Month: September 2024

Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

The column you are about to read is a “hate crime.”

Or, rather, an alleged “hate crime,” as I believe my attorney would like me to put it.

We’re still sorting that distinction out in criminal court. Or, rather, we are about to sort it out again, on September 30, in Berlin Superior Court.

We already sorted it out once, in January, in District Court, where I was summarily acquitted, following which, for a few weeks, it wasn’t a “hate crime.” But the Hate-Crime Commissar of New Normal Berlin wasn’t happy about that verdict, so she appealed to have it overturned, whereupon it became a “hate crime” again, or an alleged “hate crime,” or whatever it is, currently.

OK, I’m going to go ahead and re-perpetrate my “hate crime,” or alleged “hate crime,” or whatever its legal status actually is at the moment. I want to get that out of the way now so I don’t go off on a tangent and forget to do it later. If you don’t want be a party to that, this would be the time to click away.

Still with me? OK, here comes the “hate crime” …

There you go. That’s my “hate crime” … those two Tweets from 2022, criticizing the Covid mask mandates. I’m not going to bother translating them again and going over all the details of my prosecution. I have done that ad nauseam. There is only so much repetition my regular readers can take. If you’re unfamiliar with the background of my case, you can read about it in The Atlantic, Racket News, Berliner Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, Weltwoche, Sky New Australia, Epoch Times, Discourse Magazine, and assorted other outlets, or you can watch this video by The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or refer to this chronological fact-sheet I published in a recent column.

Instead (i.e., instead of reciting all the details of my prosecution again, like late Lenny Bruce reading his trial transcripts onstage, which, I promised I was really going to try not to do that), let me introduce you to Frau Ines Karl, the Hate-Crime Commissar of New Normal Berlin.

Photo: dpa/Jörg Carstensen

That isn’t her real title, of course. Her official title, in German, is “Oberstaatsanwältin als Hauptabteilungsleiterin der Zentralstelle Hasskriminalität Berlin,” which basically means “Senior Public Prosecutor and Head of the Berlin Central Hate Crime Office.”

Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl began her distinguished prosecutorial career back in the GDR, i.e., the German Democratic Republic, the judiciary of which convicted roughly 200,000 people of political crimes during its 40-year existence.

I couldn’t find any details about her distinguished prosecutions during her GDR days, but Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper, did a profile of her in 2021, and assured us that Karl had been “lengthily reviewed” before being allowed to prosecute people and run “Hate-Crime Offices” in the reunified Germany.

Here’s an excerpt from that piece [translation and emphasis mine] …

“In April, Ines Karl will have been a public prosecutor in Berlin Moabit for 30 years. She knew early on that this was her dream job – it almost came to an abrupt end with reunification. She grew up in Berlin-Mitte and Lichtenberg, studied Law in Jena in the 1980s, and worked as a public prosecutor in Weißensee before the wall came down. Only after a lengthy review process, including by the Judges’ Election Committee and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was she allowed to continue the profession she learned and practiced in the GDR in the Federal Republic. The experiences of that time are still with her today, with mixed feelings.” — Der Tagesspiegel, 2021

Given that Ines Karl was cleared by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (i.e., Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency), there is absolutely no reason to hold her East-German prosecutorial “experiences” against her, or go fishing around in the GDR archive to determine the exact nature of those prosecutorial “experiences.”

In fact, doing so would probably be a “hate crime.”

So, I definitely won’t be doing that. I’ve got enough “hate crime” troubles as it is.

What I did, though, after I stumbled onto Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl’s background, was Google around a bit, you know, just to refresh my memory of other people’s “experiences” in the German Democratic Republic.

One thing I found was this article in Deutsche Welle (East Germany’s Tortured Political Prisoners). Here’s an excerpt [emphasis mine] …

“Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there remain Germans who tout the legacy of the German Democratic Republic. The oft-heard claim that ‘not everything was bad about the GDR’ and that the Soviet-allied state had great day care facilities, as some still assert, strikes 68-year-old Manfred Wilhelm as utterly absurd. He was a political prisoner. In 1981, Wilhelm was sentenced to eight and a half years behind bars for the crime of inciting hatred against the state — just for telling a few political jokes to friends and in bars.”

So that made me feel a little better about being re-prosecuted by Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Karl, and being defamed, and having my reputation and income as author damaged. At least she’s not looking to lock me up for eight years! Three years is the maximum sentence for my “hate crime.” Or, I don’t know, if she feels she really needs to send a message to other alleged “hate criminals,” I guess she could count up all the times I’ve published the Tweets that I just republished again above and charge me with multiple counts of my “hate crime.” In fact, her office has already launched a second criminal investigation of me based on just that!

Another thing I found while just idly Googling around, which didn’t make me feel so much better, but maybe kind of explains a few things, was an article, in two different German outlets, in which Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl was quoted referring to one of her colleagues’ participation at a demonstration and his criticism of Germany’s Covid measures on social-media networks as “crimes.”

Here’s the quote [translation and emphasis mine] …

“Karl emphasized that the debates about possible right-wing extremist attitudes in the security services were being ‘monitored very closely.’ The case of a Berlin public prosecutor who took part in the Corona-denier demonstrations and spread corresponding posts on social networks is being extensively discussed in the public prosecutor’s office, for example ‘whether this should be socially acceptable here. If such crimes are committed, investigations will also be carried out within our own ranks,’ emphasized Karl.” — Evangelisch Magazine, MiGAZIN, 2020

The fact that Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Karl would refer to the expression of political dissent as a “crime,” on the record, without a second thought, may explain why her office is unabashedly prosecuting me on fabricated “hate crime” charges (i.e., using a swastika in my artwork), and not Der Spiegel, Stern, Karl Lauterbach, and many others, for doing exactly the same thing.

