Month: March 2024

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A former high school girls’ volleyball player who was injured in a game by an opponent identifying as transgender is calling out a Democrat congresswoman who claims that having transgender athletes in female sports doesn’t hurt anyone.

Payton McNabb, a 19-year-old from North Carolina, was struck in the face by a male who identifies as transgender in her varsity high school volleyball match in September 2022. The male knocked Ms. McNabb unconscious in a spike—a move intended to hit the ball in the game.

The incident forced Ms. McNabb to spend months recovering from headaches and concentration problems. She also missed the remainder of her volleyball season.

Ms. McNabb said she suffered from a neck injury, concussion, lasting vision impairment, and partial paralysis in the right side of her body, as well as mental anguish.

“Just getting back from my second doctor appointment this week, a year and a half later, I’m definitely going to have to disagree,” Ms. McNabb posted Thursday on X. “My life is forever changed because of an injury by a boy. So yeah … men have harmed women in our sports. But as long as your feelings don’t get hurt, right?,”

Ms. McNabb was responding to a clip of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who made an emotional argument during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing over a bill that, among other things, would prohibit male athletes from representing the United States in future women’s Olympic competitions.

“Why are you doing this?” a teary Ms. Jayapal asked the bill’s sponsors. “It is a tiny portion of people across the country that identify as trans, and not a single one of them is doing anything to harm you or your family.”

Riley Gaines, an collegiate swimmer-turned advocate of preserving spaces for females, voiced her support for Ms. McNabb.

“Payton is partially paralyzed on her right side, her vision and memory are impaired, and her sports career ended prematurely because of a man posing as a woman. Democrats who deny this is happening are evil,” she wrote on X, along with a video clip showing the moment Ms. McNabb was hit by the spike.

A former University of Kentucky swimmer, Ms. Haines was forced to compete against and share a locker room with transgender athlete Will “Lia” Thomas, who captured gold in the 500 freestyle at the 2022 National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Championships. She is also among more than a dozen other female athletes who are suing the NCAA for violating Title IX, a federal law that promises equal treatment and athletic opportunities for women and girls.

The athletes’ lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Atlanta, alleges that NCAA’s “radical departure from Title IX’s original meaning” is harming women by subjecting them to “a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”

“Title IX was enacted by Congress to increase women’s opportunities; therefore, no policy which authorizes males to take the place of women on women’s college sports teams or in women’s college sports locker rooms is permissible under Title IX,” the complaint read.

The female athletes also accused the NCAA of depriving women’s places, titles and public recognition by permitting transgender players who “retained male advantage, size, strength, power, and speed” into women’s sports teams. “The NCAA gives males who wish to compete against women the option to suppress testosterone to a level that is still above the highest level a female can produce without doping,” it noted.

Democrats Oppose Women Protection Bill

The lawsuit comes as House Resolution 7187, formally called the Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, advanced out of the committee and went to the full House for a vote.

Sponsored by 27 Republicans, the bill would require all national governing bodies for amateur sports to “prohibit a person whose sex is male” from participating in exclusively female competitions. This would affect sports events such as Olympic games and national championships.

Earlier in Thursday’s hearing, Ms. Jayapal invoked her own child who identifies as a transgender girl, imploring those who back the measure to question whether they could still do the same if they had a “trans daughter.”

“I am the proud mother of a trans daughter, and every time these bills come up, I ask you to think about what it would be like if your daughter was the one that you were talking about,” she said. “What would it be like if you were telling her she does not have the right to be who she is?”

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), co-chair of the Equality Caucus, denounced HR 7187 as “a hate bill” that would “incite violence and ultimately remove trans people from public life.”

“I want trans girls and women to know: You deserve to participate and thrive in the sports you love,” she said.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has finally broken her silence with CNN.

Willis insisted that she has done nothing wrong while declaring that “the train is coming” for Donald Trump.

On this occasion, CNN can be excused for not having an opposing view. Willis circa 2020 denounced Willis circa 2024.

Willis told a CNN reporter “I don’t feel like my reputation needs to be reclaimed. I guess my greatest crime is I had a relationship with a man, that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way. And I know that I have not done anything that’s illegal.”

The most obvious person to interview in rebuttal of that statement is Willis’s 2020 self. After all, she repeatedly declared that she would not have any romantic relationship with those in her office.

Willis ran against her former boss Paul Howard, who was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal involving his relationship with women in his office.

Willis offered both experience and ethical leadership, including pledging repeatedly that “I will certainly not be choosing to date people that work under me.”

When confronted with this repeated campaign promise on the stand, Willis came up with a perfectly bizarre spin about Nathan Wade being literally “special” as a special prosecutor. While she hired him, supervised him, and controlled his continued employment with the office, she tried to suggest that he was not really part of the office in the same sense.

