US Industrial Production surged 0.9% MoM in May (triple the 0.3% MoM expected  and well up from the unchanged MoM print in April). That is the biggest MoM jump since Jan 2023 and lifted the YoY print to +0.39%…

Source: Bloomberg

That is the biggest beat of expectations since July 2023 (and above all estimates)…

Source: Bloomberg

Manufacturing output also climbed 0.9%, led by consumer goods, after a revised 0.4% April decrease, lifting the YoY change in manufacturing output 0.1% YoY….

Source: Bloomberg

Capacity Utilization picked up also to 78.7% (better than expected)…

Source: Bloomberg

The figures stand in contrast to other data showing manufacturing has had difficulty building momentum amid elevated input prices, inconsistent consumer demand and high borrowing costs. The Institute for Supply Management’s latest measure of factory activity shrank in May at a faster pace as a gauge of output came close to stagnating.

Source: Bloomberg

Now we wait for the downward revisions…

Apple has ended ‘Apple Pay Later,’ the buy now, pay later (BNPL) service launched in the US early last year. The change went into effect today, according to 9to5Mac. Users with outstanding BNPL debt can still manage payments in the app. This comes ahead of Apple’s new BNPL service with Affirm, which is expected to launch later this year. 

“Apple Pay Later is no longer offering new loans. Existing Apple Pay Later loans and purchases are not affected,” Apple Pay Later’s website read. 

In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said:

Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay. With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the US Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders.

Apple Pay Later provided consumers with BNPL loans that ranged from $50 to $1,000 and split that purchase into four equal payments across six weeks, with no fees or interest.

Last week, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the company announced that iPhones and iPads will soon be integrated with Affirm’s BNPL feature. 

9to5Mac shed more color on Apple’s partnership with Affirm, indicating:

Apple emphasizes that its focus is on the new installment loan features coming to Apple Pay later this year. These features will be available in multiple countries around the world. Apple Pay Later, meanwhile, was only ever available in the United States.

What’s clear is that Apple will no longer back new BNPL loans. Instead, Affirm will when the service launches later this year. In other words, Apple is mitigating risks ahead of what could be a consumer downturn next year.

The big takeaway is that Apple has little faith in American consumers. Look at the disastrous Apple/Goldman Sachs credit card partnership, which is expected to end in the near term.

Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia continues to rise, a growing body of research is sounding the alarm on a possible culprit: heavy metal exposure.

From the medications we take to the water we drink and potentially even the air we breathe, metals like lead, cadmium, and aluminum are widespread in our environment. These metals can increase the risk of cognitive decline and neurological conditions.

Environmental Factors Fueling Cognitive Decline

Nearly 7 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, and this number is projected to almost double by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Studies on humans consistently demonstrate that exposure to lead, cadmium, and manganese is associated with impaired cognitive function and cognitive decline.

Cadmium, in particular, has been increasingly released into the environment through industrial activities such as coal mining and the use of phosphate fertilizers on crops.

Aluminum, another metal linked to an increased risk of dementia, is being considered as part of potential geoengineering methods to mitigate climate change through the injection of aerosols into the lower stratosphere. This could lead to an increased risk of exposure to aluminum compounds for humans and ecosystems.

The legalization of marijuana in a growing number of U.S. states may also exacerbate the problem of toxic metal exposure. A 2023 study found that cannabis users had significantly higher levels of lead and cadmium in their blood and urine compared to nonusers. Researchers discovered that the cadmium levels in cannabis users were, on average, 22 percent higher in blood and 18 percent higher in urine. Lead levels were elevated by 27 percent in blood and 21 percent in urine among these users.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there is no safe level of lead exposure.

Trace Metals That Mitigate Dementia Risk

While some metals can adversely affect neurological health, many essential trace metals could potentially reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. These trace metals, or minerals, play a crucial role in maintaining brain health and mitigating the risk of neurodegenerative diseases when not consumed in excess.

• Magnesium: Neuroprotective; reduces oxidative stress and inflammation
• Zinc: Essential for immune functions and brain communication
• Copper: Reduces oxidative stress and inflammation
• Selenium: Improves cognition in mild cognitive impairment

Food sources rich in these trace metals include:

• Various nuts like almonds, walnuts, and pecans, and seeds (chia, flax, sunflower)
• Legumes (lentils, chickpeas, black beans)
• Whole grains, including whole oats, quinoa, and barley

While these trace metals may have a neuroprotective effect, they are not a substitute for established treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. A comprehensive treatment plan that includes lifestyle changes, medications, and cognitive training is still necessary to manage these conditions effectively.

