“We’re not hard people to find or to contact. Simple professional courtesy would have been warning us that it was going to be used. And I think that we are well within our rights to clarify the records,” Ward said.

“Just as Sheriff Boudreaux said, I do not in any way want the use of that photo to be construed as support of her (Harris) either in her candidacy, current candidacy, or even in her tenure as attorney general of the State of California.”

In an interview Tuesday with Fox News, Boudreaux said Harris showed up in 2014 “for a sound bite, didn’t shake anyone’s hands and she quickly left the briefing room.”

He said law enforcement officials in Southern California are “very familiar” with Harris’ record and her campaign ad was “deceptive to say the least.”

The sheriff added, “I just wanted to come out and say that for me as the sheriff or Tulare County looking out for victims, looking for someone who’s going to support criminal justice and law enforcement, that is best represented by Donald Trump, not Kamala Harris.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A human rights lawyer has warned that a lawsuit brought by Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif against the likes of Elon Musk and JK Rowling could set a significant precedent against free speech.

Khelif, who competed and won a gold medal in the women’s welterweight division, despite having XY chromosomes, is charging that prominent personalities and bodies engaged in “acts of aggravated cyber harassment.”

Questions were raised by both the World Boxing Organisation and the International Boxing Association regarding Khelif’s eligibility to compete as a woman following two previous  ‘failed’ gender tests.

Speaking to GB News, human rights lawyer David Haigh warned that the lawsuit could lead to “policing of social media” across borders.

Haigh outlined “If they proceed with this, the Paris prosecutors have the reach jurisdiction to come to other countries. And if that is the case, that then is a very concerning development.”

“You can have countries around the world basically policing social media in other countries. It could be a very, very significant case in free speech, the use of social media,” Haigh added.

‘This could be a very significant case both in free speech and gender politics.’

David Haigh discusses reports Imane Khelif is to sue Elon Musk and J.K Rowling over harassment about her gender. pic.twitter.com/Io0hBDOlqZ

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 14, 2024

He continued, “are we now going to see France trying to extradite or issuing arrest warrants for JK Rowling? It’s a very slippery slope and it could become a very significant case.”

The lawyer also noted that the case could also set a legal precedent in terms of gender ideology.

“If it proceeds, and that’s a big if, it could have significant ramifications. Whether or not there has been harassment, you will have a debate on what is and isn’t a man or a woman in the court,” he noted.

“If part of whether or not there has been harassment and abuse comes down to whether or not that boxer is a man or a woman, obviously evidence will need to be put forward on both sides of that,” Haigh further explained.

*  *  *

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.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an amicus brief in the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit against Google’s monopolistic behavior, suggesting that the court impose stringent actions against such practices.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by developer Epic Games against Google. Epic claimed that Google violated antitrust regulations by monopolizing two markets: the market for distribution of mobile apps for Android users and the market for processing payments. In addition, Google benefits from gaining access to user data.

“Google has thus installed itself as an unavoidable middleman for app developers who wish to reach Android users and vice versa,” Epic said.

In December 2023, a district court jury in California ruled in favor of Epic, finding that the game developer proved that Google was in violation of antitrust laws. District Judge James Donato has yet to decide on what relief Epic should be provided.

Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times that on Aug. 12, the FTC filed an amicus brief in the case, suggesting how the court could consider remedies.

Ensuring antitrust laws are strictly enforced “is essential for protecting and preserving economic freedom and the free-enterprise system,” the agency pointed out.

“When a company engages in business practices that are found to violate the antitrust laws, courts are empowered to remedy those violations by ordering all relief necessary to restore competition in the affected markets,” it stated.

This includes “identifying and requiring actions that the defendant must affirmatively take toward that end.”

If companies violating antitrust laws reap the advantages secured through such actions, it will end up incentivizing other firms to engage in similar behavior, the agency warned.

As such, the district court should ensure that the violating firm does not continue securing the benefits obtained via breaching antitrust rules, it stated.

Though it should be said that at no point does the FTC outright say that Google should be broken up, Duncan Riley reports via SiliconAngle.com, that any lay reader with a knowledge of U.S. antitrust law and English can reasonably come to that conclusion. And there’s more.