Willis notably stressed that she did nothing “illegal.” She did not address whether she acted unethically.

The court itself denounced her for unprofessional conduct in this controversy, including her speech at a church suggesting that racism was behind these allegations.

Moreover, it may be too early to tell if she is entirely free of criminal allegations. Many believe that both she and Wade gave knowingly false or misleading testimony.

That is a problem not just for them as individuals but for the office in this case.

Willis and Wade were both prosecuting people for the very same conduct of filing false statements with courts and making false statements. The two lawyers testified in tandem but only one was disqualified.

While the Court casts doubt on Wade’s testimony on the relationship, it ignored that Willis effectively ratified those claims in her own testimony.

Putting aside the pledge of a train coming for Trump, there is the problem that there are usually two tracks and another train may be coming for Willis as the state (and potentially the bar) looks into these allegations.

Banks are often among the biggest companies in the world.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu lists the top 50 banks in the world by consolidated assets, based on a 2023 report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The data represents each bank’s total assets for the most recent period available.

Chinese Banks Keep on Growing

According to S&P, the four largest Chinese banks grew their assets by 4.1% in 2022, reaching a combined total of $19.8 trillion.

In fact, Chinese banks already account for over a third of the assets held by the largest banks on the planet. Four of the 15 biggest companies in China are banks.

Rank	Bank	Headquarters	Total Assets
1	Industrial and Commercial Bank of China	🇨🇳 China	$5.7T
2	China Construction Bank Corp	🇨🇳 China	$5.0T
3	Agricultural Bank of China	🇨🇳 China	$4.9T
4	Bank of China	🇨🇳 China	$4.2T
5	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	🇺🇸 US	$3.7T
6	Bank of America	🇺🇸 US	$3.1T
7	Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group	🇯🇵 Japan	$3.0T
8	HSBC Holdings	🇬🇧 UK	$2.9T
9	BNP Paribas	🇫🇷 France	$2.9T
10	Crédit Agricole Group	🇫🇷 France	$2.5T
11	Citigroup	🇺🇸 US	$2.4T
12	Postal Savings Bank of China	🇨🇳 China	$2.0T
13	Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group	🇯🇵 Japan	$2.0T
14	Mizuho Financial Group	🇯🇵 Japan	$1.9T
15	Bank of Communications	🇨🇳 China	$1.9T
16	Wells Fargo & Co.	🇺🇸 US	$1.9T
17	Banco Santander	🇪🇸 Spain	$1.9T
18	Barclays PLC	🇬🇧 UK	$1.8T
19	JAPAN POST BANK	🇯🇵 Japan	$1.7T
20	UBS Group	🇨🇭 Switzerland	$1.7T
21	Groupe BPCE	🇫🇷 France	$1.6T
22	Société Générale	🇫🇷 France	$1.6T
23	Royal Bank of Canada	🇨🇦 Canada	$1.5T
24	The Toronto-Dominion Bank	🇨🇦 Canada	$1.5T
25	China Merchants Bank	🇨🇳 China	$1.5T
26	Goldman Sachs Group	🇺🇸 US	$1.4T
27	Deutsche Bank	🇩🇪 Germany	$1.4T
28	Industrial Bank	🇨🇳 China	$1.3T
29	China CITIC Bank International	🇨🇳 China	$1.2T
30	Shanghai Pudong Development Bank	🇨🇳 China	$1.2T
31	Morgan Stanley	🇺🇸 US	$1.2T
32	Crédit Mutuel	🇫🇷 France	$1.2T
33	Lloyds Banking Group	🇬🇧 UK	$1.1T
34	China Minsheng Banking	🇨🇳 China	$1.1T
35	Intesa Sanpaolo	🇮🇹 Italy	$1.0T
36	ING Groep	🇳🇱 Netherlands	$1.0T
37	The Bank of Nova Scotia	🇨🇦 Canada	$1.0T
38	UniCredit	🇮🇹 Italy	$917B
39	China Everbright Bank	🇨🇳 China	$913B
40	NatWest Group	🇬🇧 UK	$868B
41	Bank of Montreal	🇨🇦 Canada	$859B
42	Commonwealth Bank of Australia	🇦🇺 Australia	$837B
43	Standard Chartered	🇬🇧 UK	$820B
44	La Banque Postale	🇫🇷 France	$797B
45	Ping An Bank	🇨🇳 China	$772B
46	Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria	🇪🇸 Spain	$762B
47	The Norinchukin Bank	🇯🇵 Japan	$753B
48	State Bank of India	🇮🇳 India	$695B
49	Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce	🇨🇦 Canada	$691B
50	National Australia Bank	🇦🇺 Australia	$680B

The Chinese financial market is followed by the American market on our list, with six U.S. banks combining for $13.7 trillion in assets.

