Month: December 2022

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Three years ago, I bet that 99 percent of my readers had never heard of ORC.  Of course by now almost everyone knows that ORC stands for “organized retail crime”, and it is prompting retailers to permanently shut down stores all over the nation.  Right now, retail theft is happening from coast to coast on a scale that we have never seen in our entire history.  Marauding bands of looters are barging into stores, grabbing as much merchandise as they can possibly carry, and then loading it into their vehicles.  Online marketplaces make it easier than ever to turn stolen goods into cash, and at this point organized retail crime has become a multi-billion dollar business.  As I have repeatedly warned my readers, America is descending into lawlessness.  The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing, and if we stay on this path our society will soon be completely unrecognizable.

Every year, organized retail crime gets even worse.  According to Fox Business, the number of ORC incidents in 2021 was 26.5 percent higher than in 2020…

ORC incidents soared 26.5% on average in 2021, with 81.2% of retailers surveyed reporting “somewhat more” or “much more” ORC-associated aggression and violence year-over-year, according to the survey.

Of course things are even worse here in 2022, and this is particularly true in states where shoplifting laws are very soft.

For example, in Portland some stores are often victimized “more than once a day”…

Some of the hot items are perfumes and expensive handbags. Often, stores are victimized daily and sometimes more than once a day. A local pastor whose window looks out on the local Nike store says he sees thieves running out of the store with their arms full of stolen stuff all the time. And the excellent KGW-TV story makes the point that this stolen stuff is not to feed hungry children. It is organized theft. The stuff gets sold online and in flea markets.

Needless to say, it is almost impossible to run a profitable business in such an environment, and many store owners are throwing in the towel.

In recent days, one store owner in Portland made headline news all over the nation by posting a note that explained exactly why the store is being closed…

A Portland, Oregon, clothing shop permanently shut down this month after facing a string of break-ins that has left the store financially gutted, according to a note posted to the front of the store.

“Our city is in peril,” a printed note posted on Rains PDX store reads, according to KATU2. “Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business, in our city’s current state. We have no protection, or recourse, against the criminal behavior that goes unpunished. Do not be fooled into thinking that insurance companies cover losses. We have sustained 15 break-ins … we have not received any financial reimbursement since the 3rd.”

Sadly, organized retail crime is not just plaguing cities on the west coast.

This is truly a national phenomenon, and large retail chains are losing giant mountains of money because of it.

In fact, Target recently caused quite a stir when it admitted that organized retail crime accounts for most of the 400 million dollars that it has lost from shoplifting over the past year…

Shoplifting is such a big problem, that last week, when officials from Target were explaining why the company’s profit fell by 50% in the third quarter, they mentioned shoplifting as a contributing cause. Target Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington said Target shoplifting has jumped about 50% year over year. Target estimates shoplifting has cost the retailer $400 million and most of that, Hennington said, has come from organized retail theft.

If things are already this bad, what will happen when economic conditions in this country really start deteriorating in 2023 and beyond?

The more desperate people become, the worse organized retail crime will get.

At this point, thievery has reached such epic proportions that some retailers are actually considering locking up all of their merchandise…

In September, on an earnings call with investors, Rite Aid’s executive vice president of retail, Andre Persaud, floated an idea to improve the chain’s performance in New York City: turn the drugstore into one giant vending machine in order to fight shoplifting. “We’re looking at literally putting everything behind showcases to ensure the products are there for customers to buy,” Persaud said.

Does that sound familiar? Many big-city pharmacy chains are halfway there, with plexiglass cases that have mushroomed over even low-priced household goods like shampoo and deodorant—to say nothing of laundry detergent, razor blades, and baby formula. It’s like shopping at a pharmacy 100 years ago, with a white-aproned clerk pushing around a ladder to grab your tinctures and tonics, except now it’s a minimum-wage cashier with a key ring. These days, you press a red button and a loudspeaker tells the store that you have a foot fungus. In July, a Manhattan Duane Reade made international news when it placed a can of Spam—Spam!—in a theft-deterrent plastic case.

If this trend catches on, the way that we shop could change forever.

The days of just going in and quickly gathering what you need could soon be gone permanently.

And it is all because our society is becoming completely and utterly lawless.