“Looking forward in cases like Epic v. Google often requires the consideration of network effects, data feedback loops, and other key features of digital markets,” the FTC writes. “This could help ensure that potential competitors can overcome the advantages established digital platforms often gain, which include network effects and data incumbency.”

But the real kicker comes towards the end. “Google’s monopolistic behavior has significantly harmed millions of users in the United States,” the FTC adds. “Allowing monopolists to reap the rewards of illegal monopolization while avoiding the costs of restoring the competition that they unlawfully eliminated would undermine deterrence.”

There is a strong possibility that the FTC is hinting at a possible breakup of Google as a negotiating tactic; nonetheless, it should be taken seriously.

Kent Walker, president of Google global affairs, said the decision “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine“ but concludes that Google ”shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” according to a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

“Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal,” Walker stated.

“As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

Earlier this year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for stronger antitrust enforcement to break up big tech firms.

“To restore competition in existing digital markets and to foster emerging markets like AI, Amazon’s e-commerce platform should be separated from its product lines. Google should be broken into its search business and its browsing services,” she said.

“Each of the major cloud services—Google, Microsoft, and Amazon—should not be allowed to use their enormous size to dominate a whole new field, and that means blocking them from operating large language models. Each of these moves would create valuable competition.”

According to Bloomberg, less severe options than a breakup of Google include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products.

Should a breakup occur, first up would be forcing Google to divest both its Android operating system and its Chrome web browser.

Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations,

More than a dozen jurisdictions run by Democrats – including Washington D.C., and several adjacent Maryland municipalities – allow noncitizens to vote in some local elections. San Francisco not only permits noncitizens to vote but appointed one to serve on its Elections Commission.

Such developments, against a backdrop of millions of illegal migrants streaming into the United States under the Biden-Harris administration, bring new urgency to debates over election integrity. Many Republicans fear that a widespread effort is afoot to give noncitizens the full benefits of citizenship, including the right to vote in all elections, on top of benefits already available to illegal aliens in some places, notably drivers licenses, food stamps, government health care, and work visas.

Although Democrats note that noncitizens may not participate in federal elections and claim there is little evidence noncitizens are voting unlawfully, critics are unmollified.

A RealClearInvestigations analysis of proposed and enacted state and federal laws, along with other reporting and research, suggests that the fight over noncitizen voting is only likely to intensify this year – both in the immediate wake of an expected closely-contested presidential election and in its aftermath.

States across the country report that thousands of noncitizens have been discovered on voter rolls in the past decade, with unknown numbers already having voted: 

• Pennsylvania found 11,000 registrants suspected of being noncitizens after becoming aware of a decades-old “glitch” in the state’s “motor voter” registration system in 2017. It removed 2,500 individuals from the rolls, and it could not verify the citizenship status of the other 8,700 registrants.
• Virginia has removed over 11,000 registrants from its rolls between 2014-2023 – and more than 6,300 from January 2022 to July 2024 alone – upon learning that they had declared themselves noncitizens in other interactions with government, typically in transactions with the state’s department of motor vehicles. House Republicans cited a study showing that of nearly 1,500 noncitizens the Commonwealth removed from rolls from May 2023 to February 2024, 23% had cast ballots since February 2019.
• New Jersey had some 616 self-reported noncitizens in 11 counties “engaged on some level with the statewide registration system,” 9% of whom cast ballots, according to a 2017 survey conducted by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
• Boston, Massachusetts, officials revealed this year that the city had removed 70 noncitizens from the rolls, some 22 of whom had voted, the removals coming in response to disclosure requests from the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
• Ohio recently ordered the removal of 499 noncitizens from its voter rolls after removing some 137 other registrants back in May.
• North Carolina identified more than 1,400 registrants on state voter rolls who did not appear to be naturalized, in an audit conducted prior to the 2014 midterm election. Eighty-nine flagged individuals appeared at the polls to vote, and 24 had their registration challenged; 11 challenges were sustained or justified.
• Arizona classifies some 42,000 people on its rolls as “federal-only” registrants as of July 1, 2024 – after they had failed to provide the proof of citizenship necessary to vote in state and local races. The state’s bifurcated voter rolls are the result of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in which a 7-2 majority led by the late Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that federal voter registration requirements – of which documentary proof of citizenship is not one – preempted the state’s standards. 

