By Matthieu Martal, Goldman FICC trader and director
Sharp rates moves triggered violent equity sell off, as short squeeze dynamics fade and selling pressure intensifies on long duration and credit sensitive assets.
Fading the chase: Bears are pressing shorts again. The short covering dynamics appear to have come to its natural end after two months of aggressive risk unwind. HF Net exposure has reset back to 5y median from 10th %ile in May, with Gross still at highs, speaking of the magnitude of bear capitulation. Equities entered the week with over 90% of SPX constituents trading above 50d moving average, the 2m return spread between HF VIP GSTHHVIP stocks and most shorted names GSXUMSAL at 5y highs, and our beta factor pair GSPUBETA rallied +25% since May (99th %ile) – all pointing at downside asymmetry. This week’s reversal was sharp, with CTA thresholds getting hit and forecasted $32bn for sale on a flat tape in the next week and gamma positioning adding pressures on down moves.
Snapping rates: The sharp increase in US rates sparked a duration sell off as equities re-calibrate expensive valuations. Equity bond proxies GSXUBOND & GSXEBOND sold off aggressively alongside expensive software GSCBSF8X and renewables GSXURNEW. Rates vs equity dislocation has been well flagged but seemed not to matter until it does. The equity sensitivity to rising rates has picked up significantly over the past month as a result, with SPX vs US 10y yield 1m correlation close 20y lows. Also interesting to see the Cleveland Fed inflation pointing at an acceleration in August which could signal more room to go. Worth noting however that European equities are trading at an all-time 12m PE discount vs US equities in a sector adjusted basis and could be more resilient in a backdrop of duration recalibration.
Credit vs Consumer: Fitch unexpectedly cutting US credit grade accentuated the risk off move, adding pressure on low quality pockets of equities such as levered stocks GSXUDEBT & GSXEDEBT and weak balance sheet ones GSXUWBAL, GSXEWBAL. Not all pockets of equities are reflecting worsening consumer credit thought, with Big Ticket Items GSXUBIGT de-coupled from Lending Sensitive Stocks GSXULEND despite worsening consumer data. See charts below for more.
Cyclicals priced for perfection: Employment numbers continue to normalize slowly to more sustainable levels, supporting the soft landing trade. However, the soft landing narrative seems mostly priced in cyclical equities GSPUCYDE & GSPECYDE, with equities trading the normalization of costs from supply chain and strong pricing pent up demand despite fading tailwinds into 2H. Short covering have been a tailwind for cyclicals, especially in Europe where optimistic equity implied sentiment is most disconnected from PMIs. Timing the downturn remains difficult however, and the desk has seen investors favor expressions in most crowded long industries such as Autos GSXEAUTO, with EU Auto long short ratio reaching 2y highs and BMW earnings pointing at margin compression in the space.
Earnings jigsaw: European earnings have been underwhelming vs US beating more, however the reaction function has been poor. For instance, companies that beat tend to outperform SPX by 100bps, but in this reporting season, names beating consensus by >1std dev outperformed by only 22bps. On the other hand earnings miss are lagging by 62bps vs historically underperforming -211bps. This echoes the terrible performance of our sentiment Barra pair GSXUBFSL/ GSXUBFSS, with stocks with positive sentiment lagging the ones with negative sentiment the most in 10 years on a 3m window.
The 2m return spread between HF VIP stocks and Most Shorted stocks has reached some of the worst levels in the last five years.
Stocks with the positive sentiment 3m performance vs negative sentiment name has been the worst in 10 years
Earnings confusion, beats not rewarded, miss not punished
US Economic surprises remain very strong, supporting the pro-cyclical momentum in US and European equities
Bond Proxies sold off as US rates make new highs GSXUBOND & GSCB30YR
Big Ticket Items GSXUBIGT de-coupled from Lending Sensitive Stocks GSXULEND despite worsening consumer credit data
In a split decision, a federal appeals court on Friday upheld a controversial pandemic-era law in Connecticut that ended decades-old religious exemptions for vaccination requirements for children.
In a 2-1 decision (pdf), the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected a legal challenge to Connecticut’s Public Act 21-6 (pdf), a hotly contested law adopted in 2021 that repealed non-medical exemptions from immunization requirements for children in schools, colleges, and daycare facilities.
In 2021, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton dismissed a constitutional challenge to Public Act 21-6 brought by religious rights advocates, including We the Patriots USA Inc., the lead plaintiff.
The groups appealed Judge Arterton’s ruling, culminating in the Manhattan appeals court’s Aug. 4 decision.
The key argument put forward by We the Patriots USA Inc. was that a ban on religious vaccine exemptions violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Passage of Public Act 21-6 in April 2021 drew protests at the Connecticut state Capitol, with several thousand demonstrators attending, some holding or chanting slogans like “Defend religious liberty” and “Coercion is not consent.”
The appeals court’s majority opinion focused on the argument that ending religious exemptions for vaccines was a reasonable way to protect public health and safety, citing as justification a decline in the proportion of schoolchildren immunized against contagious diseases in Connecticut, especially measles.
Judges in the majority said that it was exceedingly rare for a court to object to a state’s school vaccination requirement and they didn’t want to “disturb this nearly unanimous consensus.”
“Only one court—state or federal, trial or appellate—has ever found plausible a claim of a constitutional defect in a state’s school vaccination mandate on account of the absence or repeal of a religious exemption,” wrote Judge Denny Chin on behalf of the majority.
