By Andrew Thornebrooke of the Epoch Times

A swarm of drones flies through the night sky over the Pacific.

Shrouded in darkness and less than 100 miles from the California coastline, they go in groups of fours and sixes, stalking U.S. Navy vessels. They whir about over the ships’ bows, gathering intelligence to deliver to faceless masters.

They match the speed of the naval vessels, flying unimpeded in low visibility for as long as four hours at a time. The alarmed crews of the ships have no idea where they came from or what their purpose is.

This is not the plot of an up-and-coming spy thriller, but a series of actual events that took place in July 2019.

The chilling encounters raised alarms throughout the Navy and brought forth an investigative apparatus composed of elements of the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and FBI. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of the Pacific Fleet were kept primed with updates on the situation.

“If the drones were not operated by the American military, these incidents represent a highly significant security breach,” said one investigative report based on the ships’ logs.

Yet, the nature of the drones, where they came from, and who deployed them remained a mystery for more than two years.

However, a new investigative report published by The Drive in June shed light on the incidents, which totaled at least eight encounters involving several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that were previously referred to simply as UFOs in the press.

The report, based on Navy materials newly obtained through multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, pinpoints the launching point of the drones as a civilian bulk carrier operating in the area at the time. That ship, the MV Bass Strait, is owned and operated by Pacific Basin, flagged out of Hong Kong.

“The Navy assessed that the commercial cargo ship was likely conducting surveillance on Navy vessels using drones,” the report said. During its first-ever operational voyage, the ship may have been linked to previously unknown incidents in March and April 2019, including “intelligence collection operations” targeting the USS Zumwalt, America’s most advanced surface combatant.

“Active surveillance of key naval assets is being conducted in areas where they train and employ their most sensitive systems, often within close proximity to American shores,” the report said.

China’s Growing Drone Force

It is too early to say what connection, precisely, the crew of the Bass Strait, Pacific Basin, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) share. Nevertheless, the incident underscores the central role that drones are to play in the next stage of modern warfare and how they are already shaping the battlefield and intelligence gathering processes.

As it so happens, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is betting big on drone warfare. The regime has invested heavily for over a decade into everything from cheap and expendable commercial quadcopters to resource-heavy high-altitude long-endurance drones.

Indeed, the CCP and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have undertaken numerous UAV projects since the early 2000s. However, the first appearance of a large-scale Chinese-built stealth drone came shortly into CCP leader Xi Jinping’s tenure.

Likely built from data obtained from the Iranian capture of an advanced American drone in 2011, China’s “Sharp Sword” was just the first of many advanced UAVs, built through the assistance of foreign technologies gathered as part of the regime’s comprehensive program of technology theft.

Since then, the CCP has funded dozens of varieties of UAVs using a plethora of state-owned corporations that also build the regime’s space and missile technologies. From larger combat drones like the Sharp Sword to small quadcopter drones like those spotted near California to rocket-powered supersonic vehicles intended to zip through the sky gathering targeting information, the CCP buys everything drone-related.

Moreover, the CCP is already building out its drone capabilities across the spectrum of its military assets, deploying those capabilities in some of the world’s most contested regions.

China’s third and newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is expected to host a variety of drones. Its electromagnetic catapult system will prove invaluable for quickly launching differently weighted drones with adjustable torque.

That effort will likely build on operational lessons learned from the last several years, as China’s second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, was spotted in early June this year with a small fleet of “commercial or commercial-derivative drones” on its flight deck, according to one report’s analysis of images that appeared on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

“[The images] do underscore the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s ever-increasing efforts to develop and field various types of unmanned aircraft, including those that can operate together in networked swarms, and often with an eye toward performing various roles in the maritime domain,” one report said.

If that were not enough to underscore the regime’s ambition to dominate the strategic space with a new, drone-first approach to military engagement, there is now the case of the Zhu Hai Yun.

The Zhu Hai Yun is a 290-foot ocean research vessel designed to deploy various underwater and airborne drones for various purposes. The ship is also a drone and can either be remotely controlled by a pilot or left to navigate the open seas autonomously.

In the words of its manufacturer, it is the “world’s first intelligent unmanned system mother ship.”

And though Beijing has officially described that mothership as a maritime research tool, a South China Morning Post report acknowledged that the vessel indeed hosts military capabilities that can “intercept, besiege, and expel invasive targets.”

That news is likely to displease U.S. military leadership, which is not likely to deploy its own such vessel for six more years.

Watching, Learning, Preparing

As the pace of China’s military drone development has accelerated, the rate of international incidents related to drones has also increased.

In August 2021, Japan Self Defense Forces led multiple sorties of fighter jets over several days to intercept PLA drones caught flying south of Okinawa. The drones, comparable in size to the United States’ Predator and Reaper drones, were believed to be collecting strategic intelligence on the Miyako Strait, which provides the PLA with a critical point of entry to the Pacific, and has been the site of increasing Chinese military excursions for the past decade.

The incident serves as a poignant reminder of what so much of China’s drone fleet serves to do: secure vital strategic intelligence for the coordination of military actions.

And it is this point that brings one back to the issue of just what several groups of drones launched from a Hong Kong freight ship were doing spying on U.S. Navy vessels near the coast of California.

If such actions were directly or indirectly tied to the sprawling military-security apparatus of China’s communist government, what would be the end goal for the intelligence gathered? What is the action in “actionable intelligence”?

To that question, one analysis found that 2019’s “adversary drones” were “meant to stimulate America’s most capable air defense systems and collect extremely high-quality electronic intelligence data on them.”

“By gathering comprehensive electronic intelligence information on these systems, countermeasures and electronic warfare tactics can be developed to disrupt or defeat them,” the report said. “Capabilities can also be accurately estimated and even cloned, and tactics can be recorded and exploited.”

“That swarm could have been, and likely was, sucking up, or helping another nearby platform suck up, all that sensitive … data on the most capable warships on earth and at very close range.”

In essence, the drones were achieving two things. The first was the blanket intelligence gathered from spying on U.S. naval vessels up close. The second was learning what would draw an American response and what that response would be.

In this way, the drones were baiting U.S. naval vessels, soaking up intelligence about their response (or lack thereof) for future actions that could not only inform the Chinese military about the technical specifications of U.S. ships, but also how to manipulate their crews and protocols to learn how American forces would behave in conflict.

Winning the Next War

Such tools have very real consequences for the United States, its allies and partners, and the greater liberal international order. Perhaps nowhere more so than in the acute threat of a CCP invasion of the democratic Taiwan, which has maintained its de facto independence since 1949.

Despite that independence, and despite the fact that the CCP has never ruled the island, the regime has made a central point of its current focus the forced unification of Taiwan with the mainland. Drones, it appears, are to play a central role in that endeavor.

In late 2021, the PLA launched a miniature aircraft carrier designed to deploy and recover swarms of drones. Such staging vehicles are designed to work alongside surface combatants to disrupt military operations in the maritime domain by swarming enemy targets or rendering them less effective through distraction.

continue reading over at The Epoch Times

The human body is a miraculous, well-oiled, and exceptionally complex machine. It requires a multitude of functioning parts to come together for a person to live a healthy life—and every biological detail in our bodies, from the mundane to the most magical, is driven by just 21 chemical elements.

Of the 118 elements on Earth, just 21 of them are found in the human body. As Visual Capitalist's Mark Belan and Anshool Deshmukh detail below, together, they make up the medley of divergent molecules that combine to form our DNA, cells, tissues, and organs.

Based on data presented by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), in the above infographic, we have broken down a human body to its elemental composition and the percentages in which they exist.

These 21 elements can be categorized into three major blocks depending on the amount found in a human body, the main building block (4 elements), essential minerals (8 elements), and trace elements (9 elements).

The Elemental Four: Ingredients for Life

Four elements, namely, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, are considered the most essential elements found in our body.

Oxygen is the most abundant element in the human body, accounting for approximately 61% of a person’s mass. Given that around 60-70% of the body is water, it is no surprise that oxygen and hydrogen are two of the body’s most abundantly found chemical elements. Along with carbon and nitrogen, these elements combine for 96% of the body’s mass.

Here is a look at the composition of the four elements of life:

Values are for an average human body weighing 70 kg.

