US Marines Mocked Over Pride Month Pageantry

US Marines Mocked Over Pride Month Pageantry

With pride month upon us, it’s not uncommon to see companies signaling virtue with rainbow everything in order to let the world know they support the LGBTQ∞ community, lest they be considered un-woke.

Now, the US Marine Corps has joined the fray, tweeting a photo of a marine helmet with bullets painted in rainbow colors on the strap.

Many took offense at the meme – suggesting the Marines are being divisive.

“Seriously? How does fixating on differences foster cohesion and unity?” tweeted Florida Governor Ron Desantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw.

Others pointed out that the marines ‘did the meme’: 

Others followed suit with similar criticism:

What say you?

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 20:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/GMYfWkg Tyler Durden

Biden’s ‘Salami-Slicing’ On Taiwan: We Aren’t Changing Policy Except That We Are Changing It

Biden’s ‘Salami-Slicing’ On Taiwan: We Aren’t Changing Policy Except That We Are Changing It

Authored by Patrick Lawrence via Consortium News,

Watching President Joe Biden’s stunningly clumsy performance in Tokyo last week, during which he committed the U.S. to defending Taiwan militarily, my mind went to the old adage, “All politics is local.” I am sure it is, but we are called upon to extend the thought: “All foreign policy is local” is our late-imperial reality.

The rest of the world is mere proscenium for our purported leaders, to put this point another way. No one with a hand in American foreign policy, so far as I can make out, is the slightest bit interested in the one thing, above all others, that the 21st century requires of competent statecraft. This is the desire and ability to understand the perspectives of others.

Have you ever heard anyone in the Washington policy cliques state, or even wonder, what China’s legitimate interests are in East Asia, first of all on the question of sovereignty over Taiwan? I haven’t either. You can run a foreign policy in this manner, but any successes it achieves will be sheer happenstance. In the Taiwan case, these people can’t even count on a fluke.

White House image

What we saw during Biden’s appearance in Tokyo was the latest installment of a Taiwan policy, and by extension a trans–Pacific policy, fashioned to satisfy various constituencies at home. The voiceless American public does not count among them. Like all policies of this kind, this one is poorly conceived, miscalculated, out of touch — in other words, doomed to failure as our new century unfolds.

“You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” This was the question a broadcast correspondent posed as Biden stood with the prime ministers of Japan, India, and Australia at the conclusion of a security summit last Monday.

“Yes,” our addled president replied without elaboration.

“You are?” the correspondent persisted.

“That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said, again with no further comment.  

Parse the exchange carefully. The president of the United States told Taiwan, China and the rest of Asia that America would commit troops and matériel — its own, not the weaponry it sells Taiwan in quantity — to a defense of the island in the event of a conflict with the People’s Republic. Given the reference to Ukraine, there is simply no other way to interpret Biden’s remarks.

Provocative Departure

This was a significant, openly provocative departure from the longstanding policy known as “strategic ambiguity,” a flimsy (as it has always seemed) concept whereby Washington does not say what it will do should China attempt to reassert sovereignty over its breakaway province.

Instantly, Biden’s many minders, who serve as nursing-home attendants more than department secretaries and advisers in these cases, began explaining to a very disturbed world that what their president said was not what their president said. “As the president said, our policy has not changed,” the White House explained in a rushed statement to the press.

A day later, even Biden was mouthing the approved language: “The policy has not changed at all,” saith Joe last Tuesday and on several occasions since. Come again, please? Yes, I announced a dramatic change in our Taiwan policy, but no, we’re not changing our Taiwan policy?

We cannot mark down what happened in the Japanese capital a week ago to the grim reality that our 46th president suffers a creeping senility. He does, but this will not do as an explanation of what amounts to a bad-cop, good-cop routine wherein the bad cop suddenly becomes one of the good cops after being bad.

The government-supervised New York Times went for the “gaffe-prone pol” theory, and who is not familiar with the… let us say simplicity of our president’s intellect? But neither will Biden’s evident dimness get us to clarity. 

I see design in these weird events.

What is it, then, we appear to have witnessed? Given Taiwan is the eastern front in our new, two-front Cold War — the one we’re nicely on the way to losing — we had better understand what we are in for.

Here I will speculate briefly.

The journalist posing the fateful question was Nancy Cordes, a longtime television correspondent who now covers the White House for CBS News. Given CBS’s long, many-decades-long record of collaborating with the national-security state, could her exchange with Biden have been prearranged to allow the response she precipitated?