The reference to “only one court” relates to a recent decision by U.S. District Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden, who ruled that Mississippi must provide religious exemptions to the state’s childhood vaccine requirement after a lawsuit alleged that health authorities violated the First Amendment.
The lone dissenting voice in the Connecticut case came from Judge Joseph F. Bianco, who criticized Judge Arterton for dismissing the case too quickly and not giving the plaintiffs enough time to fully explain how it goes against the constitutional right to religious freedom.
Judge Bianco also wrote in the opinion that the defendants failed to establish how Connecticut is different from the vast majority of other states that have a religious vaccine exemption with no apparent impairment to the safety of their residents.
“Although Connecticut asserts that this differing treatment between religious and secular exemptions was prompted by a substantial increase over recent years in the number of religious exemptions and an acute risk of an outbreak of disease, Connecticut fails to explain how forty-four states and the District of Columbia have maintained a religious exemption for mandatory student vaccinations without jeopardizing public health and safety,” Judge Bianco wrote.
Judge Bianco also questioned Connecticut’s argument that abolishing the religious exemption threatens public health by pointing out that Public Act 21-6 contains a legacy provision that lets students with current religious exemptions remain unvaccinated until they graduate high school.
“Connecticut also fails to articulate how having the “grandfather clause” in the Act that allows students with current religious exemptions to remain unvaccinated until they graduate high school (which could be over a decade if they were in kindergarten at the time of the passage of the Act) is consistent with its position that the elimination of the religious exemption was necessary to prevent an acute risk of an outbreak of disease among students,” the judge wrote.
Reactions
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong issued a statement praising the appeals court’s decision, focusing on the court’s key argument that ending the religious exemption promotes public health.
“This decision is a full and resounding affirmation of the constitutionality and legality of Connecticut’s vaccine requirements,” Mr. Tong said. “Vaccines save lives — this is a fact beyond dispute.”
“The legislature acted responsibly and well within its authority to protect the health of Connecticut families and stop the spread of preventable disease,” he continued. “We will continue to vigorously defend our state’s strong and necessary public health laws.”
The lead plaintiffs, who argued that Connecticut violated their constitutional rights, reacted critically.
“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the removal of the religious exemption in Connecticut does not infringe upon the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment, or the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law,” Brian Festa, co-founder and vice president of We the Patriots USA Inc., said in a statement.
Norm Pattis, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, praised the dissenting judge and vowed to press for a full 13-judge appeals court review of the case.
“We think the dissent got it right,” he said in a statement. “The case raises grave first amendment issues about the role of religion in American life.”
“We will ask the Second Circuit for re-argument and an en banc hearing,” he added.
We have seen the fastest Federal Reserve hiking cycle in a generation. Interest rates have risen from near zero to over five percent in little over 16 months.
Such a quick increase has had unprecedented affect on bank deposits, leading to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this year.
But what effect has it had on cryptocurrencies?
Using data from www.coinmarketcap.com , we can see that the volume traded of bitcoin has fallen. Which would be in line with reduced liquidity.
To get an idea of broader liquidity in the crypto space, I try and track the market capitalisation of the biggest stablecoins. There seems to be some sort of relationship, but an unstable one at best. The theories around stablecoin and bitcoin vary. One line of thinking is that stablecoin is a gateway to crypto, so surging stablecoin market cap points to more money entering the system. The other line of thinking is that when people are nervous about bitcoin price, they sell bitcoin and place the proceeds into stablecoin. The chart below does not really help to disentangle which theory is correct.
Another way to look at it is the size of stablecoin market capitalisation to bitcoin market cap. Here the relationship is more interesting, showing that stablecoin has grown faster than bitcoin. If this relationship holds, it would suggest bitcoin is overvalued relative to current stablecoin market cap.
What could have caused bitcoin to rally without liquidity? Well positioning was very negative at the beginning of 2023. CME Bitcoin futures had moved back to negative bias at the beginning of 2023. Still negative today, but less so.
Also listed bitcoin play, Microstategy, saw its short interest rise to over 40% of shares outstanding, a level that in my experience suggests the risk of a short squeeze being very high, which is what has happened. The stock is up 175% this year, and short interest has fallen back to 28%.
Liquidity driven and speculative assets are often driven by technical flows. Generally speaking, you want to be long bitcoin when 20 day weekly average is moving higher, and short when 20 day weekly average is moving lower. At the beginning of 2023, it was turning higher, but as of today, it is in no man’s land.
Putting it all together, bearish positioning was excessive at the beginning of the year, but positioning is much more neutral, and liquidity is still declining in this market. The outlook is bearish to me.
Today, some people who identify as transgender expect their doctors to pick up on the unspoken fact that sometimes “men” complaining of stomach pain are actually women who identify as men.
For doctors to be oblivious to—or ignore—basic human biology, such as the differences between male and female, already has caused great harm, including death, said Dr. Jeffrey Barrows, senior vice president of bioethics and public policy for the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA).
“Fortunately, those very tragic cases are rare; but they’re likely to become more common,” Dr. Barrows said. “So it gets to the point that we in the health care profession must keep track of the true biologic sex of the patient.”
But if in the process of trying to assess and provide life-saving care, a doctor notes the biological sex of a patient—on a chart, for example—he or she can be at risk of being fired, Dr. Barrows said.
The medical field largely has accepted radical gender ideology as science, doctors told The Epoch Times.
Doctors who speak against it risk losing their jobs, Dr. Barrows said.
Differing Health Issues
In 2019, the New England Journal of Medicine described the case of a woman who had undergone procedures to look like a man. She lost her baby because doctors failed to diagnose her as pregnant.
