Month: November 2021

Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times,

Jeffrey Epstein molested her and she didn’t tell a soul for 17 years.

Teresa Helm was 22, and she had already patched her life back together after being sexually abused by a close family member, starting at age 8.

“I really suffered in silence,” Helm told The Epoch Times’ “Insight” magazine.

As a child, she had told her mother about the abuse in the hope that she’d make it stop. Instead, her mother told her not to tell anyone, and it continued for 3 1/2 years.

“I just didn’t get help, even though I kept asking for it. And so after what happened with Jeffrey, I suffered in silence, just like I had always kind of done,” she said.

In 2002, Helm had moved to California from Ohio and was attending a massage therapy school, positive of a bright future. It became even more exciting when a fellow student, a year ahead of her, approached her about an opportunity for a traveling massage therapist job. Helm was interested and was connected with another young woman, whom she subsequently met at Santa Monica to discuss the potential job.

“We looked similar, we were at a similar age, so I connected with her,” Helm said. “I never felt like anything she was saying to me wasn’t legitimate, or I never felt fearful.”

Teresa Helm at age 21. (Courtesy of Teresa Helm)

Helm said the woman painted a phenomenal picture of what life would be like as “Miss Maxwell’s” personal traveling massage therapist—private jets, top chefs, access to the best education all over the world.

“So I’d say that she did her job very well. Because in an hour or so of walking around the boardwalk, I was like, ‘Wow. This is really great. I’m so lucky, this is meant to be.’”

Wanting to grasp the incredible opportunity, Helm told the woman she was interested, and was informed that she’d need to fly to New York City and meet Maxwell for the final interview.

Two weeks later, Helm’s travel to New York City had been arranged—flights, driver, an Upper East Side apartment to stay in, a gift basket waiting.

“I go meet with Miss Maxwell. I was expecting to give a massage because that’s what the interview was pertaining to. And everything with Ghislaine Maxwell was legitimate and pleasant, and she was very polite. Her home was stunning,” Helm said.

“I was super impressed with her because she’s this very well-spoken woman, and she’s clearly successful because of her beautiful home, and she has photos on the wall of ex-president Bill Clinton. And I’m thinking: ‘Wow, she’s really something special, she’s worked hard. She’s accomplished a lot in her life.’”

Helm spent a couple of hours in the home before Maxwell told her she was next going to meet up with Maxwell’s partner, Jeffrey.

It was the first time Helm had heard of a partner, but nothing had indicated she should feel alarmed or that she was in any kind of danger. Any red flags, she realized in hindsight, had been easily normalized and explained away.

Even when Maxwell told her to “give Jeffrey whatever he wants” during his massage because he “always gets what he wants,” Helm thought Maxwell clearly must mean, “Do a good job, because he’s had a lot of professional massages.”

“Because of my trust with [Maxwell]—she was able to create that trusting bond within me in a matter of hours—I literally walked myself to the man of the house who was going to assault me,” Helm said.

“I took myself there, because those three women did their job perfectly well and I didn’t suspect a darn thing. When I look back at the fact that three women set me up to be assaulted, it’s just disgusting. It’s a different level of betrayal.”

Helm said Epstein sexually assaulted her in his office during the interview and threatened her as she ran out of the house, her world shaking and head spinning.

Shocked to the core and full of shame, Helm returned to California the following day.

(Photo and illustration by The Epoch Times)

“The shame was overwhelming, it was paralyzing,” she recalled. “I was just so ashamed to say anything.”

Her life spiraled down, and three months later she broke her lease, dropped out of school, and returned to Ohio.

For the next five years, Helm fell into a destructive pattern. But just weeks before her 28th birthday, she found out she was pregnant, and life shifted again—this time toward the positive.

“That’s what really saved my life and turned my life around,” she said. “It was the first time I really valued myself. It was like that sense of purpose. And knowing that I was going to protect my child the way that I was never protected.

“Then after having him, I was so honored to be his mom. And then it really actually dug up, it was like, almost hatred toward my mom and Jeffrey. That first year of my son’s life was a lot of emotional processing for me. And I just wanted to kind of remove myself from the world and just be a mom. And that’s what I did.”

Helm’s son has just turned 14, and she also has a daughter who is 7. She is the full-time caregiver for both.

‘The World Shifted’

Helm, who had moved to Florida, was folding laundry one Thursday evening in July 2019 when she went online and saw a headline about Epstein after he’d been arrested for sex trafficking. She clicked the link to open the article and came face-to-face with her abuser. In that instant, she realized “Jeffrey” was Epstein.

Stunned, she sat down and googled Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

“It was life changing, just in that moment. It was like retraumatization, No. 1. No. 2, it was like the world shifted and changed all over again. It’s been different ever since that moment, like the world changed yet again, in that moment and it has not gone back. Nor will it,” Helm said.

“Because I didn’t know there were others. I didn’t know that this was this huge thing with these people.”

The following day, after a regular yoga class, Helm sat in her car and sobbed as the emotions swirled. She decided it was time to break her silence.

The opportunity to speak out presented itself quickly.

Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10, 2019, one month after his arrest. A medical examiner ruled it a suicide by hanging nine days later.

The New York judge, Richard Berman, would be forced to dismiss the charges against Epstein—which included the sex trafficking of dozens of minors from as early as 1995—but not before he allowed survivors to speak.

Twenty-three women spoke in the courthouse on Aug. 27 about being sexually abused by Epstein, either in person or through a lawyer.

“I’m coming forward because it is time to bring light to that darkness, and it’s time to replace that darkness with light,” Helm said that day. She had only decided that morning to speak out and use her name publicly.

Another survivor, “Jane Doe 9,” said she was 15 when she met Epstein, in 2004.

“I flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane to Zorro Ranch, where I was sexually molested by him for many hours.” she said through a lawyer. “What I remember most vividly was him explaining to me how beneficial the experience was for me and how much he was helping me to grow. Yikes.”

Epstein’s Zorro Ranch is in New Mexico. He also owned multimillion dollar properties in New York, Florida, and France, and his own islands in the Caribbean, Little St. James Island and Great St. James Island. Epstein has been linked with a veritable who’s who of the fashion and political worlds.

Attorney Gloria Allred (R) and her client Teala Davies, who claims to have been a victim of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein when she was a minor, at a press conference to announce a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate, in New York on Nov. 21, 2019. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

Chauntae Davies also spoke in the courtroom.

She said she was recruited by Maxwell while doing a massage apprenticeship.

“Upon my first meeting her, I wouldn’t know I had been recruited until many years later, when I would read it in a headline,” Davies said.

She said Maxwell and Epstein took her in, sent her to school, and gave her a job.

“They flew me around the world, introduced me to a world I had only dreamt of and made me feel as though I had become a part of their family—another thing I was desperately searching for,” Davies said.

“But on my third or fourth time meeting them, they brought me to Jeffrey’s island for the first time.”

Davies said a knock on her door late at night indicated that Epstein was ready for another massage, so she hesitantly went to his villa.

As Epstein began his assault on her, Davies said she told him, “No, please stop.”

“But that just seemed to excite him more. He continued to rape me, and when he was finished, he hopped off and went to the shower.”

Davies said she ran out of the villa, cried herself to sleep, and then spent two weeks in a Los Angeles hospital throwing up from a neurological disorder that manifests into violent vomiting attacks, largely triggered by stress.

“Jeffrey’s abuse would continue for the next three years, and I allowed it to continue because I had been taken advantage of my entire life and had been conditioned to just accept it.”

A protestor holds up a sign of Jeffrey Epstein in front of the federal courthouse in New York City on July 8, 2019. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Maxwell on Trial

Helm had finally broken her silence, and it was a watershed moment.

She didn’t get to see Epstein face his charges, but she’s eager to be in court to see Maxwell face hers.

FBI agents arrested Maxwell at her New Hampshire estate on July 2, 2020. She has been in a Brooklyn jail since. Bail has been denied several times, with Judge Alison Nathan ruling that she is a flight risk. The trial was originally set for July, but was delayed until Nov. 29 and is expected to last six weeks. Jury selection began on Nov. 16.

