Tag: news

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Earlier this month the White House published its new “Pandemic Preparedness” targets.

They are far from alone in covering this. Back in March, Sky News was asking: “Next pandemic is around the corner,’ expert warns – but would lockdown ever happen again?”

On April 3rd, the Financial Times asked something similar: “The next pandemic is coming. Will we be ready?”

Less than an hour ago, the Daily Mail invited us inside “the world’s deadliest cave that could cause the next pandemic”.

Just two days ago a professional panic spreader wrote for CNN:

The next pandemic threat demands action now!!!

OK, I added the exclamation points, but they are very much implied in the original text.

So, while Iran and Israel rattle their sabres on the front pages, I thought we should take a look at the quieter back pages to see what we can learn, and help us predict how “the next pandemic” will unfold.

WHAT IS “THE NEXT PANDEMIC”?

I mean…I feel like that’s fairly self-explanatory.

Seriously though, it’s the one they’ve been predicting from pretty much the moment Covid started. First it was going to be monkey pox – sorry MPox – but that fizzled.

Of course by “pandemic”, we really mean “psy-op”, because nothing about the next pandemic will be any more real than the last pandemic. Hell, given the leaps forward in AI technology, it could be considerably less real next time.

We don’t know any of the details yet, but there’s enough vague coverage to tease out some guesstimates.

WHAT DISEASE WILL THEY USE?

Probably the most important question. We already mentioned monkey pox, but that doesn’t look likely anymore.

Right now they are mostly talking about “disease X” – a term which caused a little panic in certain sections when it first appeared on the scene – but that isn’t some top secret gain of function super disease, it’s literally a place holder name.

And it’s a placeholder name which does its job, for the time being.

After all, they don’t really need an actual name yet, any more than they need an actual disease, they just need the idea of a disease to hold over people’s heads while they construct the legislative rules of their health-based tyranny.

Indeed, the vagueness “Disease X” provides is helpful, as it keeps the legislation vague too.

That said, they will likely want and/or need to produce an actual disease at some point.

When that time comes around, it will almost certainly be another respiratory disease, because they are easy to “fake” using pre-existing endemic diseases and their uniform symptoms.

The prime candidate is bird flu, which has been slow-boiling in the news for two years now and has recently got a big uptick in coverage due to it allegedly passing to people from cows.

The UN reports “pandemic experts” are “concerned over avian influenza spread to humans”. Just yesterday, Jeremy Farrar of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “[the] threat Of Bird Flu spreading to Humans is a great concern”

Prompting gleefully sensationalist headlines like this from the Daily Star:

New pandemic ‘expected’ as human-to-human bird flu of ‘great concern’ to WHO

Bird flu is a convenient pick because it enables them to push their health tyranny and their food transition at the same time. They can claim that dairy, beef, chicken and eggs have become “dangerous” as an excuse to ration them or at least force scarcity while they drive the prices up.

They will then push the idea that veganism and/or lab grown meat “prevents pandemics”. Something they’ve been claiming since at least 2021.

The Daily Mail reported just a few hours ago:

H5N1 strain of bird flu is found in MILK for first time in ‘very high concentrations,’ World Health Organization warns

The downside to bird flu is that it’s hard to work the climate change angle into the narrative, so maybe they’ll go with something else.

WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN?

Probably not until the winter, I would guess January 2025 at the earliest, for two reasons:

1. They need it to be flu season so they can co-opt normal seasonal deaths into their “pandemic” narrative.
2. I think they’ll want to wait until after the “big election year” is over so there are fresh governments in place.

That second point is not just a hunch, but based on the article from Sky I mentioned above. It asks “would lockdown ever happen again?”, and an “expert” answers [emphasis added]:

…if another lockdown was needed, the current Tory government would either have to minimise scandals over their own rule-breaking – or change hands completely to keep the public on board. If we had a new government, people would be far more likely to have faith in them because they would be less likely to say, ‘it’s the same bunch as before – why should we do it again?’

Which I think is correct.

That would also explain the raft of sudden political resignations – including Covid stars Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern – which swept the world in Covid’s wake. They were aware then, and are still aware now, their players were spent and they needed a fresh roster before coming back for the second leg.

So, elections first – with all the nonsense that entails – then maybe the “next pandemic”.

HOW WILL IT BE DIFFERENT FROM “COVID”?

Any future pandemic psy-op will be unlikely to follow the covid pattern beat-for-beat, for one thing the Covid narrative spent itself before achieving everything it was meant to achieve.

You can bet the farm that, in the four years since, there have been working groups and researchers poring over the pandemic data to figure out what went wrong and how they can fix it next time.

There seem to be three recurring themes.