That’s just one example that illustrates how knowing and acknowledging a patient’s biological sex matters.
Sometimes, the true biological sex of a person who identifies as transgender or nonbinary is not immediately obvious, even to a physician, Dr. Barrows said.
Yet “one of our members was recently fired from his position because he wrote the biologic sex [of a transgender-identifying individual] in the medical record” of the patient.
Some health issues affect men and women differently, and those issues often require very different treatments, Dr. Barrows said.
Heart attack symptoms in men, for example, most often include chest pain. Women, however, might experience nausea or heartburn.
In an emergency, a person who convincingly appears as the opposite sex, may cause a doctor to miss symptoms that would lead to a correct diagnosis in time to provide rapid treatment, Dr. Barrows said. And the misunderstanding could prove fatal.
Purely medically speaking, he said, what’s “best for that transgender patient … is for a doctor not to have to guess the sex of the patient.”
It makes sense that “there must be some way to keep track of the biological sex of the patient,” he said. “The best way to do that is in the medical record.”
But now, with the explosion of transgenderism, some medical organizations do not allow that information to be added to a medical record. Some see its notation as disrespectful to a patient who identifies as the opposite sex.
LGBT activist groups, such as the Human Rights Campaign, advise doctors to change patient forms to avoid hurting the feelings of transgender-identifying individuals.
“Revise client forms,” the group’s website guidance on health care reads.
“Allow options for male/female/transgender and use neutral terms like “partner” or “spouse,” rather than “single,” “married,” or “divorced.’
The organization, which has a powerful voice in policy-making in the United States and around the world, did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Willfully introducing confusion into life-and-death situations is “insanity,” Dr. Barrows said.
Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also suggest it’s important to collect sexual orientation and gender identity information.
“Without this information, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients and their specific health care needs cannot be identified, the health disparities they experience cannot be addressed, and important health care services may not be delivered,” the CDC website reads.
‘Intense Pressure’ on Doctors
Whether or not doctors face punishment for transgender-related issues depends on where they work, Dr. Barrows said.
Currently, a CMDA lawsuit provides a permanent injunction against the federal government firing doctors because they refuse to perform a transgender procedure.
“But outside of that, the vast majority of the pressure and coercion to perform transgender procedures is unfortunately at the local level at the local hospital or hospital system,” Dr. Barrows said.
Another doctor, who asked to be identified only as Dr. Andrew, formerly worked at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Starting in 2019, he said he began facing “intense pressure” from his employer to follow policies meant to accommodate transgender patients.
The school issued a new general intake form that required patients to answer questions about gender identity and sexual behaviors in detail, he said.
Questions like these normally don’t appear on intake forms because they might threaten patient confidentiality or embarrass patients, Dr. Andrew said. Physicians usually ask those questions in private, he added.
Also, for patients from some cultures, questions like this on an intake form can be seen as a grave insult, he noted.
“It was inconceivable to me that some elderly woman from Bangladesh who didn’t speak English, who was brought in by her son, would be asked those sorts of questions, often by her children,” Dr. Andrew said.
He said VCU’s administration pressured students to introduce themselves by announcing preferred gender pronouns and that the school taught students to ask patients for their preferred gender pronouns.
Dr. Andrew was eventually fired for “poor clinic performance,” he said, even though patients consistently gave him five-star ratings.
“I think it’s coming from the accrediting agencies, as well as within medical education,” he said. “So you’re seeing it all over the country. You’re seeing it on the national level.”
The Epoch Times reached out to university officials for comment and was told one would be available by Aug. 3. No further communication was received.
Differing Approaches of States
State laws determine a doctor’s right to refuse to perform certain procedures or provide certain treatments, Dr. Barrows said.
Florida doctors are empowered by legislation for medical freedom signed in 2023 by Gov. Ron DeSantis, presently a Republican presidential candidate.
The landmark legislation “safeguards the free speech of doctors” and “provides a path for doctors to protect their license from medical accreditation boards that are attempting to punish them for speaking out against the medical establishment,” according to the governor’s office.
Other states take a different stance.
New Mexico, California, and Oregon encourage overruling a doctor’s conscientious objection, he said.
“I would be quite fearful that I could be put into a position where I am forced to do something against my conscience and not have nearly the legal protection that I would like to have,” Dr. Barrows said.
The transgender medicine field affects many medical specialties. Family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery, dermatology, urology, plastic surgery, and internal medicine all can encounter issues related to transgenderism.
“It’s hard to find a field that you could enter and deal with people that would not in some way be touched by the transgender issue,” Dr. Barrows said.
Christian doctors in all these specialties must carefully consider local laws before they decide where to work. Doctors of other religious faiths can face the same struggle, he said.
Being forced to perform procedures to further a patient’s transgender identity can go against deeply held religious beliefs, causing great distress for these doctors, Dr. Barrows said.
“I had a student that was very frustrated because they had actually been called in to help with hysterectomies on women that were identifying as male,” Dr. Barrows said. “Their uteruses were perfectly normal. They had done more of those procedures than they had delivered babies.”
The Transhuman Movement
Transgenderism is likely the vanguard of medical movements aiming to change humanity, Dr. Barrows said.
He predicts that medicine and technology to make people “transhuman”—or beyond human—is just around the corner. Experts have expressed similar concerns to The Epoch Times.
That way of thinking is in opposition to the idea of medicine, Dr. Barrows said. “The goals of medicine should be healing, restoration of health, and palliation, the limitation of suffering within the dying process.