The top 10 on the list include four Chinese banks, two American institutions, two French, one Japanese, and one British.

The biggest climber on our rank was Swiss UBS Group AG. The bank surged to 20th place from 34th in 2021. Its $1.6 trillion asset size has been adjusted to incorporate troubled Credit Suisse Group AG, which UBS agreed to take over in an emergency deal orchestrated by the Swiss authorities in March 2023.

Assets held by the 100 largest banks totaled $111.97 trillion in 2022, down 1.5% from $113.67 trillion a year earlier. Some of the reasons include high inflation, interest rate hikes, and the Russia-Ukraine war, which dampened global economic growth and investor sentiment.

After weeks and weeks of daily mechanical incidents that prompted many to ask – no pun intended – if the wings have fallen off from the US aviation and airline industries, on Saturday Bloomberg reported that US aviation authorities are considering drastic measures to curb growth at United Airlines, including preventing the carrier from adding new routes, following a series of safety incidents.

Citing “people with knowledge”, Bloomberg said that the Federal Aviation Administration (or FAA) has discussed temporary actions it may take with the airline’s leadership in recent days. This follows a report from Reuters (“Boeing chair to meet key airline customers without planemaker’s CEO, sources say“) last week hinting that the CEO of Boeing, David Calhoun, may be in jeopardy after the relentless barage of Boeing-linked “mishaps” especially after recent comments by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary who slammed Boeing’s corporate culture. Anyway, going back to United, in addition to route restrictions, the US carrier may be barred from flying paying customers on newly delivered aircraft; indeed the sources said that the FAA already is suspending United’s ability to approve and promote pilots to fly different aircraft models. One wonders if it’s because of, well, this…

The proposed clampdown would effectively pause growth for an unspecified period at one of the largest US airlines, underscoring the panicked rush to restore confidence in, and heightened scrutiny on commercial aviation safety following a near-catastrophe earlier this year involving a Boeing plane. Since the January incident, in which a panel blew out in midair from an Alaska Airlines jet, United has endured multiple headline-grabbing mishaps including:

• A plane in Houston ran off the taxiway into a grassy area
• Another aircraft lost a tire shortly after departing from San Francisco
• A Houston-to-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines began spewing flames.

The FAA has announced investigations of those and other incidents.

The renewed focus reflects stresses on commercial air travel after years of rapid growth coming out of the depths of the pandemic.

Without addressing the report directly, the FAA told Bloomberg that it already plans to increase oversight of United in the coming weeks to review processes, manuals and facilities, the carrier told employees in a memo. Sasha Johnson, United’s vice president of corporate safety, said in the message that regulators and the company agree it needs “to ensure we are doing all we can to promote and drive safety compliance.”

Johnson also said the FAA planned to “pause a variety of certification activities for a period of time,” without specifying which ones. The limits under consideration would restrict United from adding new routes beyond those the airline has already sold tickets for.

Leaders of an Orlando-area local for United pilots sent a message to members saying that the FAA recently stepped in to “take substantial action” against the carrier, including restricting its abilities around pilot approval. The so-called line check process to certify and promote pilots has been paused pending further action from the FAA, according to two people familiar with the situation.

There are now “regulator-imposed restrictions on our ability to operate and grow our airline,” according to the message from the Local Council 150 chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. “We will also see an increased FAA presence in our daily operation.”

United Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby this week promised customers that the carrier would review the incidents and its employee training. Perhaps what Kirby should be promising customers is to stop pushing “insane“, disastrous, and potentially deadly, DEI mandates, which were revealed in an interview he did touting his company’s diversity initiatives, which limited white employees while emphasizing more women and minorities in its workforce.

This is insane.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby proudly states they’re using DEI based racial and gender quotas to reduce the amount of white people in the air travel industry.pic.twitter.com/HsyT2Bwut9

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) January 15, 2024

Maybe, in retrospect, there’s a reason why there are fewer women and minorities int he air travel industry…

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

A Day for Acronyms

IGIW

Let’s start with IGIW. I’m not sure it is an official one, but we can go with I Got It Wrong. I came into this week stating that it would be far more difficult for stocks to bounce 5% than drop 10%. I was looking for yields to continue their upward trajectory. 10-year yields finished the week lower by 11 bps and the Nasdaq was up by almost 3%. I continue to look at a wide variety of sentiment indicators, positioning indicators, etc. and see extremely aggressive positioning, but so far it has worked for those positioned that way.

GCBE

Probably another one I just made up, but Global Central Bank Easing was the theme of the week.

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) hiked rates, finally going back to positive yields! They officially ended “yield curve control,” but the 10-year yield was already at 0.7% (down from almost 1% in November), so that didn’t have much of an impact. It might have been the most dovish “tightening” ever, which says a lot!