Let’s take a look at how each of these four chemical elements contributes to the thriving functionality of our body:

Oxygen

Oxygen plays a critical role in the body’s metabolism, respiration, and cellular oxygenation. Oxygen is also found in every significant organic molecule in the body, including proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and nucleic acids. It is a substantial component of everything from our cells and blood to our cerebral and spinal fluid.

Carbon

Carbon is the most crucial structural element and the reason we are known as carbon-based life forms. It is the basic building block required to form proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Breaking carbon bonds in carbohydrates and proteins is our primary energy source.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen, the most abundantly found chemical element in the universe, is present in all bodily fluids, allowing the toxins and waste to be transported and eliminated. With the help of hydrogen, joints in our body remain lubricated and able to perform their functions. Hydrogen is also said to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, helping improve muscle function.

Nitrogen

An essential component of amino acids used to build peptides and proteins is nitrogen. It is also an integral component of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, the chemical backbone of our genetic information and genealogy.

Essential and Supplemental Minerals

Essential minerals are important for your body to stay healthy. Your body uses minerals for several processes, including keeping your bones, muscles, heart, and brain working properly. Minerals also control beneficial enzyme and hormone production.

Minerals like calcium are a significant component of our bones and are required for bone growth and development, along with muscle contractions. Phosphorus contributes to bone and tooth strength and is vital to metabolizing energy.

Here is a look at the elemental composition of essential minerals:

Values are for an average human body weighing 70 kg.

Other macro-minerals like magnesium, potassium, iron, and sodium are essential for cell-to-cell communications, like electric transmissions that generate nerve impulses or heart rhythms, and are necessary for maintaining thyroid and bone health.

Excessive deficiency of any of these minerals can cause various disorders in your body. Most humans receive these minerals as a part of their daily diet, including vegetables, meat, legumes, and fruits. In case of deficiencies, though, these minerals are also prescribed as supplements.

Biological Composition of Trace Elements

Trace elements or trace metals are small amounts of minerals found in living tissues. Some of them are known to be nutritionally essential, while others may be considered to be nonessential. They are usually in minimal quantities in our body and make up only 1% of our mass.

Paramount among these are trace elements such as zinc, copper, manganese, and fluorine. Zinc works as a first responder against infections and thereby improves infection resistance, while balancing the immune response.

Here is the distribution of trace elements in our body:

 

Values are for an average human body weighing 70 kg.

 

Even though only it’s found in trace quantities, copper is instrumental in forming red blood cells and keeping nerve cells healthy. It also helps form collagen, a crucial part of bones and connective tissue.

Even with constant research and studies performed to thoroughly understand these trace elements’ uses and benefits, scientists and researchers are constantly making new discoveries.

For example, recent research shows that some of these trace elements could be used to cure and fight chronic and debilitating diseases ranging from ischemia to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.

Authored by Enrico Trigoso via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Three retired U.S. military officers—LTG Thomas McInerney, USAF; MG Paul Vallely, U.S. Army; and Colonel Andrew O’Meara Jr., U.S. Army—signed a letter authored by “Concerned Graduates of West Point and The Long Gray Line,” protesting against mandatory vaccinations, CRT classes, sanitary conditions, progressive political activism, and other “woke actions,” in the military academy.

“The Long Gray Line” refers to the continuum of graduates United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

“We wanted to challenge the leadership of the Academy and the Defense Dept on their WOKE actions, CRT, Diversity training and the other discrepancies in the Academy. We found it pervasive at the Naval and Air Force Academies so we knew it was directed from the highest levels of our Military Leadership,” Vallely told The Epoch Times.

“We all want the Military to get back on track to training and leading our Armed Forces to secure America and its Citizens,” Vallely, who has been sounding the alarm against a socialist takeover of the United States, added.

The letter, titled “Declaration of Betrayal of West Point And the Long Gray Line,” asks for the following information:

1. An explanation for the irregularities in the enforcement of the Honor Code.

2. A justification for the mandatory vaccinations of cadets with the COVID Virus despite widespread adverse reactions to the inoculation, as well as provisions for exceptions for cadets with religious objections.

3. An explanation for teaching Critical Race Theory at the Academy that constitutes an attack upon the Constitution and our constitutional Republic. This is behavior that constitutes unconstitutional conduct, if not sedition.

4. An explanation of reported mismanagement of the cadet dining facility resulting in unsanitary conditions, inadequate food prepared for the meal, and food served that was reportedly unfit for consumption.

5. Political activism on the part of civilian faculty members constituting political activity violating the long-standing policy of the Academy and Army Regulations.

6. The practice of exclusive reliance upon radical progressive guest speakers to address the Corps of Cadets. This practice results in prejudiced political activism on the part of the Staff and Faculty in violation of Army Regulations.

7. An explanation for the failure of the Superintendent to respond to correspondence inquiring about problems identified at the Academy.

Read more here...

Churches across the US are working with homeless charities to construct tiny home communities amid one of the worst housing affordability crises ever. 

AP News says churches are using spare land to build tiny home communities to accommodate the homeless. 

On vacant plots near their parking lots and steepled sanctuaries, congregations are building everything from fixed and fully contained micro homes to petite, moveable cabins, and several other styles of small-footprint dwellings in between.

Church leaders are not just trying to be more neighborly. The drive to provide shelter is rooted in their beliefs — they must care for the vulnerable, especially those without homes. -AP

More than half a million Americans were homeless in 2020, and the number has likely climbed as shelter costs if renting or owning have exploded, triggering the worst ever housing affordability crisis on record. As we've previously noted, soaring shelter costs force people into homelessness. 

Days ago, we outlined how a tidal wave of evictions could be ahead with 8.4 million Americans, or about 15% of all renters were behind rent payments. Of that, 3.5 million said they could be evicted within the next two months. Unlike the pandemic, the federal eviction moratorium prevented people from ending up on the streets, though the moratorium has since expired during the worst inflation storm in four decades. 

Jeff O'Rourke, lead pastor of Mosaic Christian Community in St. Paul, Minnesota, embraced tiny homes as a housing solution. He said his church uses "every square inch of property that we have to be hospitable." 

Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, partnered with local nonprofit Amikas to construct a tiny home community to address the homelessness crisis. 

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Firm Foundation Community Housing, launched by Rev. Jake Medcalf, has erected a tiny home housing community in the parking lot of First Presbyterian Church of Hayward. 

The First Christian Church of Tacoma in Washington erected an entire village of tiny homes in their parking lot.

"We don't have a lot of money. We don't have a whole lot of people … but we care a lot about it, and we've got this piece of property," said the Rev. Doug Collins, the church's senior minister.

Donald Whitehead, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, told AP the move by churches across the country to build tiny home communities is a "great emergency option" amid today's economy that hasn't worked for everyone. 

Maybe all of these tiny home communities springing up at US churches should be dubbed "Bidenvilles," similar to the shacktowns built during the Great Depression in the 1930s called "Hoovervilles." 

More of these communities will be constructed as the eviction tidal wave nears. 

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Known and suspected terrorists are entering the United States in unprecedented numbers amid a surge in illegal immigration, according to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.).

In an interview with NTD, the Louisiana representative stated that the Biden administration is providing “absurd” figures on the actual number of known and suspected terrorists entering America through its borders.

Higgins, a decorated law enforcement officer, said he believes this number to be much higher in part owing to the number of suspected terrorists who have aggressively avoided interaction with law enforcement at the border, which are referred to as “got-aways.”

Higgins’s comments come after Border Patrol agents captured 50 people who were on the FBI’s terror watchlist from October 2021 to May 2022.

That figure was just 15 in the fiscal year 2021, which included several months under former President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Towards the end of last year, I had estimated that we had lost about 250 KSTs, known and suspected terrorists, so the total numbers now that we’re told could serve about 700,000 ‘got-aways’ are suspected to have crossed into America. I think that’s a low number,” Higgins said.

“From my perspective, with data delivered to me by boots on the ground, from the border and from Central America and Mexico, and from the official numbers that are delivered to Congress from official data collection processes with Customs and Border Patrol, I think it’s reasonable for Americans to sort of step back and say, ‘My God, we have somewhere between 500 and 1,000 known and suspected terrorists [that] have entered into our country across our southern border since President [Joe] Biden has been inaugurated into office.’ This should startle every American citizen regardless of political affiliation,” Higgins said.

‘Conservative Numbers’

Explaining why he believes the actual number of suspected terrorists in the United States could be higher, Higgins, pointed to Biden’s administration, which he said is using “conservative numbers” when it comes to estimating how many there are.