1. Vaccines not lockdowns There will be a focus on securing vaccines rather than lockdowns. Indeed, part of the whole “aw shucks lockdowns were damaging who’d have thunk it” rigmarole is about setting up the dynamic that “next time” we need to do anything we can to avoid lockdowns.

Lockdowns will become a threat rather than a fact.

“We HAVE to mandate vaccines, because the economy can’t afford another lockdown.”

“Take the vaccine, you don’t want to have another lockdown do you?”

So there will be more testing, more masks and more vaccine mandates…and/or quarantine camps for the unvaccinated. And if they DO have lockdowns, they will be entirely blamed on the “anti-vaxxers”, of course.

2. Speed speed speed The main failing of the Covid narrative was that it ran out of steam. By the time the vaccines rolled out in early 2021 the pandemic fatigue was already setting in. And by the time the third boosters and fourth waves were in the headlines nobody really cared.

The propaganda blitzkrieg of early 2020 was arguably the greatest and most wide-reaching misinformation campaign of all time – and it was almost overwhelmingly effective. But it slowed, stalled, stopped and staled.

Next time, they know now, they need to be faster. Bill Gates said as much at the 2022 Munich Security Conference. They need to get the disease out the deaths up and vaccines in before people even realise what happened.

Hence the “100 day vaccines” plan. As the ever-reliably-hysterical Devi Shridar writes for the Guardian:

most governments are working towards the 100-day challenge: that is, how to contain a virus spreading while a scientific response, such as a vaccine, diagnostic or treatment, can be approved, manufactured and delivered to the public.

The “100 Day Mission” is the brainchild of CEPI, the Gates and WHO-backed NGO. Its main aim is to make it possible to produce new vaccines for previously unknown pathogens in 100 days.

In the US, the target is 130 days from pathogen discovery to nation-wide vaccine coverage.

It should go without saying that real, reliable, “safe and effective” vaccines cannot be produced in 100 days. Whatever they make, sell and force you to inject in that time…it won’t be a vaccine

3. Free Speech is Dangerous. The slow development of the narrative post-2020 may have hindered the health tyranny agenda, but it was the independent media that really hurt it. The impromptu network of dissident experts, independent researchers and social media movements spread “misinformation” faster than the powers-that-be could fact-check it.

We have seen perpetual messaging about the dangers of “misinformaion and disinformation” since then, including prominently at the most recent DAVOS summit earlier this year, where it was labelled one of the “three greatest dangers” facing the planet.

Last week, a UK Parliamentary Committee published “recommendations” headlined:

Government should learn lessons from pandemic to improve communications and counter misinformation

Only a few days ago, Gordon Brown was quoted in the news “warning” that:

“fake news’ risks preparations for next pandemic”

Which heavily implies they will move to counter this “fake news” before the “next pandemic” begins.

WILDCARD PREDICTION: The multipolar angle. Whatever form the “next pandemic” takes, they will likely avoid the monolithic messaging of 2020, where total global conformity to “the message” was one of the real telltale signs of deception. Next time prepare for countries like India, China and Russia to forge their own pandemic strategy – focusing on some new treatment or technology that the West refuses to endorse.

There are no sources to back this one, yet. It’s just a gut feeling.

*

So what am I officially predicting for the “next pandemic”?

1. It will won’t be launched until after the major elections this year, because they want new politic faces untarnished by Covid
2. It will likely be bird flu or some other respiratory disease, launched in the winter to hijack the real flu season again
3. The chosen disease will fit into one or more pre-existing agenda – either impacting food or originating from some forced “climate change” connection or both
4. They will move faster, producing “vaccines” in 100 days to stop people getting wise to the deception as they did with Covid
5. They will try and avoid lockdowns, but use them as a threat to enforce vaccine mandates more rigorously
6. They will clamp down harder on “mis- and dis-information” before launching the new narrative.
7. The next pandemic will have a multipolarity angle to establish a fake binary

That’s how I see it. Feel free to bookmark this post for future reference.

Even if I’ve guessed the details wrong here, there’s no question they are planning to roll out another pandemic at some point in near future. A covid sequel that learns from past mistakes.

While, in some ways, it will likely be worse than Covid was – the good news is that this time we can be ready for it.

For those curious, owning a flamethrower is broadly legal across the United States, with Maryland being the exception, as the state has effectively banned these devices. In California, flamethrowers are legal but require a permit. 

With the legality all sorted out. What’s been making headlines this week is a Unitree Go2 quadruple robot equipped with a flamethrower. 

“Thermonator is the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog. This quadruped is coupled with the ARC Flamethrower to deliver on-demand fire anywhere!” Throwflame, the company behind the robot flamethrower, wrote on its website. 

Called the “Thermonator,” the flamethrowing robot retails for $9,420 and can shoot napalm upwards of 30 feet. 