We will never have an answer to this, but I must say I found the staginess of the occasion odd from the first, and I will take this thought no further.

Third Time

As many news reports noted last week, the Tokyo presser was the third time Biden, as president, has sailed the American ship of state near these rocks. Last summer he equated Taiwan with Japan and South Korea, two nations with which the U.S. has security alliances providing for mutual defense. Taiwan is not a nation, however many times The New York Times errs in calling it one, and has no such treaty with Washington.

A couple of months later a CNN correspondent asked Biden if the U.S. is committed to defending Taiwan against an attack from the mainland. “Yes, we have a commitment to do that,” he replied.

I must remind readers here that, in consequence to Biden’s diminished mental capacities, it has been a matter of record since his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva last year that the time he spends in front of journalists is strictly controlled, the journalists are carefully chosen and what will be said during their exchanges is vetted beforehand. You know, Soviet-style.

Some context is in order here.

It has been clear since the Biden regime’s earliest months that it has no idea how to address China or what a sound China policy would look like. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s calamitous encounter with Chinese counterparts in Alaska in March 2021 was the first indication of this, though hardly the last.

By default, I would say, Biden and his national security people inherited the policy shaped by Mike Pompeo because they didn’t know what else to do. Remember the McCarthyesque speech the Trump administration’s secretary of state gave at the Nixon Library two summers ago? Fifty years of engagement with China have failed, so it is time to confront the evil Chinese Communist Party, good must destroy evil, etc.?

That one.

One prominent feature of the Pompeo policy was its vigorous determination to refute the One China policy, which acknowledges Taiwan as part of China, and scrub strategic ambiguity in favor of “strategic clarity,” as in, We’re on for a war, body bags and all, and will wage it to defend Taiwan when the time comes.

The Biden regime has done nothing more than slow down this policy while altering it in style and tone. Having nothing to say for itself, it has no choice but to mollify the warmongering hawks whose position Pompeo articulated. These factions extend from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon to the defense-industry lobbies to the think tanks, some conservative, others “liberal.”

What happened in Tokyo last week is called “salami-slicing,” incremental moves such that a major policy shift is executed little by little by little. It follows naturally that Washington commonly accuses China of salami-slicing, given it is exactly what the U.S. is doing in the Taiwan case. Hence the contradictions noted above: We aren’t changing policy except that we are changing it.

July 16, 2020: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on maritime claims in the South China Sea. (U.S. State Department, Flickr)

It was obvious within days of the Tokyo press conference that the discourse on Taiwan has taken a decisive turn of the kind Biden appears to have intended to prompt. We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of strategic ambiguity in favor of strategic clarity just as the dangerously belligerent Pompeo urged.

One day after Biden’s remarks The New York Times quoted none other than Harry Harris urging this shift. Harris, some readers may recall, was commander of the Pacific fleet during the Obama years and liked nothing better than grandstanding on the decks of his aircraft carriers while huffing and puffing about America’s naval superiority in the Pacific.

China, the retired admiral asserted, “isn’t holding back its preparations for whatever it decides it wants to do simply because we’re ambiguous about our position.” This appeared in a piece explaining how the Biden regime is all of a sudden “trying to walk a fine line between deterrence and provocation.”

Nice. Nuanced. This is what I call subtle statecraft, diplomacy at its most evolved.  Let’s come as close as we can to starting a conflict with China while avoiding the appearance of starting one.  

A day later Bret Stephens, the Times columnist who is admittedly not to be taken seriously, urged “a more open military relationship with Taiwan.” Biden needs to forget his FDR fantasies, our Bret thinks, and “find his inner Truman,” referencing the first Cold War’s premier Cold Warrior.

We read regularly now of the policy cliques war-gaming a military conflict with China over the Taiwan question. NBC recently broadcast “War Games: The Battle for Taiwan,” a 27–minute Meet the Press segment. Such a program, lest readers lose track of the time, would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. But a salami slice at a time, Washington and its clerks in the media prepare us for Cold War II’s second front.

NBC, I remind readers, has a history as long as CBS’s of collaborating with the State and Defense departments — very, very directly — in the production of broadcast propaganda. There is one great, big saving grace in all of this. At the horizon, it is nonsense — America preening before its mirrors of self-regard.

Anyone with a head on his or her shoulders — and I have it from confidential sources there are a few such people in Washington — knows that a hot war with China over Taiwan is utterly out of the question. There is absolutely no way the U.S. could win one against the people’s Liberation Army, the P.L.A. Navy and the P.L.A. Air Force.