Earlier today, I was deeply saddened to read about a particularly horrific crime that happened in Philadelphia on the day after Thanksgiving…

A Philadelphia parking authority officer was shot in the head in broad daylight by a thug in the City of Brotherly Love last Friday.

The suspect was caught on a surveillance camera walking up behind the 37-year-old male parking official and shooting him in the head at point-blank range at 3.50pm on the 4500 block Frankford Avenue the day after Thanksgiving.

The officer, who was on duty at the time of the crime, is seen in video footage immediately collapsing onto the sidewalk before help arrives.

The fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams all around us, but most people don’t seem to care.

Most people are just so self-obsessed that they can’t even see that our society is rotting and decaying at a truly frightening pace.

A highly civilized society is extremely difficult to create, but it is very easy to lose.

Unfortunately, most Americans are not going to realize this until it is far too late.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

The EU is continuing its attempts to forge a legal pathway forward whereby it can seize frozen Russian central bank assets and divert them to funding Ukraine’s reconstruction, however, steep enough legal hurdles remain to have thus far thwarted the plans. 

“We have blocked €300 billion of the Russian Central Bank reserves, and we have frozen €19 billion of Russian oligarchs’ money,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen boasted in a statement this week. And speaking of her goal of utilizing confiscated assets by EU member states to rebuild war-devasted Ukraine, she said further, “We will work on an international agreement with our partners to make this possible. And together, we can find legal ways to get to it.”

“Russia and its oligarchs have to compensate Ukraine for the damage and cover the costs for rebuilding the country. And we have the means to make Russia pay,” she contineud.

On Wednesday the European Commission issued legal options to be explored for making “Russia pay”, which is an attempt at “clarifying the international context, identifying ways to strengthen the tracing and identification of assets as preliminary steps for potential confiscation and exploring avenues that could lead to the confiscation of frozen Russian assets.”

The Wall Street Journal reviewed some of the building pressure for the EU to act more decisively and on a unified front as follows:

European Union officials said the bloc can’t confiscate tens of billions of euros worth of frozen Russian central-bank funds to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, while its executive body sent proposals to member states on setting up an international court to prosecute Russian officials for this year’s invasion.

Pressure had been building up for months from some member states for Brussels to come up with ways to seize Russian assets and hold top Russian leaders accountable for the war. 

But the issue remains that among most member states, there are clear legal roadblocks making it difficult or impossible to seize frozen assets if the individual or entity in question has not first been convicted criminally. 

On this question, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pointed out starting months ago that confiscating Russian state assets “should not be done lightly, should be carried out only in co-ordination with allies and might require legislation in the US” – as the FT paraphrased of her words.

Further as the FT notes, “Under the commission proposal, the Russian state would be entitled to have the assets returned if there was a peace deal, potentially along with some minimal accrued interest. In the meantime, the liquid assets of the Russian state would be invested to generate returns to pay for reconstruction” – as the thinking in Brussels goes.

Addressing the much bigger money pot of frozen Russian central bank assets, one EU official was quoted in European media as saying, “We think that we can create a structure that would allow us to actually actively manage these assets and use the proceeds of managing those assets, with the returns to be able to support Ukraine.”

Authored by Joe Lauria via Consortium News,

The founder of a US-based website that earlier published the same un-redacted documents that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange was later indicted for has invited the U.S. Department of Justice to make him a co-defendant with Assange. 

“Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks,” John Young wrote in a Justice Department submission form, which Young posted on Twitter on Tuesday.

“No US official has contacted me about publishing the unredacted cables since cryptome published them,” he wrote. “I respectfully request that the Department of Justice add me as a co-defendant in the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act.”

Assange has been charged with possession and dissemination of classified information, some of the same material that Young possesses and disseminated. Young founded Cryptome, which he calls a “free public library” in 1996. It was a precursor of WikiLeaks in publishing raw, classified and unclassified government documents on the internet.

Young testified at Assange’s extradition hearing in London in September 2020. His sworn statement says:

“I published on Cryptome.org unredacted diplomatic cables on September 1, 2011 under the URL https://cryptome.org/z/z.7z and that publication remains available at the present. … Since my publication on Cryptome.org of the unredacted diplomatic cables, no US law enforcement authority has notified me that this publication of the cables is illegal, consists or contributes to a crime in any way, nor have they asked for them to be removed.”