Throwflame says Thermonator is mainly used for “wildfire control and prevention,” “agricultural management,” “ecological conservation,” “snow and ice removal,” and “entertainment and SFX.” 

Over the years, we have covered the proliferation of this technology, from ‘cute’ dancing robo-dogs from (Japanese-owned) Boston Dynamics to the Chinese version of ‘spot’ with a machine gun strapped to its back. 

Even an armed robo-dog deployed by a drone. 

Blood-Wing, a Chinese defense contractor, demonstrates drone-deploying an armed robodog.

The Future is Now. pic.twitter.com/tRKnKa8xvp

— Lia Wong (@LiaWong__) October 4, 2022

Meanwhile, just days ago, Boston Dynamics unveiled its new humanoid robot that creepily moves like no other robot has moved before. 

We promise this is not a person in a bodysuit. https://t.co/S9FgfpqvrW pic.twitter.com/G30sXHQ93C

— Boston Dynamics (@BostonDynamics) April 17, 2024

The militarization of robot dogs is terrifying. We’re surprised these robots have yet to be deployed in Ukraine.

Authored by William Woodruff via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Whether Presidential Immunity is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing Shouldn’t Depend Upon Party Affiliation

“Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?” That is the question the Supreme Court will answer when it hears oral argument in Trump v. U.S.  on April 25, 2024.

Legacy media and the ladies of “The View” nearly lost their collective minds when the Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s decision denying him immunity for his actions surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021. However, even Jack Smith, the Special Counsel prosecuting the case, argued that it was of “imperative public importance” that the Court resolve the immunity question before trial.

But forget about Trump for the moment. The issue is bigger than Trump and his legal woes. As the partisan divide between the left and the right grows larger, there is a real risk that the criminalization of policy differences could raise our current state of “lawfare” to a new level.

Several retired four-star generals and admirals, as well as former cabinet officials, have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that granting immunity to former presidents for actions within the outer perimeter of their official duties would raise questions about the ability of the United States to peacefully transfer power from one administration to another, and thereby pose a grave risk to national security.

The retired officials’ brief also argues that granting immunity would undermine civilian control of the military and undermine trust and confidence in the military as an institution.

The “parade of horribles” in the retired officials’ brief assumes that a future president would instruct subordinate military officers to carry out illegal orders for which they, but not the president, would be criminally liable. The brief also suggests that an unrestrained incumbent would use the military to retain power and, thus, destabilize America’s diplomatic and military standing among nations.

Of course, none of the hypotheticals feared by the brief writers occurred in the case pending before the Court. Apparently, they are afraid not of Donald Trump but of some unidentified future president.

To analyze the pros and cons of immunity, however, there is no need to speculate about what some future president might do. We need only look at actual events from our recent history.

Situation #1

President Obama ordered a drone strike in Yemen to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and Islamic Imam critical of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Before releasing the drones that killed al-Awlaki and two others, the White House sought and received a Memorandum from the Department of Justice providing legal justification for the attack.

Several questions come to mind.  Should the memo from DoJ authorizing the killing of an American citizen abroad without judicial due process immunize President Obama for violating the federal criminal statute that imposes criminal penalties for the extra territorial killing of an American citizen?

Could a subsequent President, a member of the opposing political party, direct a new Attorney General to investigate whether the killing of the U.S. citizen by drone attack in Yemen violated federal criminal law? If an indictment is returned against the now former President for that killing, should President Obama be allowed to claim immunity or be forced to stand trial?

Situation #2

President Biden revoked many of President Trump’s Executive Orders addressing border security when he took office. He also halted construction of physical barriers intended to secure the southern border and stem the flow of illegal border crossings and the smuggling of dangerous drugs.

The number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed. Instead of remaining in Mexico until asylum claims were adjudicated, migrants were “paroled” into the interior of the United States and given a court date for their asylum claim years into the future.

The quantity of illegal drugs, and the deaths of American citizens from accidental drug overdoses smuggled across the southern border, escalated astronomically. Federal law imposes criminal penalties on those who enter the United States illegally. It also punishes conspiracies to violate federal law.

So, if the White House switches parties when President Biden leaves, should the new president’s Attorney General seek an indictment against Biden for conspiring with the Secretary of Homeland Security to violate U.S. immigration laws by facilitating the illegal entry of millions of migrants into the United States? Or should those policy choices be protected by a cloak of immunity?

Situation #3

Eager to deliver on a campaign promise, President Biden announced a policy to “forgive” billions of dollars in student loan debt. The Supreme Court struck down the President’s plan and held that Congress had not authorized the Executive to unilaterally forgive student loan debt.