I don’t want to impugn her competence as a Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor or in any way suggest that the “lengthy review process” of her understanding of the law (including the concept of “the rule of law” in non-totalitarian societies) conducted by the Judges’ Election Committee and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution prior to turning her loose on the public following the collapse of the GDR was … well, anything less than adequate, but, if Germany is going to continue to claim that it has any respect for basic democratic principles — not to mention its own constitution — someone might want to take Ines Karl aside and explain that political dissent is not a crime.

Or, on second thought, maybe it is now. In which case, it would helpful if the German authorities would drop the “Germany is a democratic state under the rule of law” crap and just go openly totalitarian. It would certainly be less confusing.

After all, in New Normal Germany, it is once again a crime to “delegitimize the state,” as it was in East Germany and Nazi Germany. I reported this in May 2021 in a column called The Criminalization of Dissent, as did The New York Times.

Here’s an excerpt from my column …

“Yes, that’s right, in ‘New Normal’ Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous ‘extremist.’ The German Intelligence agency (the ‘BfV’) has even invented a new category of ‘extremists’ in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being ‘anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security’ … I’m not joking. Not even slightly. The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (‘Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz’) is actively monitoring anyone questioning or challenging the official ‘New Normal’ ideology … the ‘Covid Deniers,’ the ‘conspiracy theorists,’ the ‘anti-vaxxers,’ the dreaded ‘Querdenkers,’ and anyone else they feel like monitoring who has refused to join the Covidian Cult. We’re now official enemies of the state, no different than any other ‘terrorists’ … or, OK, technically, a little different. As The New York Times reported last week (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance), ‘the danger from coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists does not fit the mold posed by the usual politically driven groups, including those on the far left and right, or by Islamic extremists.’ Still, according to the German Interior Ministry, we diabolical ‘Covid deniers,’ ‘conspiracy theorists,’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ have ‘targeted the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press, and globalism,’ and have ‘attacked police officers’ and ‘defied civil authorities.’”

As I mentioned above, it’s a bit confusing, the “delegitimizing-the-state as opposed to political dissent” thing, and the selective-prosecution-of-“hate-crimes” thing, and the German justice system, generally.

I reached out to some of the German state media, and even to Marco Buschmann, the Minister of Justice, and requested more clarity on the German justice system, and the “Is Germany a totalitarian state again?” question. Sadly, I have received no response.

Maybe Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl can help me out with that. In light of her “experiences” as a prosecutor in the GDR, she probably has a pretty good understanding of how things work in totalitarian systems. And, if she needs to brush up on the “democratic rights” thing, she could have a look at Article 5, and Article 2, and Article 3, and Article 8, of the German constitution.

Or, I’d be happy to go over those articles with her, personally. Perhaps she’ll show up in court this time. Last time, she sent one of her junior colleagues who appeared to be a bit … well, under the weather, or on some sort of heavy medication, or maybe he had just emerged from a strenuous “New Normal” struggle session.

In any event, if you’ve never witnessed a “hate-crime” trial in New Normal Germany, and you don’t mind being subjected to the anti-terrorism-style “Security protocols” that the Court has ordered in effect in the courtroom — not to discourage the public and the press from attending and reporting on the trial, of course, but on account of what the Superior Court describes as “the overall tense security situation” — you’re welcome to attend on September 30.

Be advised, though, I might commit a few more alleged “hate crimes,” right there in the courtroom, assuming I’m allowed to speak.

I’m not sure what the rules are these days in terms of what we’re allowed to say … which is kind of the point of this entire exercise, in case that wasn’t already clear.

Oh well, I guess I’ll take my chances. I hear the New Normal political prisons aren’t nearly as bad as the old East German ones.

Maybe they’ve even added toilet seats!

Faced with a surge in staff absences, Germany’s employers are reaching for a new trick to get workers to clock in: a cash bonus for not calling in sick. Tesla, headed by CEO Elon Musk, is leading the charge – offering workers at its Berlin plant up to €1,000 (US$1,111) just to show up.

According to Bloomberg, such measures speak to the severity of the workforce crisis engulfing Europe’s largest economy.

A combination of increased respiratory infections in the wake of Covid and deteriorating mental health have propelled sickness absences to the highest in Germany’s post-reunification history, impairing economic growth and exacerbating labor shortages, while heaping extra burdens onto businesses and the roughly one-third of workers who consistently show up.

As a result of more frequent infections, sick days have soared to levels not seen since reunification – causing production lines to grind to a halt, forcing businesses to strain under the weight of these unprecedented absences. Some companies even suspect that generous sick-pay benefits and pandemic-era rules allowing employees to call in sick by phone are being exploited by workers who aren’t actually ill.

In Germany, that figure has increased to at least 15 days per employee, and some estimates put the total nearer 20. This is one of highest rates in Europe; if attendance was better, Germany could have avoided a recession last year, economists say.

