Authored by Lorenz Duschamps via The Epoch Times,

Estonia has called on all NATO allies to increase defense spending in a bid to strengthen collective support for Ukraine as the conflict recently passed its one-year mark.

“Members have not done enough,” Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. “This is my comprehensive assessment.”

“The Western camp has supported weapons aid, given around 50 billion euros [about $53 billion] approximately, and this is far from being satisfying,” he added.

“If we want to invest in Ukrainian victory, not only to invest to Ukraine, that they can survive and not lose, we have to change the paradigm of our support.”

The Baltic state, which joined NATO in 2004 and is also a member of the European Union, recently increased military aid for Ukraine to 370 million euros (about $392 million), slightly more than 1 percent of Estonia’s gross domestic product (GDP).

In the interview, Reinsalu asked all member states to follow Estonia’s target, noting that not only should allies contribute more to Ukraine, but they should also increase defense spending to the alliance itself, suggesting raising spending from 2 percent to 2.5 percent.

“We are making—before the Vilnius Summit—the call that all the NATO allies should contribute their fair share to defense, and the 2 percent is not enough … to raise the minimum of defense expenditure from GDP to 2.5 percent level,” Reinsalu said, adding that Estonia “passed the decision” to raise defense spending to 3 percent of GDP starting next year.

Reinsalu’s remark reiterates a stance revealed in early February by Estonian Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur, who pled during a bilateral meeting in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that all EU partners and NATO member states “must spend more than 2 percent” of their GDP, “ideally closer to 2.5 percent” on defense, according to a transcript of the meeting.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (R) and Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur stand for their national anthems during an honor cordon at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on Oct. 18, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Estonia, though a small country, has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion and, as a share of its economic size, has “provided more military aid to Ukraine than any other country in the world,” Austin said at the meeting.

According to data from The World Bank reported by Fox News, Estonia invested as much as 2.4 percent of its GDP toward NATO in 2020, though that number dropped to 2.2 percent in 2021.

Spending Pledges

NATO allies agreed in 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, to halt the spending cuts they had made after the Cold War and move toward spending 2 percent of GDP on their defense budgets by 2024. That pledge expires next year, and now, some NATO members are working toward a new target, despite some existing members not even supplying the necessary 2 percent of GDP to defense as stipulated.

NATO leaders are expected to map out the way ahead when they meet for their next summit at the Heads of State Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July, although it is unclear what the new guideline will be because some member states say 2.5 percent of GDP is unrealistic.

The United States, meanwhile, spends more on its defense budget than all the other allies combined, putting 3.47 percent of GDP into its military coffers, according to NATO estimates for last year.

On the one-year mark of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration also announced an additional $2 billion in new military aid, bringing the total to $32 billion in taxpayer funds provided to Kyiv in the past 12 months, or roughly five times Ukraine’s annual military budget.

Remember when getting in your car and flying down the highway with the top down used to be the perfect escape from the mire and muck of everyday life, like bills and e-mail? Now, thanks to the implementation of technology in the auto industry, that once-freeing joyride is literally becoming bills and e-mail. 

That’s because a new patent from Ford now allows the manufacturer to “remotely shut down your radio or air conditioning, lock you out of your vehicle, or prompt it to ceaselessly beep if you miss car payments”, according to a new report from Bloomberg. While the official company line is that Ford has “no plans” to use the technology, we’re certain that’ll be proven to be incorrect over time.

“We submit patents on new inventions as a normal course of business, but they aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans,” Ford said.

And the patent coincidentally comes along at a time when many car owners are experiencing difficulty keeping up with rising rates, resulting in “delinquencies [that] have been steadily ticking back up from their pandemic lull”. 

John Van Alst, a senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, commented: “It really seems like you’re opening up a can of worms that, as a manufacturer, you don’t really need to be doing.”

“You’ve now created this device which is like the doomsday device in Dr. Strangelove,” he continued. 

The technology is called a “repossession-linked technology” in the patent and can also disable cruise control and automated windows. “Disabling such components may cause an additional level of discomfort to a driver and occupants of the vehicle,” the patent reads. 

Recall, back in September 2021, we wrote about how in-car cameras were already keeping a close eye on everything drivers were doing. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have now developed a smart-car camera system that can “figure out exactly what a driver is doing,” according to a Gizmodo report from around the time. 

We noted that the “appeal” of these points is what prompted the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation to come up with a camera that uses AI powered image recognition to construct a digital sketch of the driver – which then, in turn, provides enough details for the system to guess what the driver is doing. The system can determine things like when a driver is sipping a cup of coffee or looking at their phone.