Instead of seeking legislative authority, President Biden reworked his plan to rely upon a different statute for authority. Assume the courts dismissed lawsuits challenging Biden’s “Plan B” because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. “Plan B” went forward and billions of dollars in federal student loans became “grants” instead of loans that had to be repaid.

The federal Anti-deficiency Act imposes criminal penalties on anyone who authorizes the expenditure of federal funds without a valid congressional appropriation. When President Biden leaves office, can he be indicted and tried because his “Plan B” loan scheme violated federal law?

Presidential Immunity Analysis

Each of the foregoing situations illustrates how  a former President could be subject to indictment for actions taken within the outer perimeter of his official duties as President. Never happen, you say? Surely, no one would try to force these facts into violations of existing law. But Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith have all engaged in creative lawyering to bring novel criminal charges against Trump. Apparently, some see creative lawyering as a feature and not a bug in our legal system.

While the former Presidents have substantive defenses to the charges and the novel theories advanced in the indictments may be rejected by the courts or nullified by a jury, should the former presidents and the country be put through the spectacle of a criminal trial?

One of the major attributes of immunity is that it avoids the trial in the first place. Instead of placing one’s fate in the hands of a jury and hoping they will accept one or more defenses or justifications for the alleged violations, immunity prevents the trial at the outset. In other words, if the process is the punishment, immunity avoids the process.

Presidential immunity for actions within the outer perimeter of official duties allows a president to make difficult policy and operational decisions without concern for his personal liberty once he leaves office. It also eliminates the temptation to exact a tit for tat when the next election goes to the opposition party.

On the flip side, the existence of presidential immunity may provide unwarranted protection for the actions and decisions of a president who does not really have the best interests of the country at heart. But the Constitution provides two significant checks on that unseemly circumstance: impeachment and the ballot box. Furthermore, the Constitution specifically provides that upon conviction by the Senate in an impeachment trial the person impeached “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”

It is tempting to favor or disfavor presidential immunity in criminal cases depending upon the political or personal like or dislike one may have for the indicted former President. Republicans get immunity but Democrats don’t; or vice versa. But if we are to be a nation of laws every former president should be entitled to presidential immunity for alleged criminal acts committed within the outer perimeter of official duties, or no former President should be so immune.

The issue before the Supreme Court is one of first impression. While immunity has been litigated in the context of civil claims, no former President has been indicted for criminal acts while in office, until now. In an ideal world, the answer to the question presented in Trump v. United States would remain nothing more than an interesting topic of discussion among law professors.

But if the last seven or eight years have proved anything it is that we are not living in an ideal world.

William A. Woodruff is a retired Army lawyer who, as Chief of the Army Litigation Division, was responsible for defending Army policies, programs, and operations in federal courts around the country. He retired from active duty in 1992 and taught law for 25 years at Campbell University School of Law in North Carolina.

Authored by Fred Roeder via RealClearMarkets,

On a Friday night in March 2011, I stayed at an upscale W Hotel on Lexington Avenue in New York City for $124. That hotel later became The Maxwell, but sadly it didn’t survive the pandemic and is now permanently closed. Today the average hotel stay in that same neighborhood costs between $400 and $500 on a Friday night. The surge in hotel prices, particularly for upmarket accommodations, has caught the attention of travelers and investors worldwide. What led to this spike in hotel rates post-pandemic?

Several factors have been at play for the hospitality industry since COVID entered the rearview, resulting in higher prices for travelers.

Supply and Competition

Competition within hospitality plays a crucial role in determining hotel prices. While it might appear that there’s no shortage of lodging options for travelers, the regulatory crackdown on platforms like Airbnb in big cities has redirected travelers back into the arms of traditional hotels, thereby increasing demand. 

As the Consumer Choice Center has pointed out, 80 percent of properties were already delisted from Airbnb by October 2023 thanks to New York City’s stringent new short-term rental policies. Because of the new restrictions on temporary rentals, which state that only two paying guests at most can stay for up to 30 days under certain conditions (unobstructed access to the whole residence, short-term registration, owner present on site), many families have no choice but to look for a hotel room during their NYC stay. 

Not to mention the massive buying up of hotel room blocks by the city in order to house newly arrived migrant populations. This warps the market for hotel rooms in profound ways. NYC has at least 140 active contracts with city hotels to fill all their vacant rooms, normally valued around $110 per night, but marked up by 73 percent to $190 for a room. Vacancies mean lower prices, but if surrounding inns are full, hotel prices rise for consumers. 

This arrangement may not be what hoteliers had in mind for their business, but it has proven highly lucrative for the properties cooperating with the city in these contracts. 

Closures of smaller hotels along with industry consolidation reduce the number of options for consumers, which empowers larger hotel chains to raise prices. Moreover, high interest rates on financing discourage the construction of new hotels, leading to an even more constrained supply of rooms. All the while, prices creep even higher. 