The lawmaker added that this is in part because “got-aways” are very difficult to catch because they aggressively run and hide from law enforcement.

Things have been made even harder, according to Higgins, because much of law enforcement at the border has been pulled away from their primary mission of securing the border to instead processing illegal aliens, giving the “got-aways” more opportunity to escape.

“So the men that are aggressively evading law enforcement, we’re looking at true numbers of probably a million but we’ve been told 700,000,” Higgins said. “So just using a number of 700,000, and estimating that a very small percentage of that number would be a known or suspected terrorist, which fits the historical data, you could look at 700 known and suspected terrorists who have crossed into our country.”

“It’s a startling number, it should frighten us all, it should drive us to greater action to confront the Biden administration’s failed border policies to insist upon the resignation of [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas and to promise the American people that if Mayorkas does not resign, he’s going to be impeached,” the lawmaker continued.

Higgins added that huge numbers of those individuals who are evading law enforcement at the border are working for Mexican drugs cartels, and pointed to the rising number of fentanyl deaths in America.

Read more here...

Canada's most expensive cities to live are starting to officially overtake the U.S.'s most expensive cities to live.

In fact, Mississauga, Vancouver, and Hamilton are more expensive than well known expensive U.S. cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, according to a new study from Canadian insurance provider PolicyAdvisor.

The study looked at the "10 biggest cities by population in each of Canada and the US based on the average cost of eight items in each – a cinema ticket, a meal out, a bottle of water, a cappuccino, one month of gym membership, a one way ticket and a monthly ticket on public transport as well as a month’s rent".

Topping the list remains New York, which is the most expensive city when "considering cost of living in relation with salary". The combined cost of the basket of 8 items that the study looked at accounted for 57% of the average salary in New York, the study found. 

New York was followed by Mississauga, Canada, at 56.4% of salary, and Vancouver, Canada, at 50% of salary. Both Hamilton and Toronto, Canada beat out well known expensive U.S. cities like Los Angeles and San Diego. 

New York had the "highest price of rent, at an average of $3,381.88 per month, as well as the highest gym membership cost ($103.35), monthly transportation pass ($129.5) and cost of a meal at an inexpensive restaurant ($25)," the study found. 

Toronto had the "second highest cost of monthly transport pass after New York" and Hamilton also a high monthly travel pass, at $85. Vancouver was toward the top of the list because of its far lower salary than other cities - people earned just $3,804.53 per month there. 

“The impact of the pandemic has made a lot of people reconsider their priorities for both their careers and where they want to live. This data contains some surprising results, as even though some major cities in North America might be perceived as having lower living costs – when factoring in the average salary in the area, it’s not as clear cut," a PolicyAdvisor spokesperson said. 

PolicyAdvisor is a digital-first life insurance broker, using technology to make insurance simple, quick, and online.

By Noi Mahoney of American Shipper

Gulf Coast ports got a boost in May from strong container volumes, as well as imports of steel and plywood and exports of crude oil and petroleum products.

Port of Houston reaches all-time TEU record in May

Port of Houston hit an all-time record for monthly container volumes in May, handling 335,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, a 16% increase over the same period last year.

“Container activity continues to be at record levels. It seems like we’re talking about new records at the port every day,” Roger Guenther, Port Houston’s executive director, said during the port’s monthly meeting Tuesday. “There’s really no signs of [volume] backing off of the imports or exports and actually the exports are beginning to rebound a little bit.”

Total import tonnage was 2.8 million tons in May, a 32% year-over-year increase. Total export tonnage was 2.1 million tons, a 2% year-over-year decrease. 

Imports of steel increased 72% year over year in May to 401,587 tons. Imports of general cargo increased 83% to 840,351 tons.

Port Houston has been handling about 13,000 daily interchanges combined at its Barbours Cut and Bayport container terminals but a single-day record of 14,000 on June 23, said Jeff Davis, Port Houston’s chief operations officer.

Davis said the port was working 26 ships Tuesday. “We have seen pretty much the same on a daily basis, but it has not been without challenges,” Davis said. 

Port Houston expanded its hours at the Bayport and Barbours Cut container terminals at the beginning of June to include Saturdays. The new gate hours were put in place to help optimize the flow of cargo through the terminals.

Davis said Saturday volumes have been a little “disappointing” so far but hopes more trucking operators will begin to utilize the extra workday.

“We’ve seen a couple of 1,000 transactions on Saturdays. We’re seeking about half of a normal day of the week. We’d love to see 6,000 transactions at a minimum on Saturday,” Davis said.

Imports of steel increased 171% year over year in May to 646,548 tons. Imports of general cargo increased 4% to 601,543 tons.

Port Houston recorded 713 total ship calls in May, a 5% increase from the same period last year.

Nashville, Tennessee-based Ceres Terminals Inc. also recently announced the opening of a 75-acre container yard directly adjacent to the Barbours Cut Terminal.

The new yard will provide container services, servicing steamship line partners, beneficial cargo owners and the trucking community. The yard will also provide services for final-leg deliveries to meet cutoffs, according to a press release.

“This yard will provide our customers with much-needed near-dock capacity as well as supply chain efficiencies which we hope will relieve some of the stress on the container terminal,” Adam Brooks, COO of Ceres Terminals, said in a statement.

Port NOLA sees 88% increase in breakbulk but container volume declines

For the third consecutive month, the Port of New Orleans (Port NOLA) saw a large increase in breakbulk cargo but a decline in container volumes.

The port recorded an 88% year-over-year increase in breakbulk tons in May to 262,728 tons.

In recent months, Port NOLA’s monthly volumes have been boosted by shipments of coffee and plywood. 

Port NOLA’s container volume declined 30% year over year in May to 35,535 TEUs. Like many ports across the country, Port NOLA said it has been hampered in recent months by a shortage of cargo containers. 

The port handled 12,621 Class I railcar switches in May, a 9% year-over-year increase. The port handles switching operations for the six Class I railroads that operate in New Orleans: BNSF Railway, CN, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific.

Port of Corpus Christi sees growth in petroleum, crude oil

The Port of Corpus Christi in South Texas moved 15.2 million tons of cargo in May, a 9% year-over-year increase from the same month in 2021.

Total shipments of crude oil totaled 8.7 million tons, of which 8 million tons were exports, during May. Exports of crude oil saw an 8% increase from the same month last year.

The port also handled 5.3 million tons of petroleum during May, a 18% increase compared to the same year-ago period. Exports of petroleum for the month topped 4.2 million tons, a 20% increase from the same period last year.

The Port of Corpus Christi had 635 ship calls in May, including 374 liquid cargo barges and 180 liquid cargo ships. It was a 10% year-over-year increase in total ship calls compared to May 2021.

China's first Mars mission appears to have been a success. On Wednesday, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced the Tianwen-1 probe completed all planned scientific exploration tasks, including snapping imagery data of the entire planet. 

The mission's scientific objectives were completed by a robotic spacecraft consisting of six devices: an orbiter, two deployable cameras, a lander, a remote camera, and the Zhurong rover. The aims of the mission included:

• Searching for evidence of current and past life,

• Producing surface maps,

• Characterizing soil composition and water ice distribution, and 

• Examining the Martian atmosphere, particularly its ionosphere.

CNSA said the Tianwen-1 had spent two years orbiting Mars while the rover portion of the mission surveyed the surface for about a year. One thousand forty gigabytes of "medium-resolution" and "high-resolution" image data covering the entire world of Mars were acquired. 

"As of June 29, the Tianwen-1 mission orbiter has been flying normally for 706 days, orbiting Mars 1,344 times, and has acquired medium-sized data covering the entire planet of Mars. With high-resolution image data, all scientific payloads have achieved global exploration of Mars. The "Zhurong" rover has traveled 1921.5 meters on the surface of Mars. Both the Tianwen-1 mission orbiter and the Mars rover have completed the established scientific exploration​​​," CNSA said. 

Some of the photographs released show where the planet's water resources reside. In a 2018 European Space Agency mission to the planet, an orbiting probe found liquid water under the ice of the planet's surface. 