The vehicle can then make a determination if the driver is paying attention, prompting a semi-autonomous system to determine how distracted they could be. 

Pretty soon the car will be taking you out for a joyride when it’s stressed…

Authored by Efthymis Oraiopoulos via The Epoch Times,

Fifty-one percent of the world’s people will be overweight or obese by 2035, with the most affected countries being in Asia and Africa, a new report estimates.

The World Obesity Federation report claims that overweight and obesity-related problems could cost $4.35 trillion annually by 2035 if prevention and support do not improve.

The report says its estimates will be realized if current trends continue.

Childhood obesity could more than double by 2035 from 2020 levels, the report says, adding that lower-income countries, all in Asia and Africa, will be hardest hit.

The report adds that 208 million boys and 175 million girls are expected to be obese by 2035.

One out of four people is predicted to be obese by 2035, compared with one out of seven today.

The report uses body mass index (BMI) for its assessments, a number calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. In line with the World Health Organization’s guidelines, a BMI score over 25 is overweight, and over 30 is obese.

Describing the data as a “clear warning,” Louise Baur, the federation’s president, said that policymakers needed to act now to prevent the situation from worsening.

“It is particularly worrying to see obesity rates rising fastest among children and adolescents,” she said in a statement.

“Governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation.”

The World Obesity Federation has a formal consultative status with the World Health Organization, according to its website.

The report’s data will be presented to United Nations policymakers and member states next week.

American Obesity

In the United States, one of the major hurdles army recruiters now face is obesity, which has become a dominant health challenge for Americans. As of 2020, the prevalence of obesity in the adult population hit nearly 42 percent.

In addition, research shows that government food subsidies are a significant contributing factor.

One 2022 study found a link between receiving food assistance and a greater chance of becoming obese by consuming unhealthy foods. That’s especially true for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

It’s been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In spite of claims from the regime and its media allies that Russia was the next Third Reich and would soon roll through half of Europe, it turns out that was never even remotely true.

In fact, things have unfolded more or less just like we predicted here at mises.org:

• the Russians aren’t even close to occupying any place in Europe beyond eastern Ukraine.

• It’s not Munich 1938. Economic sanctions have not crippled the Russian regime.

• Most of the world remains ambivalent on the conflict.

• The conflict will likely end with a negotiated settlement – contrary to what the Washington wants.

The fact is that in spite of the United States’ and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) efforts to turn Ukraine into World War III, the war in Ukraine remains a regional conflict. It seems most of the world is uninterested in making sacrifices to carry out US policy in Ukraine and that many see the inherent hypocrisy behind US talk about respecting national sovereignty. 

There’s also an important lesson here about listening to the war maximalists who incessantly promote full-scale war as the “solution” to every international crisis. The US clearly wants to fight the war to the last Ukrainian, in what the US is packaging as a global crusade in the style of World War II. But, it seems now that more pragmatic thinkers—i.e., the French and the Germans—recognize that negotiations are the more humane solution. 

They Wanted a “Munich Moment”

Within days of the Russian invasion, the Western global hegemonists got to work claiming the invasion was essentially a war of global conquest. For instance, Matthew Kroenig in Foreign Policy stated that Vladimir Putin had shown a clear interest in “resurrecting the former Russian Empire, and other vulnerable Eastern European countries—Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states—might be next.” Kroenig immediately concluded that the US’s military budget should be doubled.

Another writer insisted the Ukraine invasion contained “a whiff of Munich.” John Storey at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute claimed that “the forgotten lesson of Munich” had allowed “Putin is [to do] his best impression of German dictator Adolf Hitler.” Storey ominously asked, “Will the Baltic states and Eastern Europe be next?” dutifully repeating the party line that Russian tanks might soon roll into central Europe.

Yet the “lesson of Munich”—which is invoked incessantly and certainly not “forgotten”—has never been appropriate for conceptualizing the war in Ukraine. That sort of thing has even led some pundits to proclaim that global nuclear war is “worth it.” The real lesson to be learned here, however, is the lesson of 1914: that we should not allow military alliances to lead major powers into overreactions that lead to global disasters. The “Munich” crowd wanted mass mobilization against Russia in early 2022. They didn’t get it, and thank goodness.

Russia Was Never a Global Threat

It has been clear from the very beginning that Russia has never had the capability to sustain an occupation of any areas that do not already contain a sizable number of ethnic Russians or Russian sympathizers. This hardly mirrors the military capabilities of the Third Reich. Thus, it is not surprising that Russia’s occupation endures only in southeastern Ukraine and the Crimea. At this point, Russia is attempting to push the frontiers of its occupation zone as deeply as possible into areas with a sizable Russian minority. Even this has proven difficult for the Russian regime. Russia simply lacks the resources to take on anyone but its impoverished neighbors. 