The Times had the good sense to run an opinion piece in Sunday’s editions precisely to this effect. “Defending Taiwan Would Be a Mistake,” is the headline and a good summary of Oriana Skylar Mastro’s argument. She writes:

“Simply put, the United States is outgunned. At the very least a confrontation with China would be an enormous drain on the U.S. military without any assured outcome that America could repel all of China’s forces.”

Mastro is a fellow in Chinese security studies at Stanford and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This is what we’re seeing these days on the Taiwan question: What grounded thinking there is to be found is as often as not coming from conservatives as against the liberal “antiwar” warmongers who crowd our national discourse.

The Skylar Mastro column was an implicit defense of strategic ambiguity, which is the question on which the policy debate now turns. I have always considered it a weak policy, a sophisticated name for either indecision and paralysis or for an unstated knowledge that the U.S. cannot win this one and can do no more than put off the inevitable on the Taiwan issue. The island is Chinese real estate and sooner or later this will be the reality.

But ambiguity is better than clarity in the way the hawks use the term. 

China reacted predictably to the Biden statements. “On issues that bear on China’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and other core interests,” Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesman, said, “no one shall expect China to make any compromise or trade-offs.”

There is no salami-slicing here. Anyone who knows Chinese history understands that questions of territorial integrity and sovereignty are the hottest buttons on Beijing’s console. But Wang’s statement — the statement of a spokesman, not a senior official — seemed to me notably low-key. And since this official reaction, Beijing appears to have let the incident fade.

It seems to me the Chinese understand: Biden’s Taiwan policy is all posture in the service of several purposes. It mollifies the hawkish factions mentioned above and will keep the weapons manufacturers in contracts more or less indefinitely. As previously argued in this space, Washington doesn’t need a hot war across the Pacific: An open-ended cold one will do.

A third purpose is to me the most interesting. Escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait, given there is no real intention of engaging the Chinese militarily, is the doing of a nervous, declining power profoundly unsure of itself in a changing world order it can do nothing to stop. In this the preening and pretending is all about reassuring you and me that our leaders are not completely, abjectly blowing the 21st century.

An astute Financial Times writer published a piece over the weekend noting that Biden’s performance — good word for it — in Tokyo coincided with the opening of Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the triumphalist Tom Cruise film of 1986.  “Curiously, James Crabtree writes, ‘it turns out that Top Gun: Maverick is actually a rather anxious kind of blockbuster, filled with doubts about the durability of U.S. power, and functioning in many ways as an elegy for relative American decline.’”

The head on Crabtree’s piece is “Still Top Gun? What Tom Cruise’s New Movie Tells Us about American Power.” It tells us a lot. It tells us it is starting to come down to theater now, spectacle without substance.

What we are going to see in Taiwan is likely to prove exactly what we already see in Ukraine. We will salami-slice increasing support for the independence-minded government in Taipei, arm the island to its very teeth, provoke China as we have Russia, and hope the mess escalates.

Then we will watch, as true heroes do.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 20:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/ORJ9xGa Tyler Durden

Auto-Armageddon: May Sales Data Shows Dramatic Slowdown In US New Car Sales

Auto-Armageddon: May Sales Data Shows Dramatic Slowdown In US New Car Sales

Auto sales numbers for May are starting to trickle in and they’re ugly…

The lack of stimmy money and unemployment check bonuses, combined with the fact that rates are rising and spending is slowing, made for a tumultuous May report for some of the most well known legacy auto manufacturers. 

Here’s a look at four of the first names to hit the tape this week, with most other major auto manufacturers set to release data within the next day or so. 

*HONDA MAY U.S. AUTO SALES -57.3%

*TOYOTA US MAY SALES 175,990, -27.3% Y/Y

*MAZDA N. AMERICA MAY SALES DOWN 63.7%

*NISSAN APRIL GLOBAL SALES -29.1%

It’s going to be tough to keep the melt-up in auto prices going with sales slowing down so much. Over the last year, both new and used car prices have soared amidst growing demand and a gummed up supply chain that keep inventory sparse. 

Inventory looks like it could be less of an issue over the next few months, based on May’s numbers. Remember, we wrote in the beginning of May that used car prices were crashing at a near record pace. 

As we noted then, the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, a wholesale tracker of used car prices, printed the most significant monthly decline in terms of rate of change averaged out over three months in April at 6.4%. It didn’t beat the April 2020 print of -11.2% nor December 2008 of -11.5%, but those two periods were in full-blown financial crises.