Here are the most important developments since the Chinese probe started orbiting Mars in early 2021 and began operations in May 2021: 

• China's First Mars Mission Begins Next Month As Tianwen-1 Approaches Red Planet
• China Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Mars
• China's Mars Rover Travels 450 Meters, Spots Own Parachute From Lander
• China Releases Astonishing Images Of Mars Taken By Tianwen-1 Spacecraft

CNSA said the scientific data collected would be researched and used to promote humankind's exploration of the universe. 

The final frontier is space -- the world's superpowers are on a hunt for trillion-dollar deposits of rare metals that will power Earth's green energy revolution in decades to come. 

Authored by Jack Rasmus via Counterpunch.org,

Biden and the other G7 leaders are meeting in the Bavarian Alps this week. Apart from proclaiming they’ll never give up supporting Zelensky and Ukraine, G7 leaders announced they were planning two new sanctions on Russia.

Like most of the previous six phases of sanctions the purpose of the latest is to deprive Russia of revenues from exports. So far sanctions haven’t been all that successful in that regard, at least in the shorter term. While the USA has banned Russian oil and gas imports to the USA, those amounts and their respective revenue impact on total Russian export revenue is insignificant. Moreover, the ban on Russian oil exports to Europe do not begin until December 2022, while there’s no ban on Russian natural gas imports whatsoever. So little net impact on Russian energy export revenues from Europe either.

The sanctions on oil & gas Russian exports to Europe have been quite minimal to date. Meanwhile, Russia’s exports to China, India and rest of the world have been rising. As have global energy prices in general.  With accelerating global prices for oil and gas, and an increase in Russian energy exports to India, China and elsewhere, Russia’s revenues have been actually rising.

This rising revenue despite sanctions has presented something of a conundrum for Biden and the G7. The whole idea of sanctions is to dramatically reduce Russian revenues, not simply volume of exports! Sanctions thus far have had the opposite effect of what was intended—Russian energy revenues have risen not fallen.

So the G7 in Bavaria have come up with two more schemes to try to reduce Russian export revenues. But the thin mountain air must be affecting their thinking. The two new schemes are among the most desperate and economically absurd sanction ideas spawned thus far.

1. Ban Russian Gold Exports to Europe

The first absurd proposal being bandied about in Bavaria is to get Europe to agree to ban Russian gold exports to Europe.

The thinking is Russian revenues from gold constitute Russia’s second largest export revenue source, but at $20 billion a year gold sales revenue is still well below Russia’s oil export revenue of around $90 billion (before sanctions). Most of the Russian gold exports goes to the gold exchange in London where it’s ‘sold’ by Russia in exchange for other currencies. The G7 thinks denying Russia access to the London gold exchange will result in a big dent in its total export revenues and ability to obtain other currencies with which to purchase other needed imports for its economy. But there are problems with the G7’s proposed ban on Russia gold exports.

First, Russia could just as well sell its gold elsewhere in the world. It doesn’t have to sell it to the Europeans at the London exchange. Other major global buyers of Russian gold are Turkey, Qatar, India and other middle eastern markets. Gold prices have been rising globally, as inflation has driven up oil, gas, and other industrial and agricultural commodities. Gold is an asset that tends to rise in price with rising general price levels, which are now accelerating worldwide. With inflation, other countries will more than gladly buy up the Europeans’ share of Russian gold. Some may even then sell the gold back to the Europeans—at a marked up higher price of course.

The Demand for Russian gold will simply shift, from Europe to elsewhere. Russian gold export revenues will thus not fall on net; in fact, may possibly even rise as gold prices continue to rise with inflation–ironically in large part due to other sanctions in general.

Second, gold is an asset that provides a hedge against inflation. It may be that Biden can get the G7 leaders and their governments (and central banks) to boycott buying Russian gold. But what’s to stop individual investors in Europe from buying Russian gold in offshore markets, when it’s presently such an attractive asset? Will Biden extend sanctions on all the individual Europeans who simply shift their purchases of Russian gold from the London Gold Exchange to the gold exchanges in Turkey, Qatar and elsewhere?

2. Price Cap Russian Oil Exports to Europe

This is an even sillier proposal. Here’s the logic of how the price cap is supposed to work. Theoretically, Europe would all agree to buy Russian oil exports over the next six months but only at a deeply discounted price that all of Europe would agree on. In other words, set a ‘price cap’ at a level well below world market prices that are currently determined by supply in global oil spot markets. The lower price is supposed to cut Russian revenues from the oil exports to Europe—i.e. reduce revenues, the prime goal of all sanctions. The idea was first suggested by Janet Yellen, the US Secretary of the Treasury. That’s the Janet Yellen who told the world in February 2022 that inflation was temporary, remember!

Getting all of the G7 to agree to a price cap still requires getting the rest of Europe as well as Japan, So. Korea and others to agree to that price capt as well.   But isn’t Europe supposed to stop buying all Russian oil imports by end of 2022 per previous sanctions they’ve agreed to? Who believes the Europeans can agree to a price cap on Russian oil and implement that cap in three months (July-September)–and then for just three months more (October-December)? Europe can’t do anything in three months, or even six. Maybe the US and EU aren’t all that confident they can implement a full ban on Russian oil exports by December?

But even this isn’t the most absurd aspect of the ‘price cap’ proposal.

Assuming Biden could get all the G7 to convince all of Europe’s 27 nations on a super discounted price, there’s still the ‘small problem’ of what Russia’s response might be to all that. The G7’s faulty logic is the deep discounted price Europe is only willing to pay for the oil would be at a price much lower than even the 30% discount that Russia is now selling oil to India, China and elsewhere. The G7 presumably would offer to buy Russian oil only at a 50% discount off current world prices maybe? That would put pressure, as the G7 argument goes, on Russian oil sales to India etc. The Indians would then demand Russia oil prices at the G7 lower 50% discount price. Russia would realize further reduced revenues from oil lower prices to India, China, the rest of the world as well as to G7 and Europe.

This is a proposal so ridiculous it’s almost embarrassing. The problem with the G7 ‘price cap’ idea is there’s no reason why Russia would want to sell any oil whatsoever to Europe at the G7’s deeply discounted price cap level.

First, why should it when Europe says it plans to phase out all Russian oil by December anyway? Second, Russia has shown it is not concerned with reducing natural gas export revenues to Europe. It’s already cut cubic gas exports to Europe by one-third as part of its own economic response to Europe’s agreement with US sanctions on Russia and it’s warned Europe of another third soon.  Economic warfare cuts both ways. So what’s to stop Russia from just cutting off all oil exports to Europe—and well before December? Third, Russia would have to be pretty dumb to agree to sell oil to Europe at the latter’s ‘price cap’ level which would be well below Russia’s already 30% discount oil price sales to India? It knows the likely knock on effect that would follow. India as a long term oil customer is far more important to Russia than Europe which says it’s ending as a customer in just six months.  Finally, Russia knows if it cuts off all oil exports to Europe, it would just change the market flow of global oil, not reduce it. Russia would sell more to other countries, which might then just re-export it back to Europe in turn.

In short, the error with the G7 price cap idea is it assumes that buyers (Europe) can set the price for oil in what is a global sellers market! G7 may think they can stand market fundamentals on their head and make it work, but they are wrong.  No amount of G7 wishful thinking can make Demand determine Supply in today’s global energy markets, where broken and restructuring supply chains, sanctions, and war are the main determinants of price.

Both the proposal to ban Russian gold exports to Europe and the proposal to manipulate oil demand to reduce its global market price—and thereby deprive Russia of revenues—are ideas that reflect more the desperation of the US and G7 to find some way to make sanctions on Russia work in the short run when thus far they aren’t working very well, if at all.

The short run objective of sanctions–i.e. to reduce Russian export revenues–has not been working but the two latest desperate ideas won’t work any better.

Historians will wonder years from now why the US and its most dependent allies in tow—the G7 countries—embarked upon a scope of sanctions on Russia so soon after Covid’s deep negative impacts on global supply chains and domestic product and labor markets. Global markets, trade and financial flows were seriously disrupted by the Covid experience of 2020-21. And they had not recovered by January 2022 when US sanctions on Russia were escalated. Before global supply chains could heal, the US and its G7 allies embarked on sanctions that further disrupted and restructured those same supply chains while simultaneously setting off chronic global inflation that ravaged their domestic economies as well. History will show, it was all not well thought out.

Even less thought out, however, are the more recent G7 proposals to ban Russian gold and engineer a price cap on global oil—the latter in effect a fantasy that by somehow manipulating a region’s (Europe) oil Demand it could set global oil prices in general and thus over-ride Supply as the driver of oil price and revenues.