Volkswagen, meanwhile, is mulling over plant closures and layoffs for the first time, with reports suggesting that around 10% of its production workers are out sick—double the expected rate. The company is losing an estimated €1 billion per year due to these absences. Meanwhile, Tesla’s new pilot program, which offers €1,000 bonuses to employees who maintain a 95% attendance rate, is a clear sign of how dire things have become. And they’re not alone: Kiel’s transport company KVG and even Mercedes-Benz have dabbled in similar incentives, though with mixed results.

As Bloomberg‘s Chris Bryant notes, if employees feel forced to show up sick to earn a little extra cash, it could spell disaster for workplace health, while those with chronic conditions who stand no chance of getting a bonus will be left out.

Germany’s sick-leave policies are incredibly generous by international standards. Workers are entitled to six weeks of full pay when they call in sick, with costs covered by the employer—a system that costs companies around €70 billion annually. After six weeks, health insurers cover up to 70% of wages for up to 72 weeks. For Americans used to minimal or zero sick leave, this setup might sound like a dream. But with nearly 60% of Germans admitting they’ve called in sick when they could have worked, it’s clear the system isn’t without flaws.

So what’s next for Germany’s sick leave conundrum? The government has promised to review the pandemic-era rules allowing doctors to excuse workers from work over the phone for up to five days. But with a culture so deeply ingrained in protecting workers’ rights, even small changes are likely to face stiff resistance.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

CNN headlined an article last week about how “Pro-Russian posters appear on billboards across Italy” as part of their ongoing campaign fearmongering about alleged Russian influence in the West.

The posters themselves are innocuous though and simply call for an end to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. Some municipalities like Rome ordered them taken down for using the city’s name and official symbol, but others let them stay up.

Ukraine protested these posters and predictably demanded censorship.

It turns out that all this is organized by a local activist who’s connected to groups formed during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, thus meaning that they represent Italians with heterodox views.

This analysis here from February shares more insight into evolving national sentiments towards this conflict, which are increasingly trending towards opposition to perpetuating it, while this one here from last weekend reminds everyone that folks can independently arrive at seemingly Russian-aligned views.

The insight from those two pieces discredits CNN’s innuendo that these posters are physical proof of a Russian influence campaign.

Rather, they’re just manifestations of citizens’ constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech, which is being practiced within legal limits in this case. Regardless of one’s views on this issue, it’s important that they don’t exaggerate the impact of these posters, which are unlikely to change Rome’s official stance towards the conflict.

Public sentiment is always important to pay attention to, but only in rare instances does it lead to a change in policy. When this does happen, it’s usually after elections and only if those who win do what they promised, which isn’t always the case. Another example is large-scale protests that inflict serious economic damage on the state, but these aren’t expected in Italy over this issue. Even if they occurred, however, forcible means could be employed for breaking them up and containing the economic fallout.

At the same time, however, public influence campaigns like the one that’s being legally waged by local activists in line with their constitutional rights could succeed in bringing more followers to their cause. In that case, some politicians might calculate that it’s better to speak out more loudly in favor of whatever it is that the people in general or a strategic constituency thereof are agitating for. Depending on the national political arrangement, this could destroy ruling coalitions and lead to early elections.

It’s therefore just as much of a mistake to dismiss the impact of this poster campaign and those like it as it is to exaggerate their impact. What CNN and Ukraine are doing is counterproductive to their proxy war cause though by hyping up what’s happening in order to push their anti-Russian fearmongering. By doing so, they’re amplifying the activists’ anti-proxy war message in ways that their posters could never achieve, plus they prove that there are people passionate enough to fund this public influence campaign.

On a closing note, these same activists might soon be accused of “receiving money from Russia” in order to discredit their campaign and fuel the Russiagate 2.0 conspiracy theory that the American elite have concocted ahead of the next elections, but observers shouldn’t take any such accusations at face value. All that’s happening is that a group of people are making their political opinions known in a peaceful way, which only bothers those who are insecure about the merits of their own contrarian views.

Authored by Eva Fu, Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

For years, Beijing has been deepening its hold on America, drawing intelligence from the U.S. government while silencing critics with the help of agents embedded in U.S. society.

The United States is now hitting back—and seeing results, according to experts.

In early September, prosecutors arrested Linda Sun, former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accusing her of acting on behalf of Beijing in exchange for gifts and payouts valued in millions of dollars to her family.

There has also been a marked increase in the rate of convictions or pleas in recent months. The Justice Department has brought forth dozens of CCP-directed espionage and foreign agent cases in the past four years, resulting in at least 13 convictions or pleas, with more than half of those taking place this year—including three in the past month. an Epoch Times review of the court records show.

On Aug. 6, a Chinese American scholar posing as a pro-democracy activist was convicted by a jury for spying on dissidents for the CCP.

On Aug. 13, a U.S. army intelligence analyst from Texas pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the CCP.

On Aug. 23, a software engineer who worked two decades at Verizon pleaded guilty to gathering intelligence on countless dissidents and organizations targeted by the CCP since 2012.

Case documents reveal a broad range of criminal actions taken by agents, often different from what most may imagine to be spying. Beyond industrial espionage and covert influence campaigns, the regime has directed hacker rings, including a group that was charged and sanctioned this year for waging a 14-year campaign on the United States.

“I feel that our nation must take every opportunity to stop these threats,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee for the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times, noting that the U.S. intelligence community has identified Beijing as the number one threat to the United States.

Bacon has experienced Chinese espionage attempts firsthand. Last year, he was hacked by CCP-linked hackers who also broke into email systems of State and Commerce department officials and dozens of other groups.