The Fed routinely says monetary tightening will create a soft-landing, similar to the mid-90s. However, tightening financial conditions could only spark trouble for an economy based 70% on consumption and driven by access to cheap credit. The cooling in the used car market could suggest a broader economic slowdown is ahead.

We also noted in May the used car market year-over-year growth rates versus used car auto loan rates. A jump in rates has dampened upward price pressure as fewer buyers can afford cars. This is likely part of what has contributed to May’s terrible retail sales numbers. 

Additionally, according to a report out Wednesday by The Verge, GM is also slashing prices on their 2023 Chevy Bolt EV and EUV. 

Hilariously, GM’s PR department is definitely doing their job well, as they put the “spin” on the lowered pricing as a measure being taken “amid high demand”. GM says it wants to send the message that “affordability has always been a priority for these vehicles”, the Verge wrote

A GM spokesperson said: “This change reflects our ongoing desire to make sure Bolt EV/EUV are competitive in the marketplace.” 

Because we all know that high demand drives prices…lower…right?

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 19:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JmCwgA Tyler Durden

“This Feels Like A Slow-Motion Train Wreck”

“This Feels Like A Slow-Motion Train Wreck”

By Ven Ram, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

If you climb a tall flight of stairs, came back down and repeated the experiment, say, a dozen times, you will be pretty drained by the time you are done. Yet, if you ask a physicist the upshot of the experiment, they might just shrug their shoulders and say your net displacement was zero.

The story of US stocks last month was much in the same vein. The S&P 500 Index made a handful of multi-standard deviation moves, enough to send it screaming below 3,900, only to end the month pretty much where it had started. The Nasdaq 100 basket, which had slumped more than 13% in April, hiccuped — but not too much more.

Despite the late recovery during May, this feels like a slow-motion train wreck. While overnight indexed swaps were starting to slide back on Fed pricing for the remainder of the year, we are now back to factoring in 190+ basis points of tightening. So by the time we are prepared to turn the page over on the calendar, we may be looking at a Fed funds rate of 2.75%, weighing on stocks like gravity on an astronaut.

And then there are concerns about slowing growth to contend with. We began the year with economists estimating US GDP growth of about 3.8%, give or take. Now we are talking about something in the region of 2.6%. Much of that is likely to have an impact on USA Inc., so stocks will not only have to factor in a higher discount rate, but also a smaller numerator in terms of corporate earnings.

That may explain why, despite successive attempts, buying the dip hasn’t quite worked well so far this year. What does that leave us with? Calculations suggest we still face enough downside that could take the S&P 500 to circa 3,600 and Nasdaq to about 10,750. If that proves right, we may have to brace ourselves for more noise from Wall Street.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 19:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/uUi1IhV Tyler Durden

Police Respond To Shooting At Oklahoma Hospital, Describe Scene As “Catastrophic”

Police Respond To Shooting At Oklahoma Hospital, Describe Scene As “Catastrophic”

Police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, responded to an active shooter situation at a medical building on Wednesday evening, according to local news KTUL

Tulsa Police Department said there were multiple injuries, and the suspect had been shot. It was reported the suspect was armed with a rifle. 

“A suspect has been shot,” Sgt. Richard Meulenberg told reporters at the scene. 

Police said there is no longer an active shooter situation at the Natalie Medical Building at Saint Francis Hospital on Yale Ave. They’re currently clearing the building floor by floor and described the incident area inside as “catastrophic.” 

Darin Glodo with the Tulsa Police told CNN there were injuries, but just how many are unknown. 

Watch ABC News’ live feed here:

*This is a developing story

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 19:19

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/L8cGa1w Tyler Durden

New York Governor To Raise Age Limit For Semi-Automatic Rifle Purchases, Ban Body Armor 

New York Governor To Raise Age Limit For Semi-Automatic Rifle Purchases, Ban Body Armor 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and top state lawmakers announced ten bills that have been introduced in both the Assembly and Senate that would tighten New York’s gun laws following the mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas. 

The bills would raise the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic rifle to 21 years old from 18, prohibit the purchase of body armor for anyone not eligible (NY tried to ban it last year), require a license to buy a semiautomatic rifle, eliminate grandfathering of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices (otherwise known as extended magazines), strengthen the Red Flag law, and require new pistols to include microstamping technology for tracing. 

Gov. Hochul, Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Speaker Carl Heastie announced the introduction of the ten new bills on Tuesday. The bills are expected to gain traction as the public outcry for lawmakers to do something increases after the recent mass shootings. 