What’s more, bogging down Russia has required only a tiny portion of the war-making resources available to the NATO coalition. Europe’s NATO members have mostly pledged older weapons, and precious little state-of-the art equipment. The Washington Post recently noted, for example, that the West “is still short on pledges.” Recent promises of Leopard tanks from Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands turned out to be promises of “refurbished” tanks that are more than forty years old. Moreover, none of these tanks will even arrive before this summer. As of late November, contributions of military aid from Germany, the United Kingdom, and France combined totaled a paltry €5 billion. That’s 6.00 percent the size of Russia’s military budget, and a miniscule 0.05 percent of the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $10 trillion that comes out of the UK, Germany, and France combined. But what of US military aid? Surely a huge amount is needed to counter the Russian juggernaut? Well, the US military aid totals no more than $50 billion as of early 2023. That’s 6.00 percent of the US military budget, and it’s 0.20 percent of the US’s GDP.  In addition to this, the US regime now admits it doesn’t even know what happens to the weapons it sends to Ukraine. How much of that $50 billion actually goes to Ukraine’s defense? Not $50 billion. 

If that’s all it takes to keep Russia slogging it out in eastern Ukraine, it’s hard to see how the Russian regime poses an existential threat to even western Ukraine, let alone any other state in Europe. This helps illustrate how unnecessary the US is to the conflict. Russia poses no threat to the US—unless the US escalates to the point of nuclear war. If the Europeans feel threatened, they can easily defend themselves given the huge size of their economic bloc, relative to Russia. The Europeans have more than enough resources to “stand with Ukraine” however they wish to define that. Yes, that might require Europeans to give up a bit of their government pensions and enormous welfare states in order to fund their own military defense. But there’s absolutely no reason why American taxpayers need be on the hook to subsidize Europeans as they’re swilling cappuccinos on month-long vacations.

The World Is Not United against Russia

Perhaps seeing that Russia presents no conventional military threat beyond its “near abroad,” most of the world has not signed off on starting a new cold war. Although NATO mouthpieces have been enthusiastic about the passage of United Nations resolutions condemning Russia, it’s notable how many countries chose to abstain from the vote. Last week, the UN general assembly voted again on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion and calling for Russia’s withdrawal. One hundred forty-one countries voted in favor, but, notably, thirty-two countries abstained from voting (seven states voted against the measure). Among those thirty-two countries were China, India, Pakistan, and South Africa. India, a US ally and the “world’s largest democracy,” was apparently uninterested in joining NATO on the resolution. South Africa, another major world economy and democracy, stayed out of the matter as well. In fact, the only member of the BRICS bloc to vote in favor of the resolution was Brazil.

This has partly been driven by practical matters. The political leadership in these countries is simply not prepared to impoverish its population in order to please Washington. But the resistance also comes from the fact that most of the world knows US pretensions toward respecting national sovereignty and international law are all an act. The US invasions and bombing campaigns against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria have made it clear the United States is perfectly at ease with violating national sovereignty when it suits US ambitions. The so-called rules-based international order obviously means nothing to the US when it becomes inconvenient to Washington. (It should also be noted the Ukraine regime supported invading Iraq and sent at least five thousand troops to help the US occupy that supposedly sovereign nation.)

What does this all mean for Russia? It means that some of the world’s largest economies have signaled they have no plans to cut Russia off from the global economy and that they refuse to cut themselves off from Russian oil, gas, and foodstuffs.

Sanctions Didn’t Ruin Russia

The US has been unsuccessful in securing global compliance in isolating Russia economically. Thus, the US has been forced to rely on coercive sanctions—not just against Russia, but against those who choose to keep doing business with Russia. The US must now spend time and resources enforcing “secondary sanctions” designed to coerce countries that don’t play along, and now finds itself in the position of repeatedly threatening countries other than Russia with “consequences” for violating US sanctions.

But, for all the US bluster on this, US sanctions have clearly failed to ruin Russia economically. Recent numbers show that the US oil sanctions against Russia “have done little to curb the flow of Russia’s crude.” Or as this article as CNBC suggests, the oil sanctions “failed completely.”

This isn’t to say that the sanctions have had no effect. Yet it is clear that the sanctions—the harshest sanctions used since World War II—are not a “game-changer.”