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) surprised the market by cutting rates. Markets responded positively to this surprise move. Maybe I was in a bad mood at the time, but I’m wondering why we spend so much time worrying about what the 20th largest economy by GDP does with rates? I saw some tweets at the time, which seem accurate, but Bitcoin’s market cap is bigger than the Swiss GDP. That is mostly irrelevant and comparing apples to oranges (or chalk to cheese, for our U.K. readers), but it did strike me as a sign of the times. While I’m on this portion of the rant, we seem to care much more about the SNB than we do about the BOC (Bank of Canada), despite Canada’s economy being more than double the Swiss economy, and far more trade is affected by that currency and their interest rate policy.

The ECB (European Central Bank) and the BOE (Bank of England) set the stage for future rate cuts, buoying global markets.
The Fed is being taken as being quite dovish as well. I think that take is overstated (Post FOMC Thoughts), but given the overall tone of GCBE, it is an understandable take (at least in the heat of the moment). The FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) does seem a bit nervous about jobs, and the balance sheet is getting to levels where they may need to restrain QT (Quantitative Tightening) as some level of balance sheet is required for our banking system to function efficiently.

While the central banks have been “jawboning” markets in this direction, this week’s series of back-to-back-to-back meetings seemed to solidify the view for markets.

One “odd” thing is that I haven’t heard the words “American Exceptionalism” much in reference to these bank policies. Yes, we are all excited that every other bank is definitively dovish, but shouldn’t they be when their economies and markets are behind ours?

How the election campaign will affect Fed policy remains to be seen, but unfortunately for the Fed, in a world where every decision is held under a magnifying glass and examined for political motivations, it will be difficult to convince many people that their actions are apolitical. I think this is really going to hamstring what they can do in September and November, so a cut in June with maybe another “pre-emptive” cut in July makes sense, but I am not expecting more than that without the economy taking a big hit.

MBC

Made By China. Yes, yet another completely made-up acronym, but it fits. I almost went with MCGA (Make China Great Again), since we had these hats, but I really want to keep to our theme on the transition from Made in China to Made by China.

Sticking to Made By China, we laid out the threats, risks, and opportunities in Made By China 2025.

In this month’s ATW – Around the World with Academy Securities, we touched on several important issues, but more and more, the geopolitical lens is beings focused on China’s goods and brands. From some conversations in D.C. and Vegas with our GIG (Geopolitical Intelligence Group), it is clear that many departments in D.C. are very focused on China and what is an “appropriate” relationship with China. Much of the focus is at the National Security level, but the definition of “national security” includes things like manufacturing, energy security, etc., making it much more all-encompassing than what people typically think of as “national security.” This is going to affect how we treat China and is, without a doubt, going to impact how China responds to us in ways that the market still doesn’t seem to be pricing in.

CNY (Chinese Renminbi – or yuan) and the PBOC (People’s Bank of China) should be watched. So far, China has not done a lot, by historical or even U.S. standards, to turn their economy around. They’ve had some stimulus here and there and implemented some rules to stymie stock market sellers. However, so far, their response seems to be appropriate if their economy was merely in the doldrums, and not on the precipice of a serious decline (which many people suspect is the real case).

But just this past week they allowed the currency to drift above 7.2. Allegedly that level represents key support, and while it has been higher in the past, many have expressed concern that this recent breach could be part of an effort to seriously devalue the currency in an attempt to make their exports cheaper. That seems pretty darn obvious to me. Their way out of their economic malaise is to produce more goods in China. Since companies, in general, are not looking to expand their manufacturing in China, they will need to manufacture and sell their own brands! The concept of “China Inc.” is that the government and corporations are inextricably linked and work together in ways that are just not possible (or even conceivable) in the U.S. and Western Europe.

Which brings us to Temu and Shein. Neither are acronyms, so they don’t quite fit today’s title, but they are so important to the Made By China theme that they need to be mentioned. Personally, and it is just my preference, I have not used either site and avoid pulling them up, let alone clicking on them. Yes, I am in the camp that has had concerns about the data on TikTok for a long time. In any case, I’m told that many of the products sold on Temu have apps associated with them to access their features. That seems a bit scary to me. Maybe I’m just a paranoid luddite, but…

Shein, as a representative of “fast fashion,” is likely to be hit by a French bill Penalizing Fast Fashion. I think the argument goes along the lines that “the clothes are so inexpensive and people throw them away much sooner than normal, creating a strain on the environment.” That seems to be a stretch, but yet again, it highlights the selling of Chinese made goods by their own brands. This is a threat to sales from “our” brands, whose stocks are in “our” indices.

