Authored by Mary Lou Lang  via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, has been dealing with a surge of sex crimes, gang violence, traffic infractions, and other crimes, due to an influx of illegal immigrants.

The latest crime reported by the Kenner Police Department on Oct. 29 involved a 17-year-old old illegal immigrant who was arrested for sex crimes involving two minors in the city. Two additional minors were also found to be abused, Police Capt. Mike Cunningham told The Epoch Times on Oct. 30.

Luis Renan Bonilla-Alfaro allegedly inappropriately touched four minors aged 4 to 13 and performed sexual acts with them in a trailer park.

Bonilla-Alfaro confessed and admitted that he filmed the acts with the minors. Kenner Police found sexually explicit videos on his phone of him and the minors.

“We have identified two additional victims, one of whom was the unidentified we found on [the] suspect’s phone,” said Cunningham. “A total of four victims, all under the age of 13, all males.”

Cunningham said the Kenner Police Dept. will be filing additional charges once forensic interviews of the two additional victims are completed.

Cunningham said they do not know when Bonilla-Alfaro crossed the border and that they “only know he came across as a family unit and there was contact with Border Patrol.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

“With the failure that continues at our border the burden and challenges fall to the boots on the ground, local law enforcement, to keep our communities safe. As these illegal aliens migrate further east over time—the problems that were unique to Texas are now here in Louisiana,” said Kenner Police Department Chief of Police Keith Conley in an email to The Epoch Times.

“The most alarming trend I have seen since being elected Chief in 2022 is the sexual assault of juveniles by illegal aliens. Earlier this year we had an illegal alien rape a 15-year-old girl, then the next night he stabbed a man in the face.”

Another case he noted was of an illegal immigrant who raped a 14-year-old girl at knifepoint.

This latest case involves sexual offenses on boys ages 4, 7, and 8, and a fourth young boy his police department is working to identify, Conley said.

“We did have HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] put a detainer on this predator,” Conley said. “These children should never have been  victimized, our borders should have been secured! This is a failure at the highest level.”

Kenner police also encountered more than a dozen members of the 18th Street Gang in the city and found they were attempting to recruit members from the local high school, Bonnabel High School, according to Cunningham.

The 18th Street Gang is a violent international gang that engages in numerous criminal activities, including murder, kidnapping, assault, robbery, firearms, and narcotics trafficking, according to the Department of Justice.

Like the violent MS-13 Gang, the 18th Street Gang recruits teenagers, and after two years of initiation, the new recruit must commit murder to become a full-fledged gang member, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Most of the 18th Street Gang members found in Kenner have been deported, Cunningham said.

The city of 70,000 has a mandatory arrest policy, which applies to anyone driving a vehicle who does not have a driver’s license and has led to several arrests a day, according to Conley. It has led to taking “some really bad people off the streets as a result,” he said.

Fraudulent temporary license plates, unlicensed and uninsured motorists, and traffic problems are more prevalent than ever before now, according to Conley, which is putting Kenner residents in danger and driving up insurance costs.

The rise in crime and traffic infractions is also draining the resources of the police department.

“It should also be noted that Kenner enjoys a large Hispanic population—20-30 percent. It is leaders from this community that have reached out to my office, asking us to work towards keeping those from coming here illegally,” Conley said. “They feel that they came to this country legally to make a better life for their family–they worry that the criminal element and trends from those countries they fled from will now become more prevalent here.”

Bonilla-Alfaro so far has been charged with first-degree rape, two counts of sexual battery, two counts of pornography involving juveniles, and indecent behavior with juveniles. Additional charges are expected to be filed, according to the police.

People on the Kenner Police Department’s Facebook page expressed outrage at the crimes against the innocent children and cited the open border as the reason.

Kedin Ribera wrote, “Those who are doing bad things should be punished with the full weight of the law, but the majority of Hispanic people are dedicated to working honestly.”

“Joe Biden Kamala Harris this is what happens when you have open borders,” wrote Chad Brown.

Mauro Rene Carbajal, who indicated she is a minority, wrote, “100% in favor of  close [d] borders, sorry my people may hate me for it, but it’s the only way to keep our families safe.”

Bonita Atchison Toca, in her Facebook posting, noted the increase in sexual abuse by migrants and wrote: “This right here is despicable!!!! Kamala Harris 2024 take him to your house!!!!!! This is the results of open borders!!! It’s more and more in Kenner Louisiana, horrible!”