Exposure to Heavy Metals in Daily Life

Prolonged exposure to low levels of aluminum can lead to changes associated with brain aging and neurodegeneration, a scientific review published in Toxicology showed. The use of antacids made with aluminum hydroxide is one of the main sources of aluminum exposure in humans.

There is no known way to reverse the damage caused by aluminum exposure, Dr. Charles M. Janssens, an internal medicine specialist in Cincinnati, told The Epoch Times. “The brain is demonstrated to have some plasticity and regenerative ability,” he said. “But the best course of action is to remove the source causing the insult.”

The way we’re exposed to these metals varies. “With lead and arsenic, it is primarily through dietary sources, and for other metals, it is more due to occupational exposure,” Dr. Janssens said.

Certain foods and spices, including imported candy, coriander, turmeric, and chili powder, have also been found to contain lead.

While aluminum has been associated with impaired cognition, this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to throw out your aluminum cookware. These metals need to be in a certain state, such as gas or liquid, to be absorbed into our bodies and cause harm, Dr. Janssens said.

The development of totalitarian governments always coincides with sweeping efforts to socially engineer the population to adhere to less rebellious behaviors.  Specific groups that present a threat to the regime are usually identified and targeted with propaganda or indoctrination.  In tandem, the rest of the population is also conditioned to fear those groups and treat them with suspicion.  In this way the establishment elites mold the more submissive public into a shield that protects them from the revolutionaries that might dethrone them.

But what happens when the social engineers want to create tyranny on a global scale?  The list of possible rebels grows exponentially larger and effort to control them all or demonize them all becomes far more complex.  How can the elites simplify their agenda and suppress the public with more efficiency?  

The only answer is to attack and cripple the largest subset of the population that is most likely to give them problems in the future.  Which monolithic group is more likely to fight back against the system?  Obviously, the answer is masculine men.  Therefore, this new global regime seeks to undermine and sabotage men, labeling masculinity an existential danger to society, like nuclear weapons or global warming.

In recent years Australia has been at the forefront of many authoritarian experiments.  Their egregious violations of citizen liberties during the covid hysteria were astonishing.  Perhaps even worse has been the complete takeover of DEI within the Australian government along with the infestation of radical feminism.  Australia, it would seem, is all but lost to the nightmare of the woke religion.  

That’s why it’s not at all surprising that the the Premier of the Australian state of Victoria has created a new ministry tasked with the purpose of changing and perhaps even controlling men.

Jacinta Allan announced this month that state MP Tim Richardson would serve as the inaugural Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behavior Change – the first position of its kind in the country.  The appointment was in response to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling gender-based violence a “national crisis” and promising greater government action.  First, Australia blamed guns for violent crime; now they are blaming men in general.

The mainstream media claims the new effort is in response to a ‘crisis of sexist violence against women.’  The problem is that the data doesn’t support this.  Hospital records for assaults and homicides in Australia show a steady decline among men and women in the past two decades, and they also show that men are much more likely to face victimization compared to women.

Of course, it all depends on how the government defines “sexist violence.”  Does this include contrary ideas or mean words?  Let’s not forget that for progressives words can be the same as violence.  Interestingly, Tim Richardson suggested that his role will focus primarily on the internet and how it “affects men’s attitudes towards women.”  In other words, the government likely wants to control speech on the web to prevent “toxic” male behaviors.

It is not the job of “all men” to take responsibility of the crimes of a tiny handful.  It is not the job of government to mold the behavior of the citizenry.    

All western nations have been involved in the campaign to demonize men in one form or another, utilizing third-wave feminism as a vehicle.  Australia is simply acting as a beta test for similar programs to be implemented in other countries. 

The use of feminism is necessary to fabricate a rationale; they can’t merely attack men for being men or attack men for being potentially rebellious against authoritarian government, there has to be a “victim” that needs protection so that the attack on men appears justified.  Those who defend masculinity are thus by extension accused of threatening the safety of women.

In other words, the totalitarians become the “good guys” because they supposedly have women’s best interests at heart.  And, since men are everywhere, the totalitarians need to be everywhere too so they can keep that terrifying masculinity at bay.  The global regime suddenly becomes sacrosanct; a precious defender of women’s safety.   