The legislative package includes:

A.1023-A (Paulin)/S.4970-A (Kavanagh)

Requires all state and local law enforcement agencies to report seized or recovered guns to the criminal gun clearinghouse; participate in ATFs collective data sharing program; test-fire seized or recovered guns for national integrated Ballistic Information Network; and, enter the make, model, caliber, and serial number of the gun into the national crime information center. Also requires gun dealers to implement a security plan for securing firearms, rifles and shotguns; prohibit persons under eighteen and not accompanied by a parent from the certain locations of a gun dealer’s premises; provide training to all employees on the conduct of firearm, rifle, and shotgun transfers, including identification of and response to illegal purchases; adhere to record keeping requirements; and require the State police to conduct inspections of gun dealers every three years.

A.6716-A (Wallace)/S89-B (Kaminsky):

Creates the crimes of making a threat of mass harm and aggravated making a threat of mass harm.

A.7926-A (Rosenthal, L)/S.4116-A (Hoylman):

Requires DCJS to certify or decline to certify that microstamping-enabled pistols are technologically viable and if certified as viable, to establish programs and processes for the implementation of such technology; and, establishes the crime of the unlawful sale of a non-microstamping-enabled firearm

A7865-A (Fahy)/ S.4511-A (Kaplan):

Requires social media networks in New York to provide a clear and concise policy regarding how they would respond to incidents of hateful conduct on their platform and maintain easily accessible mechanisms for reporting hateful conduct on those platforms

A.10428-A (People-Stokes)/S.9229-A (Hoylman):

Eliminates the grandfathering of large capacity ammunition feeding devices that were lawfully possessed prior to the enactment of the Safe Act or manufactured prior to 1994.

A. 10497 (Jacobson)/S.9407-B (Kavanagh):

Makes unlawful the purchase and sale of body vests for anyone who is not engaged in an eligible profession. Eligible professions include law enforcement officers and other professions designated by the Department of State in consultation with other agencies. Also requires that any sale of a body vest be done in person.

A.10501 (Meeks)/S. 9465 (Bailey)

Creates a new Task Force on Social Media and Violent Extremism in the Attorney General’s office to study and investigate the role of social media companies in promoting and facilitating violent extremism and domestic terrorism online.

A. 10502 (Cahill)/S. 9113-A (Skoufis):

Expands who may file an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) petition to include health care practitioners who have examined the individual within the last six months; requires police and district attorneys to file ERPO petitions upon credible information that an individual is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to himself, herself or others; requires the State Police and the Municipal Police Training Council to create and disseminate policies and procedures to identify when an ERPO petition may be warranted; amends the firearm licensing statute to make it clear that when an individual has been reported by a mental health practitioner and a county mental health commissioner has concurred with such practitioner that the individual is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to themself or others, such report is considered in determining whether or not to issue a firearm license to the individual; and, expands the mental health practitioners who can make such reports.

A10503 (Jackson)/S. 9458 (Thomas):

Requires that an individual obtain a license prior purchasing a semiautomatic rifle. This is prospective and applies to purchases made on and after the effective date.

A. 10504 (Burgos)/S. 9456 (Sepulveda)

Expands the definition of a “firearm” to include any weapon not defined in the Penal Law that is designed or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by action of an explosive. This is intended to capture firearms that have been modified to be shot from an arm brace, which are evading our current definitions of firearms and rifles.

“Within the last month, two horrific mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas have rattled this nation to our core and shed a new light on the urgent need for action to prevent future tragedies,” the governor said. 

“New York already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country but clearly we need to make them even stronger. New Yorkers deserve to feel safe in schools, in grocery stores, in movie theaters, in shopping malls, and on our streets — and we must do everything in our power to protect them. Working closely with Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, Speaker Heastie, and all of our partners in the legislature, we will strengthen our gun laws, help keep New Yorkers safe, give law enforcement the tools they need to prevent crime, and stop the spread of dangerous weapons. As New York once again leads, we continue to urge the federal government to seize this opportunity and pass meaningful national gun violence prevention laws,” the governor continued. 

“Just 10 days separated the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde that took the lives of 31 people. Nowhere else in the world is this happening. We are in desperate need of a conversation about guns, but we are also in desperate need of action.” Speaker Carl Heastie said.

In a statement, chair of the New York State Republican Committee Nick Langworthy responded to the governor’s push for even stricter gun laws, pointing out it doesn’t even address America’s mental health crisis: 

“This package of bills does nothing to actually address the underlying mental health crisis at the center of the problem or invests in securing our schools. If Hochul and legislative leaders cared about shooting victims, they would vote today to repeal their disastrous bail laws that has turned our streets over to violent criminals.”