The Epoch Times reached out to both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign for comment on the latest crime in Kenner, as the open border is a major issue for voters this election.

“This is further proof that Kamala Harris refuses to fulfill her role as border czar, ignores the invasion of dangerous gangs like Tren De Aragua at the southern border, and has allowed her inhumane wide-open border policies to drive up crime,” RNC spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email to The Epoch Times.

“Thanks to failed border czar Kamala Harris, apartment complexes are being taken over by violent gangs, more than 32,5000 children are unaccounted for, and innocent victims like Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, and Rachel Morin have been brutally killed by illegal immigrants. America deserves a president that will close our border, deport illegal immigrants, protect our border patrol agents, and put America First. Kamala Harris broke our border security, but President Trump will fix it.”

Vice President Kamala Harris did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

However, while on a September trip to the border, Harris said that if she is elected president, she will fix the immigration system and secure the border.

“As your president, I will protect our nation’s sovereignty, secure our border, and work to fix our broken system of immigration. And I will partner with Democrats, Republicans, and independents to do it,” Harris said.

Harris also said she will bar those who cross illegally from the country.

“Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from reentering for five years. We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators, and if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum,” Harris said.

Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Regardless of who wins the election, the next president likely will have to deal with an economic slowdown next year, several experts told The Epoch Times. The government may try to intervene, but there’s a risk any remedies will cause harm, they said.

On paper, the U.S. economy is chugging along nicely. Unemployment is low, the markets are up, and the gross domestic product (GDP) came in 3 percent above inflation in the second quarter. Third-quarter GDP is expected to climb 2.6 percent above inflation, and median wages increased by nearly 2.5 percent (adjusted for inflation) over the past two years.

Yet, a large proportion of Americans don’t feel like the economy is working well for them.

Only about 21 percent consider business conditions “good”—a far cry from the nearly 40 percent who thought so five years ago, according to Consumer Confidence Index surveys. Self-reported family financial situation has virtually stagnated for the past year, the survey shows. Meanwhile, credit card debt is up about 16 percent over the past two years.

Economic indicators likely won’t remain as encouraging for long, said Lance Roberts, the chief investment strategist at RIA Advisors.

“I think you’re going to start looking at much lower rates of economic growth somewhere sub-2 percent growth as consumers become challenged by making ends meet,” he said.

Steve Hanke, professor of Applied Economics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, shared a similar concern.

“The economy is running on fumes and is bound to slow down,” he said via email, pointing to the shrinking of money supply in 2022–2023 that has since only partly reversed.

Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, “there have only been four such contractions: 1920–21, 1929–33, 1937–38, and 1948–49. Three were associated with recessions, and the 1929–33 contraction resulted in the Great Depression,” Hanke said.

Financial markets should brace for a similar slowdown, according to Adam Taggart, founder of Thoughtful Money, a financial education firm.

In recent weeks, Taggart spoke to more than a dozen market analysts and noticed there’s an unusually wide disagreement on the market direction.

His best suggestion is to follow the global liquidity model produced by Michael Howell, chief executive of CrossBorder Capital, a London-based market research firm.

The model indicates that bull and bear markets in today’s economy trace liquidity: how much money is in the system overall. Howell posits that liquidity waxes and wanes in cycles. Right now, he says the market is in an upward cycle that’s likely to peak next year, signaling a slowdown.

“Just like when you throw a ball up in the air as it gets close to its apex, its speed of rise is declining,” Taggart said.

Market predictions, however, assume that “everything remains status quo next year,” Roberts noted.

As the economy slows down, letting a large number of Americans descend into poverty would be politically indigestible for whoever becomes the president. It would be expected for the administration to intervene, he suggested.

Taggart concurred.

“The system will do everything it can to fight it,” he said.

How that may happen would partly depend on who wins.

If Vice President Kamala Harris is elected and gets Congress on her side, her plan would be to institute a series of government programs, such as to finance public housing and subsidize downpayments for first-home buyers.

“That’s very inflationary,” Roberts said.

The programs would be at least partly financed through increased taxes on higher earners, which could offset the impact on government deficit. But that’s not the main issue, as Roberts explained.

“Once you start providing capital to people to go buy stuff, that massively increases the demand on the available supply,” he said.

Housing construction can’t be increased at will due to a limited number of people skilled to build them.