Maxwell is charged with sex trafficking children, perjury, and the enticement of minors while she was a close associate of Epstein, according to a superseding indictment filed in the Southern District of New York on March 29.

“In particular, from at least in or about 1994, up to and including at least in or about 2004, Maxwell assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18,” the indictment alleges.

“Moreover, in an effort to conceal her crimes, Maxwell repeatedly lied when questioned about her conduct, including in relation to some of the minor victims described herein, when providing testimony under oath in 2016.”

Virginia Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts), one of Epstein’s most well-known accusers, claimed in a 2016 deposition that she was directed by Maxwell to have sex with a number of rich and powerful men, including “foreign presidents,” a “well-known” prime minister, and “other world leaders.”

None of the men Giuffre named in the documents have been charged, and all have denied the claims.

A court officer stands outside a Manhattan courthouse where media have gathered for the arraignment hearing of Ghislaine Maxwell in New York City on July 14, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Maxwell, often described as a British socialite, maintains her innocence on all charges and in a 2016 deposition claimed she had no idea Epstein abused young girls.

During the deposition, Maxwell was asked: “Did Jeffrey Epstein have a scheme to recruit underage girls for sexual massages? If you know.”

She replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” according to the transcript. “I never saw any inappropriate underage activities with Jeffrey ever.”

Maxwell acknowledged that former President Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s plane, but denied introducing Britain’s Prince Andrew to underage sex partners.

“I’m ready for this trial to start,” Helm said.

“I really aim to be there and look at her right in her face, and equally as important is for her to see me.”

Helm isn’t named in the indictment and won’t be testifying, but that doesn’t matter.

“I’m hopeful that there will be justice in this, that she will finally be held accountable and finally be sentenced for crimes that she has committed and for the lives that she has just willingly stepped in and ruined. This is a woman that changed the entire trajectory of my life and not for the better.”

Helm said she hopes Maxwell is found guilty on all charges and receives the maximum penalties.

“I don’t think for a moment that she deserves to be on the outside of a jail cell,” she said.

“I and other girls, we’re on the outside of these bars, and yet we haven’t fully regained our freedom back. So I hope she gets the maximum sentence. She doesn’t deserve any less than that.”

Helm said she often gets asked if she thinks Epstein’s death means Maxwell is now a scapegoat and is being punished for his crimes.

“No, I do not. She knew what she was doing. She didn’t think twice about doing it. She did it countless times. She did it … very masterfully, very successfully,” she said.

“You don’t help facilitate and run and orchestrate one of the largest sex trafficking rings on this globe, on this earth, without knowing what you’re doing and intentionally doing it.”

An exterior view of the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City on July 14, 2020. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)

The indictment alleges that Maxwell befriended some of Epstein’s minor victims prior to their abuse, including by asking the victims about their lives, their schools, and their families. Other times, Maxwell and Epstein would take the victim shopping or to the movies, or pay travel or education expenses.

“Having developed a rapport with a victim, Maxwell would try to normalize sexual abuse for a minor victim by, among other things, discussing sexual topics, undressing in front of the victim, being present when a minor victim was undressed, and/or being present for sex acts involving the minor victim and Epstein,” the court document states.

The indictment goes on to say that in order to “maintain and increase his supply of victims,” Epstein, Maxwell, and other Epstein employees also paid certain victims to recruit additional girls to be similarly abused by Epstein.

Helm said she has tried to understand what would cause a woman such as Ghislaine to intentionally set girls up to be forever traumatized. She said she has read how Ghislaine lost her father, whom she was very close to, and met Epstein not long afterwards.

Helm said she lost her own father unexpectedly almost seven years ago.

“I still to this very day miss him incredibly, and I am not out there hurting people,” she said. “There’s no grievance, or there’s no tragedy that justifies you turning around becoming literally a monster.”

Maxwell’s lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment by Insight.

Epstein avoided criminal charges for years, raising questions about being protected by the rich and powerful. In September 2007, he entered into a nonprosecution agreement that gave him immunity against prosecution for numerous federal sex crimes in the Southern District of Florida.

As part of the deal, in 2008, Epstein ultimately pled guilty to state charges of procuring a minor for prostitution and was registered as a sex offender. He spent 13 months in jail but was granted work release for 12 hours a day, six days a week.

The Grooming Process

Grooming and recruitment are critical steps in the sex trafficking industry.

“If you don’t have a successful grooming process, you don’t have the abuse, because it just doesn’t make it that far,” Helm said.

Jennifer Hill, assistant executive director of the Children’s Assessment Center in Houston, said her organization sees 5,000 children a year who’ve been sexually abused, both by family members or through trafficking.

And that’s just the children who have spoken up. “I think most people never, ever tell. And that’s what’s tragic,” she said.

Hill said it’s hard to discern how many children don’t report abuse, but statistics show that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before they’re 18.

Common events—the divorce of parents, a breakup, bullying, or the death of a family member—can all make a child vulnerable. Many trafficked children come from the foster care system. But sexual abuse is the most common source of vulnerability for sex-trafficked children—70 to 90 percent of these children have a history of sexual abuse, according to anti-trafficking organization Path2Freedom.

Hill said the grooming and recruitment process takes different forms, but involves getting access to the intended victim and gaining their trust so that eventually they’ll be willing to listen to that person, and that person has some control over their behavior.

For children, it can include buying gifts, listening to their problems, or helping them in some way. These days, a lot of grooming occurs online through messaging apps or social media and gaming platforms. Post-abuse, children can be threatened to stay silent.

Hill said she hopes the Maxwell trial will spur other victims of trafficking and sexual abuse to come forward. As a former prosecutor of child sex abuse cases, she said a lot of abusers are teachers or trusted adults in the community, which can be intimidating for victims.

Her organization conducts awareness trainings for law enforcement, medical professionals, mental health professionals, teachers, and the community on recognizing and reporting trafficking.

Helm said so many lessons can be taken from the Maxwell case, “like the fact that it can be a woman.”

“That woman groomed me precisely well, beautifully. And that grooming process is so crucial for parents to identify that this is what’s happening to their children. Or for a child to think I think this might be happening to me. Because that grooming process is such a transfer of power [and] a gatekeeper to the abuse.”

During 2019, the National Human Trafficking hotline received reports of 11,500 human trafficking cases, representing more than 22,000 victims. California, Texas, and Florida are identified as the worst three states for human trafficking. In Texas alone, more than 79,000 children are being trafficked for sex, according to a study by the University of Texas at Austin.

“There’s not one single zip code in this nation, not one that is exempt from trafficking,” Helm said.

“It happens in the wealthiest of the wealthiest, to the most impoverished, and everything in between. It has exploded online.”

A residence belonging to Jeffrey Epstein on East 71st St. on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City on July 8, 2019. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

The Threat Online

Fifty-five percent of domestic sex-trafficking survivors who entered the life in 2015 or later met their trafficker for the first time using a mobile app, website, or text, said Tammy Toney-Butler, an anti-human trafficking consultant for Path2Freedom.

Predators ramped up their sexual enticement of minors and the posting of child sexual abuse material as schools closed and kids worked online from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

The number of reports of online child sexual abuse materials reported to the NCMEC during the first six months of 2020 surged 90 percent to more than 12 million, the center reported. Reports of predators enticing minors went up 93 percent to more than 13,200.

Facebook was used for most (59 percent) of the online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases in 2020, according to the Human Trafficking Institute’s annual trafficking report.

That makes Facebook “by far the most frequently referenced website or app in public sources connected with these prosecutions, which was also true in 2019,” the report found.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Facebook could be held liable if sex traffickers use the platform to prey on children, arguing the social media website isn’t a “lawless no-man’s-land.”

The ruling was made following three Houston-area lawsuits involving teenage trafficking victims who alleged that they met their abusers through Facebook’s messaging service. Prosecutors also said that Facebook was negligent by not doing more to block sex traffickers from using the site.

