Record Anti-Netanyahu Protests, Labor Strikes, Bring Israel To A Standstill
What by many accounts is the largest protest Israel has ever seen in its history filled the streets of Tel Aviv overnight, with more expected Monday, in the wake of Israel recovering the bodies of six Israeli hostages who were held in a Gaza tunnel.
Estimates by journalists said the anti-Netanyahu protest ranged anywhere from 300,000+ to 750,000 people. They accuse the Israeli prime minister of intentionally stalling and thwarting a hostage swap deal with Hamas, instead prioritizing the military operation which could put some 100 remaining captives in harm’s way. Watch: the largest rally of the war…
Wow. Aerial video of massive protest in Tel Aviv, Israel tonight of nearly 300,000 people, demanding a ceasefire hours after bodies of 6 hostages were retrieved from Gaza tunnel. Largest rally since war: pic.twitter.com/2KtqWUk7ef
“For 11 months, the Israeli government led by Netanyahu failed to do what a government is expected to do — return its sons and daughters home,” The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a fresh statement. “A deal for the return of the abductees has been on the table for over two months. If it weren’t for the thwarting [of the deal], the excuses, and the spins, the abductees whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably be alive.”
Among the hostages was an Israeli American. The deceased and recovered bodies have been identified as American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi.
The IDF had stated it believes they had been shot not long before its troops reached the tunnels under Rafah. Subsequently health authorities announced they were likely killed 48 to 72 hours before their autopsy, and that they were all executed at close range by multiple bullets.
All of these emerging details have only further served to outrage the victims’ families as well as demonstrators, who are calling for a new government. Huge protests have taken over parts of Jerusalem as well, and in front of government buildings.
Meanwhile, exacerbating the political divide over Gaza policy is the new announcement by Israel’s largest labor union the Histadrut, which has called a general nationwide strike to begin Monday. This marks an unprecedented first of the Gaza war.
As tens of thousands protest in Tel Aviv to demand Netanyahu allow a prisoner exchange/ceasefire, Israeli forces are responding with stun grenades.
Israel has been at war with its neighbors since its inception. Now it appears it may go to war with itself.pic.twitter.com/55eEI1T40p
The union said it is striking as it’s become clear that a truce deal is “more important than anything else,” according to the words of Arnon Bar-David, the head of Histadrut. “We are getting body bags instead of a deal.”
Israeli media on Monday says the country for some eight hours effectively came to a standstill:
Workers shut down public services, tech firms and other businesses, and activists snarled traffic at intersections across the country Monday as hundreds of thousands of people joined a one-day general strike aimed at pressuring the government to seal a hostage-ceasefire deal in Gaza after the military recovered the bodies of six hostages executed just days ago.
According to more:
With limited bus service forcing commuters to find alternate means of travel and many employees declining to show up for work, activists began gathering Monday morning at major junctions and on other roads around the country.
Demonstrators blocked major streets in Tel Aviv and shut down highways leading to the city from the north and east, bringing traffic on the Route 1 and Route 4 highways to a standstill. To the deafening beat of drums, they vowed not to abandon those still believed held hostage in Gaza, and accused the government of leaving them to die there.
Protesters have been heard chanting throughout the day, “Why are they still in Gaza” – in reference to the hostages.
The pressure from the streets, and now that the large one-day union strike is sure to deal a blow to the economy (with future strikes still a looming threat), will increasingly result in political division at the top of the government.
However, an Israeli court has ruled against the Histadrut strike, and ordered workers back to their jobs, a decision which the union says it will respect:
A court ordered strikers back to work Monday afternoon, cutting short a labor action aimed at pressuring the government to seal a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza as thousands protested for an agreement nationwide.
Tel Aviv’s labor court ruled that the Histadrut labor federation had until 2:30 p.m. to wrap up a general strike that had shut down government offices and limited access to clinics, banks, public transportation and other services.
There are also widespread reports that during a Sunday night security cabinet meeting Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confronted Netanyahu.
Gallant told him: “Continuing to impose constraints such as the decision on the Philadelphi corridor will result in us not meeting the goals of the war. The fact that we prioritize the Philadelphi corridor at the cost of the lives of the hostages is a serious moral disgrace,” the defense chief said.
Hungary Is First Central Bank To Pause Rate Cuts As Inflation Suddenly Jumps
While the Fed has made it abundantly clear that it will officially end its hiking cycle in just over two weeks when it cuts rates for the first time since March 2020, the reality is that the US central bank is far behind the curve when it comes to easing monetary policy, with most other G7 central banks – including the ECB, BOE, BOC, SNB and so on – having already cut rates at least once. In fact, one may not realize it with inflation still at nosebleed levels for most people, but a few weeks ago, Bank of America calculated that 2024 is already the 3rd best year for rate cutson record, with just the crisis 2009 and 2020 ahead!