“You’re trying to solve a housing problem; you’re going to massively create one at that point,” Roberts said.

“If we give $25,000 to three million people to go buy houses, there’s not enough houses to buy, and they can’t build them that fast. So that’s going to be very inflationary.”

Not only would housing prices rise but also construction labor, commodities, and transportation, which all are tied to the housing supply chain, Roberts said.

If former President Donald Trump wins and gets Congress on his side, his plan would be to cut taxes, increase domestic energy production, cut regulations, and impose tariffs on imports.

Cutting taxes and regulations stimulates the economy, as does cheaper energy. Tariffs, on the other hand, could create problems, Roberts said.

Even if the tariffs are calibrated to minimize impact on domestic prices, they would “put pressure on foreign trading partners,” he said.

“It’s certainly going to ramp up a lot of the rhetoric in the market … That’s going to make the markets nervous at that point, depending on how aggressive these tariffs are.”

That has real economic impact as nervous investors are more hesitant to invest.

He also suggested Trump would press the Federal Reserve to “cut rates more aggressively.”

“The Fed’s not going to respond to that, but it’s going to give a lot of rhetoric to the markets,” he said.

“So you potentially get an environment next year where you get a bit stronger growth, but a lot more volatility—both in markets as well as the economic data.”

Taggart was skeptical that either administration would be able to cut deficits on a meaningful scale.

Hanke agreed.

“I think either administration will embrace the newfound economic religion: spend, spend, spend—with Harris pouring even more coals on the fire than Trump,” he said.

Split Congress Scenario

It could easily happen that whichever candidate wins, she or he won’t get majority in both chambers of Congress. In that case, the Congress would likely remain gridlocked, with neither party getting its way. Government spending would stay in an autopilot mode of about 8 percent annual increases, Roberts said.

“That’s the best outcome for the markets. It’s probably the best outcome for the economy, because nothing actually happens that causes a potential unexpected shock to markets.”

Read the rest here…

Henley & Partners, a firm that advises the wealthy on international migration, says that the total number of inquiries by affluent Americans to move abroad surged 500% in the first ten months of 2024 compared with the same period of 2020. Most inquiries are by folks who fear political and social unrest regardless of who wins next Tuesday.

“The primary driver for US citizens looking outside the country is political uncertainty,” Basil Mohr-Elzeki, managing director at Henley & Partners, told Bloomberg. 

Basil said clients are spending up to 10% of their net worth on residency and citizenship programs, some of which can cost millions of dollars. More than 40 countries, including the US, have these residency-by-investment programs, also called “golden visas.”

Artur Saraiva, Henley & Partners’ co-founder, explained that “a lot of Americans at the moment” are speaking with us about second passports or long-term residencies abroad as the US presidential election cycle ends in just days. 

He noted that surging demand for dual citizenship comes from clients across the political spectrum, including registered Democrats and Republicans, with many fearing socio-economic turmoil regardless of who wins. 

Saraiva said, “Portugal has been very attractive,” adding Greece has also been another top choice among clients for its relaxing environment. 

In a separate report, Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners, told NBC News, “We’ve never seen demand like we see now.” 

High-net-worth individuals view one citizenship as a significant personal and financial risk. Their ability to jump ship in one country if social unrest, war, or economic crisis strikes is becoming more common with those who can afford second passports or long-term residencies abroad. 

Google searches for “Henley & Partners” have spiked more than at any other time in the last two decades. 

News stories featuring “Henley & Partners” surged during Biden-Harris’ 3.5 years of ‘joy and love’ inflation storm and illegal alien invasion. Story counts continued rising well into the election year. 

The most valuable passport might be from the UAE, considering it’s a tax haven and has no extradition agreements with other countries.

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

Concentration: 

“Don’t get distracted by an iPhone 17 with ChatGPT functions,” said the British CIO,his long career spent in Asia. “It’s a distraction in the grand scheme of things,” he continued. “All that matters is that you understand we’re in a massive arms race; our ability to win comes down to compute, power, AI.” We were discussing highest conviction themes, where you’d concentrate your capital if you could make only one bet. It’s a good thought experiment. Because real wealth is not generated by diversification, it is built through concentration. 