Instead, the sanctions have created additional motivation for states to find ways to get around US sanctions in the future. As Agathe Demarais notes in Foreign Policy:

Russia, Iran, China, and other countries at odds with the United States are doubling down on efforts to vaccinate their economies against sanctions. These measures have little to do with sanctions circumvention: Instead, they represent preemptive steps to render potential financial sanctions entirely ineffective. Such mechanisms include de-dollarization efforts, the development of alternatives to SWIFT (the Belgian cooperative that connects all banks across the world), and the creation of central bank digital currencies.

That reference to “other countries” is key. The more the US employs its financial power as a weapon against other regimes, the further this will push the world’s regimes to find ways to break free of the US-centered financial world. Those efforts will put downward pressure on the dollar in coming years.

“Unconditional Surrender” was Never an Option

The US has generally saved its “regime change” rhetoric for small, dirt-poor countries that are unable to fight back. Yet, following the Russian invasion, many Western commentators began calling for regime change in Russia as well. Most notably, on March 26, President Joe Biden said Putin “cannot remain in power,” although he was later forced to backtrack. Not only are the prospects for regime change in a nuclear-armed country fraught with immense danger, but many observers recognize the fact that toppling Putin is easier said than done. Nor would such a move guarantee that Putin’s regime would be replaced with a regime opposed to Russian expansionism. In fact, the new government could easily be “worse” by NATO standards.

This is a hard pill to swallow for Americans who are wed to a long-standing obsession with “unconditional surrender” in every military conflict. The model here is the Japanese surrender in the Second World War. The reality, however, is that the overwhelming majority of military conflicts are ended through negotiated settlements.

Nevertheless, throughout the first half of 2022, those who called for negotiations to end the war—for purposes of ending the bloodshed sooner—were branded Russian apologists. Only total victory, we were told, was an acceptable outcome.

Those days are swiftly coming to a close. “Total victory” for Ukraine, defined as the total withdrawal of Russia, was never likely. The reality is more along the lines of what French diplomats are privately willing to admit. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, French and German leaders are now telling the Ukrainian regime that it needs to consider peace talks:

“We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,” a senior French official said. “And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.”

Gen. Petr Pavel, president-elect of the Czech Republic and a former NATO commander, said at the Munich conference [last week]: “We may end up in a situation where liberating some parts of Ukrainian territory may deliver more loss of lives than will be bearable by society. . . . There might be a point when Ukrainians can start thinking about another outcome.”

The endgame is coming into view, and it’s a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, it’s a settlement that will come only after an immense loss of life for both Ukrainians and Russians, and at the price of enormous loss of capital and infrastructure. A settlement could have likely been achieved sooner, and with the same territorial losses in Ukraine that likely would have resulted in any case. The US could have given up its obsession with making Ukraine a NATO outpost. The Ukraine regime could have given up trying to turn Ukraine into an ethno-state where Russian-speakers are second-class citizens. The US and Ukraine could have admitted they’re not getting Crimea back.  Instead, they chose to prolong the conflict, and the result has been perhaps hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. The fact that the Russian regime is ultimately the aggressor here does not change this reality.  Being a small, poor country next to Russia has always been just an unfortunate reality for some. Thus, responsible foreign policy for those states lies in taking positions that limit unnecessary bloodshed while finding ways to co-exist with the Russians. Instead, the US and Ukraine have chosen to wax philosophical about moral rectitude while NATO leaders recite their bullet points on regime change, total victory, Munich, and a “rules-based order.” None of this helps save lives. 

Those who promoted a need for full-scale war and “no peace until total victory”  have been stunningly wrong, and it has proven to be very costly.

*  *  *

Read More:

• We Must Now Learn the Lesson of 1914, Not the Lesson of 1938. 

• A Brief History of Pundits Encouraging Nuclear War

• NATO Plans to Rip Off Americans Even More as Sweden and Finland Set to Join

• If Ukraine Joins the EU, It Will Be the Poorest Member by Far

• It’s Time to Abandon America’s Fetish for “Unconditional Surrender”

• Russia Isn’t Nearly as Isolated as Washington Wants You to Believe

• Russian Weakness and the Russian “Threat” to the West

• No, Ordinary Russians Are Not Responsible for the Crimes of the Russian Regime

• Why Sanctions Don’t Work, and Why They Mostly Hurt Ordinary People

• Will Biden Sanction Half the World to Isolate Russia?

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) reintroduced a bill which would require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to destroy firearm purchase records in their database.

The bill, No Retaining Every Gun In a System That Restrictts Your Rights (No REGISTRY), comes amid an agency crackdown on gun stores, Fox News reports.

The bill would also require that gun stores which are closing down to destroy their purchase records, preventing the ATF from obtaining them.

“The Second Amendment is clear: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” said Cloud in a press release. “The Federal Government does not have the right to subject its law-abiding, citizen firearm owners to excessive scrutiny.”