“Can we ever say that whatever actions we are taking are enough? I don’t believe so as the threats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and national security impact,” Bacon said.

Who Are the Spies?

The CCP has long targeted people of Chinese descent—of whom there are more than 60 million people outside China—as potential assets in its intelligence operations.

Among those charged by the DOJ in the foreign agent cases are officials of the CCP’s top intelligence gathering agency Ministry of State Security (MSS), Chinese citizens traveling to the United States under false pretenses, hackers residing in Asian countries; as well as asylees, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent.

Some reside in the United States while dozens of others charged are known to reside in China, and will now face arrest if they ever set foot on American soil.

There are also many who are U.S. citizens that aren’t of Chinese descent. They include active military members, former law enforcement, and experts in competitive fields.

The CCP engages in what experts such as Casey Fleming, chair and CEO of risk consultancy BlackOps Partners, describe as “unrestricted warfare,” meaning there are no legal, ethical, or moral lines it will not cross to pursue its objectives. It capitalizes on one’s baser instincts—greed, pride, lust, shame—to recruit assets.

“Number one, it’s money. Number two, it’s ego. Number three, it’s blackmail,” Fleming, who advises the DOJ, FBI, and Congress on the CCP threat, told The Epoch Times.

In May, two New Yorkers pleaded guilty in an indictment that charged seven, including MSS officials in China, for trying to coerce an American family to go back to China to be imprisoned by the CCP.

The defendant had harassed the Chinese man with bogus lawsuits and told the victim it “really is a drop in the bucket for a country to spend $1 billion” to achieve what the CCP ordered, promising “endless misery” for the victim, he said. “It is definitely true that all of your relatives will be involved.”

In January, a former U.S. Navy sailor was sentenced to 27 months for giving sensitive military information to the CCP over the course of almost two years, in return for about $14,000.

“I mean, he’s paying me so I was like, okay, I’ll just do whatever he says,” the sailor told the FBI in an interview, describing the job as “easy money.”

Several other cases involving former military members include an indicted Navy sailor and army soldier, and a former U.S. army helicopter pilot who pleaded guilty.

Last month, Sgt. Korbein Schultz, an army intelligence analyst with the First Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment at Fort Campbell, pleaded guilty to sending military secrets to a CCP agent, receiving $42,000 in return.

Beginning around June 2022, Schultz began sending sensitive military files to an unnamed conspirator working for the CCP.  Schultz received payment up to $1,000 per document in return.

A month into the partnership, Schultz told the conspirator he would like to turn the relationship into a long term one, according to the indictment. He provided materials including details about U.S. precision rockets, their performance, and how they would be used. He also shared manuals and technical data of several US aircraft, documents referencing the Chinese military, and documents related to the U.S. military forces in the Indo-Pacific.

The conspirator asked for information of higher levels of classification as the partnership progressed and promised higher payments for more exclusive information.

“I hope so! I need to get my other BMW back!” Schultz wrote in response to the promise of higher pay. He told the conspirator he wished he could be “Jason Bourne,” and brought up the idea of moving to Hong Kong so he could work for the conspirator in person.

Four months into the partnership, the conspirator raised the suggestion of recruiting another service member who had access to higher classified information, and Schultz set out to do so over the next few months.

In another case, two men who pleaded guilty in July to acting as CCP agents had tried to bribe an IRS agent to target Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice with five meditative exercises and teaches the principles truth, compassion, and tolerance. Since 1999, the CCP has sought to “eradicate” the practice in a whole-of-state approach.

Unbeknownst to the two men, the IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent, who took the $5,000 bribe and offer of $50,000 total as evidence in their case. In a recorded call, one of the two men, John Chen, said the money came from Chinese authorities, who were “very generous” when it came to their goal to “topple” Falun Gong.

Insider Threat

Fleming says some “insider threats” were planted in companies and the military decades ago, pointing to the former Verizon software engineer who had been sending the CCP data on Chinese dissidents in America since at least 2012 as an example, and companies are now beginning to recognize the long term effort with these high profile cases.

Some recruits are attracted by the money, others prestige. “They’ve done that to Harvard professors and so on: ‘We’re going to let you set up a sister lab in China … and you’ll be the head of the lab,‘” Fleming said as an example. “’You’re so smart and accomplished. We‘d like you to do a white paper.’”

Fleming said he receives a few of these offers a year himself. The most recent one, from Hong Kong, came just months ago. He promptly deleted it. “I know what’s going on, but many people don’t, and they take $7,500 to do a white paper,” Fleming said.

Read the rest here…

We know that by now you are sick of discussions of tomorrow’s Fed rate cut – 25 or 50 or whatever… so here’s some more.

With Wall Street strategists spent and exhausted, playing out game theory and Martingale scenarios about what the Fed could, should, may, or would do, the big guns have taken the mic and, as expected, they disagree.

We start of with DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach, who joined the record numbers of traders betting that the Fed will kick off its interest-rate cutting cycle with a half-percentage-point move on Wednesday.