Of course, none of this is true.  The establishment’s obsession with the cult of transsexualism is proof of that.  Their insistence that women are nothing more than a “social construct” that can be replaced by mentally ill men in wigs and makeup leaves little doubt that femininity is being targeted nearly as much as masculinity.  But the hyperfocus on men is logical if one accepts the possibility that the goal of these programs is to weaken western societies to the point that they are easy to conquer.  In this way, the war on masculine men makes perfect sense.       

Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

One burning question following the European parliamentary elections that concluded on June 9: how did Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy – Fd’I) perform so well despite the following:

1. A lousy economy. That’s the norm in Italy, but…

2. It was made even worse by Project Ukraine, of which Meloni has been a big backer and to which the Italian public is largely opposed.

For comparison’s sake, in Germany, which is the first industrial location in Europe while Italy is the second, the ruling coalition was absolutely hammered. Italy may not have suffered through the humiliation Germany has with the Nord Stream affair, but the economic carnage is similar.

Recently unveiled street art of “Santa Giorgia” in Milan. Source: https://twitter.com/PalomboArtist

Here are some possibilities why Meloni and company emerged strengthened from the EU elections.

(1). Italians are used to the woeful economic conditions.

The decline in living standards is new to Germany, however. The biggest drop since WWII will tend to draw a more passionate response. In Italy, a little more than 48 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot. In Germany, nearly 65 percent of voters went to the polls – the highest in an EU election since reunification.

Germans have not (yet?) given up on the system the way Italians have, and this is clear from detailed polling data from the European Council on Foreign Relations released in January. Notice the difference between the percentages of people who would not vote or don’t know who to vote for:

This data was reflected in the recent vote. The number of Italians who have effectively given up on the system (51.66 percent) and chose not to vote trounce those that support Meloni who got 13.89 percent of eligible voters (which has the news media declaring her the only popular leader at the G7). And it wasn’t just that it was an EU election; Italy’s voter turnout has been dropping in national elections for decades and hit a post-WWII low of 64 percent in 2022. Still, Meloni and the Fd’I were able to come out on top in the EU race:

German voters’ dissatisfaction with the ruling coalition just hit a record high of 71 percent, and used the European elections to voice their displeasure, which is largely the result  of discontent with falling living standards in Europe’s largest economy, as the government deals with the energy crisis sparked by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Both Italy and Germany are suffering from declines in standard of living; the difference is one of timelines. Italy’s is a decades-long drop, while it is newer in Germany.

(2). Feeble opposition in Italy. 

Partito Democratico, which formed in 2007 when parties of the center-left and parties that liked to imagine themselves as left, united to form a bourgeoisie group that is currently led by Elly Schlein. She grew up in Switzerland and got her introduction to politics by working as a volunteer for Obama’s two presidential campaigns in Chicago. According to La Repubblica, it was that experience that taught Schlein, as she says, “you don’t need to ask for votes, but mobilize people with ideas.”

Okay, then. She has taken a liberal stance on issues like same-sex marriage, the environment, and the migrant crisis. But Schlein supports Project Ukraine and has little economically to offer the working class. Partito Democratico, which formed out of the rubble of the Italian Communist Party – once the largest in the Western world – is now nothing more than an offshoot of the US Democratic Party with the same lesser-of-two-evils strategy and focus on cultural issues.

“They write about me that I am a communist, anti-capitalist, radical chic from a rich family, Jewish but anti-Israel. A series of untruths…” Schlein said last year on the TV programme Otto e Mezzo on La7. Good to know.

The Peace Land Dignity (Pace Terra Dignità, PTD) list launched last year and includes three minor left parties, but failed to take off with only 2.2 percent of the vote.

The Five Star Movement, which formed in 2009 and became a populist force against the establishment, laid down with dogs and got fleas. It has mostly flamed out after a series of missteps in recent years, including getting into bed with the rightwing Lega Nord and Partito Democratico and backing the government of unelected former Goldman Sachs executive Mario Draghi. The party split in 2022 and has endured numerous defections since over its opposition to Project Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Meloni and Fd’I are still riding the wave of opposing the Draghi government (despite Meloni essentially becoming a protege of Draghi upon taking office), which helped propel them ahead of their rivals on the right.