“The buckets are defense, AI, the infrastructure to support it, and the commodities required for it all,” explained the same CIO. “They’re each part of a piece, the same theme.” One big trade. “The driver of AI is not improved productivity, it’s defense. And defense gets kind of lost in the debate.” No one really wants to talk about it. “But that’s why this drive to push AI to the extremes is being pushed and will continue,” he said. “So that’s long Nvidia, ARM, TSMC, Taiwanese peripherals, the major armaments companies too.”

“Trying to find the US companies that are investable with good beta to the defense theme has been difficult,” he said. “The best opportunities have come from Europe.” They’re the ones who need to spend most. Our Asian allies too. “Mitsubishi Heavy, NEC, the Koreans. Then you have copper, but you need to invest in the entrepreneurial miners. Big names, like BHP, Vale, Glencore, they’re megaliths, bureaucracies, more focused on avoiding risks than taking them,” he said. “So that’s my thematic bet right now, and for the foreseeable future.”

Zero: 

Israel sent 100 aircraft for a 2000km flight to attack Tehran. Zero were shot down. First, the IDF took out Iran’s air defenses. Those Russian S-300 anti-aircraft systems can now be found disassembled in large craters through the region (Russia’s newer S-400 system underperformed expectations in Ukraine and the S-500 is in test phase). With Iran’s air defenses offline, Israeli aircraft had their way with whatever targets they chose in Tehran. They skipped over the mullahs this time. Next time who knows. Such is the nature of warfare for those with superior tech. 

Hypersonic: 

“This precisely demonstrates that the US military is using the so-called threat of China’s missile development as an excuse to continuously enhance its missile strike capabilities across land, sea, and air, seeking absolute military superiority,” said Zhang Junshe in the Global Times, a Chinese propaganda sort of online publication. The US Navy is reportedly moving to arm our ships with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) interceptors to counter the growing threat from Chinese hypersonic weaponry. 

Hyperconnected: 

America’s SpaceX launched its 201st mission to expand the Starlink network, with a goal of bringing high speed, low latency internet access to the globe. The Falcon 9 delivered another 23 satellites, 573 lbs each, into low-earth orbit on Wed, bringing the total to 6,504. SpaceX plans to launch 12 Falcon 9 rockets every month. The pace of Starlink satellite deployment is mind-blowing and can be seen.

Starlink is the largest-ever satellite constellation.

Across its 10,000 lasers, it can transmit 5.6 terabytes per second and more than 42 petabytes in a single day: the equivalent of 28 million hours of 1080p HD video.

[🎞️ Starwalkapp]pic.twitter.com/REcLJ7cUtR

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 16, 2024

In Ukraine, we glimpsed the power of this system. Imagine it when paired with AI. There is no prize for second place in this race.

Thirteen years after the massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, causing a catastrophic meltdown, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., sent a fishing rod-like robotic device into one of the plant’s three damaged reactors to extract the first tiny piece of radioactive material.

AP News reports that Tepco successfully retrieved 2 inches of radioactive material from a mound of molten fuel debris on the bottom of the No. 2 reactor. The 3-gram (0.1-ounce) piece will provide crucial data for the plant’s operator to proceed with a decommissioning strategy…

Telesco on Wednesday successfully clipped a piece presumably measuring less than 3 grams (0.1 ounce) from the planned area right underneath the Unit 2 reactor core, from which large amounts of melted fuel fell during the meltdown 13 years ago, TEPCO said.

Plant chief Akira Ono said only the tiny spec can provide key data to plan decommissioning strategy, develop necessary technology and robots and retroactively learn how the accident had developed.

The government and TEPCO have set a 30-to-40-year target for the cleanup, which experts say is overly optimistic and should be updated. -AP News

Decommissioning Fukushima Dai-ichi will take decades. The sample will provide more exact figures to update decommissioning timelines. The site holds 880 tons of highly radioactive molten fuel in three reactor buildings.

Meanwhile, in August 2023, Tepco began releasing treated radioactive wastewater from the plant into the sea. This infuriated China, which shortly after blocked imports of Japanese seafood.  

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

• Despite high storage levels, European gas prices remain volatile due to supply disruptions.

• The EU’s dependence on Russian gas continues, with alternative sources from the U.S. and Azerbaijan facing limitations in meeting Europe’s total demand.

• Experts: Europe’s gas supply outlook might worsen in 2025 compared to 2024.

A year ago, European politicians declared the gas crisis from the near-complete halt of Russian supplies was over. The EU had turned to alternative natural gas suppliers, assuring there would be enough to prevent shortages and steep prices. These assurances now appear premature.