It makes one wonder about the qualifications of the current generation of world leaders (led by Biden and the US) playing with the geopolitical world order. And wonder even more about their even less understanding of the consequences of their economic actions on the world economy.

*  *  *

Jack Rasmus is author of  ’The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, January 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network on Fridays at 2pm est. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

The Biden administration's cunning plan to garnish billions in taxes from crypto has reportedly hit a wall.

The provision in the US infrastructure bill signed into law in November, which will require financial institutions and crypto brokers to report additional information, could reportedly be delayed.

Bloomberg reports, according to people familiar with the matter, that the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service are likely to push off a January 2023 date for the firms to begin tracking data such as customers’ capital gains and losses.

Once rules are in place, exchanges and brokerages will have to send the detailed transaction data to the IRS and their clients who made the trades, who could then use the information to file their taxes. The data would include customer names and addresses, gross proceeds from sales, and any capital gains or losses.

As CoinTelegraph reports, the potential delay could reportedly affect billions of dollars related to capital gains taxes - the Biden administration’s budget for the government for the 2023 fiscal year previously estimated modifying the crypto tax rules could reduce the deficit by roughly $11 billion.

Remember, it's all for your own good:

“It could be very helpful just to standardize the reporting and put it in a way that makes it easier to digest and put on a tax return,” said Michael Desmond, former chief counsel for the IRS

In other words, helping the IRS find tax cheats... and simplifying reporting for all the honest crypto players.

For now, according to Jake Chervinsky, head of policy at the Blockchain Association,"delaying is smart."

“We're getting closer & closer to the effective date of the infrastructure bill's tax provisions & we're still waiting for guidance or rulemaking on implementation,” he added.

If true, this is good news.

We're getting closer & closer to the effective date of the infrastructure bill's tax provisions & we're still waiting for guidance or rulemaking on implementation. We've also seen legislative proposals that could make big changes. Delaying is smart. https://t.co/m7bMDiVFFU

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) June 29, 2022

Bloomberg notes that in addition to the rules, Treasury and the IRS are working on a new form for crypto firms to use called the 1099-DA, which will be different than the 1099-B used by stock and bond brokers. 

There is no escaping the inevitable though as the Biden administration is adamant that crypto tax evasion remains a major issue for Washington policy makers.

Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

The following in an excerpt from my new book: Re-Architecting Trust, The Curse of History and the Crypto Cure for Money, Markets and Platforms. It provides context on the ongoing breakdown of traditional social medial.

The prevalence of digital fakery is an underrated contributor to the breakdown of respect in every online setting. It leads to a toxic environment where the worst behaviors are rewarded. To see why, we must first recognize that online influence is valuable. Having a lot of likes, retweets, positive reviews, and followers is an asset, one that increasingly impacts the offline economy. A restaurant that has a lot of five-star reviews is more likely to get new customers and a pundit who has a lot of Twitter subscribers is more likely to get a book deal.

The digital attestations of likes and followers and so on are a form of social capital, and everyone is motivated to acquire as much as they can. The question is how.

Some people try to acquire their social capital by doing something useful, like running a quality restaurant or putting out valuable content.

They hustle, put in long hours, and work to earn every like, retweet, positive review, and follower. This is the social capital equivalent of proof of work: do the work, earn the reward.

Other people cheat.

They don’t put in the hours or hustle, they instead buy enough fake followers and reviews on the black market to make it look like they did. This is the social capital version of a Sybil attack. On any centralized platform such as Seamless or Twitter, the second group is guaranteed to win.

As the comedian Groucho Marx once said, “the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

To understand why, recall that the target audience — the consumers who order food from an app, watch TikTok videos, and subscribe to Instagram feeds — have no idea what’s real and what’s fake. Facebook doesn’t tell them what percentage of an Instagram influencer’s likes were generated by a click farm (if it did, advertising revenues would plummet). This lack of information puts every would-be influencer in a bind. If viewers can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, then what’s the best strategy for becoming popular? Should they work hard to earn real users or pay up to acquire fake ones? The answer is both. After all, those who decide to both build and buy will always be more popular than those who only do one. In game theory, this is known as the Nash equilibrium. In real life, it’s a race to the bottom.

But now we have a new problem because Instagram users aren’t that gullible. They understand that some chicanery is going on. There are too many content creators who are suspiciously popular, and the numbers only ever go up, sometimes too quickly. There are also academic studies and media reports that confirm their suspicions. But there is no obvious tell, so the most reasonable response from the users perspective is to assume that everything is a little fake, and to discount every number — every like, retweet, five-star review, and follower count — accordingly. Since tomorrow will bring more fakery, then discount a little more with each passing day. It helps that the human brain is uniquely adept at performing this invisible calculus. People have been doing it for millennia. Not with social capital of course, but with money.

Online social capital in any centralized setting is an inflationary currency. It does not enjoy scarcity of any kind and is easy to counterfeit so its purchasing power falls on a daily basis. That’s why it takes much higher numbers to impress users today than it used to. Here the world’s centralized platform operators are even more irresponsible than central banks. The Federal Reserve might be profligate with its printing, but it at least tries to preserve the integrity of its currency after it’s been issued. That’s why $100 bills are difficult to counterfeit. One hundred (or one hundred thousand) likes on any social media platform, on the other hand, are easy to counterfeit.

In economics, Gresham’s Law is the phenomenon by which “bad money eventually drives out good.” It’s more of a principle than a law but explains why lower quality representations of the same currency, like diluted coins with less gold that still have the same face value, tend to force higher quality money out of circulation. It’s best understood from the perspective of ordinary people making sensible decisions. In any economy where legal tender laws force citizens to treat coins of different metal content as having the same value, people are going to try to spend the diluted coins (to get rid of them) and save the denser ones. Maybe the laws will be changed, or the currency will fail, and all coins will have to be melted down to capture their pure metallic value. A similar phenomenon also explains why Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as a store of value, not the medium of exchange it was invented to be. The more fiat money that is printed by the world’s central banks, the greater the perception that fiat is a form of bad money, leading people to want to spend their dollars and hoard their bitcoins.

Kabessa’s Law is the social capital equivalent of this dynamic, named after a popular crypto pundit who first postulated the dilemma that every would-be influencer faces in a centralized setting — to build or to buy. This law states that counterfeit online social capital eventually drives out the quality kind, taking over.

The higher the percentage of fake activity on any platform, the lower the incentive to bother trying to create the real deal. Put differently, the easier it is to buy one thousand Twitter followers, the lower the incentive to try to earn one.

*  *  *

About the book: Re-Architecting Trust is a thought-provoking exploration of how decentralized blockchain networks and the digital assets that they enable can reinvent our most important trust frameworks by creating new types of money, reinvigorating how we transact the old kind, disintermediating the least trustworthy financial institutions, and enabling meaningful business models for artists and influencers. You can order a copy here

Last week we showed that with the Bloomberg Economics team now modeling in virtual certainty of a recession in the next 24 months...

... and with consensus now expecting Fed rate hikes to peak in Q4 and rate cuts to begin in Q1 2023...

... the only question is of timing: just when does the recession begin?

To answer that question, we go to the latest survey of Wall Street professionals conducted by DB's Jim Reid whose preliminary results were released today, and which finds that "the risk of a US recession by the end of 2023 has only been building in recent months with 88% of you now thinking it happens by the end of 2023 up from 78% last month." Interestingly still only 17% believe the recession starts this year, but this is up from 13% last month and virtually 0 in February, so as Reid notes, "the market narrative of a more imminent recession has moved quicker than the responses." Also worth noting: just 8% now expect no recession until 2024, down from a near majority (45%) in February.

That said, of these respondents, over a third (~6% of the total responses) believe the recession has already started. And while Reid still thinks 2023 is more likely than 2022 ("but it's clear the risks are building"), we have claimed since last December that the recession is a 2022 calendar event and a few more catastrophic data points such as the latest guidance cut by RH, just three weeks after its last guidance cut, will make a 2022 recession consensus, which in turn will only accelerate the timeline on the Fed's rate cuts and QE.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A South Carolina state representative on the ballot for the Democratic primary runoff on June 28 for the U.S. Senate has been heard in leaked audio strategizing on how to utilize Democrat “sleepers” to run as Republicans in local elections, as well as requesting drug money from a state prison inmate.