As we showed previously, the barrage of recent dovish media trial balloons in the past week has fueled a sharp bond-market rally that’s driven the yield on two-year Treasuries to less than 3.6%. That’s roughly 1.75 percentage points below the Fed’s target rate, and is the biggest spread between the two rates products on record, surpassing the 2008 pre-crisis chasm (when the bond market turned out right and the Fed would not only cut rates to zero but launch QE for the first time).

probably nothing pic.twitter.com/KkEeneboTu

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 14, 2024

Gundlach, long a fan of bond market signaling, said the central bank should close that gap, and he is betting that the Fed is likely to reduce its benchmark by 50 basis points on Wednesday and lower it by a total of 125 basis points by the end of the year. While to many such an aggressive easing cycle would spark panic that the US is about to enter a recession, to Gundlach the Fed is woefully behind the curve as he thinks the US economy is already in a recession and the Fed has kept policy tight for too long.

“I think they’re going to cut 50 — they seem so out of line,” Gundlach said as part of a panel at the Future Proof conference for the wealth management industry in Huntington Beach, California. “The Fed is way behind the curve and they should get their act together.”

The problem with such an approach is that as we discussed previously, equities are nowhere near pricing in a recession, and the realization of just how bad it is, will instantly crash the stock market, wiping out trillions in value, and making the resulting recession far worse. Which is precisely why the Fed is unlikely to rush and cut 50, which is why Powell will again disappoint Gundlach, even if that is probably impossible: the DoubleLine CEO said said already he gives the Fed a letter grade of F, adding that they should have cut rates sooner. “We are in a recession already,” Gundlach said. “I see an awful lot of layoffs announcements.”

But if Gundlach sees fire and brimstone, another just as iconic billionaire, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio disagreed, and said the overall picture of the US economy probably warrants a smaller interest-rate cut by the Federal Reserve this week.

“The Fed has to keep interest rates high enough to satisfy the creditors that they are going to get a real return without having them so high that the debtors have a problem,” Dalio told Bloomberg TV in an interview in Singapore on Wednesday.

“Whether it’s 25 or 50 basis points, 25 basis points would be the right thing to do if you look at the whole picture,” Dalio said on the sidelines of the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2024. “If you look at the mortgage situation, which is worse and that affects more people, then it’s probably 50 basis points.”

Still, Dalio said that ultimately what the Fed does this week “doesn’t make a difference” over the longer term. Policymakers will need to keep real interest rates low to enable the servicing of mounting debts, he said, and he is correct: as we showed last week, the cumulative interest on US debt in the 11 months of fiscal 2024 has already surpassed $1 trillion, a record high, and it will reach $1.2 trillion for the full year.

And unless the Fed cuts rates – inflation be damned – the implosion resulting from this particular Minsky moment will come that much sooner.

Finally, taking a more aloof position, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said whether the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by 25 or 50 basis points, the move is “not going to be earth-shattering.”

“They need to do it,” Dimon said at a conference on Tuesday. But “it’s a minor thing when the Fed’s raising rates and lowering rates because underneath that there’s a real economy.”

Dimon said previously that while he doesn’t “think it matters as much as other people think,” citing ongoing economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures, he is in the opposite camp from Gundlach, warning for more than a year that inflation may be stickier than investors expect, and wrote in his annual letter to shareholders in April that his firm is prepared for interest rates ranging from 2% to 8% or more. To be sure, if the Fed cuts as much as Gundlach expects, the second coming of the inflationary wave will make the head of Arthur Burns’ ghost spin faster than the CPI dial.

It’s not just inflation as a result of monetary policy that is worrying Dimon: on Tuesday at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy’s annual conference, he said again that geopolitical issues – including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as the US’s relationship with China – are his top concern. It “dwarfs any one I’ve had since I’ve been working,” he said. And you have no idea how fast inflation will explode if Israel nukes Iran’s oil production facilities, and 4 million barrels of crude are suddenly pulled from the market.

“People overly focus on, ‘are we going to have a soft landing, a hard landing?’” Dimon said. “Honestly, most of us have been through all that stuff, it doesn’t matter as much.”

Well, Jamie is a billionaire: a hard or soft landing doesn’t really matter to him or to those in his social circle. For everyone else, however, it does.

Authored by Phil Gurski via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the wake of yet another foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot, this one by a Canada-based Pakistani seeking to kill Jews in New York on the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack in Israel, everyone is loudly proclaiming: “ISIS is back.”

And yet, this analysis is wrong.

For someone or something to “be back,” it has to have left in the first place. This return can be surprising or expected, but in the end it is of note. With respect to the ISIS terrorist group, it has not “resurged” because it never went away in the first place.

The group has been around since the mid-2010s, having morphed into its present form after starting out as an al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Interestingly, even al-Qaeda distanced itself from ISIS as the former saw the latter as too violent!

ISIS went on to create what it called the caliphate, spanning parts of Iraq, Syria, and Kurdish territory, and carried out unspeakable crimes over a half-decade, including beheadings, drownings, burning people alive in cages, mass executions, sexual slavery, and “markets” where women were bought and sold to ISIS “fighters.” The group went on to attempt genocide against the Yazidi religious sect, dismissing its members as “devil worshippers.”

Thanks to the United States and its coalition partners, the caliphate was dissolved by 2019. Many celebrated the end of these monstrous jihadis.

However, not only did ISIS not down arms in Iraq and Syria—today they regularly carry out attacks in both nations—but the group spawned a dozen or more “provinces” in West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Mozambique, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, India, and Central Asia. These “subsidiaries” have killed thousands over the last several years. In many ways, ISIS has surpassed al-Qaeda—which itself is not dead—on the list of the most lethal terrorist groups. The branch most cited today is ISIS-K or ISIS-Khorasan, operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS-K is responsible for the attack on the Crocus City Hall music venue near Moscow in March.