The court said the victims can move forward with their lawsuits against Facebook. They claimed that the company violated the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which was approved in 2009.

Toney-Butler said the income traffickers can make from one victim can be close to $400,000 a year, and survivors have reported being forced to have sex more than 20 times a day while being six to seven months pregnant. And once a woman is over 18, she’s often seen by society as “a drug-addicted prostitute” rather than a victim of sex trafficking, she said.

A child, after being pulled into sex trafficking, “only lives for seven years before they succumb to the environment,” Toney-Butler said. Suicide, drug overdose, and violence are often the killers.

Teresa Helm (R) with three other sex-trafficking survivors, (L–R) Cathy Hoffman, Sabrina Lopez, and Nissi Hamilton, in Houston on April 24. (Kathleen O. Ryan)

The Future

Now 41, Helm is hopeful. Aside from looking after her children, she’s a fierce advocate and mentor to other survivors and a consultant to organizations and politicians to ensure laws and programs are victim-centered.

“Helping others is the ultimate payback. That I didn’t completely break forever. I’ve been broken and I have repaired myself stronger,” she said.

She referred to the old Japanese art form called kintsukuroi, or “to repair with gold,” which is the practice of repairing broken ceramics with gold, making them stronger and more beautiful than before.

“And I definitely kind of view myself as that, in the fact that I can turn around and leverage this pain into purpose and help others—that’s the ultimate thing for me, to be able to be strong enough to go out and help others, help them change their lives, help them recover their lives and recover their power.”

For Help

The National Human Trafficking Hotline is confidential, toll-free, and available 24/7 in more than 200 languages.
Call: 1-888-373-7888
Text: “Help” or “Info” to 233733
Chat: humantraffickinghotline.org

China’s President Xi Jinping has just wrapped up a multi-day meeting with his top generals across major branches focused on military readiness. One key concern he articulated to the Central Military Commission was the recruitment of top talent toward the creation of a highly professional and skilled PLA military. No doubt military readiness related to Taiwan and the PLA Eastern Theater Command was discussed as well.

Simultaneous with the meeting in Beijing which started late last week, China kept up the pressure on Taiwan, sending wave after wave of military flights into Taiwan’s defense identification zone (ADIZ). As usual, they flew near the southern part of the island with on Sunday 27 PLA aircraft at once breaching the zone – including nuclear capable long range bombers and a refueling plane – resulting in Taiwan scrambling its own jets and monitoring the flights via air defense systems. 

“Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it deployed combat aircraft to ‘warn’ the Chinese jets to leave, as well as missile systems to monitor the planes,” Axios wrote of a response action now so frequent as to seem commonplace. 

The past few days have been busy in airspace off Taiwan’s southern coast, in what’s been a steady uptick of such threatening flights. “Over the past year, the frequency of Chinese incursions has increased, with about 150 aircraft over a period of four days,” The Associated Press tallied by the close of Sunday.

This could mark a new record set over a four-day time period, given the first week of October say 145 PLA aircraft within the same window, a prior record. The actions had corresponded with China’s 72nd annual National Day.

Again, while such ADIZ incursions are now almost commonplace, Axios’ Zachary Basu has recently pointed out that the risk of severe miscalculation or ‘unintended incident’ only grows with every new large-scale formation that the PLA sends toward the island…

Few experts see a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as imminent. But the chances of a devastating miscalculation grow each time a Chinese fighter jet enters Taiwan’s ADIZ, says Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation.

Meanwhile a much smaller PLA formation was sent Monday, in what’s become a daily occurrence…

5 PLA aircraft (Y-8 ASW, J-16*2 and J-10*2) entered #Taiwan’s southwest ADIZ on November 29, 2021. Please check our official website for more information: https://t.co/8fIy4AHeka pic.twitter.com/dCWTzdQf0R

— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) November 29, 2021

Recall that a key focus of the Nov. 15 Biden-Xi summit was about Taiwan and an expressed desire for “guardrails” that might prevent the rival superpowers from stumbling into conflict. Xi had reportedly been firm in presenting Biden with demands surrounding the Taiwan issue, while Biden had reiterated the US is sticking by the ‘One China’ status quo and doesn’t wish to enter confrontation. 

But as for any actual agreements or specifics, these were lacking from the summit: “The president was very clear in reaffirming very long-standing US policy and raising very clear concerns, but the idea of establishing specific guardrails with respect to Taiwan was not part of the conversation tonight,” a senor White House official had said at the conclusion of the summit.

Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Substack,

Why progressives defend and finance open drug scenes…

In my new book, San Fransicko, I describe why progressives create and defend what European researchers call “open drug scenes,” which are places in cities where drug dealers and buyers meet, and many addicts live in tents. Progressives call these scenes “homeless encampments,” and not only defend them but have encouraged their growth, which is why the homeless population in California grew 31 percent since 2000. This was mostly a West Coast phenomenon until recently. But now, the newly elected progressive mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, has decided to keep open a drug scene at Mass and Cass avenues, even though it has resulted in several deaths from drug overdoses and homicides.

Progressives defend their approach as compassionate. Not everybody who is homeless is an addict, they say. Many are just down on their luck. Others turn to drugs after living on the street. What they need is our help. We should not ask people living in homeless encampments to go somewhere else. Homeless shelters are often more dangerous than living on the street. We should provide the people living in tents with money, food, clean needles, and whatever else they need to stay alive and comfortable. And we should provide everyone with their own apartment unit if that’s what they want.

But this “harm reduction” approach is obviously failing. Cities already do a good job taking care of temporarily homeless people not addicted to drugs. Drug dealers stab and sometimes murder addicts who don’t pay. Women forced into prostitution to support their addictions are raped. Addicts are dying from overdose and poisoning. The addicts living in the open drug scenes commit many crimes including open drug use, sleeping on sidewalks, and defecating in public. Many steal to maintain their habits. The hands-off approach has meant that addicts do not spend any amount of time in jail or hospital where they can be off of drugs, and seek recovery.

Now, even a growing number of people who have worked or still work within the homeless services sector are speaking out. A longtime San Francisco homeless service provider who read San Fransicko, and said they mostly agreed with it, reached out to me to share their views. At first this person said they wanted to speak on the record. But as the interview went on, and the person criticized their colleagues, they asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.

Why “Housing First” Failed

The main progressive approach for addressing homelessness, not just in San Francisco but in progressive cities around the nation, is “Housing First,” which is the notion that taxpayers should give, no questions asked, apartment units to anyone who says they are homeless, and asks for one. What actually works to reduce the addiction that forces many people onto the streets is making housing contingent on abstinence. But Housing First advocates oppose “contingency management,” as it’s called, because, they say, “Housing is a right,” and it should not be condition on behavior change.

But such a policy is absurdly unrealistic, said the San Francisco homeless expert. “To pretend that this city could build enough permanent supportive housing for every homeless person who needs it is ludicrous,” the person said. “I wish it weren’t. I wish I lived in a land where there was plenty of housing. But now people are dying on our streets and it feels like we’re not doing very much about it.”

The underlying problem with Housing First is that it enables addiction. “The National Academies of Sciences review [which showed that giving people apartments did not improve health or other life outcomes] you cited shows that. San Francisco has more permanent supportive housing units per capita than any other city, and we doubled spending on homelessness, but the homeless population rose 13%, even as it went down in the US. And so we doubled our spending and the problem got worse. But if you say that, you get attacked.”

How did progressives, who claim to be evidence-based, ever get so committed to Housing First? “Malcolm Gladwell’s [2006 New Yorker article] “Million Dollar Murray,” really helped popularize this idea,” the person said. “But it was based on an anecdote of one person. It works for who it works for but is not scalable. [Governor] Gavin [Newsom] made a mistake [as San Francisco’s Mayor 2004-2011] which was that we stopped investing in shelter. But that’s because all the best minds were saying, ‘This is what’s going to work.’”