New Yorkers who already own a semiautomatic rifle or body armor will be grandfathered in if the bills are passed. Other states would likely follow New York’s move. Also, Democrats in Washington, D.C., are pushing bills to raise age limits to buy guns and ban high-capacity magazines. 

Podcaster Joe Rogan warned last week that Democrats are coming for your guns and argued that criminals would be the only ones left with firearms. 

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 19:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/LXMIr7O Tyler Durden

AI Expert Says Parents Will Choose “Digital Babies” In The Metaverse Over Real Ones Within 50 Years

AI Expert Says Parents Will Choose “Digital Babies” In The Metaverse Over Real Ones Within 50 Years

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

An expert on artificial intelligence says that within 50 years, parents will opt to have “digital offspring” that only exist in the metaverse due to concerns over the environment and overpopulation.

The prediction was made by Catriona Campbell, who is described as “one of the UK’s leading authorities on artificial intelligence.”

According to Campbell, parents will decide to have digital babies, an updated version of Japanese Tamagotchi digital pet toys, for the same reasons they are already choosing not to have real babies, namely, “concerns about the environment, overpopulation, the rising cost of bringing up a child.”

“Campbell predicts they will be commonplace and embraced by society within half a century,” reports left-wing newspaper the Guardian.

The AI expert says the cyberspace babies will eventually be indistinguishable from the real thing and that if parents get bored of them, they can just cancel them like they would a monthly Netflix subscription.

“Campbell says virtual children will look like you, and you will be able to play with and cuddle them. They will be capable of simulated emotional responses as well as speech, which will range from “googoo gaga” to backchat, as they grow older,” reports the newspaper.

The article also says concerns that the digital babies would just be ‘creepy dystopian dolls’ that can be turned on and off are “old fashioned.”

“Think of the advantages: minimal cost and environmental impact. And less worry,” it adds.

As ever, this is just more anti-natal propaganda, predominantly targeting white western countries, which are already seeing birth rates rapidly decline.

There is an entire cottage industry of social engineering based on convincing westerners not to have children.

As we previously highlighted, in 2020, CNN marked Valentines Day weekend by promoting “the benefits of being single,” even as birth rates across America and Europe continue to plunge.

America’s fertility rate currently stands at 1.8 births per woman.

From 2007 to 2011 the fertility rate in the U.S. declined 9% in the space of just 4 years.

In 2016, the U.S. fertility rate fell to 59.8 births per 1,000 women, the lowest since records began.

Fears about “overpopulation” are also a contrived myth given that plummeting population levels are far more likely to be a bigger problem in 50 years time.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 18:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/qopu0aS Tyler Durden

US Nat Gas Prices Have Exploded Thanks To Soaring LNG Exports To Europe

US Nat Gas Prices Have Exploded Thanks To Soaring LNG Exports To Europe

Regular readers will be aware of our view regarding the soaring US nat gas price, which we have repeatedly said is to a large extent a function of US nat gas exports to Europe, meant to ease Europe’s historic natgas shortage which is the direct result of the Ukraine war (as Putin turns the screws on European nat gas exports) and Europe’s disastrous “green” policies which virtually assured that the continent would have a historic energy crisis. Indeed, as we noted a few days ago in “US NatGas Prices Top $9, Hit 2008 Highs As EU ‘Convergence’ Accelerates“, when addressing a recent Pew Poll which found that “61% of Americans would favor exporting large amounts of natural gas to Europe”, we doubt 61% would be supportive of such policies if they knew they are behind the historic spike in domestic nat gas prices.

Today, none other than Reuters’ senior energy analyst John Kemp confirms that behind the surge in US nat gas prices are LNG exports to Europe, writing that “US natural gas production will have to accelerate significantly if the country is to keep growing record export volumes without creating shortages for consumers at home.” And while we may avoid shortages, we certainly will have much, much higher prices to look forward to before the European nat gas crisis “converges” with the US.

According to Kemp, gas exports in the form of LNG were up by 674 billion cubic feet or 87% in the first three months of 2022 compared with the same period in 2019.

Domestic consumption was flat over the same period, selected to span the pandemic, according to the latest monthly data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But domestic production increased by only 433 billion cubic feet (5%), mostly as a result of low prices and consolidation within the industry.

In consequence, LNG exports have grown to around 12% of domestic gas production, up from 4% in 2019, and the proportion is set to increase further.