Other evidence of noncitizen voting has been found in states from California to Illinois. 

Republicans argue that such examples expose weaknesses in the voter registration and administration process – including that registrants need not provide proof of citizenship to get on the voter rolls. These and other loopholes in state-run systems make elections vulnerable to ineligible noncitizen voters today.

Each side has its own research to support its claims. Democrats cite a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, finding that local election officials overseeing the tabulation of 23.5 million ballots during the 2016 presidential election identified only 30 potential incidents of noncitizen voting.

Republicans highlight a recent study estimating that 10% to 27% of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote, and 5% to 13% will illegally vote in 2024 – a potentially massive number given the illegal alien portion of the noncitizen population alone numbers well over 10 million. Election integrity advocates argue that states have not found many incidents of noncitizen voting for the simple reason that authorities, including the Department of Justice, do not look for it.

“DOJ investigations of illegal voting are all but nonexistent,” Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, said in a recent floor debate concerning the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, a bill Lee and House colleague Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced to combat noncitizen voting. After the House passed the measure in July, Democrats blocked the legislation in the upper chamber, where it remains stalled.

“[T]oo many prosecutors refuse to enforce the law even when such illegal behavior is discovered by election officials or others,” Hans von Spakovsky, a former Department of Justice official who now works at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Congress in May.

Should election officials fail to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots on the front end, J. Christian Adams, a fellow former DOJ official and president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told RCI, there is “almost nothing” the public or political parties can do on the back end to identify, challenge, and invalidate noncitizen votes prior to election certification.

Adams’ group has documented myriad electoral races decided by one vote or tied over the last two decades – something he and others argue indicates just how critical it is to combat illegal voting, given the potential impact to tight races up and down ballots.

States generally seem unfazed by the prospect of noncitizen voting. For this article, RealClearInvestigations contacted authorities in the seven states comprising RealClearPolitics’ top battlegrounds: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Two states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, did not respond to RCI’s inquiries. Election authorities in the five responsive states maintained that current law is a sufficient deterrent to noncitizen voting, emphasizing that casting a ballot as a foreigner would constitute a criminal offense with grave penalties.

“Someone would have to knowingly and intentionally commit a class 6 Felony if they did vote as a noncitizen, and it would result in the revocation of their legal status in the USA, and they would likely face deportation,” a spokesman for Arizona’s Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement. The spokesman said he hoped his statement, which pointed to the state’s voter challenge process and noted other procedures pertaining to citizenship, would “compel” RealClearInvestigations to “clear up [RCI’s] notions and erroneous assumptions.”

Georgia touted its 2022 citizenship audit in correspondence with RCI, the first such review of the voter rolls for citizenship in state history, in which it found that 1,634 people who attempted to register to vote were not verified by the SAVE program. All were in “pending citizenship” status within Georgia’s internal systems, and thus none had been allowed to vote. “Due to the effective processes Georgia has in place to verify U.S citizenship at the time of registration … we are confident noncitizens are not voting in Georgia, and if one ever does, they will be punished to the full extent of the law,” Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told RCI.

North Carolina election board public information director Patrick Gannon told RCI: “We have little evidence of noncitizens voting in elections, and get very few complaints alleging voting by noncitizens.”

He pointed to a 2016 state audit report and the handful of cases alleging noncitizen voting that the bipartisan State Board of Elections has referred to prosecutors since 2017.

Similarly, Wisconsin election commission public information officer Riley Vetterkind told RCI, “There is not evidence to support the idea that noncitizens are voting in Wisconsin in significant numbers.” The spokesperson for the state’s bipartisan commission cited the few instances of suspected election fraud, irregularities, or violations referred to district attorneys by municipal clerks that the state’s election commission “has been made aware of.”