One of the claims made defenders of the open drug scenes is that people who live in them are mostly locals who were priced out of their homes and apartments and decided to pitch a tent on the street. In San Fransicko, I cite a significant body of evidence to show that this is false, and that many people come to San Francisco from around the U.S. for the city’s unusually high cash welfare benefits, free housing, and tolerance of open drug scenes.

The insider agreed. “People come here because they think they can. It’s bullshit that ‘Only 30 percent [of homeless] are from out of town.’ At least 20,000 homeless people come through town every year. Talk to the people on the street. There’s no way 70 percent of the homeless are from here. Ask them the name of their high school and they guess, ‘Washington? The one around the corner?’ But you can’t even talk about that without being called a fascist.” 

The people living on the street suffer from serious addiction, this person said. “During the first point in time count [census of homeless population] in 2007, one-third had a disability, mental illness, or addiction, while last time, it was over two-thirds. The population fundamentally changed, whether from the drugs, or the time on the street. It doesn’t matter because a lot of the problems on the street are drugs-related. Neither San Francisco nor any other municipality can solve the housing policy without changing federal policy.”

Life in the open drug scenes is brutal, this person confirmed. “Most homeless encampments are not communities but have paper-thin relationships based on their disease. It’s hard to have healthy relationships when you’re just trying to keep your head above water because you’re so dope dependent.”

What San Francisco and other progressive cities are doing isn’t working. “People in those encampments have food brought to them, port-a-potties brought to them, and all they need to do is put drugs in their arm all day. They get really really sick and they die. Portugal didn’t make it so you can do whatever you want. The consequences of your action are treatment driven, but there are consequences. Here there are no consequences. And so we make it worse.”

This person was harshly critical of San Francisco’s Department of Public Health for allowing drug overdoses to rise to over 700 per year. “They say, ‘It’s not our fault because it’s fentanyl.” But it’s only gotten worse.”

This person stressed they were in favor of harm reduction policies like giving addicts clean needles in exchange for them giving back dirty ones, but not just giving out needles. “I’m all in favor of needle exchange, but not of needle distribution. Ask people to return the needles they’ve been given. There are people who don’t have it together enough. I get that. But when you tell people we’re going to give you whatever you want, to do whatever you want… Sleeping on a sidewalk is a crime. There are things you can’t do. You can’t shoot up on the street. The laws are there for a reason.”

Why Progressives Create Homelessness

So ⁦@SFPD⁩ just arrested ⁦@christinevans⁩ for interfering with their work of displacing folks in a large encampment under the freeway during a pandemic as Delta is spreading. I was talking to an unhoused pregnant woman when they threatened to arrest me too. pic.twitter.com/NBANKCWA0Y

— Kelley Cutler (@NutCheese) July 27, 2021

Open drug scenes look like natural disasters, but they are the result of specific city policies. These policies including giving money, food, and drug paraphernalia to addicts to support their addiction. But even if progressives didn’t give people those things, many addicts would still live in open drug scenes. As such, the main reason “homelessness” is so much worse in progressive West Coast cities is because progressives hotly oppose efforts by cities to close the open drug scenes and move addicts into shelters and rehab.

By blocking the closing of open drug scenes, which is referred to as “clearing an encampment,” people in need of help don’t get it. “The San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness recently [July 2021] protested an encampment clearing where a woman was pregnant,” the insider told me. “As soon as everybody left, the woman went into a shelter, after having been on the streets for three months. She went indoors. It’s like, ‘What are you fighting for? The right of this person to stay on private property and be pregnant?’”

One of the questions I tried to answer in San Fransicko was when it was that street addicts started living in tents. I concluded that it started with the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in 2011, when progressive activists in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities lived in tents in front of government buildings to protest capitalism. This person confirmed this account. “You’re right that the tents popped up after Occupy,” they said. “But it wasn’t just that the Occupy activists gave the homeless their tents. It was that the homeless saw well-heeled whites sleeping in tents. It got moralized.”

The most influential homeless advocate in San Francisco, and perhaps the United States as a whole, is the head of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, Jennifer Friedenbach. Over the last three decades, Friedenbach has taken control over San Francisco’s homelessness budget and other policies. She blocks the closure of open drug scenes, calls people who disagree with her fascists and racists, and organizes protests at the homes of politicians.

Time to house all San Franciscans, don’t you think? pic.twitter.com/PA5fFGivhN

— Jennifer Friedenbach (@fbach4) May 18, 2021

A typical example of Friedenbach’s tactics could be seen in posters she promoted in May. The headline read, “See a tent? Just fucking leave it alone, thanks. Maybe instead of complaining about a homeless person’s only shelter from the elements, you could do something about the economic conditions that put them there in the first place?”

The main reason San Francisco lacks sufficient homeless shelters is because Friedenbach and other Housing First advocates have long opposed them. They have demanded that money go to providing people with their own apartment units. The reason, Friedenbach explained to me, is that “if you ask unhoused people, they’re not screaming for shelter. They’re screaming for housing.”

In the spring of 2021, Friedenbach published an op-ed opposing a proposal considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to create, within eighteen months, sufficient homeless shelters and outdoor “Safe Sleeping Sites” for all of the city’s unsheltered homeless. “One can simply take a look to New York City,” she wrote. “Their department spends about $1.3 billion dollars of its budget on providing shelter for their unhoused population while thousands remain on the street. . . . As a result, New York has a higher rate of homelessness than San Francisco.”

But the claim was misleading. New York shelters the vast majority of its homeless, whereas San Francisco leaves the vast majority of its homeless unsheltered. “New York [City] has made the decision that everyone should have an exit from the street,” noted Rafael Mandelman, a San Francisco county supervisor. “San Francisco has consciously chosen not to make that commitment. And the conditions on New York’s streets versus San Francisco streets are somewhat reflective of what that means.”

Friedenbach controls how San Francisco spends its astonishing $850 million annual budget. “Jenny built her power base by becoming a master of the budget’s “add back” process,” said the San Francisco insider. “The night before the budget is announced, it gets reviewed by the Board of Supervisors, but they’re trying to get out of there by midnight, and that’s when these ‘community asks.’ The board goes and trims stuff out of the mayor’s budget and does “add backs” of money for struggling nonprofits. Jenny has mastered that process. And so if you’re a nonprofit executive director, and you want money in the add back process, which everyone does, you have to go through Jenny.”

This person said that Friedenbach also operates behind the scenes. “She controls fake front groups like the Homeless Service Providers’ Coalition and the Justice Budget Coalition,” said the insider. “She knows the issue well. A lot of people look to her.”

But more importantly, Friedenbach, like many progressive defenders of open drug scenes, demonize the people who stand up to her. “They shut down the discussion,” the insider said. “Everybody is just like, ‘Police bad. Public health good.’ It’s Animal Farm. But the city’s homeless outreach team can’t do their jobs without the cops. That’s the stuff that shuts down any meaningful discussion.”

Why do they do it? Radical anti-system ideology. “There’s a San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness hat which says, ‘Coalition on Homelessness: On The Frontlines of Class Warfare,’” said the insider. “They feel like they’re fighting class warfare. They tell people to not take shelter.”

I documented in San Fransicko that Friedenbach and other homeless advocates are motivated in significant measure by their belief that capitalism, not addiction, is responsible for the suffering on the streets. After I appeared on Joe Rogan, a clinical psychologist who for two decades ran programs for homeless veterans at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center, which included homeless vets, emailed me.

“I agree with all you say about the ‘homeless’ people who are actually mislabeled mentally ill and drug addicts,” wrote Dr. Mark Zaslav. “I like your comparison of the ‘ideology’ of people who “advocate” for the homeless to a religion gone haywire. But I wanted, as a psychologist, to add another point for your consideration.  This is the fact that this leftwing religion is based on split-off hatred and contempt for civilization itself.  When I attended substance abuse conferences in San Francisco run by community leaders, it became clear to me that these people had no understanding of mental health disorders like addiction – they regarded “homeless” addicts as heroes of some kind.  