Consolidated hotel groups have found innovative ways to manage yields and hence increase revenue. This would explain higher average daily rates despite similar or even lower occupancy rates for NYC hotels pre-pandemic.

Traveler’s Tastes Change 

Higher prices are also related to consumer preferences, which have evolved significantly in recent years. The pandemic prompted a shift towards safer and more luxurious options, with travelers prioritizing enhanced safety measures and amenities. This shift, coupled with pent-up demand from periods of lockdown, has resulted in a willingness among travelers to pay a premium for upmarket hotels. 

Consumers also tend to book closer to their travel dates and are proving reluctant to commit far in advance. A few years of uncertainty around travel has created a more cautious average traveler. On top of that, the normalization of remote work has blurred the lines between business and leisure travel, leading to longer average stays. 

People are taking personal vacations and then staying there longer while they transition back into work mode.

Supply Chains and Labor

Amidst all these trends, operational costs rise with minimum wage hikes, labor shortages, crunched supply chains overseas, and ever-increasing taxes in America’s largest cities. The labor shortfall is not insignificant and leaves hotels struggling to meet the high demand for rooms. The costs are likely being passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. 

It’s also very possible that hotels are eager to recoup losses incurred during the pandemic period, driving them to maximize revenue through price adjustments as demand rebounds in major travel markets. 

It’s a perfect storm of industry trends, regulatory pressures on competitors, and consumer behavior driving up the average price of a hotel stay in NYC and other large cities. Is there anything that can be done? 

Ideally, as prices rise, consumers will see a new wave of entrepreneurial competition offering market solutions and testing out new models for lodging travelers. For the sake of all our wallets, let’s hope that happens sooner rather than later.

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

With the November election less than 7 months away, mainstream media outlets are now choosing to misrepresent the current state of crime in the United States, claiming that crime is declining without providing full context or key details.

As the Daily Caller reports, there are two ways in which the federal government measures crime in the United States: The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR).

Whereas the NCVS asks roughly 240,000 Americans whether or not they’ve been a victim of crime in the last year, the UCR focuses on crimes that have been reported to police within the last year and shared with the FBI.

While more people are reporting to the BJS that they have been the victims of crime, the FBI is reporting fewer crimes through the UCR.

The UCR claims that violent crime dropped by 2% from 2021 to 2022, while the NCVS shows the exact opposite, reporting that the number of victims of violent crime increased by a staggering 42.4% from 2021 to 2022; this constitutes a rise from 16.5 victims per 1,000 people to 23.5 victims per 1,000.

Nevertheless, many mainstream media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, Reuters, and The Hill have all turned to the FBI’s data to claim, falsely, that crime is on the decline. All such reports have failed to mention the crucial data from the NCVS.

Even Joe Biden himself has turned to deliberately misrepresenting the facts by relying solely on the FBI’s data.

“This week, the FBI released data showing that crime declined across nearly every category in 2023,” said Biden recently.

“Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which every Republican in Congress voted against, we made the largest-ever federal investment in fighting and preventing crime at any time in our history.”

This directly contradicts broad public sentiment in the United States, with a Gallup poll in December finding that 77% of Americans believe crime is getting worse.

Via The Cradle

The government of US President Joe Biden has decided against imposing sanctions on Israeli army units responsible for human rights violations against Palestinians, despite initial plans to do so. 

ABC News reported on Friday that a government assessment determined that three battalions in the Israeli army committed “gross human rights violations” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank “but will remain eligible for US military aid regardless because of steps Israel says it’s taking to address the problem.” 

The assessment, which has not been made public, was outlined in a letter written by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to House Speaker Mike Johnson, which the news network obtained. 

The rights violations committed by Israeli forces “will not delay the delivery of any US assistance and Israel will be able to receive the full amount appropriated by Congress.” Billions in US aid to Israel was approved by Biden just two days ago after passing in the Senate on Tuesday.

The violations in question were committed prior to October 7 and took place in the occupied West Bank. They include the execution of Palestinians by Israeli border police, as well as torture and rape during interrogation. 

None are related to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children. 

Yet the decision is expected to frustrate many critics of the Biden administration who believe Washington has not done enough to hold Israel accountable for war crimes. Under the US Leahy Law, Washington should withhold military aid to states committing severe human rights abuses. Yet the law allows exceptions if measures are taken to punish those responsible. 

An informed source told ABC that Israel and the US have a “special agreement” that Washington must consult with Tel Aviv over any decision relating to foreign assistance. The source added that these consultations are ongoing. 

Blinken’s letter states that four of the Israeli army units have undergone “remediation” steps, meaning that those within the units that are responsible for the crimes have been internally held accountable. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on April 21: “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, I will fight it with all my strength.”