“My bill would dismantle ATF’s record keeping, restore privacy for American gun owners, and reverse the groundwork laid for the creation of a federal firearms registry.”

According to Gun Owners of America director of federal affairs, the ATF “has no business maintaining nearly a billion gun and gun owner records in a digital, searchable database.”

“ATF’s recordkeeping authority has been weaponized and all statutory protections against the creation of a gun registry have been maliciously circumvented,” he added in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“Gun Owners of America proudly supports Rep. Michael Cloud’s No REGISTRY Rights Act to rein in this rogue agency and completely eliminate ATF’s unconstitutional gun registry,” he continued.

Additionally, Cloud’s bill is backed by GOA, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (FRAC).

With a Republican-controlled House, the bill could make it to the floor for a full vote. Getting through the Senate will be harder, though.

But if the bill does make it through the upper chamber, it will go to President Biden’s desk where he could choose to veto it.

Cloud’s bill comes as the ATF cracks down on gun stores across America.

Last month, Fox News Digital exclusively obtained the ATF’s federal firearms licensee (FFL) inspection guidance from January 2022 that makes it easier to revoke gun stores’ federal licenses. -Fox News

In January of 2022, the ATF updated its federal firearms license (FFL) inspection guidance which makes it easier to revoke a gun store’s federal licensing. It states that the agency “has zero tolerance for willful violations that greatly affect public safety and ATF’s ability to trace firearms recovered in violent crimes,” and that “revocation” of the FFL’s license “is the assumed action” when it comes to violations.

When this happens, the shop is likely to close down, and can be required to send its gun purchase records – which are currently required to be kept indefinitely, directly to the ATF.

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration’s new cybersecurity strategy takes aim at China’s communist regime and other authoritarian powers for subverting the international order through malign cyber activity.

The 2023 National Cyber Strategy, released on March 2, says that communist China and other regimes are attempting to export their own forms of authoritarianism through the use of technology.

“The governments of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other autocratic states with revisionist intent are aggressively using advanced cyber capabilities to pursue objectives that run counter to our interests and broadly accepted international norms,” the strategy states.

“Their reckless disregard for the rule of law and human rights in cyberspace is threatening U.S. national security and economic prosperity.”

China in particular is threatening U.S. interests and dominating emerging technologies critical to global development with the intent of reshaping the world order, the document states.

“[China] now presents the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks and is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.”

“Having successfully harnessed the Internet as the backbone of its surveillance state and influence capabilities, [China] is exporting its vision of digital authoritarianism, striving to shape the global Internet in its image and imperiling human rights beyond its borders.”

Whole-of-Government Approach to Counter China

Given the threat posed by authoritarian powers like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the strategy outlines an aggressive posture that the administration seeks to take defending the United States and its interests from foreign interference.

This new posture, according to the strategy, will integrate cyber, diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement, and other capabilities to target threat actors and remove them from play.

“The United States will use all instruments of national power to disrupt and dismantle threat actors whose actions threaten our interests,” the strategy states.

“These efforts may integrate diplomatic, information, military (both kinetic and cyber), financial, intelligence, and law enforcement capabilities.”

Such integration will bring the United States’ cyber security strategy to more closely resemble the whole-of-society approach being implemented by China and other powers.

The purpose of such an expansive and integrated system, the document says, is to ensure that malign actors are “incapable of mounting sustained cyber-enabled campaigns that would threaten the national security or public safety of the United States.”

Likewise, the strategy seeks to expand the role of the federal government in other ways, including by taking a more assertive role in directing the market by federalizing some spending and increasing security regulations and liability laws.

The approach will focus on “shifting the burden for cybersecurity away from individuals, small businesses, and local governments,” the strategy states, as market forces are “inadequate” to impose the necessary costs on entities that introduce vulnerable products into the digital ecosystem.

‘Fundamental Changes’ to Digital Ecosystem

By making the digital ecosystem more “defensible,” “resilient,” and “values-aligned,” the strategy states, the United States can better defend itself and its partners while also offering an alternative to the authoritarian model of technological governance offered by regimes like the CCP.

To that end, the strategy is deliberately crafted as an evolution of the cyber framework first established by the Trump administration’s strategy in 2018 and “continues momentum on many of its priorities, including the collaborative defense of the digital ecosystem.”

As such, the strategy seeks to take a more aggressive stance on cyber threats to national security, and will now classify ransomware attacks as national security threats as opposed to mere criminal challenges, paving the way for a greater range of responses to such threats, including through coordination with international partners.