Then again, cutting rates is easy: the problem is what happens when you have cut rates a few times and suddenly inflation is roaring back with a vengeance, and the central bank is facing a catastrophic credibility collapse similar to that experienced by the Arthur Burns Fed, when the US central bank hiked rates in the early 1970s as inflation soared, before cutting as inflation seemed to normalize, only to see a second, far more brutal surge in inflation over the next few years leading to the calamity that was the Volcker Fed’s 20% interest rates.
Impossible? Well, maybe reread what we wrote a week ago when we explained how Powell pivoted dovishly at Jackson Hole – and this for real – just as stocks, home prices, rents and food are at all time highs… and M2 once again positive and about to surge!
But while the Fed will have at least a few months to enjoy its “mission accomplished” before the next, far more crippling leg of inflation returns, for some central banks the day of reckoning has already arrived.
One such place is Hungary, whose central bank just paused rate cuts for the first time in more than a year as inflation jumped and the currency tumbled.
Last week, policymakers in Budapest left the benchmark rate at 6.75% on Tuesday following 15 consecutive cuts, a decision which was in line with the forecasts of most economists and left the country’s borrowing costs at the highest level in the European Union.
The National Bank of Hungary ended its easing cycle after inflation quickened more than its own forecast in July and breached the 4% upper bound of its tolerance range. Meanwhile, the forint, a key factor for monetary settings due to its impact on inflation, has slumped since last month’s (final) rate cut.
While Hungary’s rate setters signaled the pause was temporary and that they were looking for openings to ease monetary policy further, the reality is that absent a deflationary shock, the country’s easing cycle is most likely over and just like in the 1970s US, another, far more painful hiking cycle is on deck.
“There may be scope for cautiously lowering interest rates further in the coming period, depending on the expected interest rate policies of the world’s leading central banks, as well as developments in the domestic inflation outlook and changes in Hungary’s risk perception,” the rate-setting Monetary Council said in a statement.
The forint strengthened modestly after the decision, but remained down 2.5% versus the euro since the start of the year. The forint kept its gains after the guidance on further rate cuts, suggesting those were largely priced in.
Inflation may return to within the 1 percentage-point band around the 3% target in the coming months, Deputy Governor Barnabas Virag told reporters at a briefing, expressing his wishes more than some credible version of reality. At the same time, he said policymakers will closely monitor August data on potential stickiness in price growth, including in core inflation that strips out volatile food and energy items. Which is now rapidly rising once again…
The Monetary Council will weigh a 25 basis-point cut or no change to the key rate at each of its meetings this year, with room for one or two more quarter-point cuts by the end of 2024, Virag said, but don’t be surprised when the next move by the central bank is a hike instead of a cut.
Meanwhile, and as always when the central bank removes the Kool-Aid, Hungary’s politicians were immediately outraged that the money printers threaten to put their political career at risk over something as inconsequential as runaway inflation. Economy Minister Marton Nagy, a potential successor to Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy after his term expires early next year, last week lashed out at the central bank for its approach. He compared rate-setters to “cyclops” for a perceived singular focus on inflation at a time of lackluster economic growth. Nagy has in the past called for looser monetary policy, because that’s what politicians want: they want loose monetary policy (ideally QE) so they can bribe as many people as possible by literally printing money. That’s how the system works.
Meanwhile, the cental bank – while it still has independence – is focusing not just on preserving the careers of corrupt politicians who summarily embezzle about 20% of whatever money they hand out to buy votes, but on avoiding hyperinflation and currency collapse which would happen in an instant should politicians ever get their hands on the money print. The central bank has been clear that its priority is achieving price stability. Policymakers have progressively reduced the size of the cuts this year from a full percentage point to 25 basis points in the past two months. The key rate peaked at 18% last year.
And now that the easing cycle has hit its limits, deflation has dropped as low as it could go and inflation is once again rising, the next move will be a rate hike: first in Hungary, and then – when inflation comes roaring back across the world – everywhere else too…
Generating nearly limitless, clean, carbon-free energy from nuclear fusion—a vision that seems to be perpetually out of reach—has taken major steps in the past several years toward becoming a reality.
On the heels of major recent breakthroughs in physics labs in generating nuclear fusion, the quest has now expanded into the private sector, where a proliferation of start-up companies are racing to make the process commercially viable, and profitable.
If they succeed, the prize would be an abundant source of virtually carbon-free energy that does not consume vast acres of natural landscapes and coastal areas, as do solar panels and wind turbines. And, unlike today’s nuclear-fission reactors, fusion energy produces relatively little radioactive waste.
Tritium and deuterium, isotopes of hydrogen, are the elements used in fusion, rather than heavy elements like uranium and plutonium that are used in fission. The final products of a fusion reaction are helium and neutrons.
Besides producing less waste, nuclear fusion does not entail the risk of runaway chain reactions like Chernobyl, scientists say.
If a fission plant shuts down during an emergency, “it can still produce a lot of power for a while from the leftover activity in the reactor, and this is why it melts,” Jean Barrette, physics professor emeritus at McGill University, told The Epoch Times.