“Thus, each drug addict defecating on the streets in the Tenderloin was a massive middle finger to some imagined white male with a briefcase.  The premise of your solutions, which make so much sense, assume that adherents to the now reigning ideology want things solved.  They do not.  They want people inconvenienced by addicts – the homeless become quote literal scared cows who roam society reminding everyone of the sins of capitalism.

“You mentioned Noam Chomsky.  These people are angry and full of hate.  They have tapped into a form of blindness among the voters of places like San Francisco or California itself – these are angry people endlessly telling themselves they are compassionate while projecting their hatred toward the ‘bourgeoise.’ I am afraid this does not end well. “

The San Francisco homelessness insider agreed, and despaired over the religious fervor in which the people who work at the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, the San Francisco Public Health Department, and many elected members of the Board of Supervisors are gripped. “Maybe homelessness is part of capitalism and racism,” said this person. “I can’t solve that and neither can any nonprofit organization. I can’t stand seeing people suffering on the streets. What are we going to do right now?”

.*  *  *

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,”Green Book Award winner, and the founder and president of Environmental Progress. He is author of just launched book San Fransicko (Harper Collins) and the best-selling book, Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins June 30, 2020). Our research and writing depends on individuals like you. Please consider subscribing now so we can expand our work in the coming year

It was almost exactly a year ago when just weeks before the first of many epic short squeezes observed in a handful of meme stocks such as GME, AMC and so on, which would eventually consume the retail public with a daytrading, short-squeezing frenzy, that we reminded our readers that the single best alpha-generating strategy in this irreparably broken market is to go long the most shorted stocks (as this tweet from Nov 30, 2020 clearly states)…

Once again, the best strategy for a broken, incoherent market is to go long the most shorted stocks: double digit alpha 6 of the past 7 yearshttps://t.co/GlV2aUYXlG pic.twitter.com/kOlXzxiCvH

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 1, 2020

… a strategy that had worked like clockwork virtually every year in the past decade (with just one exception), and which we summarized as follows: “Do the opposite of Wall Street consensus and retire in a few years.”

Most shorted YTD = 3x S&P500

Do the opposite of Wall Street consensus and retire in a few years pic.twitter.com/ouQ8Jc9NwI

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 4, 2020

Of course, while most of the US daytrading class is now in a furore over the “discovery” that most shorted stocks tend to outperform – to put it mildly – when a bunch of Gen-Z apes rams illiquid, heavily shorted names up the collective behind of hedge funds which “legally” collude during idea dinners to put on a basket of shorts, hence why stocks like GME can end up with a synthetic short that is higher than the entire float, none of this should be news to regular readers, as the theme of going long the most shorted names is one we first presented and discussed as far back as 2013:

• Presenting The Best Trading Strategy In This Market: Buy The Most Hated Stocks, Short The Most Widely Held

We then reiterated this strategy in 2014…

• The Most Beloved, And Hated, Hedge Fund Stocks Are…

… 2015…

• Stocks Soar To Best Week In A Year On “Mother Of All Short Squeezes”
• Presenting The Top 50 Hedge Fund Longs And Shorts

… 2016…

• After Three Years, This Remains The Best Trading Strategy

… 2017

• These Are The Top 50 Hedge Fund Long And Short Positions

… 2019

• These Are The 50 Most Popular Hedge Fund Longs And Shorts

… 2020

• Top Hedge Fund Longs Suffer Historic Crash As Top Shorts Outperform… And Much More Pain Is Coming

And so on.

It took banks about 6 years after our first post on this matter to admit we were right and that going long “the most shorteds” is not only the most profitable strategy but also the most successful one in the past decade; in Aug 2019 Bank of America showed that “buying the 10 most underweight stocks and selling the 10 most overweight stocks by active funds has generated alpha in the past years with the exception of 2017″...

… as we laid out in Going Against The Wall Street Crowd Has Been The Most Profitable Strategy.

What is the point of all this?

Well, the point is that almost ten years after we first pointed out this phenomenal trade which almost literally prints money with the same regularity as the Fed, only this one actually requires some effort, nobody has learned a thing.

As we first observed last week in “Most Popular Hedge Fund Stocks Suffer Record Stretch Of Underperformance” the hedge fund hotel that is Goldman’s hedge fund VIP basket of 50 most widely held HF stocks, has suffered the biggest 6 month drop on record at a time when nothing could go right for hedge funds.

Then over the weekend, we observed that even before last week’s historic Black Red Friday collapse. which saw the biggest post-Thanksgiving drop on record, hedge funds had a terrible week because according to Goldman prime, the GS Equity Fundamental L/S Performance Estimate fell -1.57% between 11/19 and 11/25, driven by alpha of -1.12% which was “the worst alpha drawdown in nearly six months” and beta of -0.45% (from market exposure and market sensitivity combined).

And then, the cherry on top was Friday’s meltup in a handful of pharma stocks like Moderna and Pfizer, which exploded higher as everything else was crashing, steamrolling hedge funds even more for one simple reason: Moderna was the third largest short in the hedge fund world according to Goldman.

Which brings us to the punchline: according to Morgan Stanley’s Quantitative Derivatives Strategy team, “The MS Crowded Long basket MSXXCRWD is down 13% vs. the S&P 500 over the last month — the worst rolling one-month relative performance on record (just edging out March 2020).“

As QDS puts it “Think about that: WORSE than March 2020…. and again, this doesn’t even embed Friday’s move.”

There are several ways to interpret this stunning observation – none of them flattering for a hedge fund community which long ago forgot how to actually hedge – but perhaps the simple and most robust explanation is to keep doing what we said back in 2013 remains the most profitable strategy –  buy the most shorted names and go short the most popular names, a strategy which will keep on giving as long as the market remains as broken as it is today.

And just to help readers off on their mission to profit from a terminally broken market – because after all, everyone else does it – here again is a list of the 50 most popular hedge funds longs…

… and the 50 biggest hedge fund shorts.

And as an added bonus stepping aside from the hedge fund universe, here are the 50 most shorted names, i.e., those companies with a $1BN+ market cap that have the highest short interest outstanding as a percentage of market cap. Going long an equal-weighted basket of these names has historically generated returns of over 20% every single year.

The full reports from both Morgan Stanley and Goldman are available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

It has just come to light that Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), added 26.35 tonnes of gold to its official monetary gold reserves over a 2 month period between May and June this year, in the process boosting its strategic gold holdings by 20% to a claimed 153.76 tonnes.

This addition to the monetary gold holdings of the Monetary Authority of Singapore was first pointed out by the World Gold Council’s Krishan Gopaul in a 25 November tweet, following an update to Singapore’s gold holdings appearing in the IMF’s International Financial Statistics (IFS) database, a source which World Gold Council uses to keep track of central bank and sovereign gold holdings.

Here’s something interesting in the latest IMF stats: The Monetary Authority of Singapore added 26t of #gold to its reserves over May and June 2021. This is its first gold purchase since at least 2000, and another instance of a developed market CB buying (along with Ireland). pic.twitter.com/UeHmAbxRt9

— Krishan Gopaul (@KrishanGopaul) November 25, 2021

May and June: 26.35 tonnes added

While it’s unclear why changes to Singapore’s monetary gold holdings from May and June only made it on to the IFS database in recent days, looking more closely, the Monetary Authority of Singapore did ‘reflect’ the May and June gold purchases at the end of July and August, respectively, via updates to the MAS’ monthly “International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity” report, but did not announce or mention the additions specifically.

Before looking at how this substantial gold purchase by Singapore went unnoticed, here are the raw numbers from the MAS site itself. Up until the end of April 2021, Singapore’s central bank (MAS) had been reporting total gold holdings of 4,096,439 fine troy ounces, or 127.42 tonnes, a figure which had not changed since at least 2002 (which is as far back as World Gold Council records go).

During May 2021, MAS reports that it added 527,201 ozs (16.4 tonnes) of gold, taking it’s gold holdings as of end of May to 4,623,640 ozs (143.81 tonnes).

During June 2021, MAS reports that it added a further 319,801 ozs (9.95 tonnes) of gold, which increased MAS’ gold holdings as of end of June to 4,943,441 ozs (153.76 tonnes).