Last week, European benchmark gas prices hit the highest in a year on the news of a production outage in Norway. On Friday, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility hit 43.68 euros per MWh, which was the highest since December 2023. It seems the future holds more price spikes—because that spike occurred despite full European gas storage caverns ahead of peak demand season.

It all started innocently enough. On Tuesday, Norway’s state major Equinor suspended production at one of its platforms due to a smoke alert. Norway is the European Union’s largest natural gas supplier at the moment. It supplies some 30% of the EU’s gas. When it reported the incident, Equinor noted it would not interfere with its export commitments. Yet gas prices spiked.

It’s all about supply security, of course. It was supply security that drove European gas buyers to rush to build a reserve early on in the year and make sure there was enough in storage before winter season began. Right now, gas in storage in the EU is at 95%, which is exemplary work—only it won’t save the bloc from shortages if the winter turns out to be colder than the last two.

Early forecasts suggest this is exactly what could happen, yet again highlighting the fact that the only reason the EU made it through winter 2022-23 was luck, which brought the continent a milder-than-usual winter. Luck is not something to lean on when it comes to the security of energy supply—which is why Russia is the EU’s second-largest supplier of natural gas, sanctions and all.

The EU admitted as much itself in its State of the Energy Union Report, released in September. “The share of Russian gas in EU imports dropped from 45% in 2021 to 18% by June 2024, while imports from trusted partners like Norway and the US have increased,” the EU wrote, but no matter how much it tries to highlight the shift to Norwegian and U.S. gas, the fact is that Russia supplies more gas to Europe than the United States—regardless of how much EU politicians are trying to stifle these supplies.

The fact this continues is simple proof that Europe still needs a lot of gas despite its voluntary demand destruction since 2022. That demand destruction, per the State of the Energy Union Report, stood at 138 billion cu m between August 2022 and May 2024. It is not something to be proud of—not when businesses are shutting down because of prohibitive energy prices. Yet the EU has done its best to put a positive spin on the demand destruction story, presenting it as a success in reducing the bloc’s dependence on Russian natural gas.

Focusing on that, however, those doing the spin seem to have forgotten that alternative supply is far from guaranteed. The recent price spikes are a rough reminder of that. The Biden “pause” on new LNG export terminal approvals was struck down in court, but it will still be a while before all the planned new capacity gets built. In fact, it will be years. And Europe needs the gas now—because Ukraine said it would not renew its gas transit deal with Russia, and the Ukrainian pipe is the only one still carrying Russian gas, besides LNG, into the EU.

Bloomberg reported this week that the EU was discussing alternative supplies with Azerbaijan that would replace Russian gas flowing along Ukraine’s pipeline network to Europe—but only partially. “The contract would need to involve a so-called swap agreement between Azerbaijan and Russia because Azerbaijan doesn’t have enough export capacity to replace the existing supplies,” Bloomberg explained.

The news, when it broke, pushed TTF prices down understandably. Yet the decline did not last long, and prices rebounded soon enough. Because demand for natural gas is growing internationally, winter is coming, and the deal with Azerbaijan is not yet finalized.

All these factors “have raised risks that the gas supply outlook for Europe may not be any better in 2025 compared to 2024, but, in fact, could be worse,” HSBC’s head of European oil and gas research, Kim Fustier, told Bloomberg.

Unless the EU finds a complete replacement for Russian gas, it could end the winter with gas storage just 30% full and even higher prices. For context, last winter, the EU emerged from heating season with storage full at 58%, which was quite a comfy level that led to comfy prices. In a worst-case scenario, Europe might even empty its storage caverns to keep the lights on and the heating on—Asia likes LNG, too, and the winter is not normally the optimal season for wind and solar. Europe’s gas problems are far from over.

A Washington Post report says that the Zelensky government is ‘ready’ for another Trump presidency. Some Kiev officials are going so far as to say it would be good, despite recent angry words with the Trump/Vance campaign.

“Ahead of a U.S. presidential election that is expected to have major implications for Ukraine — especially in terms of the vital U.S. security assistance — a number of Ukrainian officials are suggesting that maybe a drastic change would be good,” it said.

The Friday report described further, “But behind closed doors, some in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government see an upside in a Donald Trump victory, despite the Republican nominee’s repeated criticism of U.S. spending to support Ukraine and advocating a quick end to the war that could be to Russia’s advantage.”