Project Veritas, the watchdog organization that obtained the recording, confirmed to The Epoch Times that it verified state Rep. Krystle Matthews as the person speaking with Perry Correctional Institution inmate David Solomon Ballard.

“When we get enough of us in there, we can wreak havoc for real from the inside out,” Matthews is heard saying in the recording dated Feb. 15.

Inmate phone calls are recorded and those making the call are notified by an operator that calls are recorded.

It is unclear what the relationship is between Matthews and Ballard, who was incarcerated in 2018 with a four-year sentence for threatening the life and family of a public official, and a ten-year sentence for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer, with multiple disciplinary actions taken against him while incarcerated. He also has an extensive arrest record.

Ballard had been jailed for threatening the life of Aiken County Sheriff Mike Hunt and his family, according to The State.

While in custody at the Aiken County Department of Public Safety, Ballard then assaulted a State Law Enforcement Division agent.

‘Secret Sleepers’

Matthews assumed state office in 2018 as a representative of District 117.

“We need some secret sleepers,” she is heard saying. “Like, you need, we need them to run as the other side, even though they for our side, and we need them to win,” the Senate primary candidate said. “We need people to run as Republicans in these local elections.”

Ballard agrees, stating, “Right, right.”

Watch:

BREAKING: Leaked Call With Prison Inmate Reveals SC Democrat State Rep & Senate Candidate @kmforsenate Calling For "#SecretSleepers" to Infiltrate @SCGOP; Advocates For ILLEGALLY Funding Campaign with "Dope Money"

"We can flip some sh*t from the inside out." pic.twitter.com/DbkYpkYFkQ

— Lara Logan (@laralogan) June 26, 2022

Read more here...

The Russian economy is currently experiencing unprecedented pressure from a group of countries led by the United States, with more than 10,000 sanctions imposed on the country, its citizens, and companies. 

Despite all the amplification of sanctions threats by the media, and vilification of anything Russian by western leaders, many of the world's largest nations (by population and economy), are continuing to adjust to current conditions, ignoring the virtue-signaling, and sending Russia's currency and current account balance soaring.

But, in yet another example of the far-less-unified-than-Biden-claims new world order, it appears Indian industrialists have no problem dealing with Putin for their key materials.

The latest example comes from India as Reuters reports that UltraTech Cement - India's biggest cement producer - is importing a cargo of Russian coal and paying for it using Chinese Yuan.

UltraTech is bringing in 157,000 tonnes of coal from Russian producer SUEK that loaded on the bulk carrier MV Mangas from the Russian Far East port of Vanino, the document showed. It cites an invoice dated June 5 that values the cargo at 172,652,900 yuan ($25.81 million).

The increasing use of the yuan to settle payments could help insulate Moscow from the effects of western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and bolster Beijing's push to further internationalise the currency and chip away at the dominance of the U.S. dollar in global trade.

"This move is significant. I have never heard any Indian entity paying in yuan for international trade in the last 25 years of my career. This is basically circumventing the USD (U.S. dollar)," a Singapore-based currency trader said.

India has explored setting up a rupee payment mechanism for trade with Russia, but that has not materialized. Chinese businesses have used the yuan in trade settlements with Russia for years.

"If the rupee-yuan-rouble route turns out to be favourable, the businesses have every reason and incentive to switch over. This is likely to happen more," said Subash Chandra Garg, a former economic affairs secretary at India's finance ministry.

An Indian government official familiar with the matter said the government was aware of payments in yuan.

"The use of the yuan to settle payments for imports from countries other than China was rare until now, and could increase due to sanctions on Russia," the official said.

Finally, we are reminded of what First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told The Financial Times earlier in the year: that the recent financial sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine are threatening to weaken the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world currency,

Russia had been planning for years to reduce its dependence on the petrodollar since the United States imposed sanctions in retaliation for its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The current crisis in Ukraine has only accelerated those plans... and it now seems the entire BRICS group may be ready to cross the chasm as Bretton Woods III begins to form.

The implications, needless to say, are staggering (and, worse, while Zoltan Poszar does not explicitly state it, he clearly believes that world war is coming):

Empires fall and rise. Currencies fall and rise. Wars have winners and losers.

When Wellington beat Napoleon, the trade was to buy gilts. I am no expert on geopolitics, but I am an interest rate strategist and I think the level of inflation and interest rates and the size of the Fed’s balance sheet will depend on the steady state that emerges after this conflict is over. Three is a magic number:

The four prices of money are managed via Basel III and central banks as DoLR.

The four pillars of commodity trading are shaped by war, hopefully not WWIII.

The new world order will bring a new monetary system – Bretton Woods III.

A BRICS-based payment system would be the ultimate challenge to the dollar-hegemon-based system in place today.

At a BRICS summit earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the bloc, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is currently working on setting up a new global reserve currency that would be based on the currency basket of the five nations. Earlier, the bloc said it was working on establishing a joint payment network to abate the reliance on the Western financial system.

Even if this is nothing but talk, it underscores the fact that the dollar is on shaky ground. US policymakers would be wise to consider future dollar weaponization carefully.

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

The Biden administration announced it will expand access to monkeypox vaccines in a new “enhanced” national strategy to combat the outbreak, which includes the deployment of 296,000 vaccine doses over the coming weeks, and potentially 1.6 million vaccine doses over the coming months.

Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services, speaks at the HHS headquarters in Washington, on June 28, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

The plan seeks to “expand vaccination for individuals at risk and make testing more convenient for healthcare providers and patients across the country,” the White House said in a statement on June 28.

Source: BNO

Under the strategy, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will immediately allocate 56,000 doses of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine, which are currently in the national stockpile, to states and territories across the United States.

“States will be offered an equitable allotment based on cases and proportion of the population at risk for severe disease from monkeypox, and the federal government will partner with state, local, and territorial governments in deploying the vaccines,” the White House announced.

The move is a major step up from the 9,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine that HHS has so far deployed from the national stockpile to the 32 states and jurisdictions that requested the vaccine.

HHS will also allocate another 240,000 doses in the coming weeks “to a broader population of individuals at risk,” as more doses are received from the manufacturer. This would bring the total number of vaccines to be distributed over the coming weeks to 296,000.

The White House said HHS will hold another 60,000 vaccines in reserve.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement that the new strategy allows the government to “maximize the supply of currently available vaccines and reach those who are most vulnerable to the current outbreak.”

...

Up until now, monkeypox vaccines have been provided only to people who have had confirmed exposure to a monkeypox case. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) from the CDC now recommends that vaccines will be made available to people with “confirmed monkeypox exposures and presumed exposures.”

“This includes those who had close physical contact with someone diagnosed with monkeypox, those who know their sexual partner was diagnosed with monkeypox, and men who have sex with men who have recently had multiple sex partners in a venue where there was known to be monkeypox or in an area where monkeypox is spreading,” HHS said in a statement.

...

The White House noted that the ACAM2000 vaccine “cannot be provided to individuals who are immunocompromised or who have heart disease.”

Read more here...

It wasn't long ago that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had an overwhelming grip on both major parties in the United States. However, in the most striking indication yet that Democrats are slipping from AIPAC's grasp, former New York mayor and current congressional candidate Bill de Blasio has publicly disowned the group. 

In a virtual candidate forum, NY Jewish Week asked de Blasio if he supported AIPAC. "No, I don't," he responded, adding that the group has changed in a manner he called "unacceptable." Hammering home his stance, he said, “I am not seeking their endorsement and would not accept it even if it were offered."

Such an utterance from a prominent member of either party was unthinkable just a year ago—to say nothing of the fact that de Blasio is running in New York City...which, in 2019, de Blasio called "the largest urban Jewish community on Earth." 

In May, House speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted the endorsement of AIPAC's pro-Israel rival lobby group J Street. Israeli newspaper Haaretz called it "a political development that signals the shifting attitudes on Israel inside the Democratic Party." Walking a political tightrope, Pelosi—a longtime AIPAC ally and recurring attendee at its conferences—hasn't touted the endorsement. 

AIPAC and J Street have gone head to head in many Democratic primary races. Earlier this month, Pelosi recorded a video message to counter AIPAC-sponsored attack ads against a Maryland congressional candidate that has the backing of both Pelosi and J Street.  