“Whereas with nuclear fusion, you turn the switch off and it’s over; it doesn’t have any leftover radiation.”
While the potential benefits from fusion are manifold, harnessing it for electricity remains a daunting task.
“The fundamental process is well known, and of course, that’s what powers the stars,” Robert Fedosejevs, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Alberta and a specialist in laser technology, told The Epoch Times. But “fusion is the most technologically challenging approach to making energy that mankind has ever attempted.”
Within stars, immense gravity creates intense heat and pressure that causes several hydrogen nuclei to fuse into a single helium nucleus. There is a slight loss of mass in this process, and that “missing” mass is converted into enormous amounts of energy according to Albert Einstein’s famous equation, e = mc².
Absent the gravity of the sun, however, the challenge on earth is not only creating continuous fusion, but doing it in a way that doesn’t require more energy than it produces.
In December 2022, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California crossed this threshold. Through the work of about 1,000 U.S. and international scientists, the NIF created a fusion reaction that, for the first time, produced more energy than it consumed.
It was done by firing 192 simultaneous laser beams into a tiny peppercorn-sized capsule of deuterium and tritium (DT) to compress and heat it to temperatures between 50-100 million degrees Kelvin until it fused, with the product being a helium ion, a neutron, and energy.
“They’ve basically produced multi mega joules of fusion energy, with only two mega joules of laser energy going in,” Fedosejevs said. “That’s the scientific benchmark that people have been working toward for the last 50 to 60 years, to at least show that in the laboratory you can generate more energy out than in.
“So there’s no question fusion works. It’s really, how can we technically achieve it in a sustainable fashion as a power source?”
Moving From Labs to Functional Reactors
Going from a one-off, nano-second reaction in a laboratory to the reliable and cost-effective production of electricity is where scientists, engineers, and investors around the globe are turning their focus.
“We are very, very far away from working plants,” Barrette said. “You need success in many, many directions.
“It’s not one thing they’re missing. They’re missing many things right now that all have to work to make an efficient reactor.”
The first is how to create sustained reactions through fusion, in order to generate base-load electricity. Development in this area is going down one of two paths: laser inertial confinement fusion, the process used by NIF, and magnetic confinement fusion, which uses a magnetic field to simulate the intense gravity within stars.
Laser fusion, which Fedosejevs describes as a “micro-implosion in a vacuum vessel driven by an ultra-short laser pulse,” has taken the lead in terms of producing net energy gains from the reaction. The DT fuel targets are meticulously arranged, and the lasers are all aimed precisely at a space about the width of a human hair.
They are then fired once before having to be recharged and re-aimed. The process allows for about one reaction per day.
To become viable for electricity generation, lasers would have to fire at least 100 times per second, Barrette said, and although solving this and other problems is not impossible, “they are now still very much in the research phase.”
Innovators in this space are working to develop more powerful lasers that can operate at a much higher repetition rate in order to produce energy continuously.
An August report in Physics Today written by nuclear scientists Stefano Atzeni and Debra Callahan, however, notes that the NIF’s laser-based fusion was conducted with 30-year-old laser technology and that progress in laser and target technology has now advanced to the point that laser fusion continues to be seen as potentially commercially viable.
By contrast to laser fusion, magnetic fusion relies on a powerful magnetic field to create the conditions necessary for fusion to take place.
With magnetic fusion, a machine called a tokamak, a design that originated in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, uses magnetic fields to confine, compress, and heat DT plasma within a donut-shaped reactor called a torus. Once fusion occurs, the product is a helium ion and a neutron. These neutrons are able to pass through the magnetic field, and as they do they are captured by a “blanket” outside the wall; this is the primary source of the heat that would ultimately generate electricity.
Over the decades since its invention, scientists have worked to develop ever-stronger magnets to generate more energy for longer durations.
In 1982, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory created its Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), which set a number of world records, including heating plasma to 510 million degrees centigrade, well beyond the 100 million degrees required for commercial fusion. These temperatures exceed those at the center of the sun, which NASA estimates are about 15 million degrees centigrade.
In 1994, the TFTR generated a record 10.7 million watts of controlled fusion energy, which would power more than 3,000 homes.
England also operates a tokamak, called the Joint European Torus (JET), which has also succeeded in generating record amounts of fusion energy. In addition, scientists from 35 countries collaborated on the ITER tokamak in France, which will be the largest superconducting magnet ever built and is scheduled to begin operating in 2034.
“It will produce a field of 13 tesla, equivalent to 280,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field,” a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report states. While laser fusion currently leads in terms of demonstrated energy output, magnetic fusion may hold more promise for generating the continuous energy output necessary for base-load electricity.
“Tokamaks can sustain plasma currents at the mega-ampere level, which is equivalent to the electric current in the most powerful bolts of lightning,” the DOE states. “Fusion energy scientistsbelieve that tokamaks are the leading plasma confinement concept for future fusion power plants.”
Not to be left behind, China has built the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, which has also operated successfully.