These messages of reassurance, however, at times come with notes of caution that underpin election integrity advocates’ concerns.

States each have their own independent processes to maintain voter lists. Those processes vary widely in vigor, tempo, and transparency. They are often based on different degrees of access to sources of citizenship status with which to identify ineligible voters. “No state or federal law requires the WEC [Wisconsin Elections Commission] or clerks to verify a voter’s citizenship status beyond requiring the voter to certify that they are a U.S. citizen as a qualification for voter eligibility,” said Vetterkind.

Pennsylvania has asserted that “The Commonwealth has no systematic program to identify and remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.” 

The Public Interest Legal Foundation has litigated against the Keystone State and other jurisdictions just to get a peek into their registration list maintenance processes. As for how states identify potential noncitizens, Gannon said of North Carolina’s audit that “relying on state databases was wildly inaccurate for determining citizenship status.” 

The state passed a law in 2023 requiring that the election board regularly reconcile its registration list with lists provided by state courts of those excused from jury duty due to lack of citizenship – an ad hoc approach commonly used by other states.

Georgia emphasized its use of the Department of Homeland Security’s more robust SAVE tool, which provides “point in time immigration status” for those who have been issued a unique immigration identifier. (This Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements tool is distinct from the GOP-sponsored legislation with the same acronym.)

Most state officials who responded to RCI’s query emphasized that there are laws on the books permitting third-party challenges to voter eligibility. But this is a measure requiring time, money, and effort. The two former Justice Department officials – Spakovsky and Adams – recently took issue with the view that state audits and scrubs of voter rolls ought to inspire confidence, writing in the Daily Signal:

Because almost no state even attempts to verify that individuals registering to vote are U.S. citizens – and because the federal government, including both the courts and the executive branch, have put up significant barriers to such verification – we don’t really know how many aliens, whether here legally or illegally, are registering and voting.

Rougher Weather Ahead

Whatever the extent of noncitizen registration and voting today, Election Integrity Network leader Cleta Mitchell says conditions are building for a “perfect storm.” Two factors are about to produce it: “the invasion of our country by millions of illegals” and a series of largely Democratic Party-driven efforts to ease voter registration and participation.

Mitchell and others, including the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, have suggested that significant numbers of noncitizens could wind up on the voting roles under Biden administration Executive Order 14019, which directs every federal agency to register and mobilize voters. 

Officials in Alabama and Mississippi say that under the executive order, which RCI has previously examined, authorities are already attempting to register noncitizens to vote. The Biden administration initiative calls on federal agencies to coordinate with third-party groups in pursuit of its objectives as well. Adams, testifying alongside Spakovsky for the Republican majority before the House Administration Committee in May, said that “most often noncitizens are getting on the rolls through the motor voter registration process or third-party registration drives.” 

Regarding motor-voter registration, the Only Citizens Vote Coalition warns that “many states are now automatically registering people to vote at the time of coming into contact with the DMV unless the person ‘opts out’ of registration.” 

Advocates are also concerned that practices like same-day voter registration and allowing the use of student IDs to vote – IDs that can be issued to foreigners – could lead to noncitizens ending up on voter rolls and potentially voting. 

These issues likely only exacerbate concerns election integrity advocates already have around practices like mail-in voting and ballot harvesting that have become widespread since the 2020 election. A more robust “level of citizenship tracking and verification would almost certainly require legislative change to accomplish,” Wisconsin’s Riley Vetterkind told RCI.

Congressional Republicans have sought to do just that with the SAVE Act, which passed the House on July 10 in a largely party-line vote. Under the existing registration system, applicants attest to their citizenship simply by checking a box, under penalty of perjury. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls this nothing more than an “honor system” that leaves “people who have already proven they have no regard or respect for our laws” undeterred. 

The SAVE Act would close this loophole by requiring that applicants provide proof of citizenship in person when registering to vote in federal elections. Adams has argued that under the less stringent status quo, noncitizens often end up on the voter rolls through no fault of their own – subjecting aliens who often can’t speak English to severe legal liability.

Critics of the SAVE Act, echoing some states, believe those liabilities – including the threat of deportation, jail time, and other punishments – sufficiently curb noncitizen registration and voting.