‘Harmed Informants’

A cornerstone of the Justice Department’s case against Assange is that he recklessly published State Department cables leaked to him by Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning, which, the U.S. says, endangered the lives of named U.S. informants.

Young is asking the Justice Department why he too hasn’t been prosecuted for publishing these names before Assange did. 

At Manning’s court martial, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr, testified under oath that no one was actually harmed by the WikiLeaks releases. Then Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the leaks “awkward” and “embarrassing” but said they did only “fairly modest” damage to U.S. foreign interests.   

Reuters reported in January 2011:

“Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration’s public statements to the contrary.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.”

Assange was actually more concerned about redactions than the editors of his mainstream media partners who worked with him on publishing the releases. 

Mark Davis, an Australian television journalist who documented Assange’s activities during the weekend in London before publication, said that while the other editors went home, Assange pulled all nighters to redact informants names.

Guardian Journalists & the Password

Two days before publication Assange wrote to the U.S. ambassador in London seeking help from “the United States Government to privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed.”

I respectfully request that the Department of Justice add me as a co-defendant in the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act.

Sincerely,

John Young#assange @USDOJ pic.twitter.com/7jHaRI9Ilm

— Cryptome (@Cryptome_org) November 29, 2022

The U.S. responded by demanding that WikiLeaks stop publication of the cables and return those in its possession. 

In the end, only a redacted version of the State Department Cables was published in November 2010 by WikiLeaks and its mainstream partners, The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde and DER SPEIGEL. 

This remained the case until a book was published by two Guardian journalists in February 2011, in which the password to the unredacted files mysteriously appears as part of a chapter heading. This went unnoticed, as WikiLeaks tried to keep it quiet, until a German publication named Freitag said it had the password in August 2011. 

When Assange learned this he contacted the State Department to try to warn them about the impending publication of informants’ names. He was rebuffed. This is shown in a scene in Laura Poitras’ film Risk.

PirateBay published the unredacted files first and then Cryptome did on Sept. 1, 2011. It was the next day that Assange decided to publish the unredacted files so that informants could search for their names and try to get to safety. This was before it was known that no one was harmed,

“The notion that Mr. Assange knowingly put lives at risk by dumping unredacted cables is knowingly inaccurate,” said Assange lawyer Mark Summers at the extradition hearing in February 2020. The publishers and editors of WikiLeaks‘ partners oppose Assange’s Espionage Act indictment and on Monday wrote an open letter to the Biden administration urging the case be dropped. 

Having published WikiLeaks classified documents, are they ready to take the same step as Young, a U.S. citizen, who is daring the DOJ to indict him too under the U.S. Espionage Act, for doing the exact thing Assange, an Australian, did, only earlier?

We’ve already written this month about how the “tax break” incentive to buy an EV is starting to vaporize into thin air in places like Japan and the U.K.. Now, the irony continues, as rising costs of energy in Europe, helped along by “green” energy policies, are making industrial projects like battery cell factories “unfeasible”. 

Volkswagen brand CEO Thomas Schaefer said this week that investments in German and EU projects will no longer make financial sense if “policy makers fail to control ballooning energy prices in the long-term”, according to the Times. 

In a post on LinkedIn, Schaefer said: “Unless we manage to reduce energy prices in Germany and Europe quickly and reliably, investments in energy-intensive production or new battery cell factories in Germany and the EU will be practically unviable. The value creation in this area will take place elsewhere.”

Last week, French and German economy ministers proposed an outline for policy cooperation that Schaefer claims “falls short in crucial areas and does not address the envisaged priorities”, the report says. 

“Outdated and bureaucratic state-aid rules” fail to focus enough on “the short-term ramp-up, scaling and industrialisation of production,” he said. 

The report says that EU officials are focused on responding to President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which they say “violates World Trade Organisation rules and discriminates against non-US companies.”

Meanwhile, Volkswagen is in the process of putting 6 battery factories in operation across Europe by the year 2030, the report says. The company’s lead plant in Germany broke ground this July and already has a €3bn (R53bn) joint venture with Umicore in place for cathode material production. 

Recall, just days ago, we reported that the UK was looking to raise more tax revenue from electric vehicles, shattering the years-long assumption that if you contributed to “helping the environment” by buying an EV, you’d be entitled to subsidies and tax credits.