Alongside the quest to develop commercially viable fusion reactions, an equally tall hurdle is figuring out how to build a functional, durable physical structure to contain and draw energy from the reactions.
“We had the idea of ‘let’s put the sun in a bottle,’ and it turns out the hard part was not really creating the sun,” Eric Emdee, a research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), told The Epoch Times.
“We’ve created very high temperature plasmas, temperatures that are optimal for fusion to happen,” he said. “The hard part is creating the bottle.”
Within a tokamak reactor, the DT plasma, contained within a magnetic field, is surrounded by a physical wall, called a plasma facing component (PFC) that must withstand the 100 million-degree heat from the reaction.
President Joe Biden signed a proclamation in August commemorating Overdose Awareness Week, a solemn moment for a nation that has witnessed more than half a million deaths from drug overdose in the last decade.
The president hailed his administration’s “re-launch of counternarcotics cooperation” with communist China as a vital tool in combating the flow of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the United States.
It was partly this cooperation on counternarcotics that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan then traveled to China to support.
For three days, Sullivan met with top officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), before telling reporters in Beijing that the administration is dedicated to getting Chinese assistance over synthetic opioids.
“We’re going to look for further progress on counternarcotics and reducing the flow of illicit synthetic drugs into the United States,” Sullivan said on Aug. 29.
As Sullivan was preparing to leave Beijing, however, another senior Biden administration official was delivering a different message 5,000 miles to the southeast.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was in the island nation of Vanuatu, promising locals that the United States would crack down on the growing networks of Chinese drug traffickers.
Those networks, he said, were positioning themselves to increase the flow of fentanyl into the United States and elsewhere by expanding new shipping lanes throughout the Indo-Pacific.
“We are concerned some of the networks that have grown in China and South East Asia are beginning to use the Pacific for transshipment both to Latin America and the United States,” he said.
Campbell reassured those present that the United States would work with foreign nations to rein in drug trafficking by criminal networks from China. But his admission of a growing Chinese drug trade raises questions as to the efficacy of the Biden administration’s counternarcotics engagements with China.
Tackling Chinese Drug Flows
It is between these two priorities, managing diplomatic relations with China’s authoritarian regime and putting an end to the United States’s opioid crisis, that U.S. government officials now frequently find themselves.
A State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the administration “remains concerned” about transnational criminal activity in the Indo-Pacific, and is working closely with “robust” assistance to regional partners on the issue.
“These transnational criminal groups, by definition, are global in nature and so must be our response,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said that the administration’s diplomatic efforts had “driven positive steps” by the CCP to counter the flow of precursor chemicals used in the production of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.
Those diplomatic efforts consisted of two meetings of the Counternarcotics Working Group with China, a joint effort designed “to disrupt the manufacture and flow of illicit synthetic drugs.” They were unveiled after President Joe Biden met CCP leader Xi Jinping in California last year.
An Aug. 1 meeting of the working group succeeded in convincing China to schedule seven chemicals, including three fentanyl precursors, as controlled substances—a move the White House described as “an important step in the right direction.”
What remains unclear is whether these legalistic successes will result in any decrease in the amount of Chinese drugs that are currently flooding the United States and other nations.
The State Department spokesperson said that China-based companies remained “the largest source of precursor chemicals used to manufacture illicit fentanyl that affects the United States.”
Beyond scheduling drugs, the spokesperson noted that Chinese authorities arrested one individual earlier this year in relation to U.S. charges brought in 2023.
It remains the only known arrest made by China as a result of the bilateral counternarcotics coordination with the United States.
The lack of concrete deliverables from bilateral cooperation has raised concerns among some security experts that the CCP is merely making changes on paper which will not lead to any increased enforcement of drug trafficking laws.
In an analysis of the issue published in late August, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank described China’s move to schedule chemicals as “a public-relations stunt to save face and obfuscate the party’s complicity in this deadly problem.”
The researchers added that the CCP did not simply appear to ignore the export of illegal drugs from China but supported it.
“In leaked documents, companies [that sold fentanyl] boasted that the CCP owned them and that their illicit products were tax-exempt,” the researchers said.
Fentanyl by the Numbers
More than 75,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdose last year, according to official U.S. data. At the same time, U.S. law enforcement seized more than 115 million fentanyl pills throughout 2023, according to a press release by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
That’s more than 10 times the amount seized in 2021, and nearly 400 times the amount seized in 2018.
It’s too early to say if that trend will continue through 2024, but initial counts do not suggest the outlook is any less grim.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized 4,600 pounds of fentanyl powder and 34.5 million fentanyl pills in 2024 alone, according to the department’s website. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has seized more than 27,000 pounds of fentanyl, according to a fact sheet.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller said in an interview with the agency’s in-house media in May that “100 percent pure fentanyl coming directly from China” was the primary threat facing the United States from 2014–2018.