This means that over the two months May and June 2021 inclusive, MAS purchased 847,002 fine troy ounces of gold (26.35 tonnes), and in doing so increased it’s gold holdings by 20.67%, and at the same time rising from 30^th to 28^th place in the world gold holding rankings.\

Quietly and Discreetly

Each month, the World Gold Council (WGC) updates it’s World Official Gold Holdings spreadsheet (xls) in which it ranks sovereign gold holders largest to smallest based on how many tonnes of monetary gold each country holds. Looking at the latest version of this report (November), it lists Singapore in 30^th position with 127.4 tonnes ‘as of August 2021’, and this spreadsheet has not yet been updated (at time of writing) to reflect the 26 tonnes of gold purchased by Singapore in May and June.

The WGC ranking methodology states that: “This table was updated in November 2021 and reports data available at that time. Data are taken from the International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics (IFS), November 2021 edition, and other sources where applicable. IFS data are two months in arrears, so holdings are as of September 2021 for most countries, August 2021 or earlier for late reporters”.

IMF IFS data will only get updated if and when an individual country informs the IMF of a change to that country’s gold holdings. It appears then that the World Gold Council’s data for Singapore’s gold holdings is based exclusively on the IMF IFS data, and that this IFS data has for some reason only in recent days been updated to reflect Singapore’s gold purchases, which means that for some reason Singapore has only very recently informed the IMF of it’s May-June gold buying.

For verification, I ran a data query in the IMF IFS database for search criteria Singapore, for each month of 2021, with the data indicator of “International Reserves and Liquidity, Reserves, Official Reserve Assets, Gold (Including Gold Deposits and, If Appropriate, Gold Swapped), Volume in Millions of Fine Troy Ounces, Fine Troy Ounces”.

This data query output the following:

From the IFS data, you can see that Singapore’s (MAS) gold holdings remained unchanged at 4.1 million ozs until the end of April 2021, then increased to 4.62 mn ozs at the end of May, and then increased again to 4.94 mn ozs at the end of June, after which MAS gold reserves remained unchanged.

MAS Monthly International Reserves report

However, knowing now that MAS purchased gold during May and June, I went back and checked on the actual MAS monthly ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’ reports on the MA website.

The MAS ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity ‘ report for April 2021, which was published on 30 June 2021, shows the Singaporean central bank reporting a total of 4,096,439 fine troy ounces (or 127.42 tonnes). See Item 4 “Gold (including gold deposits and, if appropriate, gold swapped)”.  

The same report for May 2021, which was published on 30 July 2021, then shows that the volume of gold held by MAS at the end of May was 4,623,640 fine troy ounces, which was 16.4 tonnes more than at the end of April.

The report for June 2021, published on 31 August 2021, shows that as of end of June MAS held  4,943,441 fine troy ounces of gold, a 9.95 tonne increase over May, and a combined May-June increase of 26.35 tonnes.

Just for completeness, the report for July 2021, published on 30 September, shows that gold holdings then remained constant at 4,943,441 ozs, i.e. there were no further gold purchases beyond June.

Despite the two-month lag in reporting, these reports show that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) did report increases in gold holdings on 30 July and again on 31 August, but for whatever reason, no one noticed, or else those who noticed it did not publicise it. There is a slight chance that MAS has recently altered it’s “International Reserves” reports since May to retrospectively show these gold purchases, but it would seem quite absurd to do so, even in the secretive world of central bank gold reporting.

Besides, an Internet Archive of the preliminary MAS “International Reserves” report for end of August (published end of September) and archived on the Wayback Machine on 6 October, shows that even then (at the end of September) MAS was, on it’s website, reporting it’s latest gold holdings of 4,943,441 ozs.

The Secretive World of Central Bank Gold

So overall, it seems to be a case of no one noticing the updated gold holdings data in the MAS monthly “International Reserves” reports since the end of July, and at the same time, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) not highlighting it’s gold purchases to either the gold market or the financial press, i.e. there was no press release, no other form of announcement, nor even any comment on either the MAS website or from central bank officials. In contrast, central banks, such as Poland, have made many public statements about their gold buying, and even signal their gold buying in advance.

For a central bank which actively publishes reams of publications and reports on all sorts of topics related to Singapore’s financial sector and markets and it’s international financial position, this omission about Singapore’s sizeable gold purchases could be considered quite strange, but then again, given that we are dealing with the secretive world of gold and central banks, maybe it’s not so strange.

In addition, MAS is famous for it’s obsession with maintaining and controlling the exchange rate of the Singaporean dollar (versus a basket of currencies), so perhaps MAS prefers not to draw attention to the amount of gold in it’s international reserves as this might encourage FX markets to view the gold purchase as a move that strengthens Singapore’s reserve position and hence could put upward pressure on it’s exchange rate.

From Washington to Switzerland 

In 1968, Singapore’s finance minister Dr Goh Keng Swee and senior adviser Ngiam Tong Dow were responsible for securing Singapore’s first gold reserves when they negotiated with South Africa’s finance minister Nicolaas Diederichts to purchase 100 tonnes of gold from the South Africans at $40 per ounce while attending a World Bank meeting in Washington D.C.

Realising that the Bretton Woods system would soon collapse, and on advice from Ngiam Tong Dow, Dr Goh decided “In that case, we had better go and buy gold from the South Africans.”  

Given that there was an embargo on South Africa, intriguing the gold deal was conducted in Dr Goh’s hotel room in Washington D.C. and they turned up the TV to full volume to counter possible listening devices. According to Ngiam Tong Dow, when Diederichts agreed, he said “OK, you send your man to Switzerland, we’ll deliver the gold to you in Switzerland, and you pay us in Switzerland.” Diederichts then took out a $1 bill, ripped in in two halves, kept one half, and gave the other half to Ngiam Tong Dow saying ‘You keep this. I will keep the other half, and my man will meet you in Switzerland.” And just like that, 100 tonnes of gold changed hands. It may sound like a James Bond storyline, but this story is actually factual.       

A few months later the deal was finalised when Ngiam Tong Dow and Singaporean banker Wee Cho Yaw flew into Switzerland and went to the offices of the Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) where they met the Swiss banker representing the South Africans. Upon handing him the one half of the dollar bill, and seeing that the serial numbers matched, the Swiss banker said “OK, your identity has been established”. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Sometime subsequent to 1968 (but before 2002) Singapore added to its gold reserves to bring them up to the 127.4 tonnes level, and now yet again, Singapore has added another 26.35 tonnes during May and June 2021.

While the negotiation of this latest gold purchase may not have been as intriguing and James Bond-esque as Singapore’s 1968 gold purchase, in the world of central bank gold markets anything is possible, and we could well imagine MAS officials in exotic Swiss locations or Washington DC hotels.

But like their 1968 compatriots who were quiet and discreet in their negotiations, so yet again Singapore’s central bankers have added a sizeable tonnage to Singapore’s monetary gold reserves, so discreetly, that no one, until now, even noticed. And that’s the way the secretive central bankers like it.

Yet with this gold purchase, Singapore’s central bankers are now signaling that after years on the sidelines, they feel compelled at this time to come back to the gold market as buyers.  While yet not covered by mainstream financial media, this is a major move by one of the world’s most savvy and discreet central banks.

This article was originally published on the BullionStar website under the same title “In low key move, Singapore’s central bank adds 26 tonnes to its gold reserves“. 

The United States is preparing to expel over two dozen more Russian diplomats by January, as part of  ongoing tit-for-tat punitive efforts which previously saw the Russian government forbit its citizens from serving as local staff for the US Embassy in Russia, greatly reducing its ability to process visas and other actions in a timely manner.

The Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov revealed over the weekend in an interview that “our diplomats are being expelled” and detailed that 27 diplomats and their families are due to be expelled from American soil.

“A large group of my comrades, 27 people with families, will leave us on January 30,” Antonov described according to Reuters. He said the embassy and consulates are now “facing a serious staff shortage.”