Maybe I’m just more attuned to it, but the number of people who seem to want to “check out a BYD vehicle” seems to have increased. Not sure if anyone I’ve been talking to actually plans to buy one (I’m not even sure if you can), but people are suddenly curious about the brand. Word of mouth marketing is often mentioned as one of the more effective means of marketing a brand, and it almost seems like BYD is getting to that level even in the U.S. You cannot buy them here, though they sell buses here apparently if generative AI is to be trusted and confirmed on Reddit (which should be congratulated on their successful IPO).

ROTST or ROON

Okay, I’ve fully Jumped the Shark (JTS) on acronyms. Neither Rallying On The Same Thing (ROTST) nor Rallying On Old News (ROON) are phrases that are commonly used, but what the heck, we’ve come this far, so let’s finish with this.

I’m not going to apply it to the Fed because I can see where it was “technically” new news, or at least contrasted against fears that had gotten priced in. But two things hit me this week on this front:

• Semiconductor manufacturer crushes earnings. Stock soars 10% or more. I get it, to some degree, but at what point do we price in that the last quarter, the next quarter, and likely the next year are going to be great? Stocks, in many cases up 50% or more in a short period of time, pop on good news (and yes, it is definitively good news), but how is some of this not priced in? It’s not like every time Steph Curry hits a 3 everyone argues that he is undervalued – it is expected of him, given his current valuation. It has this feeling that the same headlines keep triggering positive responses, but will that last?
• The excitement of the CHIPS Act finally providing something that almost seemed tangible was interesting. I guess, since it has taken so long for anything tangible to come out of that bill, maybe the market had started to underprice the money that in theory was available. Maybe,  with people becoming too pessimistic about the complexity and restrictions associated with the Act (there are a lot of them), the market wasn’t pricing in much value to companies that now should get priced in. Maybe, but it seems like old news. What was “new” news is the fact that while this money has been earmarked (or allocated, or set aside, or approved), it has not yet been funded. It is yet another form of stimulus and increased debt that the market seems to be ignoring (or at least it did last week).

BTR

Since we barely dip, does anyone who has been waiting to BTD (Buy The Dip) need to Buy The Rally (BTR)? Just suck it up, and get max long stocks, bonds, and credit?

I don’t think so, but I was caught by surprise by how much we could rally while facing many big issues (the biggest of which, by far, is the competition from Made By China). I also was surprised at how much we could rally on what seems (after weeks and weeks of positive news) to be just more of the same news that should already be priced in.

I know that LAW (Long And Wrong) is sometimes used, but I’m not sure what is the opposite of that? SAS (Short and Stupid)? I do know “don’t fight the Fed” but despite the apparent GCBE, I don’t think I’m fighting the Fed.

We get a lot of economic data next week, so we will have plenty of opportunities to judge the state of the economy and the trajectory of inflation.

LOTL

One subject coming up, especially within Academy’s GIG, is Living Off The Land. My initial reaction was that this was about “preppers” and I felt good about having a well and expanding our garden. Turns out that it is all about cyber. In fact, a particularly nefarious and difficult to catch cyber-attack. CISA published on LOTL back in February. Maybe because it was competing with Super Bowl coverage, it didn’t get the attention it deserves, but it is coming up in more and more conversations. Please look for Academy’s SITREP on this important subject early next week.

Finally, one thing that I think many across the country can agree with is let’s hope the old adage of March, In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb holds true, as I for one am “done” with winter!

Bloomberg’s sources stated on Friday that China and Russia made a deal with Iran-backed Houthis for safe passage of their commercial vessels through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. 

Fast forward to late Saturday night, US Central Command announced on social media platform X that a ballistic missile fired by Houthi rebels hit a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned chemical tanker called “M/V Huang Pu.” 

CENTCOM on X provides more details about the attack on the Chinese tanker:

March 23, the Iranian-backed Houthis launched four anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) into the Red Sea in the vicinity of M/V Huang Pu, a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned, Chinese-operated oil tanker.

At 4:25 p.m. (Sanaa time), a fifth ballistic missile was detected as fired toward M/V Huang Pu. The ship issued a distress call but did not request assistance. M/V Huang Pu suffered minimal damage, and a fire on board was extinguished within 30 minutes. No casualties were reported, and the vessel resumed its course. The Houthis attacked the MV Huang despite previously stating they would not attack Chinese vessels.

Between 6:50 and 9:50 a.m. (Sanaa time), US forces, including USS Carney (DDG 64), engaged six Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) over the southern Red Sea. Five crashed into the Red Sea, and one flew inland into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

It was determined these UAVs presented an imminent threat to US, coalition, and merchant vessels in the region. These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US, coalition, and merchant vessels.