Tensions within the last months between Zelensky’s office and the Trump campaign have been on edge over Trump’s promises that he would immediately seek to negotiate an end to the war, even if that means Kiev making serious compromises. He had also called Zelensky “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen.”

Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has especially come under fire by Zelensky, which became a big headline issue during the Ukrainian leader’s September trip to the US and battleground state of Pennsylvania. Vance has been a rare Washington politician to heap criticisms on Kiev for its persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for its staying in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

WaPo explains the thinking of some as follows:

Vice President Kamala Harris would probably maintain the status quo if elected, and while Ukrainians have expressed gratitude for U.S. military support, they have also complained that this White House is too cautious and too slow in its decisions to avoid escalation with Russia. With Russia advancing on the battlefield for the past year and occupying more Ukrainian land, officials in Kyiv are increasingly lamenting that the status quo isn’t working and their requests for stronger weapons and looser restrictions on their use have been rebuffed.

Thus the speculation is that Trump could be convinced to make quicker decisions relating to the battlefield, also if it meant creating faster leverage for a future negotiating scenario with Russia.

But the new WaPo piece also seems a bit of PR signaling to the Trump administration. Zelensky appears to be prepping relations in the scenario of a Trump victory:

Ukrainian officials reject the notion that a Trump victory would be disastrous for Kyiv and that they are dreading the possibility. Within Zelensky’s office, there’s an optimism that the Ukrainian leader could sway Trump if the two forged a personal bond.

“Naturally, [Zelensky’s administration] relates more to Trump,” said a Ukrainian official who served in Zelensky’s government during Trump’s presidency. Like others in this article, the person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Another Kiev-based official told the outlet: “You have the Biden-Harris administration, and people can predict their actions. But there’s also a certain feeling of frustration.” He continued: “You have strong words, but people are upset that they aren’t followed by strong actions.”

But it remains that what Zelensky and his top aides fear most is that Trump would quickly begin following through on his campaign promises of immediately ending the Russia-Ukraine war, also by possibly engaging Moscow diplomatically, and circumventing Kiev in the process.

Authored by Drieu Godefridi via The Gatestone Institute,

Today, Germany embraces the ideologies of “green energy” and a zero-carbon society — a society that no longer emits CO2. Germans seem serious about ideology; they seem serious about everything. Once they buy into an ideology, it might be hard to change their mind.

This is how Chancellor Angela Merkel came to power (2005-2021). Many forget that she did not emerge from the extreme green left, although judging by her record, one might think so. She came, in fact, from the CDU/CSU, Germany’s “center-right” party.

Merkel’s record is clear: 1) the demographic Islamization of Germany by opening its doors to a flood of migrants alien to German culture, and apparently with less than no interest in absorbing it; 2) the subordination of Germany’s energy to Russia, 3) the destruction of Germany’s nuclear heritage. If Merkel had have been an agent of the Russian regime — which trained her — she might have acted no differently.

With Merkel gone, Germany finds itself on an accelerating trajectory of impoverishment. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German Economy Ministry now projects a 0.2% GDP contraction for 2024, reversing its earlier prediction of 0.3% growth. Germany also faces industrial annihilation.

BASF, for instance, a flagship of Germany’s industrial sector since 1865, symbolizes the nation’s manufacturing strength. With nearly 400 production sites across 80 countries, its heart remains in Ludwigshafen, Germany, where it operates a vast complex with 200 plants and employs around 39,000 people. However, this hub has recently become a focal point for BASF’s challenges.

Over the past two years, the company has shut down one of its two ammonia units and idled several others at this location due to their lack of competitiveness, resulting in the loss of 2,500 jobs, explains Chemical and Engineering News. BASF also experienced a significant decline in 2023, with sales dropping by 21.1% and adjusted earnings plunging by 60.1%. Adding to these woes, BASF recently announced plans to cut costs by an additional $1.1 billion in Ludwigshafen, foreshadowing further job cuts.

As a result of this industrial disaster, the German establishment is confronting a democratic revolt by growing segments of its people, as shown by the recent regional elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, which saw the surge of the right-wing AfD party, which demands that Germany say goodbye to the green energy myths that are destroying its industry.

One might have hoped that the German right would learn a few lessons from the Merkel disaster. It has not. Federal polls and the recent regional elections seem to agree, predicting a disaster for the left, while the center-right CDU/CSU and the right-wing AfD are on the ascent.