Where AIPAC is a relentless defender of seemingly every action of the Israeli government and encourages a hard-line U.S. foreign policy against Israel's rivals, J Street bills itself as "the political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans," and has decried "the injustice of Israel's occupation" and "the ongoing denial of fundamental rights and freedoms to millions of Palestinians in occupied territory."

The difference between AIPAC and J Street came into sharp relief last week:

• AIPAC lobbied U.S. senators against signing a letter encouraging an FBI-State Department investigation of the killing of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

• J Street officially "welcomed' the letter as pursuing "the only just and sensible solution" to resolving the controversy over a death that various investigations—other than Israel's—have concluded was an intentional, murderous act by an Israeli soldier. 

De Blasio spoke to AIPAC's national conference in March 2019—two months for before declaring his candidacy for president. He laid out what he called a "progressive case for the state of Israel," but condemned the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement that many progressives embrace as a means of opposing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Also that month, de Blasio scolded progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar for tweeting "It's all about the Benjamins baby" in response to a Glenn Greenwald tweet marveling at "how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation [Israel] even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans." De Blasio said "there's a long antisemitic tradition associated with that kind of comment." 

In distancing himself from the group, de Blasio cited an AIPAC-affiliated PAC's sponsorship of a successful primary challenger to progressive House candidate Nina Turner in Ohio. “I thought the attack on her was not only horribly unjustified, it deprived our nation of someone who could have been a huge difference maker in terms of our progressive movement,” said de Blasio. 

That race pitted two black women against each other in a district with a substantial Jewish vote. In her victory speech, challenger AIPAC-backed Shontel Brown reminisced about her visit to Israel, which helped her "appreciate the vulnerability of a state, and that has given me the understanding of the U.S.-Israel relationship and I thank my Jewish brethren." 

Turner's sin that provoked AIPAC: A tweeted message of solidarity with "If Not Now," a group that describes itself as "American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all."  

Solidarity is a verb ✊🏾 https://t.co/Kupgdtuqey

— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) May 12, 2021

At last week's candidate forum, De Blasio said "the only path forward to peace in the region for both Israeli and Palestinian people to have their own states. I would fight for that, and I would certainly fight against any organization that attacks my fellow progressives.”

De Blasio, who served as New York's mayor from 2014 to 2021, is running to represent the newly-redrawn New York 10th congressional district, which covers all of southern Manhattan and a big swath of Brooklyn.  

 

Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As previously reported in an exclusive June 20 report, evidence proves that “plainclothes” members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were embedded among Jan. 6, 2021, protesters for the purposes of conducting video surveillance. According to experts, one believes the activity itself may have been against the law. The other contends it was done for the purpose of entrapment.

Against the Law?

Speaking as a former prosecutor and three-term District Judge, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times, “if you’re going to have electronic surveillance of people there has to be warrants.”

As Gohmert explained, “FISA courts have granted warrants,” with “no particular clarity” and “no probable cause that a crime’s been committed or that this person engaged in a crime.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). “Pursuant to FISA,” the FISC website explains, “the Court entertains applications submitted by the United States Government for approval of electronic surveillance, physical search, and other investigative actions for foreign intelligence purposes.”

Regarding domestic electronic surveillance, the Department of Justice (DOJ) website, “Because of the well-recognized intrusive nature of many types of electronic surveillance, especially wiretaps and ‘bugs,’ and the Fourth Amendment implications of the government’s use of these devices in the course of its investigations, the relevant statutes (and related Department of Justice guidelines) provide restrictions on the use of most electronic surveillance, including the requirement that a high-level Department official specifically approve the use of many of these types of electronic surveillance prior to an Assistant United States Attorney obtaining a court order authorizing interception.”

Furthermore, “when court authorization for video surveillance is deemed necessary, it should be obtained by way of an application and order predicated on Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(b) and the All Writs Act (28 U.S.C. § 1651). The application and order should be based on an affidavit that establishes probable cause to believe that evidence of a Federal crime will be obtained by the surveillance. In addition, the affidavit should comply with certain provisions of the Federal electronic surveillance statutes.”

Gohmert surmised: “When you see confirmed judges are just willing to completely abrogate the U.S. Constitution because they’re the star chamber of the secret court, and they figure nobody will ever find out what they’re doing, then you know when you see there’s an Electronic Surveillance Unit, well, something’s not right.”

Gohmert’s concerns with the ESU surveillance are two-fold:

1. Were the legally required warrants obtained?

2. If so, how could a judge approve a warrant for surveillance before a crime has been committed and with no probable cause?

“We can’t have secret units doing secret surveillance of people that have committed no crime, no probable cause of a crime. Just getting blanket surveillance,” Gohmert asserted. “We don’t know what kind of warrant they had or even if they had warrants. But to deploy Electronic Surveillance Units tells us there’s a lot more here that we need to find out about and obviously it’s not going to be uncovered at least for another six months.”

But Gohmert added that “there is also more information we haven’t gotten and information that continues to leak out drip by drip.”

“Like this in [article] The Epoch Times,” Gohmert noted, “pointing out how until the deployment of munitions, the crowd was peaceful. I had heard from people and seen people interviewed saying there wasn’t any violence out there. ‘We were just mulling around, chanting stuff from time to time, then they started firing on us with tear gas and provoked the crowd.’ They created chaos, and you just wonder what was going on.”

The Evidence

Evidence of the embedded ESU members was discovered in a Jan. 3, 2021, First Amendment Demonstrations report, issued by Chief of Police Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times. While it is unclear who the MPD ESU “members” were, the report stated they wore a specific “bracelet on their left wrist identifying them as MPD personnel” among the protesters. Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the MPD, an ESU is not among them.

Also in the report, revealed now for the first time, was the advisory that the Special Operations Division “will have personnel to assist with this detail and will assist with any demonstration.” Among them were Domestic Security Officers, or DSOs.

The Special Operations Division is part of the United States Secret Service, which is part of Homeland Security.

Under the heading of “Special Operations Division — Deployment Requirements,” the report said “the Incident Commander” shall ensure that specific objectives were “adhered to.” Among those is the order that “Long Range Acoustical Device (LRAD) – The LRAD along with the warning sheets shall be deployed by the DSO members along with the munitions load out and arrest kits.”

Domestic Security Officers (pdf) are also part of Homeland Security’s Special Operations Division.

According to The Focus, the DSO “can be heard shouted on audio recordings of the Capitol siege, when law enforcement officers needed additional support against the oncoming masses.”

“DSOs are primarily used as riot police, to dole out such crowd control measures as tear gas, pepper spray, batons and rubber bullets intended to disperse rioters. Their weapons can be lethal and are only to be used in the most extreme circumstances.”

Video evidence shows an unidentified individual handing weapons to people through a window from inside the Capitol building.

Joseph McBride, an attorney for multiple January 6 prisoners and defendants identified a man tagged by “Sedition Hunters” as “Red-Faced 45.” The man McBride says is “clearly law enforcement,” was dressed in red from head to toe—with even his face painted red. He appears in a video engaging in continuous dialogue with others whom McBride also insists are agents embedded in the crowd.

“He passes out weapons, sledgehammers, poles, mace. Some of those things come in contact with some of the other protesters who have subsequently been charged with possessing dangerous weapons and are using dangerous weapons at the Capitol. That is clearly entrapment.

That is clearly the government creating conditions of dangerousness and entrapping members of the crowd to possess weapons and possibly use them for reasons that we cannot comprehend.”

According to a 140-page report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton—”Review of the Events Surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Takeover of the U.S. Capitol”—Capitol Police’s Civil Disturbance Unit was ordered by supervisors not to use the department’s most powerful tools, like stun guns. Also, “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.”

Read more here...

Continued lockdowns in China aren't helping the country's ongoing, decade-long, production exodus, a new report from Caixin notes.

The accelerating exodus from Asian production powerhouse has been helped along by Covid policy disruptions, rising labor costs and worsening trade tensions between the U.S. and China, the report notes. 

Southeast Asia and India are looking to take China's place thanks to low labor costs and rising domestic demand. This falls in line with India's political objectives, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pushing a “Made in India” campaign. 