This follows two dozen Russian diplomats being told to leave in September, with the US refusing to renew their visas as is the normative practice. When that prior event happened, Amb. Antonov complained, “It has gotten to the point where the U.S. authorities cancel valid visas of spouses and children of our staff with no reasons provided. The widespread delays in renewing expired visas are also aimed at squeezing Russian diplomatic workers out of the country.”

The State Department at the same time has downplayed that the moves have been retaliatory, instead framing it as but the result of an expired, unrenewed visa issue.

On Monday Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov lashed out at Washington. He was cited in Russian media sources as demanding the US “must stop”…

“We will definitely respond. We have already warned the US side that in order to prevent a further decline of personnel numbers here we cannot help but to respond. They must stop,” Ryabkov said.

And he described further, according to Sputnik that “the matter of issuing visas for Russian diplomats travelling to the US remains acute. He slammed Washington for perpetuating the practice of intentionally separating the families of diplomats by denying some of them visas.”

The United States will expel at least 54 more Russian diplomats next year, Russia’s ambassador to Washington said https://t.co/XubRPXaFpg

— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) November 29, 2021

In October Congressional hawks actually proposed an even bigger wave of expulsions, which would damage relations to the point of potentially breaking US-Russia communications altogether.

Citing the refusal of Moscow to in a timely manner issue more visas for American employees of the Moscow embassy, leading Senators had called for the US banning as many as 300 Russian diplomatic staff from the US. Given what’s looking to be multiple waves of expulsions, it’s possible that high number could eventually be reached at this rate.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics.com,

Over the last year, school board meetings have become ground zero for the country’s culture wars as irate parents have showed up in droves to decry school COVID closures, mask mandates, and critical race theory, as well as transgender policies.

After political analysts credited a parental uprising with helping Republican political newcomer Glenn Youngkin capture the Virginia governorship this month, these fights show no sign of easing. Both major political parties are already gearing up for next year’s midterm elections with Republicans sensing an advantage and Democrats digging in to defend beleaguered school boards, teacher unions, and the progressive policies they hold dear.

This week, conservative parents and their supporters are expressing new outrage over news that the FBI is placing “threat tags” on individuals accused of harassing or trying to intimidate school board members and teachers. For months, disgruntled parents have angrily targeted school board trustees for recalls across the nation, regularly denouncing union control of the schools as the crux of the problem. Recall attempts against school board trustees have tripled in 2021, targeting at least 216 officials, according to Ballotpedia.

But in at least one school district in Southern California, parents are warning their like-minded revolutionaries across the nation to be careful what they wish for and to get ready for a tough fight ahead. After gaining majority control of the local school board, they found themselves on the other side of the firing line with teacher unions vigorously targeting their trustee allies.

A local affiliate of the California Teachers Association has spent months this year trying to wrest back control of the school board after some of its trustees successfully fought alongside parents to reopen schools earlier this year. The union’s actions, while flying below the national radar, were unusually aggressive. 

They included spending up to $60,000 in union funds on a private firm to collect recall signatures against one trustee; successfully recalling the only African American on the board; and hiring a private investigator to follow the school board president home from meetings in an effort to challenge her residency within the district.

Why is the union so focused on regaining control of this particular school board? For local parents, it’s no mystery. The answer is the ripple effect of pandemic politics.

Frustrated by coronavirus lockdowns, a group of parents in North County San Diego founded an association and sued the state to overturn pandemic rules limiting the number of days of in-person learning or completely blocking some schools from reopening at all. In mid-March, San Diego Superior Court Judge Cynthia Freeland ruled in the association’s favor, prohibiting the state from enforcing its restrictions, which she agreed were “arbitrary,” interfered with school districts’ reopening plans for in-person instruction and denied children’s “fundamental right to basic education equality.”

Moreover, in the absence of a contrary ruling by a higher court, the judge’s decision applied to the entire state, sending a clear message to the CTA (the biggest statewide union) and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration that their guidelines weren’t mandates and they must allow school districts to reopen more rapidly.

The San Dieguito Union High School District, a high-performing area with 13,000 students and 600 teachers, had scheduled school re-openings for January 2021 but reversed course when the union sued in December to block that action.

School board Trustee Michael Allman, who was elected to the board last fall, was the lone dissenting vote. Allman’s outspoken opposition won strong support from local parents organizing on a Facebook forum, a group that quickly grew to more than 2,000 supporters. Other board members, including President Maureen “Mo” Muir, had also started pushing back against COVID school closures.

The San Dieguito Faculty Association, the local CTA affiliate, launched a recall campaign against Allman just five months into his four-year term. The union accused Allman, a former energy company executive, of violating the district’s code of conduct, charges he denies and that he believes arose from a public war of words over schools’ pandemic policies taking place on social media sites.

The SDFA a few months ago gave itself permission to spend up to $60,000 hiring a private firm to gather 5,000 signatures needed to recall Allman. At least $14,500 of that came directly from the CTA. Yet, even with the private help, the union recently gave up and the recall failed to qualify.

Allman had fought back, spending nearly all of his free time going door to door defending himself. He said he heard from supporters that recall signature gatherers were falsely accusing him of being under criminal investigation, among other “outlandish lies,” so he sent a cease-and-desist letter to SDFA President Duncan Brown. He says he’s still considering filing a defamation suit.

“It’s hard to beat the unions. I prevailed because I have the support of parents who are speaking up like never before,” Allman said in an interview.

“Put yourself in my shoes. Teachers are spreading lies about me in the community, so I went door-to-door with parents to say, ‘Hey, I’m a good guy, and I support parents.’”

He says he had a roughly 50% conversion rate of area residents who said they had already signed the recall petition. (State rules allow for the rescinding of signatures.)

But the SDFA, again with significant CTA help, successfully forced a special election for another seat on the school board, which was held by Ty Hume, the only African American member of the all-white panel. Hume, a businessman and openly declared independent, had been appointed after a union-backed trustee resigned earlier this year. Hume’s appointment gave non-union-aligned members a three-to-two majority on the board.

The SDFA took issue with Hume’s appointment, arguing that voters should have had a say in his election. His opponents produced the necessary signatures to rescind the appointment and call a special election, costing the district up to $500,000 to hold. But the gambit worked: Hume was defeated by union-backed candidate Julie Bronstein, who out-fundraised him with donations from the SDFA, another public employee union, as well as the local congressman, Rep. Scott Peters.

In a more bizarre twist, the same union hired a private investigator to follow Mo Muir home to see whether she was in fact living in the district she represented, as required by law. The private eye determined that the board president was renting out her home, which was up for sale, leading the local teacher union president to file a complaint with the district attorney. But Muir explained that she was spending time at the home of her elderly mother-in-law in Lake Tahoe during the height of the pandemic lockdowns. She sold her home but rented another within the district boundaries. The district attorney has yet to take any action; a spokeswoman said the office has a policy of declining to say whether it’s involved in an investigation.

Brown declined an RCP interview request but provided a lengthy written statement, arguing that “democracy prevailed” because the union successfully ousted Hume, whom the board had appointed, and allowed residents to elect Bronstein, who won with nearly 60% of the vote.

“While our efforts to recall Michael Allman did not result in activating a special election … we have been successful in highlighting Allman’s abuses of office to the broader community,” Brown said. He noted that the effort collected more than 4,000 signatures while thousands of other district residents “have been made aware of the dysfunction of our school board majority.”

Brown didn’t respond to an RCP request to outline Allman’s “abuses of office” and whether he or anyone else in the union is responsible for the false information Allman says was circulating about him.  “SDFA will continue to stand for our students, our educators and our community,” he said.

Area parents’ groups privately warn of a greater union backlash to come if reform groups successfully recall and replace school board trustees in large numbers across the country.

Yet this is precisely what conservative groups are pledging to do nationally, although competing with the unions’ massive organization and deep pockets is a tall order for the newly energized patchwork of parents’ groups.

A national group called 1776 Action, which promotes teaching children a traditional appreciation of America’s founding, is asking candidates and elected officials to sign a pledge calling for the restoration of an “honest, patriotic education.” The group is a conservative response to the New York Times’ 1619 project, which frames all of U.S. history through the prism of slavery.