Now Japan’s internal affairs ministry is reportedly weighing whether or not to raise taxes on electric vehicles in order to make up for a shortfall in income from taxes on traditional gas powered cars.

And so it’s turning out that the economics of an industry pivot set into motion almost solely due to government subsidization may not entirely make sense. Who would have figured?

Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

Germany just got done lecturing Qatar on human rights during the World Cup only to sign a 15-year gas deal with the Sharia-run country…

The entire German political establishment went into a rage after FIFA banned the pro-LGBT “OneLove” armband at the World Cup. Germany’s economics minister, Robert Habeck of the Green Party, told the German national team they should defy the threat of sanctions and wear the armband anyway. Various government officials protested the move, including Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who wore a OneLove armband during the opening game while cheering on the German national team.

Now, immediately after the “scandal,” Germany is proudly announcing a new gas deal with none other than Qatar — a deal Habeck has labeled as “super.” The deal may represent an energy coup for the new government, but perhaps just as important is that the deal demonstrates the German left-liberal establishment’s raw political and social engineering power — the amazing ability to virtue signal and then completely contradict that same virtue signaling a week later with zero repercussions.

It is important to remember that European foreign and energy policy is value-based, and while Qatar’s actions last week were abominable, Germany is forward-looking. Yes, Sharia-run Qatar is still known for its persecution of women and LGBT groups, and sure, Qatar has a far more oppressive, non-democratic system than Russia, and yes, there are still plenty of instances of outright slavery in Qatar, but in the words of Habeck, “15 years is great.”

He is, after all, referring to the fact that the LNG contract will begin running in 2026 and end in 2041.

German Football Federation (DFB) President Bernd Neuendorf, left, talks to German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, right, wearing the One Love armband on the tribune prior to the World Cup group E soccer match between Germany and Japan, at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

How will Germany respond to future violations of human rights by Qatar? Will Germany pick up its gas in rainbow-colored tankers? Will it print special edition rainbow-colored euros to send to Qatari banks? Of course, this is all a bit of mockery, but the meaningless sentiment behind the “OneLove” armband is in essence the same strategy, and in reality, one could imagine such stunts at least being proposed by the “Twitter class” running PR for Germany’s current government.

The left is aided by the fact that the majority of German population continuously fails to process any contradiction in the German government’s smug support for “OneLove” armbands in Qatar while at the same time signing a gas deal with Qatar worth billions. While there may be some isolated grumblings in German media and the political classes, nobody in the left-liberal establishment, especially anyone with any real power among the Social Democrats or Greens, will truly dare to call out this absurdity.

The same element is at work as when the liberal darling Justin Trudeau crushing the trucker protests in Canada by literally freezing protesters’ bank accounts and seizing their property or when Gavin Newsom dined at California’s finest restaurant without a mask in violation of lockdown rules while calling those protesting lockdowns as dangerous and heartless. These politicians, just as the left-liberals in Germany, can blatantly violate the standards and values they pretend to promote because they can — because Big Tech, the media, academia, and the West’s various cultural establishments have created a force field around, rendering them nearly impervious to being held accountable for their hypocrisy.

As N.S. Lyons writes, “Hypocrisy… is simply a display of power, so the more blatant it is the better. Hypocrisy is a concrete demonstration of living without having to fear consequences.”

In this photo released by the Qatari Amiri Diwan, German Economy and Climate Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck shakes hands with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in Doha, Qatar, Sunday, March 20, 2022. (Amiri Diwan via AP)

The reality is the gas deal with Qatar is an example of hypocrisy, but also realpolitik, even if the left-liberals would never admit it.

Germany needs gas, but it cannot obtain the amount it needs without violating its own so-called moral standards, which is why it is reaching out to all those “detestable” countries such as Qatar, which are extremely anti-gay, but also quite Brown, a combination which creates a great deal of confusion in the German mind. Interestingly, the realpolitik deal with Qatar was necessitated by Germany actually ignoring realpolitik and abandoning Russian resources, but Russians are unapologetically White and not very happy about gay people, which is far easier for the German mind to process.