While logic demands that the center-right and the right, which together have a large majority, govern — their policy convergences, whether on migration or energy, are numerous — the center-right has made clear its absolute refusal to govern with the AfD, in any way whatsoever.

This is forcing the CDU to consider governing tomorrow with… the Greens, Europe’s most radical extreme left (along with the Belgian and French environmentalists) — the party most opposed to the CDU on the issues of migration, the environment and prioritizing nuclear energy. The movement responsible for the destruction of Germany’s energy resources, and a direct accomplice of the Russian regime and under its patronage — the Greens — who signed and celebrated the dismantling of Germany’s nuclear power stations in the middle of the war in Ukraine after destruction of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline; nuclear power stations that were still operational and could have continued to produce cheap energy for years.

Is the CDU actually preparing to close the borders with those who want to abolish borders; to send back unintegrable migrants despite the Greens’ opposition to deportation; to lower energy prices with the authors of the very policies that caused the prices to explode in the first place, and to counter Islamism with the help of its most dedicated allies?

This collaboration is being facilitated by a massive ideological convergence: both the CDU and the Greens believe in the necessity of the Energiewende (“energy transition”). The elimination of fossil fuels and nuclear power is to be replaced by the “renewable energies” — mainly wind and solar — which are intermittent, often unaffordable and of limited practical use. Wind and solar are massively impacted by weather conditions. Solar panels produce less on cloudy days, and wind turbines generate less during calm periods. This variability makes it difficult to ensure a consistent energy output.

The center-right CDU supports the market economy, the Atlantic alliance and German industry — but also adheres to environmentalists’ ideology. That view helps to explain why the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament — in which the CDU is a member party — appointed Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission. Under her leadership of the European Union, the economy is collapsing, industry is disappearing and Islamism is proliferating. Supposedly, all of that does not matter because Europeans have the Holy Grail: the “energy transition” to a “zero-carbon” Europe, and more regulations than all the other civilizations combined.

Unfortunately, that policy is an absolute myth. “Zero-carbon Europe”, a physical impossibility, will never happen. Even if it did, it would make no difference to the global explosion in CO2 emissions. Europe accounts for just 8% of global CO2 emissions. Even if Europe ceased to exist, it would make little difference to global CO2 emissions. They would continue to grow on all five continents. The destruction of European industry by the German right would have no effect on the climate — zero.

Today, with environmentalists touting the “zero-carbon society” and “100% renewable energy,” Germany has locked itself in myths hardly better than the Lebensraum of the previous century.

Today, as yesterday, these myths risk precipitating the ruin not only of Germany, but of the whole of Europe.

To get Germany and Europe out of this rut, would it not be more constructive for the CDU to consider governing with the AfD?

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“In the global competition on AI, the alleged role of a single, and outdated, version of an American open-source model is irrelevant when we know China is already investing more than one-trillion dollars to surpass the US on AI,” said a Meta spokesperson, defending itself against an allegation.

The Jamestown Foundation had released an academic paper [here] with the following claim: “The military and security sectors within the People’s Republic of China are increasingly focused on integrating advanced AI technologies into operational capabilities. Meta’s open-source model Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) has emerged as a preferred model on which to build out features tailored for military and security applications. In this way, US and US-derived technology is being deployed as a tool to enhance the PRC’s military modernization and domestic innovation efforts, with direct consequences for the United States and its allies and partners.”

The report also stated: “In September, the former deputy director of the Academy of Military Sciences (AMS), Lieutenant General He Lei, called for the United Nations to establish restrictions on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare. This would suggest that Beijing has an interest in mitigating the risks associated with military AI. Instead, the opposite is true. The People’s Republic of China is currently leveraging AI to enhance its own military capabilities and strategic advantages and is using Western technology to do so.”

As the world waited for America to choose its next commander-in-chief, I spent the week thinking about security matters.

“The number of different categories of space weapons that China has created and the speed with which they’re doing it is very threatening,” warned General Chance Saltzman, head of space operations for the US Space Force, as an existential race amongst the great powers accelerates, at the dawn of the AI Age. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Among many worrying trends is the problem of debanking. It is underreported. The victims do not like to talk about it, even among family and friends.

It is rarely discussed at all in public forums. Only specialists write about it. But it is a threat to everyone in the most intensely effective way. The practice denies people access to the basics of life and yet there is no appeal, no process, no methods of challenge, and no remediation.