After the United States convinced China to schedule fentanyl as a class of drugs in 2019, however, the flow of the drug shifted from direct exports from China and began to be smuggled into the United States via Mexican cartels using Chinese precursor chemicals.
Whether the Chinese drug companies’ transition to the Indo-Pacific marks a similar shift in strategy remains an open question, but the role of Chinese traffickers and money launderers in cartel business is growing.
In July, the DOJ charged a Chinese national with importing more than two tons of fentanyl precursors from China. That same month, the Treasury Department sanctioned two China-based members of a money laundering organization with links to the Sinaloa Cartel.
Neither bust was announced to have been made in coordination with Chinese authorities.
Likewise, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 24,000 Chinese nationals illegally entering the United States in fiscal year 2023, a significant jump from the fewer than 2,000 apprehended in fiscal 2022. An additional 28,500 Chinese nationals attempted to enter at ports of entry without legal papers in fiscal 2023.
When asked whether cooperation with China had resulted in a tangible decrease in fentanyl coming over the border, a DHS spokesperson directed The Epoch Times to Sullivan’s remarks in China.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not return a request for comment on the issue.
Republicans Question the US Approach
In congressional foreign policy circles, frustration with the administration’s continued efforts to cater to the CCP on counternarcotics is growing, especially among Republicans.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who serves as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the Biden administration is ceding ground to the CCP on key issues in order to engage the regime “for fruitless talks with an untrustworthy regime” on counternarcotics.
McCaul told The Epoch Times that a prime example included the administration’s decision to remove the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science from a trade blacklist in exchange for establishing the Counternarcotics Working Group.
The Institute plays a vital role in the CCP’s genetic surveillance of China’s predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority through mass DNA collection and sequencing.
“Unsurprisingly, those conversations resulted in no demonstrable reduction in CCP shipments of fentanyl precursors to other countries,” McCaul said.
Similar concerns about the efficacy of the administration’s cooperation with China on counternarcotics have also been raised by the influential House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP.
A spokesperson for the Select Committee’s Republican majority told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s moves to schedule fentanyl precursors were the regime’s “latest vacuous promise,” designed to win concessions from the United States.
“The horror will not end until the U.S. makes clear to the PRC government and companies responsible that they will pay a price for their actions,” the spokesperson said, using an acronym for the official name of China, the People’s Republic of China.
The spokesperson said that China is “subsidizing the export of fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and fentanyl precursors” and not taking any “enforcement action against the PRC perpetrators responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths.”
A bipartisan report published by the Select Committee earlier in the year, found that the CCP subsidized the manufacture of opioids by offering tax subsidies and grants to companies engaged in the creation and export of such drugs to the Americas even though the drugs are technically illegal in China.
The Select Committee’s report also found that the CCP has ownership stakes in some of the companies exporting fentanyl precursors.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who serves on the Select Committee, told The Epoch Times that the committee had its own Fentanyl Working Group, which recommended “strict trade and customs enforcement measures” to counter the flow of narcotics from China.
“China produces almost all of the fentanyl that comes across America’s borders,” Johnson said.
“I’m not sure how the president expects China to cooperate with our requests to stop the fentanyl crisis when Chinese Communist Party-affiliated companies are the ones producing the drug.”
Democrat lawmakers have largely stopped short of critiquing the Biden administration’s counternarcotics push with China.
The Epoch Times requested comment from five leading Democrats associated with the Select Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, including ranking members Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.).
None responded as to whether they believed the Counternarcotics Working Group was effective.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services, tied the issue to other Biden administration policies and told The Epoch Times that the opioid crisis would likely continue until the ongoing border crisis was resolved.
“Lives are at stake, and we must act to mitigate the ongoing harm and pain this deadly substance is causing American families,” McClain said.
Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), whose state has consistently ranked the highest in the nation for lethal overdoses per capita, said that China’s communist regime was largely to blame.
“West Virginia has been hit hard by the drug epidemic and a lot of the poison on our streets can be directly traced back to Mexican drug cartels using fentanyl materials from China,” Mooney told The Epoch Times.
Mooney said that Congress should pass legislation to deny U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance to nations such as Mexico and China until they can be certified as having effectively worked with the United States to lower the production and trafficking of fentanyl.
He said if that doesn’t happen, those countries had no right to American assistance.
The White House did not return a request for comment.
Our fixation on what Kamala Harris knows and believes is rather quaint.
It reflects a traditional view of leadership that Democrats have largely rejected. Instead of decisive figures who guide the nation, the party is driven by untold numbers of elected officials and unelected bureaucrats, academics, and media voices who share a leftwing ideology. Harking back to its earlier history, the party is once again a machine. Its candidates are not visionaries but apparatchiks committed to the program.
The name on the ballot is largely irrelevant. No one is really voting for Harris, but for the party she represents. Still, politics needs a face, so when President Biden’s turned too craggy, she was tapped as a more youthful, attractive spokesmodel. Like Biden, her vacuity is her appeal; she is another empty vessel that Democrat marketing whizzes can fill with blithe slogans – Joy! Freedom!! Goldilocks!!!