Net exports in all forms, by pipeline as well as LNG, hit a record 377 billion cubic feet in March 2022, up from just 121 billion in March 2019.

Rapid growth in LNG exports, in excess of domestic production, has put increasing downward pressure on gas inventories and upward pressure on prices.

At the end of March, working stocks in underground storage were 318 billion cubic feet below the pre-pandemic five-year average.

After adjusting for inflation, front-month futures prices climbed in May to their highest since November 2008, on the eve of the financial crisis and great recession.


 
In order to keep Europeans warm or cool, and avoid having them pay too high prices for Russian gas, real US prices are in the 83rd percentile for all months since 1990, up from the 8th percentile three years ago, signalling the need for more production and discouraging consumption.

Reflecting the anticipated shortage of gas, futures prices for the current year compared with one-year forward have moved into a record backwardation.

There are, however, signs that domestic producers are starting to respond to the strong price incentive to raise output.  The number of rigs drilling specifically for gas has increased by 50% over the last six months, albeit from a low base, which should ensure output grows faster over the next year than in the last one.


 
The increase in the number of rigs drilling for oil should also help by increasing the amount of associated gas production.

The U.S. gas industry has been very successful in marketing its production to consumers in Europe and Asia who are anxious to diversify their sourcing and lock in reliable supplies.

Now the industry must show it can produce enough gas to feed the export machine, or else it will be US consumers who are left footing the bill.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 18:25

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Saudi Prince’s Plan for ‘Walkable’ City of Single-File Buildings Could Be a Two Miles-Long Skyscrapers Instead


Candid of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a linear city stretching out into the middle of the desert has perhaps gotten even dumber.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the kingdom’s The Line project—a proposed million-person, 170-kilometer-long city in the remote portion of the country’s Tabuk province bordering the Red Sea—is getting a redesign. Instead of the initial concept of building a long single-file line of buildings connected by a high-speed train, several anonymous sources working on the project told Bloomberg the plan is now to build two parallel 1,600-foot-tall skyscrapers that will stretch for dozens of miles.

The Line is just one of several components of the Neom project, the $500 billion endeavor spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to turn a sparsely inhabited part of the country into a world-class financial, tourism, and tech hub.

Salman has described The Line as a utopian attempt to liberate city dwellers from long car commutes and all the pollution and traffic deaths that come with them. Instead, it would be an ultra-walkable paradise where all essential services would be a five-minute jaunt away and the longest intracity trip wouldn’t exceed 20 minutes

“We need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one,” he said in January 2021 when The Line was first unveiled, describing it as a city “with zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions.”

It all sounds pretty great.

But if history and free market urban theory are any guide, the city will be a dismal, expensive failure. Utopian projects to design new cities on virgin land rarely succeed.

“The trouble is: Who wants to be first?” Alain Bertaud, a senior research scholar at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, told CityLab back in April.

“New city projects often start by highlighting their nice infrastructure,” he said, specifically referencing Neom as an example. “But nobody will move to a city with a good sewer system but no jobs. Historically, infrastructure follows the market, not the other way around.”

In short, people don’t really want to move to places where there’s nothing for them to do.

Rather, cities are labor markets that primarily exist to connect lots of workers with lots of places to work. The upshot of that intense intermingling of capital and labor is that new ideas can spread more quickly and production can become more specialized than if those urban workers and firms were distributed across smaller communities.

These “agglomeration” effects explain why cities, once they get started, tend to grow and attract more people—even though that growth brings with it congestion, pollution, and other problems of urban living The Line is supposed to cure.

The trouble is that agglomeration is hard to kickstart. Some marriage of geography, resources, and preexisting industry is usually needed to get things going.

Most of the wholly invented cities that have stuck around are new national capitals like Washington, D.C., Canberra, or Brasilia, which bring their own initial job market of bureaucrats and politicos with them. Even then, they tend to survive in spite of the elaborate urban planning that went into trying to make them look a certain way.

This brings us to the second problem with Saudi Arabia’s The Line: It’s a big long line.

No other city in the world is shaped like that, and for good reason.

The agglomerative effects that cities thrive on can only happen when businesses and workers can cluster together or reach each other within reasonable travel times. This is why cities in capitalist countries all have a similar development pattern: an ultra-dense urban core surrounded by lower-and lower-density neighborhoods radiating outward.

The central city is in the most demand because it has the quickest access to the rest of the urban area. That demand pushes up land prices, which developers respond to by building taller buildings that use less land. As you move outward, access to the rest of the city gets harder, demand and land prices fall, and densities start to fall with them.