The strategy will likewise make fundamental changes to the minimum security requirements for technologies and systems used by vital sectors such as oil and natural gas pipelines, aviation, railways, and water systems.

Moreover, by leveraging international coalitions and partnerships among like-minded nations and working with allies on shared standards of security, reliability, and privacy, the strategy says, the United States can effectively counter the CCP and other malign actors while promoting a more free technosphere.

“We must make fundamental changes to the underlying dynamics of the digital ecosystem, shifting the advantage to its defenders and perpetually frustrating the forces that would threaten it,” the strategy states.

“People and technology are increasingly linked, further enabling the very best, as well as the worst, of humanity.”

Los Angeles’ wealthiest residents are purchasing protection dogs that cost as much as a slightly used Mercedes G-Wagon over concerns of out-of-control violent crime and the growing homelessness crisis. 

Los Angeles Times said protection dogs — typically German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Dobermans, Cane Corso, or a mix of those breeds — are being sold by Delta K9 Academy in North Hollywood for as much as $70,000. Some trainers are selling dogs for upwards of $150,000.  

LA Times spoke with Arteom Bulgadarian, the president of an aerospace manufacturing company, who lives in a multi-million dollar home in Sherman Oaks. He owns several guns and recently had his home wired with surveillance cameras but felt that security layer wasn’t enough. 

So Bulgadarian contacted Delta K9 and bought a $70,000 2.5-year-old German shepherd bred as an elite protection dog. First, the dog is a family pet but is highly trained to guard the home. 

“What’s the price that you would put for your family’s security, especially when that particular house has been burglarized?

“Seventy-thousand dollars — you amortize it over 10 to 15 years, whatever the dog’s life is, and it’s not that big of a price tag,” he said.

The recent 8% surge in violent crime in LA coincides with the tenure of George Gascon, the ‘woke’ district attorney, who has allegedly emboldened criminals and sparked great anxiety among homeowners, rich and poor. There have been surges in burglaries and property crime, smash-and-grab thefts, and home robberies, leaving some to believe Los Angeles is transforming into a third-world country. 

“Every celebrity client, at one time or another, and billionaire has said to me these exact words: ‘What about a dog?'” Kris Herzog, owner of the Bodyguard Group of Beverly Hills. Herzog said his firm connects customers with security service firms that sell protection dogs for $55,000. He added, “A dog is always my recommendation if you’re not going to have a gun in the house.” 

LA Times spoke with luxury real estate agent Branden Williams who said elites in Beverly Hills are buying protection dogs. 

One breeder told the local paper:

“To be very blunt, our dogs that were born in 2022 are being sold at a price of $150,000… It’s a coveted product.”

Protection dogs are booming as law and order cracks in metro areas. 

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Existing power plants are projected to retire at a faster pace than installations of new units, and dependence on renewable projects are threatening widespread power shortages, according to a new report by regional power transmission company PJM Interconnection.

PJM analysis shows that 40 gigawatts (GW) of existing power generation is at risk of retirement by 2030, accounting for 21 percent of its current installed capacity. Meanwhile, 290 GW worth of new power supply is seeking to connect to PJM’s grid. But 94 percent of this power supply is made up of renewable energy projects that tend to only have a completion rate of 5 percent. This casts doubt on the ability of new power supply to replace old supply. PJM covers 13 eastern states and the District of Columbia.

PJM also forecasts power demand growth of 1.4 percent annually over the next decade. Certain individual zones might even show demand growth as high as 7 percent per year due to the expansion of clusters of data centers as well as overall electrification.

The retirement of existing power generation combined with the growing demand for power will create a supply gap.

According to the report, the pace of new power generation addition will likely be “insufficient” to fill this supply gap by 2030. As such, the completion rates of upcoming projects will have to “increase significantly” to maintain necessary reserve margins, it said.

Decline in Reserve Margins

Reserve margin refers to the amount of unused available power capacity of an electric power system. A reserve margin of 10 percent would mean that an entity has excess capacity amounting to 10 percent of peak demand.

According to PJM projections, the reserve margin could fall from 26 percent in 2023 to 15 percent by 2030 even in the best-case scenario. Reserve margins are critical during times of adverse weather conditions and periods of high demand. A decline suggests less reliability of power.

“The lopsided energy transition is resulting mainly from Biden’s energy policies and state mandates driving fossil fuel generation to shut down as renewable and storage projects are being developed. These are policy choices by political leaders and utilities are responding as directed,” stated a Mar. 2nd analysis of the PJM report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

Since PJM usually generates a power surplus owing to its large fossil-fuel generation sources, the entity sells excess power to neighboring grids. As such, the retirement of 21 percent of the current installed capacity by 2030 might potentially affect the power situation in these regions as well, it stated.