Also, like Biden, her lack of insight and conviction is a plus as she is unlikely to offer any pushback to the plan. I’ll stand where you want, say what you want, just please compare me to Lincoln.
If that sounds unfair, note that it is precisely what we have lived through during the stage-managed Biden presidency. As if to underscore the point, the president has been largely MIA since he was selflessly forced, kicking and screaming, to withdraw from the race. Who’s running the government? The machine.
Ironically, Harris’ largely ceremonial role adds a splash of truth to her party’s efforts to hide her. She doesn’t need to grant many interviews or hold press conferences because her own thoughts are largely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what she knows about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the intentions of China and Iran, or about the economy, health care, and education. Those decisions will be made by the machine. All she can do is jam the gears with word salads and gaffes.
Where Republicans argue her positions are unclear, we know exactly what she is offering: more of the same. A Harris presidency will continue to ramp up the leftwing policies that have marked Biden’s term. The Democrats will continue their push to transform America into a woke, quasi-socialist republic like those that dominate the broke and feckless nations of Western Europe. They will give us higher taxes, expanded regulation, mounting national debt, and – perhaps most troubling of all – the ever more strident effort to censor and punish dissenting views.
She is not feeding information into the machine, she is mouthing what it spits out.
Hence, the focus on her life and career, the causes and policies she has embraced, many of which she is now renouncing, are a distraction. What she thinks and feels doesn’t matter. The only real threat is if, as president, she tried to rise above her station and insist on consequential actions during a crisis. Lord, help us.
The problem for Democrats is that many Americans are not happy with the machine’s output. They are disappointed with its policies on the border, the spending that has fueled inflation, the growing divisions along the lines of race and gender, the fearsome global conflicts. Where a visionary leader can adapt to new circumstances, turning, if not on a dime, then a quarter, the machine grinds on. What you’ve seen is what you’re going to get. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer admitted the obvious last week when he said that if Democrats win control of the government this November, they would likely end the filibuster to pass many of the bills that stalled during the Biden years.
Still, there are elections to win. So Democrats are trying to put lipstick on a pig by selling the same old same old as a new way forward. Chutzpah or genius? Time will tell.
All of this shows the folly of the Trump campaign, which seems to believe it is running against Harris. His schoolyard insults of the vice president raise her stature, casting her as a potential world leader instead of a mouthpiece. It gives hope to Americans who are disappointed with the Biden administration – maybe she will be different. It obscures the fact that Trump’s real opponent is a vast machine, a mighty ship of state that may have no captain at the helm but is irrevocably steering the nation on a dangerous course.
J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @jpederzane.
Super Micro Anticipates No Material Changes In 2024 Form 10-K After Delay & Hindenburg Short Report
Server-maker Super Micro Computer, which has been among the biggest beneficiaries of the AI euphoria over the past two years, wrote in a filing Friday that its delayed 2024 Form 10-K will not contain material changes to results from its fiscal year and quarter ended June 30, which were reported in early August.
“Based upon the work done to date, the Company does not anticipate the 2024 Form 10-K will contain any material changes to its results for the fiscal year and quarter ended June 30, 2024, that were announced in the Company’s press release dated August 6, 2024,” SMCI wrote in a filing.
SMCI noted in the filing that the review of financial controls comes “in response to information that was brought to the attention” of its audit committee.
Troubles emerged for the computer server maker on August 6 after the company reported second-quarter earnings results that missed revenue and profit estimates tracked by Bloomberg. The company’s sliding profit margins outweighed its rosy sales outlook, which was billions above Wall Street estimates, and the 10-1 reverse stock split announcement.
Last Tuesday, short-seller Hindenburg Research, known most recently for its long-standing feud with Adani Enterprises, published a short report on SMCI, alleging the semiconductor/server company engaged in accounting manipulation and self-dealing among family members.
Then one day later, one Wednesday, SMCI announced it would delay its 10-K filing for FY 2024…
“Additional time is needed for SMCI’s management to complete its assessment of the design and operating effectiveness of its internal controls over financial reporting as of June 30, 2024,” a filing from the company read.
In markets, SMCI shares have plunged as much as 36% since the dismal earnings report on August 6. Shares peaked around $1,118 in mid-March and have tumbled into a nasty bear market of -63% since then. Following Friday’s filing, shares gained about 2% in after-hours trading.
SMCI was one of the most popular AI trades this year. Shares have nearly round-tripped the lows from the start of the year. For retail traders who bought the top, thank you for playing Wall Street’s AI pump-and-dump game.
A coalition of book publishers and individual authors have filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida over its law banning sexually explicit books from school libraries in the state.
As the Daily Caller reports, the lawsuit was filed in the Orlando Federal Court on Thursday by a group of over a dozen publishers and authors, claiming that the bill signed into law in May of 2023 by Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is a violation of both the First and 14th Amendments. The law, the plaintiffs claim, “interferes” with their ability to produce and distribute “constitutionally protected” books, insisting that the law is too vague in its description of “sexual conduct.”