It gets worse. Individuals or small cells “inspired” by ISIS have carried out attacks, some low-key in nature, in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium and were thwarted in a plan to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Austria. There was even a possible ISIS-inspired attack in Ireland, a country more used to IRA action than jihadi attacks.

We in Canada have also been targeted. In addition to the recent plot that was thwarted thanks to the RCMP and the FBI, we saw an attack in a Canadian Tire in Scarborough back in 2017 carried out by an ISIS wannabe, and one in Edmonton the same year. A few weeks ago, the RCMP arrested a father-son team, the Eldidis, who were allegedly preparing a mass casualty attack in Toronto. The dad was previously featured in an ISIS video which showed him “dismembering” a captive. This threat was only neutralized thanks to intelligence shared with Canadian agencies by France.

This flurry of ISIS attacks shows no signs of abating. The group will continue to metastasize and grow over the next few years (and possibly decades). Its presence in Africa especially is of great concern as the nations afflicted have had little to no success stopping these terrorists. The eviction of U.S., French, and other nations’ counter-terrorism forces by military juntas in Mali and Niger, and their replacement by Russia’s Africa Corps (formerly the Wagner Group), will most likely not stem the flow of attacks. Africa risks turning into what Afghanistan was to al-Qaeda in the 1990s: A terrorist haven that poses a direct threat to us in the West.

The Canadian government has to take this threat seriously and stop pretending that jihadi terrorism is yesterday’s problem, usurped by right-wing extremism. Immigration and border agencies and officials have to perform their due diligence to ensure that ISIS terrorists do not gain refugee/citizenship status.

Pretending that terrorism has peaked is a bad position to adopt. I realize that other threats are also on the rise—foreign interference/influence, espionage, cyberattacks, etc.—but terrorism is unique in that it captures the nation’s attention like no other act of violence.

ISIS will stay at the top of that threat pyramid for some time to come. It never left.

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

Amid claims that Trump is a “danger to this country and the world,” Hillary Clinton – the original sinner of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’-propaganda – has called for anyone spreading “misinformation” to be criminally charged as a “better deterrence” ahead of the election.

Specifically, the former Secretary of State told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday that Americans “engaged” in “propaganda” – similar to the type that led to the Russians “boosting Trump” in 2016 – should face criminal prosecution.

“I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016.

But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence, because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States,” Clinton told Maddow.

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton suggests jailing Americans for posting “misinformation”

“There needs to be deterrence” pic.twitter.com/soxI3wl7To

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 17, 2024

As Aaron Mate points out, her hypocrisy (and lack of shame) knows no bounds:

To make her argument against free speech, she invokes the Russiagate scam that itself was the product of her campaign’s own propaganda. Speaking of which, the case that she invokes here — Mueller charging some Russians for social media activity — led to Mueller dropping the case after the Russian company showed up to fight the case in court.

 

Here is the full transcript via RealClearPolitics (emphasis ours):

MADDOW:  Speaking of dictators, the Justice Department and the State Department have taken another of act — a number of actions in the past several weeks, striking actions, to both call out and indict and take action against the Kremlin for their attempts at interfering in this — in yet another presidential election cycle on Trump’s behalf.
 
The State Department has put out a $10 million reward for information leading to — for information about people who are trying to — about entities that are trying to illegally interfere in our election. We have seen these dramatic indictments from the Justice Department, including for paying millions of dollars, the Kremlin paying millions of dollars to pro-Trump influencers.
 
We have seen the Justice Department seize Web domains, where the Kremlin had set up news sites, what looked like news sites, looked like versions of American news sites, but were secretly operated by the Russian intelligence services or by the Russian government.
 
You feel like the U.S. government is sort of starting to figure out how to do this and taking this seriously enough, or do you still think there’s a far distance to go?
 
CLINTON:  I think there’s a far distance to go.
 
I applaud the actions taken by the Justice Department and the State Department. I think that they’re very important. But, truly, we are just at the beginning of uncovering everything that Russia, but not just Russia, other countries, have done and are doing to influence our election.
 
If you focus on Russia — and I commend you, Rachel, for your new movie — because we are only at the beginning of understanding the whole iceberg here. What the Russians started doing in 2015 and 2016, what they continued doing, they have gotten more sophisticated. They aren’t even pretending anymore.
 
Their international news operation, Russia Today, R.T., is an arm of the Russian government, an arm of its intelligence operation. It’s basically an extension of their spying efforts. They are using Americans, both those who are witting and willing and those who are unwitting and are just so surprised they’re getting $400,000 a week or $100,000 a podcast to parrot Kremlin propaganda.
 
We know from what even Republicans have said, the chairs of the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee and other Republicans who are currently in office have said that Republicans go to the floor of the Congress and they parrot Russian talking points.
 
So, I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda.
 
And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence, because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States. They’re not going to be going to a country where they can be extradited or even returning to the United States, unless they are very foolish.
 
So I think we need to uncover all of the connections and make it very clear that you could vote however you want, but we are not going to let adversaries, whether it is Russia, China, Iran, or anybody else, basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders.

Trump running mate JD Vance reacted to Hillary’s demands:

Here is Hillary Clinton, calling for civil and criminal penalties for speech she disagrees with.

But why stop at jailing your opponents?

Hillary is calling for censorship, but she’s really calling for violence.