Renewable Agenda Effects

In an article at The Epoch Times on Jan. 12, Kevin Stocklin, a film producer who made the documentary “The Shadow State,” which investigated the environmental, social, governance (ESG) industry, warned that government policies are pushing more Americans onto the U.S. grid at a time when the grid is becoming “increasingly unstable” due to climate change agenda.

The federal government is providing subsidies for electric vehicles and even contemplating banning gas stoves. Several state governments are passing laws limiting the use of oil and gas while constructing new homes while some have set dates when gasoline-powered cars would be banned.

In the corporate space, the ESG movement is pressuring companies to adhere to a zero-emissions agenda, he pointed out.

“All of this makes Americans more dependent on the electric grid at a time when utilities are accelerating the closure of coal and gas-fired plants, leaving the grid increasingly reliant on intermittent wind and solar power. This has sparked warnings from utility infrastructure experts that America’s dash toward renewables could be driving our electric grid toward instability,” Stocklin writes.

In its 10-year outlook (pdf) analyzing the impact on energy reliability during the energy transition phase, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which seeks to ensure the reliability of bulk power systems in the region, warned of a “high risk of shortfall” in energy during peak conditions in some areas of America.

The Indiana-based Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. is projecting a shortfall of 1,300 megawatts this summer that will continue to grow over the next 10 years as coal, nuclear, and natural gas generation “retire faster than replacement resources are connecting.”

If the current power situation is not analyzed properly, and inadequate politically driven policies are adopted, the United States could soon be heading in a similar direction like that of Europe. Homemade bad decisions one after the other created a crisis that was partially averted due to favorable weather this year.

President Biden on Wednesday said he’ll ban so-called ‘assault weapons’ and high-capacity magazines “come hell or high water” (thus ensuring that criminals are the only ones who have them).

“I know it may make some of you uncomfortable, but that little state above me, Delaware is one of them, has the highest rate, one of the highest rates of gun ownership,” Biden said at the House Democratic Caucus Issues in Baltimore, Maryland on Wednesday night.

“But guess what? We’re going to ban assault weapons again come hell or high water and high capacity magazines. When we did it last time to reduce mass deaths,” Biden said.

BIDEN: “Guess what? We’re going to ban assault weapons again come hell or high water. And high-capacity magazines!”

Guess what? Come and take it. pic.twitter.com/YaKqjTc4Ag

— Young Americans for Liberty (@YALiberty) March 2, 2023

Last month the Biden DOJ announced that it would give $231 million to states to be used for crisis intervention, one day after a mass shooting at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

“These awards will support the kinds of crisis intervention programs that we know save lives and help protect children, families, and communities across the country from senseless acts of gun violence,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times,

Russia is easing its dependence on the U.S. dollar and quickly growing reliant on the Chinese yuan, which could turn out to be either a boon for Moscow or a substantial risk, experts warn.

Over the last year, the Russian economy has been restricted from Western financial networks and has faced economic and political sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia has also been prohibited from using the U.S. dollar, forcing the Kremlin to turn to the Chinese yuan as an alternative.

President Vladimir Putin has expanded his country’s relations with Beijing, particularly on the energy front.

Russia’s Exports to Beijing

“According to the results of this year, Russia has become one of the leaders in oil exports to China,” Putin said at the beginning of a video conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping in December.

Russia’s exports of discounted crude and fuel oil to China surged to record levels in January, topping the previous high established in April 2020. According to data intelligence firm Kpler, crude and fuel oil flows to China increased to 1.66 million barrels per day to kick off 2023. With the world’s second-largest economy reopening its markets after abandoning its COVID-Zero strategy, market experts anticipate that the energy trade could grow at a far more significant pace.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, on Feb. 4, 2022. (Sputnik/Aleksey Druzhinin/Kremlin via Reuters)

But while Russia is using the revenues from its sales of discounted energy products to China to fund its war in Ukraine, Beijing benefits in many ways.

The first is the $13-a-barrel savings on Russian Urals, which presently trade at around $60 per barrel.

The second is that another significant market is relying on the Chinese yuan.

Data compiled by The Wall Street Journal show that domestic energy exporters are being paid in yuan. The nation’s sovereign wealth fund, which is a war chest to ensure the Kremlin pays its bills, is utilizing the yuan to maintain its oil-driven revenues. Last summer, major companies, such as aluminum king Rusal, energy giant Rosneft, and lending firm Bistrodengi, began issuing yuan-denominated bonds inside Russia. In addition, a growing number of companies are borrowing capital in yuan, while households have deposited approximately $6 billion worth of Chinese currency in Russian banks.