“2021 is really going to sort of be seen as kind of a canary in the coal mine of what’s coming down the pike next year and into the future,” Adam Waldeck, the group’s president, recently told the Associated Press.

“This will be the year that I think primarily parents stand up and say, ‘You know, we have a voice, too.’ And I think it’s going to be overwhelming.”

Kimberly Fletcher, the president and founder of Moms for America, another group organized to fight for school reopenings and against CRT and other liberal education policies, recently protested at the headquarters of the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. Her organization, along with numerous other voices on the right, denounced a letter the NSBA sent to the Biden administration urging it to treat complaints aimed at school boards and teachers as possible acts of “domestic terrorism.” After a nationwide uproar, the group rescinded the letter and apologized to its members.

Fletcher says she views the outsized role fed up parents played in the Virginia governor’s race as a “precursor of what’s to come” in the 2022 midterms.

“I have been saying for years that the moment that moms find out what’s going on behind closed doors in our schools, there’s going to be a national revolt, and that’s exactly what’s going on,” she said. “We’re just getting started.”  

In recent months, she said several members of her group have been running for spots on school boards and winning in places such as Texas and Idaho, as well as the swing states of Pennsylvania and Colorado.

The moms group is providing training sessions for prospective board candidates and for newly elected trustees, which, Fletcher argued, is far more powerful than trying to compete dollar-to-dollar with unions.

“Here’s the beauty of it — when you’re fighting for parents’ rights, you don’t need a lot of money to win,” she argued. “It’s a matter of principle.”

Still, the well-oiled teacher union machine can be formidable, especially in more liberal areas of the country. While angry parents helped fuel Youngkin’s win in purple Virginia on Nov. 2, the same day the entire Denver school board flipped from trustees supported by education reform organizations to union-backed candidates.

Last week WaPo cited multiple officials within the Biden administration who said President Biden would soon declare a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Before the White House could even announce a formal boycott for U.S. leaders – including Congressional members, Communist Party-backed Global Times said Monday that Beijing has no intentions to ask U.S. politicians to attend the Games. 

Global Times indicated that Beijing has “no plans to invite U.S. and Western politicians” who hype the “boycott” of the Winter Games. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Monday at a regular briefing in Beijing that a White House decision to block the U.S. president and other U.S. government officials from the Winter Olympics could be announced shortly. He said the Games are “a gathering of winter sports lovers and athletes from around the world, not a stage for political posturing and manipulation.”

“The U.S. and a handful of countries make an issue of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games and link their officials’ attendance with so-called human rights issues,” Wenbin said. “This is, in essence, a smear campaign in the name of defending human rights.”

At the center of the controversy are Biden and other Western politicians who criticize Beijing’s handling of Muslim minorities in its far western region of Xinjiang. Secretary Jen Psaki recently said the U.S. had “serious concerns about the human rights abuses we’ve seen in Xinjiang.”

Global Times said China plans a “simple, safe and splendid” Olympic Games without anti-China politicians. It noted that the Games might be more impressive without these politicians who do nothing more than make trouble. 

Dick Pound, the longest-serving member of the International Olympic Committee, told CBC News that countries should resist calls to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics because it would hurt athletes. 

Despite global calls for boycotting the Games, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said he was attending the sporting event. 

While Biden and other Western politicians stand against China’s human rights record, Beijing is thankful these politicals aren’t showing up to create controversy. 

Authored by Callista Gingrich via The Epoch Times,

President Joe Biden’s immigration policies have led to chaos at the southern border, fueling a national security and humanitarian crisis. The blatant disregard for the rule of law by the Biden administration will have serious long-term consequences that will affect future generations of Americans.

On Sept. 27, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration issued its first Public Safety Alert in six years. The warning alerted Americans to the “sharp increase in fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine.”

According to the DEA’s alert, the availability and lethality of these counterfeit pills have significantly increased. Such pills are produced by criminal drug networks and designed to resemble legitimate opioid or stimulant medications, such as Oxycontin, Xanax, and Adderall. Unknown quantities of fentanyl and methamphetamine are known to be pressed into these counterfeit pills, making them dangerous for users.

The synthetic opioid that is most often identified in counterfeit pills is fentanyl, which is the primary cause of the dramatic increase in overdose deaths in the United States.

Fentanyl is a lab-manufactured drug used to treat pain that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. According to the DEA, just 2.2 pounds of fentanyl could potentially cause the deaths of 500,000 people. A lethal dose of fentanyl is just two milligrams, an amount so minuscule that it can fit on a pencil tip.

Although China is the primary source for fentanyl precursors, counterfeit pills most often come to the United States from Mexico after being pressed by Mexican cartels. Kyle W. Williamson, the former head of the DEA’s El Paso division, said, “It’s the worst it’s ever been. The amount of methamphetamine and fentanyl coming in right now is unprecedented.”

In the first nine months of 2021, more than 9.5 million fake pills have been confiscated. This figure is higher than the total number of counterfeit pills that were seized in 2019 and 2020 combined. Moreover, out of all of the pills which are laced with fentanyl, two out of five have been found to contain a potentially lethal dose of the drug.

When users ingest one of these counterfeit pills without knowing what they contain, it is like playing a game of Russian roulette that can lead to death within minutes.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that during a 12-month period ending in April, overdose deaths surpassed 100,000 for the first time. Sixty-four percent of these deaths were caused by synthetic opioids, namely, fentanyl. The majority of these deaths were attributed to 25-55 year olds. Young Americans, however, were also put at risk.

Counterfeit pills can be purchased through social media and other e-commerce platforms, which means that young people with smartphones can easily acquire them without their parents’ knowledge and without realizing the dangers.

According to the most recent data from National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2019, more than one in six adolescents (4.3 million) between the ages of 12 and 17 used illicit drugs. More than 560,000 adolescents misused opioids and, nearly 245,000 adolescents misused prescription pain relievers for the first time in their lives.

When teenagers purchase counterfeit pills, they are often unaware of how much fentanyl the pills contain. The cartels have little concern for the safety of their victims, as they have figured out that the addition of fentanyl to counterfeit pills is a way to ensure their customers remain addicted to illicit drugs.

Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp, in partnership with the Fentanyl Overdose Response Team, is leading the charge to save lives from falling victim to these dangerous drugs.

Education is a key component of Smittcamp’s strategy. As she said in the documentary, “Killer High,” “There is such a high volume of this substance that we cannot police or prosecute our way out of this crisis—we have to educate people. The more people who know how lethal this drug is, the more lives we can save.”

We must do more at the national level to educate Americans about the devastating effects of fentanyl and methamphetamine. Unless we stop the flow of these deadly drugs into the United States and provide law enforcement and first responders with the necessary tools and resources to combat this crisis, young lives will continue to be tragically lost.

U.S. Natural gas futures crashed as much as 12% on new weather models that forecast above-average temperatures for the U.S.-Lower 48 through the first half of December. 

Contracts for January delivery plunged 11% as of 1145 ET to $4.860 per million British thermal unit on the CME. Prices have slipped 25% from seven-year highs (at around $6.50) as traders reassess U.S. weather and the energy crisis in Europe and Asia. 

“Late-autumn cold in Europe and Asia has sparked fears that global gas shortages will worsen as nations struggle to refill stockpiles. But so far, there’s little sign of a similar situation developing in the U.S., even as shale producers keep a lid on output and the country’s exports of liquefied natural gas surge to a record,” Bloomberg said. 

Even though it’s late November, traders closely watch the widow-maker spread between Henry Hub’s March and April contracts. The spread has collapsed in the past few months, which implies milder-than-usual weather. 

U.S.-Lower 48 average temperatures will be well above a 30-year trend line for the first half of December.

Warmer temperatures across the U.S. mean heating demand will diminish. 

Mild weather will pressure natural gas prices lower until the next update suggests otherwise. This is excellent news for U.S. consumers who are already battling near-record energy, food, and shelter costs.