This “density gradient” is a constant observable fact in all but the most regulated urban areas in the world.

The Line, at best, would have an incredibly inefficient version of this density gradient.

One could imagine a dense center on the line where homes and businesses are in the most demand, with lower-density wings on either side. But if there is such demand for living or working in the center of the line to justify that densities are that high, that would imply there’s also demand for living or working immediately above or below the center of this linear city. But the whole design requires that that land be left vacant.

The latest rumored design for The Line—two 1,600-foot-tall buildings stretching for miles—gets things even more mixed up by assuming demand for density would be nearly uniform across the line. But obviously, more people would rather live in the central parts of the building with quicker access to more locations, than on the edges where it will take a lot longer to reach a lot more stuff.

Lastly, The Line is an unworkable utopian idea because there will be no room for dynamism and change. It’s dubious that the designers of the city will perfectly predict the best place to put every possible business or home. Even if they could, unique people with their own interests, needs, and desires moving around will change what’s demanded where.

An influx of families into one part of the Line might generate a need for additional homes and schools and fewer pharmacies and nightclubs. If The Line sticks to its exquisite master plan, it will soon get overcrowded housing in one location and underutilized retail elsewhere.

Even comparatively far less planned American cities have suffered a version of this problem during and after the pandemic.

Low-density, residential-only zoning prevents apartments or commercial buildings from being added in suddenly high-demand suburbs, where prices are spiking. Meanwhile, dense downtowns have a glut of underutilized office space that zoning likewise prevents from being turned into retail or residential developments.

And American urban planning is practically anarchic compared to what is envisioned for The Line.

Of course, one doesn’t need technical urban theory to understand why The Line is a dumb idea. Every pizza restaurant that sells radial pies rather than a long line of single slices is grasping a fundamental truth of geometry that has eluded the Saudi monarchy.

Preliminary construction work on The Line started in October. The first residents are expected to move there in 2024.

The post Saudi Prince's Plan for 'Walkable' City of Single-File Buildings Could Be a Two Miles-Long Skyscrapers Instead appeared first on Reason.com.

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‘Numerous’ Armed Teachers In Neighboring County School, Says Texas Sheriff

‘Numerous’ Armed Teachers In Neighboring County School, Says Texas Sheriff

Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, the sheriff from the neighboring county, just 40 miles away, said he plans to add a full active shooter drill when school restarts in the fall.

Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe in Brackettville, Texas, on Jan. 18, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe said he’s going to add a full evacuation scenario, where the students will be taken to the local civic center and parents will come pick them up.

All 560 school students are situated on one sprawling campus in Brackettville that includes 14 buildings—”a logistical nightmare,” Coe said. But most of his deputies attended the school and know their way around.

Coe said “numerous” teachers on campus are armed and trained in what to do. The school campus also has an armed resource officer.

Teachers are taught how to barricade themselves and students into a room and teachers have a shared password with law enforcement that must be given before opening the door to anyone.

Anything that walks through the door that does not have the proper password, you light them up,” Coe said he instructs the armed teachers.

Coe said he conducts active shooter drills with his deputies every year during summer when Brackettville’s school campus is closed. He said they practice with a one man team, a two-man team, and a three-man team.

Because at any given time, the best we’re going to have is probably three people [to respond],” he said. Coe has six full time deputies for his 1,400 square-mile county.

Coe said the active shooter response protocol is, “Basically, the first one on scene, we’re going in.

“We’re not going to sit around and wait for backup. If I have to go in alone, or the deputies have to go in alone, if by chance there’s two of them, we’re going in and we’re going to the source.”

He said he couldn’t think of a scenario in which he wouldn’t go in and head to the gunfire.

We don’t have time to wait,” Coe said. “As soon as [active shooters] are challenged, nine times out of 10, if they haven’t barricaded themselves in, the minute they’re challenged, they either run or commit suicide. And that’s just statistics.”

He said the local school has panic buttons situated in the hallways, cafeteria, and locker rooms that directly transmit to anyone with a radio issued by the sheriff’s office. A red button connects to the sheriff’s office and a blue button to EMS, Coe said.

The sheriff’s office has also started collecting fingerprint and photo files for school children in case they’re needed for identification at some stage.

Uvalde police officers have been criticized for a botched response to the mass shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School last week. An off-duty Border Patrol special agent raced to the school after receiving a text from his wife, a teacher at the school. The agent fatally shot the suspect.

On May 30, memorial services began for the first of the 21 victims.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/01/2022 – 18:05

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