Among the publishers involved in the lawsuit are Simon and Schuster, Penguin Random House, MacMillan Publishing Group, and Hachette Book Group.
“Books that are required to be removed under the prohibitions on content that describes sexual conduct or content that is ‘pornographic’ as construed by the State Board are stigmatized, without regard for their value as a whole or their literary, artistic, historical, medical, or educational value as the Supreme Court requires,” the complaint claims.
The plaintiffs demand that the court rule certain parts of the law as unconstitutional, while failing to list any specific examples of books that they believe should be allowed despite the law.
“Educators who are already afraid of official state action or action by vigilante members of the public fear the loss of their credentials and livelihood and even threats to their safety,” the lawsuit adds, without citing any evidence.
The law in question is House Bill 1069, which was first implemented on July 1st, 2023. The law bans all materials that are considered either sexually explicit or outright pornographic. Parents and conservative activists supported such a bill after it was discovered that numerous novels were in public school libraries featuring explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse, particularly between homosexual couples. One such book was a graphic novel with X-rated visual depictions of homosexual sex.
“Over the past year, parents have used their rights to object to pornographic and sexually explicit material they found in school libraries,” said DeSantis in a February statement. “We also know that some people have abused this process in an effort to score cheap political points. Today, I am calling on the Legislature to make necessary adjustments so that we can prevent abuses in the objection process and ensure that districts aren’t overwhelmed by frivolous challenges.”
UK Announces Partial Ban On Arms Exports To Israel
The United Kingdom has announced it will suspend a portion of its current arms and defense sales to Israel, citing a “clear risk” to civilians and that they could be used to violate international humanitarian law.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy informed parliament Monday that the suspension will impact of 30 of 350 arms export licenses to Israel. The partial ban covers supplies “which could be used in the current conflict in Gaza” against Hamas. However, parts for F-35 fighter jets are exempt from the ban. He emphasized that the country still backs Israel’s right to self-defense, and thus the UK is not enacting a blanket ban on all items.
“It is with regret that I inform the House [of Commons] today the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” Lammy said, after conducing a review of shipments to Israel.
“We recognize, of course, Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods that Israel’s employed, and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure particularly,” he continued.
The Gaza Health Ministry has said that over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in over ten months of war. Israel says a large percentage of the deceased are Hamas militants, while Palestinian sources assert the majority are women and children.
Analysts say this is not expected to have much of an impact on Israel’s operations given that British exports only make up less than one percent of total external arms sales Israel receives.
Israel reacted with disappointment, anger, dismay. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz lashed out Monday in wake of the UK decision, saying it “sends a very problematic message” to terrorist groups like Hamas and its supporters in Iran.
But Lammy had sought to emphasize in his comments it doesn’t mean he believes Israel is guilty of war crimes or human rights abuses per se. “This is a forward looking evaluation, not a determination of innocence or guilt, and it does not prejudge any future determinations by the competent courts,” he said.
Meanwhile, pressure from Washington to wrap up Gaza operations also could be growing…
⚡️US President Joe Biden was asked if he thinks Netanyahu is doing enough to reach a hostage deal, he replied: “No” pic.twitter.com/EFMvkTZQBw
Large and growing pro-Palestine protests which have gripped parts of London over the last weeks and months have been increasing in size and intensity, and are perhaps having an impact on Labour politicians.
The D.C. Circuit Court on Tuesday ruled against approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal and related pipeline projects at the Port of Brownsville, effectively canceling prior approval of three such projects by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The Sierra Club, in announcing the ruling, said this is the first time a court has vacated FERC approval of an LNG terminal. FERC approved Rio Grande LNG, Texas LNG and the Rio Bravo Pipeline “despite widespread concerns for the harm the projects would cause to the surrounding communities and the climate.”
A lawsuit was filed against FERC by the Sierra Club, the city of Port Isabel, Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, a Floreville-based nonprofit organization, claiming that FERC failed to “adequately consider the environmental justice impacts and greenhouse gas emissions of the three projects, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the Natural Gas Act.“
The D.C. court upheld the petitioners’ arguments, vacating FERC’s approvals, meaning the agency now has to reconsider the impacts of the three projects. This will require a new draft supplemental Environmental Impact Statements and public comment period before FERC decides whether to issue new project permits.
The court’s ruling follows two other rulings in July that “call into question the adequacy of FERC reviews,” according to the Sierra Club, which noted that last week the D.C. Circuit Court ruled FERC had failed to consider greenhouse gas emissions as well as market need for expansion of Real Energy Access, a Williams company pipeline project in the Northeast.
Also last month, the same court ruled that FERC failed to adequately assess Commonwealth LNG’s air pollution impacts and greenhouse gas emissions, the Sierra Club said, adding that “it is unacceptable for FERC to conduct insufficient environmental justice analysis and to decline to make determinations on the significance of climate-warming emissions.”