“Medicine is never meant to be involved in the commodification of anybody.”
Commodification is the process of treating something as a commodity that can be bought and sold. People concerned about transhumanism say the transgender movement has turned human body parts into a commodity.
Even so, says Dr. Barrows, few doctors have fought back against the transgender movement.
“I think the vast majority are just keeping their heads down, doing what they can to avoid it because they don’t want to get too engaged and lose their job,” he said.
Many older doctors believe they can dodge the transgender issue until retirement, he said. But young doctors face an ideological obstacle course that may last the next several decades.
Dr. Barrows sympathizes with the struggle they’ll have in choosing how to best care for patients while avoiding “cancellation” for not embracing transgenderism.
“My heart really goes out to those that are relatively young and new in the health care profession.”
“Banana Republic”: Dershowitz Says Biden ‘Urged’ Garland To Indict Trump, Jack Smith ‘Could’ Be Indicted Under KKK Statute
During two recent Fox News interviews, Harvard Law professor (and former Jeffrey Epstein pal, and Trump impeachment attorney) Alan Dershowitz said that the prosecution of former President Donald Trump by the sitting president’s DOJ for contesting the 2020 election “looks like banana republic land.”
Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday to a four-count indictment over his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 US election. This comes on the heels of a 37-count indictment in June regarding Trump’s handling of classified documents.
“President Biden urged his attorney general to indict the man who he knew was going to be the leading opponent if against him,” Dershowitz told “Kudlow” guest host, David Asman. “That begins to look like banana republic land. That’s what happens when people in power are afraid of the democratic process. What they do is they seek the indictment and prosecution of the people who are running against them.”
“I have a constitutional right to vote against Donald Trump for the third time,” said Dershowitz. “I voted against him twice, I intend to vote against him again, but I want to have that right to vote against him and not have that right taken away from me by prosecutors and by the president, who wants to see him imprisoned. That’s just not the American way.”
Dershowitz also slammed the Biden administration over venue, arguing that the District of Columbia was a setup.
“This is a step in that direction, and also placing the case in the District of Columbia, which is 95% anti-Trump, putting it in front of a judge with a history of anti-Trump. If the government thinks they have a strong case, they ought to join the defense and agree to move it to West Virginia or Virginia and put it in front of another judge who doesn’t have a long history of anti-Trump attitudes,” he said, adding “So, I don’t believe he can get a fair trial in the District of Columbia.”
KKK statute?
In another Fox News interview, this time on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show, Dershowitz suggested that Special Counsel Jack Smith could be indicted for denying Trump his “constitutional rights” under a Ku Klux Klan statute.
“The indictment is based on lies, and the indictment itself contains a blatant lie by Jack Smith. He describes the speech of January 6th,” he said, adding “But he describes the speech in the indictment and deliberately and willfully leaves out the key words of the speech, namely that the president told his people to protest peacefully and patriotically.”
“By leaving out those words. It’s a lie by omission. And under the standards set out in the indictment, you know, Jack Smith could be indicted,” he continued. “Theoretically, it’s not going to happen, obviously, under the Ku Klux Klan statute that he says any people who conspire to deny somebody their constitutional rights is guilty of a crime.”
According to Dershowitz, “That would mean that Jack Smith tried to deny Trump his constitutional rights in this indictment.”
“I make that point not to argue that Jack Smith should be indicted, of course not. To make the point that the indictment is so broad, so wide, so all encompassing, it could include so much political conduct.”
Watch:
Dershowitz: Jack Smith “could also be indicted, theoretically … under the Ku Klux Klan statute [that says] ‘people who conspire to deny somebody their constitutional rights is guilty of a crime'” pic.twitter.com/CTmvYplVP9
The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki present an opportunity to demolish a cornerstone myth of American history — that those twin acts of mass civilian slaughter were necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender, and spare a half-million US soldiers who’d have otherwise died in a military conquest of the empire’s home islands.
Those who attack this mythology are often reflexively dismissed as unpatriotic, ill-informed or both. However, the most compelling witnesses against the conventional wisdom were patriots with a unique grasp on the state of affairs in August 1945 — America’s senior military leaders of World War II.
Let’s first hear what they had to say, and then examine key facts that led them to their little-publicized convictions:
General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
Ralph Bird, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss…In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Putting out feelers through third-party diplomatic channels, the Japanese were seeking to end the war weeks before the atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945. Japan’s navy and air forces were decimated, and its homeland subjected to a sea blockade and allied bombing carried out against little resistance.
The Americans knew of Japan’s intent to surrender, having intercepted a July 12 cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, informing Japanese ambassador to Russia Naotake Sato that “we are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad.”
Togo told Sato to “sound [Russian diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov] out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war.” Togo initially told Sato to obscure Japan’s interest in using Russia to end the war, but just hours later, he withdrew that instruction, saying it would be “suitable to make clear to the Russians our general attitude on ending the war”— to include Japan’s having “absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war.”
Japan’s central concern was the retention of its emperor, Hirohito, who was considered a demigod. Even knowing this — and with many US officials feeling the retention of the emperor could help Japanese society through its postwar transition —the Truman administration continued issuing demands for unconditional surrender, offering no assurance that the emperor would be spared humiliation or worse.
In a July 2 memorandum, Secretary of War Henry Stimson drafted a terms-of-surrender proclamation to be issued at the conclusion of that month’s Potsdam Conference. He advised Truman that, “if…we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance.”
Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes, however, continued rejecting recommendations to give assurances about the emperor. The final Potsdam Declaration, issued July 26, omitted Stimson’s recommended language, sternly declaring, “Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them.”
One of those terms could reasonably be interpreted as jeopardizing the emperor: “There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.”
At the same time the United States was preparing to deploy its formidable new weapons, the Soviet Union was moving armies from the European front to northeast Asia.
In May, Stalin told the US ambassador that Soviet forces should be positioned to attack the Japanese in Manchuria by August 8. In July, Truman predicted the impact of the Soviets opening a new front. In a diary entry made during the Potsdam Conference, he wrote that Stalin assured him “he’ll be in the Jap War on August 15th.Fini Japs when that comes about.”
Right on Stalin’s original schedule, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan two days after the August 6 bombing of Hiroshima. That same day — August 8 — Emperor Hirohito told the country’s civilian leaders that he still wanted to pursue a negotiated surrender that would preserve his reign.
On August 9, Soviet attacks commenced on three fronts. News of Stalin’s invasion of Manchuria prompted Hirohito to call a new meeting to discuss surrender — at 10 am, one hour before the strike on Nagasaki. The final surrender decision came on August 10.
The Soviet timeline makes the atomic bombings all the more troubling: One would think a US government that’s appropriately hesitant to incinerate and irradiate hundreds of thousands of civilians would want to first see how a Soviet declaration of war affected Japan’s calculus.
As it turns out, the Japanese surrender indeed appears to have been prompted by the Soviet entry into the war on Japan — not by the atomic bombs. “The Japanese leadership never had photo or video evidence of the atomic blast and considered the destruction of Hiroshima to be similar to the dozens of conventional strikes Japan had already suffered,” wrote Josiah Lippincott at The American Conservative.
Sadly, the evidence points to a US government determined to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities as an end in itself, to such an extent that it not only ignored Japan’s interest in surrender, but worked to ensure that surrender was delayed until after upwards of 210,000 people — disproportionately women, children and elderly — were killed in the two cities.
Make no mistake: This was a deliberate targeting of civilian populations. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because they were pristine, and could thus fully showcase the bombs’ power. Hiroshima was home to a small military headquarters, but the fact that both cities had gone untouched by a strategic bombing campaignthat began 14 months earlier certifies their military and industrial insignificance.
“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” Eisenhower would later say. “I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”
According to his pilot, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US Army Forces Pacific, was “appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster.”
“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb,” wrote journalist Norman Cousins, “I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted…He saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
What then, was the purpose of devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs?
A key insight comes from Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard. In 1945, Szilard organized a petition, signed by 70 Manhattan Project scientists, urging Truman not to use atomic bombs against Japan without first giving the country a chance to surrender, on terms that were made public.
In May 1945, Szilard met with Secretary of State Byrnes to urge atomic restraint. Byrnes wasn’t receptive to the plea. Szilard — the scientist who’d drafted the pivotal 1939 letter from Albert Einstein urging FDR to develop an atomic bomb — recounted:
“[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.“
Whether the atomic bomb’s audience was in Tokyo or Moscow, some in the military establishment championed alternative ways to demonstrate its power.
Lewis Strauss, Special Assistant to the Navy Secretary, said he proposed “that the weapon should be demonstrated over… a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… [It] would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will.”
Strauss said Navy Secretary Forrestal “agreed wholeheartedly,” but Truman ultimately decided an optimal demonstration required burning hundreds of thousands of noncombatants and laying waste to their cities. The buck stops there.
The particular means of inflicting these mass murders — a solitary object dropped from a plane at 31,000 feet — helps warp Americans’ evaluation of its morality. Using an analogy, historian Robert Raico cultivates ethical clarity:
“Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children?”
The claim that dropping the atomic bombs saved a half-million American lives is more than just empty: Truman’s stubborn refusal to provide advance assurances about the retention of Japan’s emperor arguably cost American lives.
That’s true not only of a war against Japan that lasted longer than it needed to, but also of a Korean War precipitated by the US-invited Soviet invasion of Japanese-held territory in northeast Asia. More than 36,000 US service members died in the Korean War — among a staggering 2.5 million total military and civilian dead on both sides of the 38th Parallel.
We like to think of our system as one in which the supremacy of civilian leaders acts as a rational, moderating force on military decisions. The needless atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — against the wishes of World War II’s most revered military leaders — tells us otherwise.
Sadly, the destructive effects of the Hiroshima myth aren’t confined to Americans’ understanding of events in August 1945. “There are hints and notes of the Hiroshima myth that persist all through modern times,” State Department whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren said on The Scott Horton Show.
The Hiroshima myth fosters a depraved indifference to civilian casualties associated with US actions abroad, whether it’s women and children slaughtered in a drone strike in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands dead in an unwarranted invasion of Iraq, or a baby who dies for lack of imported medicine in US-sanctioned Iran.
Ultimately, to embrace the Hiroshima myth is to embrace a truly sinister principle: That, in the correct circumstances, it’s right for governments to intentionally harm innocent civilians. Whether the harm is inflicted by bombs or sanctions, it’s a philosophy that mirrors the morality of al Qaeda.
That’s not the only thread connecting 1945 to 2023, as Truman’s insistence on unconditional surrender is echoed by the Biden administration’s utter disinterest in pursuing a negotiated peace in Ukraine.
Today, confronting an adversary with 6,000 nuclear warheads — each a thousand times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan — Biden’s own stubborn perpetuation of war puts us all at risk of sharing the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s innocents.
Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com
Two doctors are suing the Medical Board of California over the state’s law that forces physicians and those who teach them to accept radical political and racial indoctrination in order to continue practicing medicine.
Dr. Azadeh Khatibi is suing the Medical Board of California over California’s requirement that continuing medical education courses in the state include discussion of “implicit bias” in a 2019 photo. (Courtesy of Pacific Legal Foundation)
AB 241, signed in October 2019 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who supports DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—initiatives, requires all doctors in the state to log 50 continuing medical education (CME) hours every two years in order to retain their medical licenses. The left-wing Equal Justice Society, based in Oakland, took credit for drafting the language of the bill.
Supporters say the law is part of an effort to mitigate supposed health care disparities based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, but critics say it constitutes unconstitutional thought control.
Implicit Bias-Related Bills
AB 241 is just one of many implicit bias-related bills that Mr. Newsom has signed in recent years.
SB 464 mandates implicit bias training for perinatal health care providers in hospitals and birth centers. AB 1407 requires implicit bias training as a graduation requirement for nursing students.
SB 263 requires that real estate brokers and salespeople take implicit bias courses. AB 242 mandates implicit bias training for judges, court personnel, and attorneys.
California is also not averse to punishing doctors for refusing to toe the official line.
AB 2098 penalized doctors and surgeons for disagreeing with the government’s narrative on the COVID-19 virus, deeming the dissemination of “misinformation or disinformation related” to the virus to be “unprofessional conduct.” Federal Judge William Shubb, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, issued a preliminary injunction in January 2023 blocking the law.
‘Freedom’
The legal complaint (pdf) in Khatibi v. Lawson was filed on Aug. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that the mandate in AB 241 violates the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as a permanent injunction restraining the Medical Board of California from enforcing the mandate.
Lead plaintiff Dr. Azadeh Khatibi, an ophthalmologist whose first name means “freedom,” was born in Iran and immigrated to the United States when she was six years old.
But she “never imagined that she would escape the oppression of her childhood only to face creeping collectivism and unfree speech in America,” according to the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a national public interest law firm that challenges government abuses and is representing her in the lawsuit.
Ms. Khatibi teaches CME courses.
The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Dr. Marilyn Singleton, a California anesthesiologist, and Do No Harm, a national medical advocacy organization. Do No Harm previously filed a federal lawsuit against Pfizer’s race-based fellowships.
Ms. Singleton, who is black, teaches CME courses. She wrote in a February op-ed in The Washington Post that the implicit bias teaching mandate advances the “malignant false assumption that white people are inherently racist.”
“It is a message that I believe is harmful both to physicians and patients,” she wrote.
According to the PLF, implicit bias means that “medical professionals unconsciously treat patients differently based on their race or other immutable characteristics.”
Evidence that implicit bias exists is “far from established fact” and “evidence shows that improper implicit bias training can backfire, causing anger, frustration, and resentment among those taking the training.”
‘Lacks Evidence’
The legal complaint itself states that “the efficacy of implicit bias training in reducing disparities and negative outcomes in healthcare is controversial in the medical community and lacks evidence.”
The plaintiffs “prefer to teach different, evidence-based subjects” and “do not want to espouse the government’s view on implicit bias.” They also “do not want to be compelled to include discussion of implicit bias in the continuing medical education courses they teach.”
Joshua Thompson, director of equality and opportunity litigation at PLF, said although his clients are medical practitioners they are contesting the statute as CME instructors.
“They don’t want to have to speak this nonsense. So we’re challenging this as a violation of their First Amendment rights as speakers,” he told The Epoch Times in an interview.
“The last thing we want a doctor performing an appendectomy or brain surgery to be doing is thinking, ‘hmmm, maybe I should be thinking about the race of this patient when I’m performing this medical function,’” Mr. Thompson said.
“To inject race into the doctor-patient relationship like this can only produce bad results.”
“Implicit bias itself is highly suspect, but even if you grant some sort of existence of implicit bias, the idea that you can shrink that through forcing people to think about race is highly controversial, and now forcing doctors to do this in every single CME course is just crazy town,” he said.
‘Policing People’s Inner Thoughts’
Mr. Thompson said the term “implicit bias” means that “your subconscious thoughts and feelings result in real-world actions, that your conscious thoughts and decisions can be undone by these feelings that you may not even know you have.
“And the idea that we should be policing people’s inner thoughts and subjective feelings is unscientific. Hunches or other things have no place in medicine.”
What is “even less scientific is the idea that you can coach out these implicit biases through trainings that neither the CME provider nor the doctor wants to hear.
“So the existence of it is highly controversial, and the purported remedy is even more controversial. And now, California is requiring every continuing medical education course to include this,” he said.
“It’s nuts,” Mr. Thompson added.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Medical Board of California for comment.
Spokesperson Alexandria Schembra said by email, “The Board declines to comment due to pending litigation.”
Busch said his ‘freedom-loving’ ancestors would have “rolled over in their graves” knowing woke management would’ve used a transgender person to advertise Bud Light.
“They were very patriotic — they loved this country and what it stood for. They believed that transgender, gays — that sort of thing — was all a very personal issue. They loved this country because it is a free country and people are allowed to do what they want, but it was never meant to be on a beer can and never meant to be pushed into people’s faces,” Busch told TMZ host Harvey Levin.
Levin pointed out the reason behind the Dylan Mulvaney ad was all about inclusiveness, and Busch was asked about his feelings about the TikTok video featuring the man who thinks he’s a woman:
“You know, I think people who drink beer, I think they’re your common folk. I think they are the blue-collar worker who goes and works hard every single day.