According to Hebrew news site Ynet, Israeli pressure on the US helped shape the decision not to impose sanctions on the units. “The reasonable estimate is that we will be able to convince the US not to impose these sanctions,” an Israeli official told the outlet. 

In addition to Netanyahu, opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid both called on the US not to proceed with the decision. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly promised Blinken that “steps” would be taken. 

How we got here: IMPUNITY. U.S. cancels sanctions against IDF units suspected of blatant war crimes. Because Israel pledged to do its own investigation. History show these “investigations” go nowhere except to find excuses; exonerate suspects.https://t.co/HfwJGcOwCj

— Jim Clancy (@ClancyReports) April 26, 2024

A special State Department panel proposed months ago to bar certain Israeli police and army units from receiving US funds over human rights abuses. A ProPublica report from last week indicates that Blinken disregarded the panel’s recommendations for action against the units. 

The Guardian reported in January, citing interviews and State Department documents, that “special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws.”

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels may have launched attacks on two vessels transiting southwest of Mukha, a port city on the highly contested southern Red Sea. 

Bloomberg says the UK Navy has confirmed two attacks on vessels in a series of headlines hitting the Terminal around 1400 ET. 

• UK NAVY: REPORTS 2 ATTACKS ON VESSEL SW OF AL MUKHA, YEMEN

There are also reports that one of the vessels is “damaged.” 

• UK NAVY SAYS ATTACKS RESULTED IN DAMAGE TO VESSEL

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations confirmed an incident 14 nautical miles from Mukha earlier. 

The Houthis, who support the Palestinian terror group Hamas, have been launching drone and missile attacks on Western vessels since November, disrupting a critical maritime chokepoint known as “Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.” 

About a week ago, 16 maritime industry associations and social partners co-signed an open letter to the United Nations urging increased military patrols on heavily traveled shipping routes. This comes after commandos seized a container ship affiliated with Israel as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz two weeks ago. 

We have diligently published notes highlighting how maritime chokepoints across the Middle East are under threat, including the Suez Canal, Bab-El Mandeb Strait, and Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of all global trade flows. 

The Red Sea disruption is far from over. The United States and its allies in the West are losing the battle in defending the world’s major shipping lanes, as Biden’s Operation Prosperity Guardian has been an absolute failure. 

All of this symbolizes the world fracturing into a multipolar state, one full of chaos. And it will only get worse from here, hence why military spending worldwide is in a massive bull market. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“We’ll certainly never forget the dark days of June 6… January 6th, excuse me.”

– President “Joe Biden”

The plum blossoms are ready to pop here. You can feel your blood rising. The evening sun lingers a little longer every day. Normally you’d celebrate, but not this year of roaring portents and evil juju. History doesn’t stop to catch its breath for a moment. The tiny glowing diode deep in “Joe Biden’s” brain dims a bit more each day (pause) while low men and women in high places trifle with the fate of the nation. Everyone dreads what’s coming.

Which, judging by events of the week just past, looks like a worse summer of civil chaos than 2020 was.

Some entity — say, the checkbook of George and Alex Soros, maybe? — has funded the spring mustering of student mobs in support of Hamas seeking to drive wicked Israel into the choppy Mediterranean.

What you’re seeing, though, is probably not what you think you are seeing in all that. The kids are mere digits in a cultural algorithm playing out as New Age dumbshow.

I doubt that three-quarters of them actually give a flying fugazy about the Palestinians, and even fewer could find Gaza on a map if you water-boarded them.

They affect to be intersectional victims of the universal oppressor, but in so far as many of the rioters are girls of the Ivy League, or comparable redoubts of privilege— little blue-eyed, blonde-haired muffins raised on pony club, Hermes, and artisan granola — there must be something else going on.

That something else is probably sex, which is so problematical now in any traditional frame of a man getting it on with a woman that the American birth-rate is going to zero.

How does a young woman get it on with so many collegiate men vying for gay brownie points these days, or going for the grand prize in transitioning?

Why, it’s a non-starter. So, instead, you go slumming among the savages, those hairy, dumb brutes on twerk-alert, dripping testosterone — illegal aliens, student third-worlders, BLM alumni, hardcore hoodlums. They don’t know nuthin ‘bout no pony club, but they will rut like Bilberry rams until the ladies fall away crosseyed. Affecting to be a lesbian only makes the game more piquant. And if you forgot your birth control, for some reason, there’s always the abortionist.

Any time there are brownie points at stake, you know the game is actually for status, and where status is the game, fashion is the currency.