New York University Brennan Center for Justice President Michael Waldman emphasized in the May congressional hearing, as the Democrat minority’s witness opposite Adams and Spakovsky, that “under current law, noncitizen voting in federal elections is illegal four times over: it is both a state and federal crime to register to vote, and it is both a state and federal crime to vote in federal elections.” 

The liberal think-tank did not respond to RCI’s inquiries in connection with this story. Democratic party leaders from President Biden on down also dismiss evidence of noncitizen voting, claiming it is virtually non-existent.

“Even the conservative CATO Institute has said that ‘noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers,’” California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla noted in a floor speech in response to Mike Lee, referencing a 2020 blog post from the libertarian think tank. 

Democrats also claim the bill’s documentary proof of citizenship requirements disenfranchise potential voters. They point to past evidence indicating that similar state laws in places like Kansas ended up preventing eligible registrants from voting. They also highlight surveys showing millions of Americans lack commonly used documents to prove citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate – two of a number of forms one could present to satisfy the SAVE Act’s requirements.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries branded the SAVE Act an “extreme MAGA Republican voter suppression bill.”

DHS’s ‘Slow-Walking’

Registration requirements and Voter ID laws, which vary by state, do not necessarily prevent ineligible individuals from voting since noncitizens – and, in some cases, illegal aliens – can obtain relevant forms of identification. As Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin highlighted in a recent executive order, only three states – his included – require even a full social security number to register to vote.

Thus, the SAVE Act would also mandate that states bolster their registration list maintenance practices explicitly to identify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls – including through cross-referencing their lists with more comprehensive data sources.

Only five states currently have access to one resource referenced in the bill, the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE tool. A House Administration Committee report indicates that DHS is not granting the same level of access to all states and may be “slow-walking” requests to use it. 

‘Significant Inaccuracies’ in the Federal Database

When asked about this allegation, a spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service told RCI, “There is an established process agencies must undergo and eligibility criteria agencies must meet to complete SAVE registration.”

“USCIS is committed to working with agencies seeking access to SAVE and processing registration requests as efficiently as possible,” the spokesperson added while referring a reporter to several resources on its website.

Still, these databases are not seen by all as a panacea. “Even using the federal SAVE database, which can only be used to determine current citizenship status for one person at a time, and only when that person has been involved in the federal immigration system, our agency found significant inaccuracies in the data we received,” North Carolina’s Patrick Gannon told RCI in an email. “There is no comprehensive, accurate, or up-to-date database of U.S. citizens that election administrators could use for verification purposes.”

Democrats argue that the more robust voter registration list maintenance demanded by Republicans could leave eligible voters purged. Calling the SAVE Act “nothing other than a solution in search of a problem,” Sen. Padilla blocked the bill in the upper chamber.

With a September spending fight looming in Congress, the House Freedom Caucus is seeking to force the issue by calling on leadership to attaching the SAVE Act to any stopgap spending solution – a plan Sen. Lee has also endorsed.

Meanwhile, election integrity advocates like the Only Citizens Vote Coalition are calling for state-level model legislation to combat noncitizen voting. The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project has been working to identify vulnerabilities in extant voter registration systems and potential legal violations, publicize them, and press lawmakers to enforce relevant laws to combat noncitizen voting.

The conservative public interest law organization America First Legal recently sent letters to all 50 states instructing them that under existing law, states can and should send requests to the DHS soliciting the citizenship status of registered voters.

America First Legal has also sent demand letters to all 15 Arizona County Recorders compelling them to verify the citizenship of all “federal-only” voters, including through making citizenship requests of DHS – or face legal action.

On Aug. 5, America First Legal filed suit against the Maricopa County Recorder for his alleged failure to act in response to the group’s demand letter. Three days later, the Republican National Committee filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court in a bid to compel Arizona to enforce its proof of citizenship requirements for the 2024 presidential election.

Warning: Extended Lawfare Ahead

These forces on the right are likely to find themselves locked in battle with the left for years to come. 