Reject censorship. Reject violence.

Seems reasonable.

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed an encounter with four Russian Navy vessels 57 miles from Point Hope, Alaska, on Sunday. The incident occurred during a routine patrol by the Coast Guard Cutter Stratton in the Chukchi Sea, according to a statement on Sept.16.

The crew of the Stratton detected the Russian ships, which included a Severodvinsk-class submarine, a Dolgorukiy-class submarine, a Steregushchiy-class frigate, and a Seliva-class tug, as they transited southeast along the Russian side of the maritime boundary line (MBL).

Upon crossing the MBL into the U.S. exclusive economic zone, the vessels ventured approximately 30 miles into U.S. waters. The Russian vessels were assessed to be avoiding sea ice on the Russian side of the MBL and operated according to international rules and customs, the Coast Guard’s statement said.

“We are actively patrolling our maritime border in the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea, with our largest and most capable cutters and aircraft, to protect U.S. sovereign interests, U.S. fish stocks, and to promote international maritime norms,” said Rear Adm. Megan Dean, commander of Coast Guard District 17. “Coast Guard Cutter Stratton ensured there were no disruptions to U.S. interests.”

The Stratton’s patrol is part of Operation Frontier Sentinel, a Coast Guard mission designed to maintain a U.S. presence in the region and respond when foreign competitors operate near U.S. waters. These efforts strengthen international maritime norms and safeguard U.S. interests in the Arctic, according to the Coast Guard.

The encounter follows a July 24 incident in which the U.S. military intercepted joint Russian and Chinese air patrols near Alaska’s air defense identification zone.

In that instance, Russian TU-95 bombers and Chinese H-6 aircraft were tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Military analysts say that these maneuvers serve as a challenge to U.S. dominance in the region, which is home to key missile defense systems and valuable natural resources.

Su Tzu-Yun, a military analyst and director of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times that the proximity of these exercises to Alaska—a critical region for U.S. missile defense—signals a deliberate act of intimidation by China and Russia.

“The joint deployment of bombers not only serves as a stark reminder of China and Russia’s potential reach but also raises concerns about their intentions,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Defense recently released its 2024 Arctic Strategy, which emphasizes the key role of the Arctic in national defense and aims to enhance U.S. capabilities to counter rising challenges from both Russia and China.

Jon Sun and Sean Tseng contributed to this report.

While Americans were hyper-fixated on the 20,000 Haitians the Biden-Harris administration dumped into Springfield, Ohio, through an expanded Temporary Protected Status program for migrants from the collapsed Caribbean nation, former President Trump shifted the conversation during a campaign rally last week to Charleroi, Pennsylvania. 

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The small 4,000 person town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania has experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris — the schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak English, costing local… pic.twitter.com/jvlP19ANL0

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 12, 2024

Ahead of Trump spotlighting the Haitian surge in the tiny blue-collar town of Charleroi during a rally last week in Arizona, we cited the think tank America 2100, which first revealed that the town’s population of Haitian migrants exploded by 2,000% over the past two years.

It isn’t just Springfield. It’s happening everywhere.

In Charleroi, Pennsylvania—a low-income town of just 4,000—the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. And it’s almost all Haitians.

Here’s what one Charleroi councilman told us today: pic.twitter.com/Wkwv56Tnw5

— America 2100 (@America_2100) September 11, 2024

Several downtown residents spoke with us about the ongoing migrant surge. They said when the national media began covering the situation in Springfield — they thought, “Wait a minute”—the same migrant influx orchestrated by the Biden-Harris administration was happening across their town. 

We spoke with one employee at a local shop, and we will keep his name anonymous for fear of retribution by local officials or the federal government. He provided us with helpful insight into the Haitian crisis in Charleroi. 

He said at least half of the town’s population is now Haitian, noting the influx began to become noticeable under the Biden-Harris’ first term, adding there was just a recent surge in new Haitians. Many of these migrants are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status. 

As far as what is visible by residents, they explained the primary reason the Haitians were dumped into the town was because of Fourth Street Foods, a food manufacturer that produces quality frozen food products for the processed foods industrial complex. These foods end up being sold in major retail stores throughout the US. 

Let’s remind readers in March, we penned a note titled “How Shadowy Network Of NGOs Supplies Mega-Corporations With Migrants To Exploit Cheap Labor,” which is possibly how this entire scheme is being operated. The federal government alone can’t possibly plan shelter and transportation arrangements for the migrants. 

The consequence of importing third-world migrants to replace blue-collar workers in the town crushes native households. Many residents complained that rents are out of control because the migrants exacerbated a housing shortage. Some have left the town for cheaper housing outside city limits.

The picture being painted in Charleroi is part of a much broader labor theme:

• Great Replacement Job Shock: 1.3 Million Native-Born Americans Just Lost Their Jobs, Replaced By 635,000 Immigrants

How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 15, 2024

The individual said Haitians are being shuttled to and from the food packaging plants via a complex network of vans. There must be dozens and dozens of these vans, easily spotted while driving down city streets. Several of the vans had a logo with a sign that read  ‘The Wellington Agency,’ a staffing company. 

Several times during the ride-along with the individual, Haitian drivers nearly hit the vehicle. He noted that one local DMV worker posted on the town’s Facebook page about licenses being handed out to migrants like candy. He said migrants are sparking accidents all over town, which has led to a surge in insurance rates. 