Thus, the dress-up in Arab keffiyehs, the charming head-scarf denoting allyship with Hamas. Beats the heck out of those flitty N-95 masks from the 2020 Covid nights of roistering in the Seattle CHOP and trying to burn down the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland.

Rioting gives young men of the toxic persuasion opportunities to flaunt their moxie in acts of derring-do, brawling with the cops, dancing on top of cars, ripping down chain-link fences, flinging gasoline bombs.

So much the better for getting the ladies’ attention. Look what I can do! And the keffiyeh accessorizes well with black bloc riot garb. For the muffins, wearing it is great practice for the utopia-to-come when they must don burkas under submission to Sharia. Will Hermes put out a burka?

So far, the spring rioting has mostly been fun for the rioters. Unlike the J-6-21 “paraders,” locked up in the putrid DC jail for years pending trial, the Hamas frolickers are at near-zilch risk of any serious consequences.

Few will even be suspended from school.

They are doing exactly what the schools trained them up for: destroying Western Civ, one acanthus leaf at a time.

According to the shadowy stage-managers behind “Joe Biden,” this will save our democracy.

That and stuffing Donald Trump in jail for the rest of his natural life.

Alas, the lawfare cases cooked up toward that end appear defective to a spectacular degree. It really says something about the true authors of these beauties brought by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith. I speak of the behind-the-scene blob lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Matt Colangelo, and Mary McCord, who wrote the scripts for all four of this year’s big elephant trap cases against the former president. You have to wonder how that bunch made it through their law boards. The current extravaganza in Manhattan that centers on alleged book-keeping errors in furtherance of an unstated federal offense is due to go on a few more weeks. The howling errors of both the prosecution and Judge Juan Merchan are so extravagant that the proceeding looks like it was cribbed from the pages of Lewis Carroll.

Yet, there is near unanimous sentiment that the Trump-deranged New Yawk jury will convict, no matter how much more idiotic the case turns out to be. By then, we will be verging on summer. The college campuses will be shuttered and the youth-in-revolt action will necessarily move to the regular streets. Whichever way the verdict goes in the Alvin Bragg case, epic looting and rioting will commence.

Sometime this summer, I predict, the Mar-a-Lago documents case will get tossed on something like malicious prosecution. Jack Smith’s DC case, kneecapped by SCOTUS, won’t start before the November election (or maybe ever) and ditto the Fani Willis fiasco in Atlanta.

George and Alex Soros will pour millions into box lunches for the kids burning down what’s left of the cities and the demure gals of the Ivy League Left will find plenty of love in the ruins.

The two major party conventions in July (Republican) and August (Democrat) are sure to out-do the 1968 lollapalooza in Chicago (I was there) in mayhem and property damage. “Joe Biden” – really the blob behind him – will ache to declare a national emergency, perhaps even a second emergency after the recently unveiled “climate emergency” supposedly pending any day.

The USA will be in an historic horror movie you could call Emergency-O-Rama.

If you think the financial system, and the US economy that has become the tail on the finance dog, can survive all this, you will be disappointed.

The army may have to step in and put an end to these shenanigans. Don’t think it can’t happen.

*  *  *

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It’s that time of year again and US bank deposits sure showed it…

While money-market funds’ total assets fell over $100BN, on a non-seasonally-adjusted (NSA) basis, total bank deposits crashed by a stunning $258BN as Tax-Day cometh. That is considerably more than the $152BN decline last year but less than the $336BN plunge in 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

This makes some sense though as the Treasury Cash Balance rose by around the same amount as taxpayers did their duty and paid their ‘fair share’…

Source: Bloomberg

However, on a seasonally-adjusted (SA) basis (i.e. adjusted by the PhDs for the fact that we get large deposit outflows at this time of year to pay taxes), total deposits dropped $133BN – the biggest weekly plunge (SA) since 9/11!

Source: Bloomberg

Excluding foreign deposits, domestic bank deposits plunged on both an SA (-$119BN: Large banks -$99BN, Small banks -$21BN) and NSA (-$241BN: Large banks -$188BN, Small banks -$53BN) basis…

Source: Bloomberg

For context, that is the largest weekly drop in SA deposits since 9/11 and the largest NSA deposit drop since April 2022 (Tax Day).

Interestingly, despite the deposit dump, loan volumes increased last week with large banks adding $5.8BN and small banks adding $2.5BN…

Source: Bloomberg

All of which pushed the un-bailed-out ‘Small banks’ back into ‘crisis mode’  (red line below constraint absent the $126BN still in the BTFP pot at The Fed which is slowly being unwound)…

Source: Bloomberg

And so, with rate-cuts off the table – and tapering QT very much back on – we wonder just how much jockeying between Janet (Yellen) and Jerome (Powell) is going on ahead of next week’s QRA and FOMC news…

The BOJ came, issued the shortest statement in the history of central banks…

… and left, leaving traders stunned and speechless at the sheer idiocy of the world’s most clownish central bank, which has decided to invite currency collapse the same abandon as Zimbabwe, if it means pushing up domestic stonks a little bit more even as hyperinflation is unleashed among Japanese society. And now that the collapse in the yen is making banana republics like Turkey blush, and is making FX managers and traders who are still long the Japanese Dong Lira Yen to the imploding “developed” insolvent, everyone wants to know what happens next?