MARCH 23 RED SEA UPDATE

From 2:50 to 4:30 a.m. (Sanaa time)
March 23, the Iranian-backed Houthis launched four anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) into the Red Sea in the vicinity of M/V Huang Pu, a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned, Chinese-operated oil tanker.

At 4:25 p.m.… pic.twitter.com/n1RwYdW87E

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 24, 2024

What remains unclear is why the Houthis would attack the vessel if there were a safe passage deal. Also, the ship was broadcasting “India All Crew China,” which Houthi rebels could see. 

A separate Bloomberg report stated that one of the world’s top shippers, Maersk, warned the risk level across the Red Sea “remains elevated.” 

The shipper says its container ships continue “sailing via the Cape of Good Hope and around Africa is the most reasonable solution at the moment and the one that currently allows the best supply chain stability.”

Rising tensions in and around the Red Sea, especially with an oil tanker being hit this weekend, have some market observers extremely worried about a spillover in attacks across the region and the crude market, ignoring some of these mounting risks. 

One of those spillovers that Rapidan Energy Group has pointed out is the increasing risk of a “crippling attack” on Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq facility, the largest crude oil stabilization plant in the world. 

“Geopolitical disruptions: Wars can temporarily stop production or interrupt trade, but if important oil processing or production facilities, like the Saudi Abqaiq stabilization plant that Iran attacked in 2019, were to be severely damaged over a prolonged period, markets would immediately become tighter,” Rapidan Energy wrote in its 2023 global markets outlook. 

Given the chaos in Eastern Europe with Ukraine attacking Russian refineries, the global oil market could be nearing a major shock if Houthis begin attacking refineries in Saudi Arabia. 

Via The Cradle

On the morning of March 4, the State Security Criminal Court in Egypt sentenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohammed Badie to death, along with seven of the outlawed group’s leaders (Mahmoud Ezzat, Mohamed el-Beltagy, Amr Zaki, Osama Yassin, Safwa Hegazy, Assem Abdel Maged, and Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud) for organizing acts of violence eleven years ago in the so-called ‘Platform Events’ case. 

The case traces back to 2013, days after the Egyptian military ousted the late Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Mursi in a Saudi–UAE-backed coup. 

Technically, this ruling marked 80-year-old Badie’s third encounter with a death sentence following the infamous “Rabaa Operations Room” case in 2015. 

Yet, beyond notions of ‘justice,’ a deeper narrative unfurls – one laden with political gravitas. The court’s ruling wasn’t solely about holding individuals accountable for past transgressions; it was a strategic move by the Egyptian state.

Ticking time bomb 

The government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is fearful of the impending social upheaval anticipated as a result of the state’s faltering economy, flawed fiscal policies, decline in Arab world clout, and Egypt’s impotence in the face of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza – all ingredients for a potential powder keg primed to detonate.

Commentators suggest the next explosion could be of an unprecedented scale, eclipsing the Bread Intifada of 1977 and the 25 January revolution of 2011.

He recalled the role of the Brotherhood in the 1948 War, and then the effects of the Nakba on Egypt and the policies of the state, aimed at eradicating the popular Islamic social and political movement since the fifties:

We don’t care if we are sentenced to death and imprisonment. Palestine is our first cause and the cause of the Arab and Islamic nation. Mr Judge, this is the root of the case. We are imprisoned until the deal of the century is completed.

Regardless of the accuracy of Badie’s supra-temporal statement, it remains undeniable that the events unfolding in Palestine today are likely to cast a shadow on Cairo in the coming years, depending on which way the Egyptian authorities approach Gaza. The potent repercussions of a wrong move weigh heavily on Egypt’s authorities.

State v Religion

In this context, it is worth reflecting on Roger Caillois’ discussion in “Man and the Sacred” on the disparity between the state’s temporal perspective and the religious perception of time. 

A state typically adheres to an objective, temporal, and often linear vision, whereas religious frameworks usually embrace a “supra-temporal” perspective intertwined with a historical understanding – in which, given time, popular struggles will eventually outmaneuver a failed authority.

While the state endeavors to regulate movement and time, manifesting its authority through institutions such as courts and prisons, Islamists engage in a different arena. They confront the state in streets, alleys, pulpits, and prisons, focusing strategically on the temporal dimension – that is, the “timelessness” of the struggle.

Indeed, understanding the political standoff between Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood necessitates a deep dive into their historical relationship. 

The so-called “Arab street” has grown increasingly angry at Egypt’s silence over the Gaza crisis…

People Ask “Why is the Border between Egypt and Gaza so fortified?” Check the video.

Is it because Egypt has no interest in Gazans?
Yes.