With the ruble under attack by the international community and broader discussions about the end of the dollar hegemony, many consumers turned to the yuan for shelter.

Although dollars and euros still account for most of the Russian export settlements, the prevalence of payments in the yuan and even the ruble is increasing.

Sanctions on Russia

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance announced in February that it would sell more than 5 percent of its yuan stockpile. The Russian government is drawing down from its reserves to cover a budget shortfall driven by a 46 percent year-over-year decline in energy revenues in January.

Western governments have imposed tighter sanctions on Russia’s petroleum exports, while crude oil prices have slumped on global recession fears and central bank policy tightening. The Urals crude blend is down about 30 percent from a year ago.

Despite the latest developments, some estimates suggest that drawing down from its yuan reserves could allow Russia to cover its fiscal holes for as long as three years.

For now, this might be the only option for Putin and Russia. But observers warn that this could have ramifications for Moscow.

“Russia is swapping its dollar dependence for reliance on the yuan. Should relations with China deteriorate, Russia may face reserve losses and payment disruptions,” wrote Alexandra Prokopenko, an independent analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At the same time, Putin may be attempting to improve the ruble’s standing and circumvent Western sanctions by rolling out a digital ruble in April. The Bank of Russia will be working with 13 financial institutions and pre-selected businesses to participate in a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot project, local news media reported.

Officials say that Moscow is exploring a new digital format for international settlements as part of broader efforts to manufacture a new financial and monetary system for the post-invasion economy.

Rise of the Yuan

Russia’s yuan utilization could be considered progress for China’s greater objective of expanding the yuan’s reach in cross-border commerce.

In addition to Russia embracing the Chinese currency, more countries are considering settling their trade with China in yuan.

The Iraqi government confirmed to Reuters that it is taking steps to permit trade from China to be settled directly in yuan amid the nation’s U.S. dollar shortage.

“It is the first time imports would be financed from China in yuan, as Iraqi imports from China have been financed in [U.S.] dollars only,” said Mudhir Salih, the government’s economic adviser.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal published a report that stated Saudi Arabia had been considering accepting yuan instead of dollars for Chinese oil sales.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum in January, a Saudi official revealed that the Kingdom is open to discussing trade in currencies other than the greenback.

“There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the U.S. dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said. “I don’t think we are waving away or ruling out any discussion that will help improve the trade around the world.”

The United Arab Emirates has bolstered bilateral commerce with China, with trade topping $75 billion in 2021.

This has experts wondering if the Middle East is preparing for a collapse of the petrodollar and is bracing for the rise of the petroyuan.

“China has shifted its investments into the Gulf. The level of project-based, economic, and military cooperation is surpassing cooperation with the U.S. on many levels, and trade is likewise being reoriented toward China from a balance towards a preferred system,” Irina Tsukerman, a geopolitical analyst and the president of security advisory firm Scarab Rising, told The Epoch Times.

New Basket Reserve Currency

But China is even planting a presence in South America after the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced last month that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on establishing yuan clearing arrangements in Brazil.

Trade between the two nations totaled $172 billion last year.

However, in June 2022, Putin announced that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) members were designing a new basket reserve currency that would attempt to undermine the dollar’s dominance. This could be a more realistic option in the intensifying worldwide de-dollarization campaign, Tsukerman says.

“A mixture of BRICS currencies is a more likely candidate for de-dollarization than the Chinese yuan by itself due to inherent weaknesses in the yuan and China’s own economy. Most countries simply do not see the yuan as reliable enough to make the switch,” she stated.

ING global head of markets Chris Turner stated in a note that this is likely to “address the perceived U.S.-hegemony of the IMF,” adding that it would “allow BRICS to build their own sphere of influence and unit of currency within that sphere.”

But Nouriel Roubini, the chief economist at Atlas Capital Team, suggests that the global financial system will grapple with a “bipolar” currency regime that “will eventually replace the unipolar one.”

Writing in a Financial Times column last month, Roubini purported that the international economy is being fractured by American and Chinese influence. Although some experts aver that China’s rigid currency controls would prevent the yuan from ever surpassing the buck, Roubini believes the U.S. maintains its own unattractive features “among foes and relative friends.”

“These include financial sanctions against its rivals, restrictions to inward investment in many national security-sensitive sectors and firms, and even secondary sanctions against friends who violate the primary ones,” Roubini wrote.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER), the yuan’s share of total foreign exchange reserves tumbled more than 7 percent year-over-year in the third quarter to below $298 billion. By comparison, the U.S. dollar representation also declined about 9 percent to $6.441 trillion.

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