Below we share to views, one from Deutsche Bank’s Geroge Saravelos, and one from SocGen’s Kit Juckes.

We start with the DB FX strategist who frames the BOJ’s wilful incompetence merely as “benign neglect”, to wit:

On the collapse

The yen has again collapsed today to fresh record lows following the Bank of Japan meeting. We think this is warranted and that this finally marks the day where the market realizes that Japan is following a policy of benign neglect for the yen. We have long argued that FX intervention is not credible and the toning down of verbal jawboning from the finance minister overnight is on balance a positive from a credibility perspective. The possibility of intervention can’t be ruled out if the market turns disorderly, but it is also notable that Governor Ueda played down the importance of the yen in his press conference today as well as signalling no urgency to hike rates. We would frame the ongoing yen collapse around the following points.

1. Yen weakness is simply not that bad for Japan. The tourism sector is booming, profit margins on the Nikkei are soaring and exporter competitiveness is increasing. True, the cost of imported items is going up. But growth is fine, the government is helping offset some of the cost via subsidies and core inflation is not accelerating. Most importantly, the Japanese are huge foreign asset owners via Japan’s positive net international investment position. Yen weakness therefore leads to huge capital gains on foreign bonds and equities, most easily summarized in the observation that the government pension fund (GPIF) has roughly made more profits over the last two years than the last twenty years combined.
2. There simply isn’t an inflation problem. Japan’s core CPI is around 2% and has been decelerating in recent months. The Tokyo CPI overnight was 1.7% excluding one-off effects. To be sure, inflation may well accelerate again helped by FX weakness and high wage growth. But the starting point of inflation is entirely different to the post-COVID hiking cycles of the Fed and ECB. By extension, the inflation pain is far less and the urgency to hike far less too. No where is this more obvious than the fact that Japanese consumer confidence are close to their cycle highs.
3. Negative real rates are great. There is a huge attraction to running negative real rates for the consolidated government  balance sheet. As we demonstrated last year, it creates fiscal space via a $20 trillion carry trade while also generating asset gains for Japan’s wealthy voting base. This encourages the persistent domestic capital outflows we have been highlighting as a key driver of yen weakness over the last year and that have pushed Japan’s broad basic balance to being one of the weakest in the world. It is not speculators that are weakening the yen but the Japanese themselves.

The bottom line is that for the JPY to turn stronger the Japanese need to unwind their carry trade. But for this to make sense the Bank of Japan needs to engineer an expedited hiking cycle similar to the post-COVID experiences of other central banks. Time will tell if the BoJ is moving too slow and generating a policy mistake. A shift in BoJ inflation forecasts to well above 2% over their forecast horizon would be the clearest signal of a shift in reaction function. But this isn’t happening now. The Japanese are enjoying the ride

(More in the full note available to pro subs.)

And next, here is the somewhat more actionable view from SocGen’s FX strategist Kit Juckes:

The yen’s decline is becoming disorderly, which points to a final, potentially sharp, decline before it finds a floor

The Bank of Japan, as was universally expected, made no changes to interest rates at today’s policy-setting meeting, though they did edge inflation forecasts higher. Forecasts for the 2025/26 fiscal year look for core inflation (ex-food and energy) at 2.1% and real GDP growth of 1%. In Japan, as in most countries, yields have tended to average more than nominal GDP growth over time, and on that basis the US/Japanese yield differential is set to narrow significantly in the coming quarters. However, for now US yields are rising and Japanese ones are still anchored by very low short-term rates. Those short-term rates give short yen trades their positive carry and have kept the leveraged trading community happy for months.

The chart shows the US-Japanese yield differential and USD/JPY over the last 20 years, with the yield chart extended using the OECD’s forecasts for yields. These are just forecasts but they frame the issue quiet well, particularly bearing in mind how undervalued the yen is now, on any fundamental long-term valuation. If PPP for USD/JPY is now in the mid-90s, fair value adjusted for US exceptionalism and Japanification is still around 110. As long as yield differentials are large and growing, upward pressure on USD/JPY persists and while eventual return to much lower levels is inevitable, the danger here is that unless Japan’s policymakers are much more aggressive (with intervention and monetary policy), this move higher in USD/JPY will end in a final excessive spike higher.