El-Sisi is a secular ruler of Egypt. When he seized power in 2014, he had 500 Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to Death at… pic.twitter.com/KjAhjqqlCv

— MidEast Madness! (@joereal99) March 1, 2024

From the fraught interactions of the thirties to the dominance of the fifties, followed by a reluctant coexistence in the seventies, then the emergence of the Muslim ‘box’ during the Arab Spring, and subsequently the era of “post-Islamism” (as described by Iranian–American sociologist Asef Bayat), the Brotherhood has gone through various phases in a zero-sum game with the state. 

This relationship is underpinned by foundational features deeply ingrained in Egyptian political life, which neither the state bureaucracy can overcome nor the Brotherhood can fully assimilate.

Furthermore, the evolution of the Egyptian state, with its centralized control system spanning over six millennia, has moved through various pivotal periods, each contributing to the unique crises that continue to shape the country’s political scene. 

The Brotherhood throughout the ages 

From a historical perspective, the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood can be understood as a civil response to state violence inflicted upon society. In other words, the secular–Islamic tension in Egypt is not merely a cultural clash but rather a consequence of the state’s violent encroachment upon society’s symbolic capital.

It is also important to view the Muslim Brotherhood primarily as a social movement rather than a political one, akin to its offshoots, Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which also trace their roots to grassroots social activism. 

During Egypt’s monarchial period, the Brotherhood aligned closely with figures such as Fathi Radwan, Aziz al-Masri, and Muhammad Saleh Harb in opposing Saad Zaghloul and the nationalist, liberal Wafd Party. However, following the monarchy’s demise, the Brotherhood found itself on opposite sides.

In the turbulent sixties, controversial figures like Sayyid Qutb faced persecution, while Hassan al-Hudaybi, the Brotherhood’s former supreme guide, emphasized their role as “preachers, not judges.”

During Anwar Sadat’s presidency in the seventies, the Brotherhood oscillated between support and opposition, and in the eighties, it condemned his assassination by militant offshoot al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.

This helps explain the fluctuating relationship between the state and the Brotherhood throughout modern Egyptian history. 

A blast from the past 

The ‘return’ of the Brotherhood, at least to the public’s attention, raises questions about what the Egyptian state wants from society. The government’s costly trophy ‘development-without-demand’ projects – erecting entirely new cities, including a capital city – and the random ‘renaissance funds’ that boomed under Sisi are yet to benefit ordinary Egyptians or resolve Egypt’s longstanding economic and national challenges. 

Despite the artificial boom attributed to these ego projects, Egypt languishes at the bottom of Arab states in education quality, ranking 139th globally in 2023, and 153rd in health security, as corruption continues to plague its institutions, for which it ranks 130th.

Arguably, these ‘renaissance’ projects in Egypt today do little more than enrich a financial oligarchy deeply entrenched in the corridors of power, who lack any vision for sustainable development. 

While the Muslim Brotherhood may officially be banned, its historical role as a support system for the people during times when the state was either unwilling or unable to provide necessitates caution. 

If the government fails to tread carefully in domestic affairs – particularly with the backdrop of Israel’s assault on Muslims right on Egypt’s border – the Brotherhood could re-emerge from the shadows, colliding head-on with the state once again.

Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, whose Trian Partners owns a roughly $3.5 billion stake in Disney, has entered a fierce proxy fight to join the company’s board.

Sitting down with the Financial Times, Peltz slammed the DEI-driven entertainment company.

“Disney is stupid because I’m not trying to fire [chief executive] Bob Iger, I want to help him,” he said, adding: “We don’t fire CEOs.”

Disney, meanwhile, says that Peltz has not “presented a single strategic idea” to the company while campaigning for two years to secure board seats.

Peltz hit back, telling the Times: “They say we know nothing about the movie business — we don’t claim we do — but I don’t think they do, with five big losers in a row. They’ve lost first place in animation, they’ve lost first place in features . . . Maybe it’s time to change management in those divisions.”

Too woke…

In comments we’re sure the left will seize on, the billionaire investor then criticized Disney for pushing woke messaging as opposed to simply making great content.

“People go to watch a movie or a show to be entertained,” said Peltz. “They don’t go to get a message.”

Elaborating further, Peltz asked “Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?” referring to Black Panther.

The Disney proxy fight is nearing its end, with a shareholder vote scheduled for April 3. And speaking of woke…

Both sides have been publicizing the support they’ve received from others in the business world. Iger has been endorsed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, filmmaker George Lucas and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs and a large Disney shareholder.

Meanwhile, a group of current and former directors at firms including Mondelez International Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Janus Henderson Group Plc. this week co-signed a letter in support of Peltz.

As for politics, Peltz – who hosted a dinner in February with Elon Musk, says that Trump is “not a perfect candidate, nor is Biden,” adding “It looks like Trump is all we got.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Video footage shot in Wasco, California appears to show a crazed maniac waving around a severed human leg and taking bites out of it before police apprehended him Friday.