House Democrats, today in the slim minority, have voted to continue apportioning congressional seats based on total population rather than total citizens in a given jurisdiction; to protect noncitizen voting rights in Washington, D.C.; and, in legislation aimed at providing certain aliens with a path to permanent resident status, to permit authorities to waive unlawful voting as grounds for deeming noncitizens inadmissible. Liberal witnesses were unable or unwilling to affirm that only citizens should be permitted to vote in federal elections during a March Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning elections.

As a presidential candidate in 2020, Vice President Kamala Harris signaled her support for providing government healthcare to illegal aliens. Her presumed running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, signed legislation providing benefits for illegal aliens, including state-funded healthcare, driver’s licenses, and free college tuition.

Those on the left see voting rights, like the expansion of other benefits to noncitizens, as a matter of fairness.

“Immigrants pay taxes, they use city services, their kids go to our public schools. They are part of our community. And they deserve a say in local government,” New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said in defending a bill that has been ruled unconstitutional that would have allowed an estimated 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections.

The Trump-Vance campaign, by contrast, has called for mass deportation of the illegal alien population to which Democrats increasingly wish to extend rights and benefits, among other immigration measures the Republicans say aim to protect and support Americans. In contrast to the growing coterie of blue-state jurisdictions embracing noncitizen voting, red states are increasingly passing amendments prohibiting local governments from allowing noncitizens to vote, with Louisiana and Ohio most approving such constitutional changes in 2022. Eight more states have citizenship-related ballot measures in the 2024 election.

Submitted by Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on X @MerrillMatthews.

A record number of travelers are taking to the skies this year. In an era of expensive groceries, gas, food and rent, the last thing anyone wants is a massive increase in airfares.

But that’s precisely what travelers could experience if lawmakers push through new restrictions on prices, routes and even seat sizes.

More airline regulation might sound appealing. But red tape always comes with a cost, often in higher prices but also in reduced access and convenience.

Air travel used to be heavily regulated. Until the late 1970s, government officials set fares, routes and schedules for all interstate air travel. Prices were sky high, the industry operated inefficiently and relatively few people flew.

Lawmakers decided they had to do something. Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. The law allowed airlines to determine their own routes and prices.

The change unleashed competition and allowed low-cost operators to enter the market. Choices skyrocketed and prices fell. On an inflation-adjusted basis, the cost of flying is half of what it was before Congress deregulated the industry.

Deregulation led to more options. The number of cities connected via nonstop service, and the number of carriers providing that service, increased markedly.

More affordable tickets and an explosion of routes made flying accessible to millions of Americans. In 1977, a quarter of Americans reported flying in the past year. Today, it’s close to half. Nearly 90 percent of Americans have flown in their lifetime.

Considering these outcomes, why do policymakers seem intent on bringing back onerous airline regulations? Especially considering the government has a less-than-stellar public-transportation “track record” — that is, Amtrak.

Amtrak is a government-subsidized public train system that receives billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. Government created the system because passenger trains were losing money. The Washington Times notes, “Even with all that money, there are still widespread complaints about the train service. Signal problems, mechanical snafus and computer breakdowns are seen across the country.”

In Congress, members have proposed legislation that would pave the way for more federal control of airline baggage policies, fees, and seat sizes. A recent Department of Transportation rule imposes complex restrictions on airline refund policies that even the seasoned traveler may be hard-pressed to understand.

Together, the changes amount to an oversized regulatory regime that would be expensive and time consuming to comply with. Some airlines could be forced to raise prices or cut unprofitable routes altogether.

Proposals to re-regulate the airlines have nothing to do with passenger safety. It’s been 15 years since the last fatal U.S. commercial airline crash.

To be sure, there’s room to improve America’s air travel system. Shortages among air traffic controllers contribute to frustrating flight delays and cancellations. Outdated facilities and infrastructure pose challenges in many parts of the country. But remember, these broken parts of the system are largely under government control already.

Subjecting airlines to burdensome regulations wouldn’t make air travel better. It’d lead to higher costs, fewer routes, and less-satisfied travelers. Don’t let Washington do to the airline industry what it did to train travel.