One of the biggest takeaways is that open southern borders and other ways to import migrants from third-world countries have not just been done for election purposes that favor Democrats but as a source of low-cost labor to mega-corporations as the great replacement of native-born workers with foreign-born workers plays out. Basically, the federal gov’t and corporate America are selling out blue-collar workers for cheap migrants.

Residents of Charleroi had no say in their beloved town, sold out by local, state, and federal politicians and possibly a network of taxpayer-funded NGOs who facilitated the migrant invasion. Corporate profits are certainly being prioritized over the native residents. 

There was no mention of the Haitians eating dogs and cats, but there were numerous sightings of goat carcasses on a backroad that many in the town joked in a Facebook group: “Hide your goats.” 

Here’s what the Charleroi residents are talking about on their private Facebook group:

Watch: The ride-along in Charleroi occurred on Sunday while factories were shuttered and the town was quiet. 

And this. 

Full video here: https://t.co/XSnt3y0RVM

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 17, 2024

The biggest takeaway is that great replacement is ravaging American blue-collar households while the federal gov’t and their corporate overlords import the third world to the first world just to make more profits.

Under mounting pressure from Chinese retail giants like Shein and Temu, American behemoths Amazon and Walmart have been cooking up a scheme to dodge tariffs and slash costs – but a new move by the Biden administration might just rain on their parade.

For months, these U.S. retailers have been quietly plotting to overhaul their business models, aiming to ship more goods directly from Chinese factories straight to your doorstep. By doing so, they’d cut out pricey U.S. warehouses and stores, all while skirting hefty tariffs using a little-known loophole in a century-old trade law.

This loophole, known as “de minimis,” lets importers bypass U.S. taxes and tariffs on shipments valued under $800. The result? Chinese platforms like Shein and Temu have been flooding the market with dirt-cheap products, leaving American companies scrambling to keep up.

But on Friday, the Biden administration threw a wrench in the works. In a surprise announcement, officials declared plans to slam the door on many Chinese imports exploiting the de minimis rule—especially clothing items. The crackdown aims to curb the tsunami of duty-free packages pouring into the country, predominantly from China.

While the changes won’t happen overnight – the proposal will undergo industry scrutiny before finalization – the message is clear: The free ride is coming to an end, the NY Times reports.

Amazon had been gearing up to launch a discount service capitalizing on direct-to-consumer shipments from China, insiders revealed. Walmart, even if reluctant to shake up its model, felt the heat to consider similar tactics to stay competitive.

“It’s get on board or get left behind,” said Steve Story, executive vice president for customs and international trade at Apex Logistics International. “If you don’t get online and embrace this, you’re going to be overshadowed by Shein, Temu, and Alibaba.“

Story admitted he’s assisted Chinese sellers in dodging tariffs by shipping through Amazon’s fulfillment centers, thanks to a 2020 customs ruling allowing Chinese firms to act as “non-resident importers.” Essentially, they can send products tariff-free to themselves via Amazon warehouses scattered across the U.S.

Traditionally, retailers hauled shipping containers loaded with goods from China to U.S. ports, then trucked them to warehouses and stores before reaching consumers. Now, many are bypassing this route, opting to individually package and ship items directly from China under the de minimis rule. This method not only avoids tariffs but also skirts the need for extensive warehousing.

The numbers are staggering. Packages entering the U.S. under the de minimis rule have skyrocketed to over one billion in 2023, up from a mere 140 million a decade ago. China is the chief contributor, sending more packages than all other countries combined.

American businesses are pissed – saying that the rules create an uneven playing field since brands with U.S. stores and warehouses are subject to more in tariffs compared to those shipping directly to consumers.

“De minimis is like a big tax incentive the U.S. is giving you to take the job somewhere else,” lamented Peter Bragdon, general counsel at Columbia Sportswear. “It changes the math.“

Mike Hesse, CEO of Nebraska-based Blue Ox, which manufactures tow bars for RVs, discovered Chinese knockoffs of his products being sold on Amazon and slipping into the country via de minimis.

“They’re a safety issue, plus consumers are duped into thinking they’re buying an American-made product,” Hesse fumed. “That’s how de minimis is affecting me.”

Some companies have accused Chinese firms of dirty tricks, like falsifying invoices to sneak pricier items under the $800 threshold or faking shipping documents to send bulk goods duty-free.

Meanwhile, some retailers have shifted warehouses to Canada or Mexico. From there, they can swiftly and legally ship items duty-free into the U.S. when orders roll in – taking more American jobs with them.

As the Biden administration tightens the screws on de minimis shipments from China, fears are mounting that imports from our neighbors might surge as companies look for new loopholes.

Even Chinese giants are bracing for impact. Shein says it’s open to reforming the tariff exemption and will adapt to keep customers happy. Temu has started highlighting products from “local warehouses,” a move seen as hedging against regulatory changes.

“This is clearly a strategic move to limit exposure to any regulatory shifts,” noted Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse.

All eyes are now on Washington. While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have floated proposals to narrow the de minimis exemption, it’s uncertain whether they’ll rally behind a unified plan.

“The reason we really would like to see certainty is so everybody can plan business accordingly,” said Donald Tang, executive chairman of Shein, just a day before the administration’s bombshell announcement. “If everything is hanging in the middle… it’s not good for the business planning process.”

For Amazon, Walmart, and countless others, the race is on to adapt—or risk being left in the dust.