As an example, Apple said earlier this year that it had started making its iPhone 13 at a factory in India instead of Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn. Like other smartphone makers, it has an incentive not only for exports, but for domestic sales, the report notes:

In India, Chinese smartphone makers set up factories aiming at the huge domestic market. With 1.4 billion people — almost as many as in China — and a high proportion of young people, India has attracted Chinese brands including Xiaomi, Meizu, Vivo and Oppo to build factories. Many Chinese phone part makers have also set up factories there. Now Chinese brands account for nearly two-thirds of India’s smartphone market.

But that doesn't mean China doesn't have advantages: it has an enormous domestic market and decades of manufacturing infrastructure and experience, the Caixin report notes. And while no major aftershocks have been felt in China's economy, the trend is heading in the wrong direction for the country. 

Li Xingqian, director general of the Ministry of Commerce's Foreign Trade Department said the exodus from China was  “in line with the law of economics.”

Exports in the country were up 16.9% in May, the report says, accelerating from April's 3.9%. The country's trade surplus was $78.76 billion in May. 

However, thanks to weak demand in developed countries, "export orders for delivery in June and July, usually the peak season for booking goods for the back-to-school and holiday seasons, didn’t come in as expected," the report said. This weak demand was seen in falling shipping rates. 

Americans may take until the end of this year to work through inventories that were pulled forward over the last year. 

At the same time, President Joe Biden has said that he is considering lifting tariffs on $350 billion a year in Chinese goods. His administration, however, still seems to be divided on the matter and no decision is expected quickly. 

The report noted clearly that, to this day, China remains "the world's factory", which is unlikely to change anytime soon:

Neither Southeast Asia nor India can replace China as the global manufacturing hub in the near future as they are mainly engaged in labor-intensive and low value-added manufacturing, several foreign trade participants told Caixin. They also face problems such as incomplete industrial chains and low labor efficiency to varying degrees, experts said.

To foreign companies, China is not only a manufacturing base but also a huge market, said He Xiaoqing, president of consulting firm Kearney Greater China. In 2020, global companies had $1.4 trillion of domestic sales, far more than their exports of $900 billion, showing the attractiveness of China’s local market, He said.

In addition to India, Vietnam has also been a beneficiary of factories leaving China. Imports for the country were up 16.7% for the first five months of this year, data shows.

Most of the production moving to Southeast Asia involves textiles, furniture and low-end assembly of consumer electronics, the report said. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column on the growing attacks on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court after the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. As the Court ends its term, Democratic leaders are calling for removing justices, packing the Court, and other extreme reactions to the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Here is the column:

For justices, the end of a Supreme Court term usually brings welcomed vacations and speaking engagements out of town. This week it seemed more like the justices were fleeing the jurisdiction with a mob at their heels. Six justices (and their homes) are targeted because they dared to interpret the Constitution in a way that is opposed by many in the political, media, and academic establishment. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many called for impeachments, court packing, and “disciplining” justices. What is chilling, however, is that these calls have not come from extremist groups but political and media figures who are challenging the very  “legitimacy” of the Supreme Court.

The Madisonian democracy is based on the premise that, despite our factional divisions, the Constitution creates an interest in all groups in preserving the system. While the Constitution does not guarantee that your views will prevail in Congress or the courts, it has proven the most stable and successful democratic system in history.  We are all invested in that system which has achieved transformative changes over time in our laws and our society.

The Constitution is neither poetic nor pretentious in its language. It was written by the ultimate wonk in Madison. It has only one thing to recommend it: we are still here.  We have survived periods of war, economic collapse, and social discord that broke other systems.

Politicians and the press have thrived under this system and have historically defended its legitimacy even when demanding major changes in our laws. We are now witnessing a crisis of faith with the political and media establishment declaring the highest court to be illegitimate. All because they disagree with a constitutional interpretation adopted by the majority of its members.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, has declared the Supreme Court illegitimate and has called to pack the Court for rending opinions against “widely held public opinion.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., even questioned the institution’s value: “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.” She has now demanded the impeachment of Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch based on the entirely false claim that they lied under oath in their confirmation hearings. After the Dobbs decision, Ocasio-Cortez demanded “there must be consequences” for the Court.

Other leaders like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., issued a warning to the Supreme Court: Reaffirm Roe v. Wade or face a “revolution.”

The media has amplified these extreme calls. In the New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote an outline of how Democrats could rein in the high court in a piece titled, “How to Discipline a Rogue Supreme Court.” He wrote that the Supreme Court does not exist above the constitutional system and added that the “rogue” court “cannot shield itself from the power of other branches.” Bouie’s discipline includes impeaching or removing justices as well as packing the court.

Notably, like many others demanding radical changes to the Court, Bouie previously advocated the change that is most responsible for creating the Court’s current composition. Like many liberals, Bouie demanded that the Senate kill the filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees.

At the time, some of us warned the Democrats that the move was uniquely short-sighted and that they would rue the day that they took such a moronic step. As predicted, the Democrats soon found themselves in the minority without the protection of the filibuster rule and could not block nominees. They gained comparably little from the change given what they lost, including ultimately Roe v. Wade.

Rather than admit that their prior attack on the filibuster backfired, liberals are now demanding even more radical moves like a bad gambler at Vegas who just keeps doubling down in the hopes of winning a hand.

It does not matter that the Court is not as rigidly ideological or dysfunctionally divided as widely claimed. If anything, it has shown fewer divisions in most cases. Before the opinion, ABC admitted that “67% of the court’s opinions in cases argued during the term that ends this month have been unanimous or near-unanimous with just one justice dissenting.That compares to just 46% of unanimous or near-unanimous decisions during the 2019 term and the 48% average unanimous decision rate of the past decade.” Yet, after the decision, ABC’s legal analyst Terry Moran described the term as a “new era” of the “activist court.”

This crisis of faith is evident in other key constituencies in our system, including in our law schools. Law professors like Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinksy have called the justices “partisan hacks” while others have supported targeting the individual justices at their home. Georgetown Law Professor Josh Chafetz declared that “when the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified.” Most recently, the dean and chancellor of University of California Hastings College of the Law David Faigman questioned the legitimacy of the Court after the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.  

Writing in his official capacity, Faigman went as far as to claim that “this decision turns back the clock not just to 1973, but to a century when women did not have the right to vote and were, largely, treated as property . .  . the world today is so much less generous and inclusive than it was just yesterday. I tremble for my granddaughters.” Faigman declared that the “the Court itself, which is a product of political gerrymandering—raises basic questions regarding the legitimacy of the Court itself.”

From Congress to the press to academia, the very foundation of the Court is being challenged. What is notable is that these are also the voices of some of the most powerful figures in our society. Rather than seek to moderate the mob, they are fueling the rage with such reckless rhetoric. There are good-faith objections to this decision but those objections challenge the legitimacy of the holding, not the institution itself. As Benjamin Franklin noted “The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.”

As we detailed earlier in the week, the latest weekly release has pushed the SPR below the 500 million barrels mark for the first time since 1986...

And as the chart above shows, the plummeting SPR is not having the impact on prices that President Biden hoped (which explains why he is blaming everyone and everything else for the rise in gas prices - as it becomes clear it's a refining capacity issue as much as anything else).

While that is ominous by itself, we note that in the context of US demand, it is even more of a concern as based on the latest Department of Energy estimate of Implied Crude Demand, there is just 27 days of supply left in the emergency oil reserve... a record low...

"Congress has been irresponsibly selling the SPR down," said Bob McNally, who in the early 2000s oversaw the Energy Department's efforts to replenish the SPR under former President George W. Bush, adding that "draining the reserve leaves the country and the world more vulnerable to geopolitical shocks."

Finally, we note that in response to growing concerns about the depleted reserve, the Department of Energy revealed plans to replenish emergency stocks.

This fall, it will launch a buyback process to repurchase 60 million barrels of oil, or one-third of the six-month 180-million-barrel emergency release.

As Andrew Moran writes at The Epoch Times, although the White House is exploring multiple avenues, such as urging OPEC to open the taps and pushing gasoline stations to diminish the pain at the pump, the best solution is greater North American output, says Tortoise Senior Portfolio Manager Rob Thummel.

“The best solution remains increasing oil and natural gas production from reliable supply sources like U.S. and Canada that will assist in balancing the global energy markets and reduce the geopolitical risk premium embedded in global oil and natural gas prices resulting in lower prices at the pump,” Thummel stated during a recent TortoiseEcofin QuickTake podcast.

Biden announced last week that he is encouraging Congress to lift the 18-cent federal gas tax for three months...