“The last thing they want pushed down their throat or to be drinking is a beer can with that kind of message on it. I just don’t think that’s what they’re looking for. They want their beer to be truly American, truly patriotic, as it always has been. Truly, America’s beer, which Bud Light was and probably isn’t any longer.”
Busch was asked why he does not believe the beer is American anymore. He said the typical customer “is not into transgenders … People who drink beer care about wholesome things … and certain things should be kept private.”
Levin said the controversy Bud Light has stumbled into is due to the prejudice against transgender people:
“Absolutely it’s prejudice… Look, I remember my dad telling me stories that there were bars in LA that used to have signs that said, ‘No dogs, no Jews.’ So there’s been a history of prejudice in the country. People get over certain things. It’s happened to Jews. It’s happened to black people. It’s happening to gay people, and it’s happening to transgender people. So to me, it is absolutely prejudice.”
Busch responded:
“Well, I just think prejudice against Jews against Black people, those kinds of things are a totally different deal.”
Around the 8:40 mark, Busch told Levin:
“I thought we were going to talk about my book … but here we are talking about the politics of transgender people.”
Here’s the ten minute interview:
That book is called “Family Reins: The Extraordinary Rise and Epic Fall of an American Dynasty Hardcover.”
Yet a classic trap by TMZ. Busch should have known better than even agreeing to be interviewed by the Hollywood tabloid news organization.
A former special operator who rescued refugees from Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in 2021 and whose business was destroyed by a CNN story he says was false and defamatory, won a significant procedural victory in a Florida court in his libel lawsuit against the network.
In an order allowing Zachary Young to sue for punitive damages, Judge William S. Henry in Bay County quoted startling language from CNN employees’ internal emails and texts regarding the story that aired on Nov. 11, 2021.
Mr. Young, a security consultant with extensive military and government security experience, launched an effort to rescue at-risk people, primarily foreign companies or agencies’ employees and family members.
He advertised to attract corporate sponsors for the hefty sums required to perform the kinds of risky extractions usually confined to the pages of technothrillers.
His company rescued more than 20 people, most of them at-risk females, according to his amended complaint filed on Sept. 21, 2022.
Two of his clients were Audible, the audiobook company, and financial news giant Bloomberg. Another was a German firm that subcontracted for humanitarian missions; and an organization helping Afghan Christians.
CNN’s story falsely portrayed him as extorting money from desperate people and not necessarily delivering them to safety, he said in his lawsuit.
His business, which he said relied on his reputation and discretion, dried up immediately.
Mr. Young said he was only given two hours to respond before the story was set to air.
He said he told CNN’s reporter the report was inaccurate and that he needed more time to respond to it. The network ran the story anyway.
“And while this court can force CNN to remedy the monetary damage it caused Young,” the amended complaint stated, “CNN can never remedy the fact that they sacrificed actual human lives for the sake of ratings.
“CNN painted a caricature of Young as a fly-by-night extortionist, but Young is a highly trained and effective security professional. He was unquestionably qualified to extract civilians from Afghanistan, and before CNN’s slander, he saved dozens of lives.
“CNN’s defamation, however, has rendered Young unable to provide these rare and vital services, and there just aren’t many other options out there. CNN’s vicious and self-righteous slander removed Young from the equation and condemned an unknowable number of Afghans to death,” the complaint continued.
Mr. Young’s lawyer, Devin “Vel” Freedman of Miami, told The Epoch Times in an email that: “Punitive damages are important because they allow the jury to punish wrongdoers [here CNN] for their misconduct and thereby deter both CNN, and other media outlets, from engaging in similar misconduct in the future.”
“The upward limit on punitive damages is about 10 times the compensatory damages figure, so punitive damages can get quite expensive for defendants.”
CNN’s lead attorney, Deanna K. Shullman of West Palm Beach, did not respond to requests for comment emailed by The Epoch Times.
The lawsuit included a moment-by-moment account of the story that aired, including color screenshots. One contained an unflattering photo of Mr. Young laid over an image appearing to be desperate Afghans trying to get out of the country.
At the bottom, it said, “CNN Investigation: Afghans trying to flee Taliban face black markets, exorbitant fees, no guarantee of safety or success.”
Black-Market Services
“In doing so they undeniably make the accusation that Young is the purveyor of black-market services and the one exploiting desperate Afghans,” said the lawsuit, filed by Mr. Freedman.
The news story aired on “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Nov. 11, 2021, and its website and on Facebook “on or about” on Nov. 12, 2021. An article version followed on the website on Nov. 13.
Mr. Young demanded on March 17, 2022, that CNN retract the “false and defamatory statements.”
CNN issued what it termed a “correction,” noting that the words “black market” were in error and did not apply to Mr. Young. The network apologized.
The story was later deleted from CNN’s websites and social media accounts.
In his court order, Judge Henry, of Panama City, laid out why he was allowing Mr. Young to sue for punitive damages. He referred to evidence submitted by the plaintiff.
“The proffer demonstrates evidence of actual and express malice along with sufficiently egregious or outrageous behavior on the part of defendant’s [employees] which was either condoned and ratified by defendant, defendant participated in, or for which defendant was negligent.
“Without detailing each and every piece of evidence proffered, the following summary of the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate defendant’s employees’ behavior and defendant’s acts, participation or negligence which support the court’s conclusion.“
‘What a Punchable Face’
Judge Henry listed “the manner that the segments were pieced together” with chyrons scrolling along the bottom of the screen, the “tone and tenor,” and the implication that Mr. Young engaged in “black-market operations” and charged “exorbitant prices.”