Reports have suggested that the man ‘stole’ the leg from the scene of a train accident, where a person was earlier hit and killed.

The footage shows the man, identified as 27-year-old Resendo Tellez, holding and examining the limb, with witnesses saying he was eating parts of it, before attempting to walk away waving it around as multiple police cars close in on him.

WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE

Graphic.

Verified video shows a Latino man in Wasco, Calif. appearing to bite into the severed leg of a person who was hit and killed by an Amtrak train today. Deputies arrested Resendo Tellez for removing evidence from a scene of an accident. pic.twitter.com/rxC3jmj2gK

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) March 22, 2024

Here is a censored version, in case the uncensored graphic version above is removed:

JUST IN: California man arrested for allegedly eating a severed leg that he took from a pedestrian who was struck by a train.

The incident happened in Wasco, California.

According to police, 27-year-old Resendo Tellez removed a leg from an Amtrak Station.

Tellez was seen… pic.twitter.com/Wv0npYZUmP

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 23, 2024

Tellez was arrested on multiple outstanding warrants, and for taking ‘evidence’ from the accident scene.

He was also charged with misdemeanor removal of human body parts from an area that is not a cemetery without law enforcement approval.

Some reports claim he was also charged with mutilating the body, supporting the claim that he had devoured some of it.

This is the kind of thing happening most days now in Democrat run shithole American cities.

Perhaps NBC News will report the leg as being “abandoned”?

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” –Barack Obama

With less than eight months before the 2024 election, the Biden re-election campaign is in big trouble. Not only is Biden lagging in the polls vs. Donald Trump, the border crisis he created by shredding all of Trump’s Executive Orders on immigration has resulted in 10 million illegals flooding into the United States – which has left even Democrats livid.

What’s more, Biden is quickly losing the support of young Americans, and the latino vote.

Things are so bad that TIME magazine has just devoted 3,700 words to let us know that Barack Obama ‘warned’ the Biden campaign last June that defeating Trump would be harder in 2024 (because no pandemic or hoax dossier to set him up?). Six months later, Obama ‘saw few signs of improvement.’

Obama returned to the White House in December, with a ‘more urgent’ message: the re-election campaign was behind schedule in building out field operations, and that an ‘insular group of advisers’ in the West Wing was hamstringing the effort.

Now, it’s really bad…

Three months later, the 2024 general election is under way, and Biden is indeed in trouble. His stubbornly low approval ratings have sunk into the high 30s, worse than those of any other recent President seeking re-election. He’s trailed or tied Trump in most head-to-head matchups for months. Voters express concerns about his policies, his leadership, his age, and his competency. The coalition that carried Biden to victory in 2020 has splintered; the Democrats’ historic advantage with Black, Latino, and Asian American voters has dwindled to lows not seen since the civil rights movement. -TIME

Meanwhile, Biden’s inner circle is “defiantly sanguine” as a “fog of dread” descends on Democrats.

The rest of the TIME article is full of anecdotes of dissatisfied Democrats, particularly young voters such as 20-year-old Aidan Kohn-Murphy.

It has nothing to do, as many assume, with the President’s age. With palpable frustration, Kohn-Murphy enumerates the list of perceived policy “betrayals” as though they were “tattooed on the back of my hand.”

According to the report, GenZ voters “don’t understand why they should be compelled to cast their ballot for a candidate who has done so many things that are against their values,” said Kohn-Murphy.

Losing the minority vote

In 2020, Biden carried 87% of the black vote. Now, he’s polling at just 63%, a sharp decline. Meanwhile four years ago he won hispanic votes by a ratio of 2 to 1. He now trails Trump in that bloc.

Biden’s support of Israel amid the Gaza war has “tanked his standing with Muslim and Arab voters,” particularly in “must-win Michigan.”

Overall, Biden’s advantage over Trump among nonwhite Americans has shrunk from almost 50 points in 2020 to 12, according to the latest Times/Siena poll.

“It boils down to voters of color, and those voters are pissed,” said one former Biden campaign and White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I think it’s very likely he’ll lose.”

What’s more, nearly two dozen senior Democratic sources told TIME that Biden’s “campaign mechanics, structure, and staffing over most of the past year are partly to blame as well.”

While Obama was marching to re-election over the summer of 2012, his campaign head count topped 900. Despite plans to hire 350 new staffers, the Biden campaign ended 2023 with only around 70 paid employees, according to campaign finance filings.

Biden advisers don’t care about the president’s dismal numbers with young and nonwhite voters, as the “Biden brain trust” thinks they’ll vote for him again regardless.

“We’ve reached out to this group of nonwhite and young voters earlier than any presidential campaign ever has,” according to senior adviser Becca Siegel.

Good luck with that…