Overall, there is a remarkable lack of realpolitik from the German political establishment, and some German industrial leaders, watching their fortunes potentially slip away, understand this. They may have been the ones whipping the inept Habeck to do something, anything, to secure Germany’s energy supply. However, this one act of realpolitik with Qatar will not save Germany, and a general inability to pursue national interests across a Europe still beholden to not only U.S. interests but also America’s cultural hegemony, is costing Europe dearly.

Russia and its resources are still there, and while what has happened to Ukraine is a tragedy, there are still those begging Europe to reverse course. If Germany’s Qatar gas deal flies in the face of the “liberal values” Germany portends to promote, then what real moral basis does Germany have for extending sanctions against Russia? It is a fair question. In Qatar, after all, they do not even bother with elections, and as independent opinion polls have historically shown, Putin is truly a popular leader who is legitimately elected time after time — far more popular than many of the leaders in Europe’s “liberal democracies.”

The reality is that Germany could, for the most part, avert its entire economic crisis by reverting to cheap Russian energy and resources. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been ridiculed for calling an end to sanctions on Russia, arguing that Europeans are suffering more than Russians due to these sanctions. In light of the Qatar deal, Germany has little in terms of moral ground to stand on when it comes to its criticisms against Hungary, but it will continue to pretend like it does. In fact, it will likely double down on trying to remove Orbán from office. Deflection can do wonders in politics.

What is now quite clear is that Russia is not even capable of taking over Ukraine, let alone invading Germany or any other NATO country, and this war has proven it. Armed with this incredible knowledge, and with Russia’s glaring weakness on display, now would be the opportune time to press for peace and restore economic relations. Deals with Russia may not be in Europe’s “moral” interest, but neither are deals with Qatar. The U.S. has long partaken in illegal invasions of other countries, coup plots, and false flag operations, and all of this has never been a basis for Europe to stop doing business with the U.S.

Of course, the U.S., and in turn, the German media, would fight tooth and nail against such a dramatic foreign policy turnaround vis-à-vis Russia, even if some within Germany’s political establishment are secretly hoping for the war to come to an end without Ukraine necessarily pushing the Russians back to their border.

For now, moral grandstanding trumps raw national interest across Europe, and the German and European populations, even with gas deals from Qatar and the United States, will continue to pay for this new paradigm.

Kyiv’s mayor is warning residents that there’s real potential of a total blackout across the capital city of about three million people. This as Ukraine braces for more expected Russian airstrikes on its national energy infrastructure. 

“The temperature in the apartments may not differ much from the outside temperature,” Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko announced at a local security forum at a moment when temperatures have dipped below freezing, or -4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). “I appeal to the people…to have a supply of technical water, drinking water, durable food products, warm clothing,” he emphasized.

Authorities have scrambled to set up warming centers in various hard-hit cities across the country, also warning that some portions of cities may have to evacuate if the energy crisis worsens. Despite utility crews scrambling, an estimated 40% of the entire national energy infrastructure remains degraded or destroyed. 

Klitschko in his appeal told people that they must consider moving in with family or friends who have remained less impacted by the power cuts on the outskirts of Kyiv.

The Kremlin has meanwhile defended its strategy of targeting Ukrainian energy as “legitimate”. According to a New York Times update: 

As Ukrainian officials warned that Moscow was preparing to launch yet another wave of missile strikes aimed at destroying the nation’s energy grid, Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday defended Moscow’s attacks, calling infrastructure a legitimate military target despite warnings by the United Nations that they could amount to war crimes.

Sergei V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, spoke at a news conference hours after Ukrainian officials said that Russian attacks had disabled the power grid in the southern city of Kherson and six million people across the country were still without power after previous assaults.

Drawing on familiar Kremlin themes framing the Ukraine war as a battle with the West, Mr. Lavrov said that Russia is hitting targets that are used to replenish Ukrainian forces with weapons provided by Western nations and that the Ukrainian forces rely on to operate. He did not elaborate.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a meeting of NATO ministers in Bucharest, Romania condemned the “barbaric” Russian actions. 

“As Ukraine continues to seize momentum on the battlefield, President Putin continues to focus his ire and his fire on Ukraine’s civilian population,” he said. “Heat, water, electricity — for the children, for the elderly, for the sick — these are President Putin’s new targets. He’s hitting them hard. This brutalization of Ukraine’s people is barbaric.”