Judge Henry cited Mr. Young having informed the defendant in advance there were inaccuracies in the story.
He said: “The internal emails/messages between defendant’s employees that indicate an animus towards and a motivation to harm [plaintiff]—’We gonna nail this Zachary Young mf***er,’ ‘what a punchable face,’ ‘what a s***bag,’ ‘this guy is an a-hole,’ ‘it’s your funeral bucko,’ and ‘he’s a s***.'”
Judge Henry’s order contained the unexpurgated invective. He continued, saying the network’s rush to air the story without complete information, clearing up the questions Mr. Young raised or allowing him to respond fully.
Judge Henry stated other internal communications suggesting news employees knew the story had problems.
They included comments such as: “Very much not ready for prime time;” “There’s no rush;” “The story is full of holes like Swiss cheese;” it was not “fleshed out for digital;” “We need to pause this until we find out;” the story was “pretty flawed and we should consider foregoing the write and just having the video programmed;” and “My fundamental question is not answered but on TV it is less of a problem.”
The story was approved by CNN’s oversight committee and legal department, containing senior upper-level executives, Judge Henry wrote.
Some internal messages expressed surprise that an upper management review panel approved it, including representatives of CNN’s legal, news, and standards and practices departments.
Judge Henry cited CNN’s omitting or burying pertinent facts its employees knew “especially as it relates to plaintiffs, specifically that operators had been successful in extracting individuals and that plaintiffs did not work directly with individuals but rather only for sponsors.”
And, he said, CNN republished the on-air segment, published the online article, and disseminated them through Facebook and Twitter posts “with very limited retraction.”
In his order, Judge Henry permitted Mr. Young to sue for punitive damages and add “allegations as to republication of the segment on the show hosted by Jim Acosta.”
The evidence put forth by Mr. Young’s team provided a reasonable basis to establish CNN either knew statements were false, published them while possessing contradictory information, or published them “with reckless disregard despite awareness of their probably falsity,” Judge Henry wrote.
He said the plaintiff establishes “actual malice” and “express malice.”
Actual malice is defined by USlegal as “a statement made with a reckless disregard for truth.”
Express malice is when the statement is made with intent to harm.
“In total,” Judge Henry said in his court order, “Plaintiffs have proffered evidence of ill will, hostility, evil intent on the part of defendant’s employees in putting together and airing the on-air segment and digital media pieces.”
China & Russia Sent Huge Naval Flotilla Toward Alaska; US Responds By Dispatching Destroyers
A large joint Russia-China military exercise which is being described as unprecedented in size has sparked alarm in the Pentagon, given it took place off Alaska, causing the US to dispatch four navy warships and aerial assets in the same waters, a very rare move itself of significant size.
The drills by Washington’s most powerful nuclear-armed rivals was called in The Wall Street Journal“the largest such flotilla to approach American shores” in recent history, but it never entered American territorial waters.
It was revealed by US defense officials in a Sunday morning WSJ report, which detailed that “Eleven Russian and Chinese ships steamed close to the Aleutian Islands,” and further, “The ships, which never entered U.S. territorial waters and have since left, were shadowed by four U.S. destroyers and P-8 Poseidon aircraft.”
One analyst and retired Navy captain cited in the report said it was “a historical first” and “highly provocative” – particularly given the backdrop of the raging Ukraine war and rising Taiwan tensions. The flotilla came close to Alaska last week but has since left, US officials indicated.
Alaskan Senator Dan Sullivan (R) said in a Sunday Fox News interview that Congressional leaders were briefed by the Pentagon last week when the Chinese and Russian ships were patrolling.
He explained: “Whether you live in Alaska like I do, or on the East Coast of the United States, a very large surface action task force between our two main adversaries, probing very closely to United States shores is concerning.”
“It just solidifies this idea that we’ve entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow who are increasingly aggressive,” he added, striking a hawkish tone. However, he failed to mention the very regular US naval and aerial patrols not far off mainland China, as well as in the Taiwan Strait – somewhat parallel to moves now being made by China and Russia near Alaska. Beijing likely sees itself as merely “answering” the prior US naval provocations in places like the South China Sea.
Both sides of the rivalry, in conducting such ‘threatening’ joint drills and flotillas tend to emphasize that such patrols only take place in international waters. The Pentagon regularly touts its “freedom of navigation” operations in China’s own backyard.
But the Pentagon’s response to this China-Russia provocation was something Sen. Sullivan has described as equally unprecedented, given that multiple US warships were quickly dispatched in Alaskan waters:
“We ramped that up significantly. Four U.S. destroyers and air assets, P-8’s, that were tracking and monitoring this large-scale Russian-Chinese task force quite closely. So that is a significant improvement,” said Sullivan. “That’s a lot of naval power up here demonstrating American resolve.”
In recent years, even significantly prior to Russia’s ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, which has brought NATO and Moscow to the brink of direct war, the Chinese and Russian navies had already been ramping up coordinated activity in places like the Sea of Japan and near Japanese islands, which Tokyo has protested as an unwarranted intrusion.
There were joint Russia-Chinese naval maneuvers in the Bearing Sea, near Alaska, in 2021 and 2022 as well, but never on a scale of what’s now being described of this fresh incident. This appears a sign of Putin and Xi’s pledge of “no limits friendship” – first articulated nearer the start of the Ukraine war. Both countries are flexing their military might just off the North American continent.