We did not know until Melania Trump’s latest biography that she and her son Barron were victims of debanking, the practice of shutting down a person’s bank account based on an unsigned and unexplained decision in which the account holder is merely notified that all services are hereby denied.

Good on her for admitting this. People rarely do.

This apparently happened in 2021, after her husband had left the office of the presidency. There were concerted efforts at the time to wipe out the memory of his time in office.

Back in those days, I used the home assistant app called Google Home. I asked who the 45th president was and the product responded that it had no information on that. Indeed, it was like a scene from Orwell.

Apparently Melania and Barron were also being deleted by their own bank.

“I was shocked and dismayed to learn that my long-time bank decided to terminate my account and deny my son the opportunity to open a new one,” she wrote.

She did not say the name of the bank. Nor do most victims of this practice. The bank simply sends a letter and encloses the balance. The victim then has to hunt around for an alternative, now with the black mark of having been canceled by another bank, which raises real questions. The problem is compounded by the absence of any real reason for the actions.

We do not know how widespread this practice is but, anecdotally, it has clearly escalated in recent years. The same has happened to the former president, and many of his supporters.

The Free Press comments: “Also debanked have been a number of Christian charities, including Indigenous Advance Ministries, a Memphis-based charity that does philanthropic work for orphans in Uganda, and Family Council, a pro-life charity based in Arkansas. According to Democratic lawmakers, many Arab and South-Asian Americans—who are considered ‘high risk’ because of being Muslim—have been debanked, too.”

There is no human right to have a bank account, and banks have every legal right to decide with whom they would like to do business. They can end client services for anyone at any time and have no legal obligation to explain or allow appeal.

Confusing matters is that banks may not necessarily want to kick out account holders but are pressured to do so by their own compliance standards. If they see a business account engaged in activity that seems even slightly sketchy—dealing with crypto or moving cash around in strange ways or taking too many deposits from a strange source—the system itself could flag the account and the process is then set in motion with no human decision-maker.

Indeed, the letter could be sent and the account removed without any knowledge of someone at the bank. The algorithms are ruling the people in this case, a problem that has become extremely serious in a range of areas.

At the same time, there is real danger presented when the practice is deployed for purely political reasons. It is a digital application of the principle of Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Debanking allows exactly this.

Banking services exert an incredible power over our lives. Our automatic payments keep the lights on, the mortgage paid up, and the cellphone going. The debit cards and credit cards hooked into them are the lifeblood of our living standards. Try to function even a day or two without them and you’d see what I mean.

Having them suddenly cut off is like falling into the abyss. You can march down to bank headquarters and demand answers, but this much I promise you: You will get none. Probably no one there, not even the branch manager, has any answer. For whatever reason, the powers that be have decided that your account is not one they want and that is the end of it. There is no one to sue because no one did anything wrong. Granting banking services is at the discretion of the bank, period.

The problem is that the banking system is integral to power itself, regulated by agencies and holding vast amounts of government debt in a system that is ultimately overseen by the legislative and executive branches. That makes banking political, not just in the United States but all over the world. The discovery by political elites that they can weaponize the banking system should alarm anyone and everyone simply because it allows the punishment of political enemies through surreptitious means.

The Free Press points to “an emerging, bipartisan, anti-debanking bloc on Capitol Hill.” They quote Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California. “Every American should have the ability to take out a loan or save for their future without fear of discrimination or having their accounts closed without explanation,” Khanna said, according to the publication.

Indeed, that seems entirely reasonable. There needs to be some action taken before this gets out of hand, which it will very quickly in today’s contentious political environment.

Experts on this topic all agree: The debanked need to speak out about this now, posting letters and recording communications. It’s the only way we draw public attention to this.

There is a broader problem relating to the creation of social-credit systems around the world, most especially in China. Political compliance becomes a standard of inclusion in financial and social life generally. It’s a highly effective way that regimes can carefully and quietly control their citizens. It has no place in a free society, and it seems like our laws ought to be clear about that.

Even if the technology allows it, even if the algorithms dictate it, we need systems in which banks and other financial institutions cannot end services for people without some explicitly cited reason and an opportunity for appeal, in addition to some legal recourse in the case of arbitrary action. Taking those steps would help underscore the point that this society aspires to be free and grants its citizens dignity and rights.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.