It was focused on regulating the rates charged by interstate natural gas transmission companies. In the years prior to the passage of the Act, concern arose about the monopolistic tendencies of the transmission companies and the fact that they were charging higher than competitive prices. The passage of the Act gave the Federal Power Commission (FPC) control over the regulation of interstate natural gas sales. Later on, the FPC was dissolved and became the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) pursuant to a different act. FERC continues to regulate the natural gas industry to this day.
National Environmental Policy Act
The National Environmental Policy Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in December 1969 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 1, 1970.
Since its passage, NEPA has been applied to any major project, whether on a federal, state, or local level, that involves federal funding, work performed by the federal government, or permits issued by a federal agency. Court decisions have expanded the requirement for NEPA-related environmental studies to include actions where permits issued by a federal agency are required regardless of whether federal funds are spent to implement the action, to include actions that are entirely funded and managed by private-sector entities where a federal permit is required. This legal interpretation is based on the rationale that obtaining a permit from a federal agency requires one or more federal employees (or contractors in some instances) to process and approve a permit application, inherently resulting in federal funds being expended to support the proposed action, even if no federal funds are directly allocated to finance the particular action.
Environmental Justice?!
The courts have further expanded the act beyond all recognition to include environmental justice.
Now, on three approved projects, with construction underway, in the name of “environmental justice”, the three projects “will require a new draft supplemental Environmental Impact Statements and public comment period before FERC decides whether to issue new project permits.”
Wikipedia notes the average time for a review is 4.5 years!
I strongly suggest the affected parties challenge this all the way to the Supreme Court. Hopefully the Supreme Court will put a permanent end to this regulatory madness.
Pennsylvania Are You Paying Attention?
Pennsylvania is the second largest natural gas exporter in the US, second only to Texas.
This explains Kamala Harris’ reversal on fracking. Anyone paying attention knows she is a liar.
CLAIM: In Thursday’s interview, Ms Harris said she would not ban fracking and maintained that she has “not changed that position”.
VERDICT: This needs context and could be misleading as Ms Harris has changed her public position on fracking. In 2019, she said she was “in favour of banning fracking.”
The following year, in the 2020 vice presidential debate when she was on the Biden ticket, Ms Harris said “Joe Biden will not end fracking” and: “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”
During the CNN interview on Thursday she was pressed on her 2019 statement, and Ms Harris responded: “I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice-president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”
Has child poverty fallen by over 50%?
CLAIM: “When we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit, so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%.”
VERDICT: This is somewhat of an exaggeration and needs context. Child poverty rates did fall, but not by “over 50%” and they rose again the year after, so the impact was only temporary.
In Creampuff Interview, CNN Spoon Feeds Harris the Answers to its Questions
“How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made?” Bash asked Harris. “Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?”
Nothing like giving the person interviewed the answer right in the question you ask in case they cannot figure out what to say.
“My values have not changed,” replied Harris, pretending to be pro- and anti-fracking simultaneously.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that individuals who engaged in “criminal” behaviour during the pandemic still need to be held accountable.
Kennedy, who is in line for a health related position in Donald Trump’s administration should he be elected, declared recently that there needs to be a “reckoning” brought upon those responsible.
Speaking at the Limitless Expo, Kennedy explicitly referenced Anthony Fauci, noting “I wrote a book about Fauci. It’s a great book. There are 2,200 footnotes in the book… I invited people to find problems with the book… And nobody ever told us any factual error in that book.”
He charged that Fauci and others used their positions during COVID to enforce “totalitarian controls that were not science-based.”
“It’s a story, really, of people involved in really terrible, immoral, homicidal criminal behavior,” Kennedy urged.
RFK Jr: “There still has to be a reckoning” for Covid
“The mainstream media hasn’t caught up with the science, but the science is out there now and it’s devastating.”
“Yesterday, the chief attorney for FDA admitted, because he lost a case in court against a doctor, that there… pic.twitter.com/dvLRD6tvAx
He noted that effective treatments were repressed, stating “Ivermectin was a very, very devastating cure for COVID. It literally obliterated COVID.”
“By depriving people of Ivermectin, many, many people, millions of people around the globe, died, and they didn’t need to,” Kennedy added, charging that Fauci and others pressured the FDA to discourage such treatments in favour of relentlessly pushing unproven and untested vaccines.
“There were cures for COVID from day one, very effective cures. But they didn’t want that. They wanted the vaccine only,” Kennedy posited, adding “if they admitted that any of [the treatments] were effective, the whole vaccine project would have fallen apart.”
Kennedy added that after the vaccines, myocarditis cases among young people, particularly athletes, exploded.
“On average, it was, I think, 29 a month globally, athletes who died on the field. We’re getting down to hundreds a month now,” Kennedy emphasised.
He concluded that “the science is out there now, and it’s devastating.”
After endorsing Donald Trump last month, RFK Jr. declared that he is ready to help “make America healthy again.”
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