In Germany, the recent vote was partially a reversion to the mean. Part of the reason the traffic light coalition (Greens, SPD, FDP) came to power was the messy succession fight in the CDU following Angela Merkel’s departure. The now seemingly stable CDU under former Blackrock executive Friedrich Merz is back on top.

What’s new in Germany is the presence of at least two parties offering clear and disparate alternatives to the status quo: Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW. These parties plundered the ruling coalition’s support:

(3). The successful blaming of immigrants. It Germany, by the opposition. It Italy, by Meloni and the Fd’I. 

In Germany, 31 percent of voters believe immigration is a “crisis” issue, and they overwhelmingly back the CDU and AfD to do something about it. More than three million refugees and asylum seekers live in Germany, which is more than in any other European country. The government tried to get tough on this issue in recent months, including passing a law clearing the way for easier deportations of asylum seekers, and criminalizing certain activities by aid workers who assist them, punishable with up to ten years in prison, but as always, voters tend to prefer the real thing. Voters trust the AfD (45 percent) and the CDU (21 percent) most on the issue they’re most concerned about, and as a result, performed well in the recent election.

Italians, on the other hand, continue to view economic issues as the top source of crisis in the country. And yet 47 percent of Italians believe they have nowhere to go on that issue as we saw above.

Meloni and the Fd’I have also done their best sleight of hand trick to blame immigrants for Italy’s economic woes.

There is little to no separation across the Italian political spectrum on the issues of labor, healthcare, education, and public finances. What separates Meloni and the Fd’I is that they claim they have found the culprits behind working class Italians’ declining living standards: immigrants and the threat they pose to national identity. The mission to beat back that threat also creates a sense of empowerment, because while working class Italians have been rendered powerless for decades to stop the selling out of their country, wage suppression, and across-the-board neoliberal reforms, here is an easily identifiable target.

And finally at long last someone is doing something. Even if that something isn’t much at all except making some asylum seekers suffer and using them to further undercut Italian workers.

While Meloni has enacted more border control measures, she has also backtracked and now claims that Italy needs labor migration and adopted a target of 833,000 new migrant workers to fit the needs of capital. According to the 2020 IDOS Statistical Dossier on Immigration, the overall average monthly wage for foreign workers was 1,077 euros in 2019, which was 23.5 percent lower than that of Italians’ 1,408 euros. That gap is only widening in Italy, as well as the EU, and masses of Italians under 35 are emigrating abroad as their employment prospects and wages are so dismal at home.

Importantly, Von der Leyen has championed Meloni’s plan to reroute asylum seekers from Italy to cages in Albania as “out-of-the-box thinking.” That’s one way of putting it. Albania is not an EU member state, and the ​​automatic detention migrants are likely to face there is in breach of Italian and EU law. Von der Leyen’s EU sees Meloni’s Albania plan as a template for the bloc, however. The two have apparently bonded over hardline immigration policies, traveling to Tunisia together for an agreement to limit migrant departures and taking a tour of the migrant reception center on the Italian island of Lampedusa together.

Von der Leyen’s promotion of Meloni’s efforts is a stamp of approval for the strategy to shift the blame for economic woes caused by EU neoliberalism and NATO wars to immigrants.

The Prototype

As neoliberal politicians of the globalist center-left are so thoroughly discredited (see Macron, Scholz) it is now the right’s turn to keep advancing the great EU neoliberal and NATO anti-Russia projects. They do this while appealing to nationalism and anti-immigration while leaving economic and foreign policy unchallenged.

The Meloni model likely requires a breakdown of faith in the system and corresponding low turnout, but that is happening across Europe as living standards decline and parties across the spectrum are unwilling or unable to offer alternatives to the EU’s neoliberalism and the NATO-directed Project Ukraine.

The Meloni prototype also brings the same foreign policy, being pro Project Ukraine, as well as China hawks.

Here are two potential ways the Meloni prototype can be more successful than the “centrists” like Macron or Scholz in today’s EU:

1. Davide Monaco at the University of Manchester department of politics had this interesting paper last year titled “The rise of anti-establishment and far-right forces in Italy: Neoliberalisation in a new guise?” While it is focused on Italy, it can increasingly be applied to elsewhere in the EU as well. His argument boils down to the fact rightwing governments “can further neoliberalisation processes together with a mix of anti-migration and welfare chauvinist measures” and that “far-right parties can advance ‘nation-based’ neoliberalisation processes.” Here’s the real nut of the argument:

The peculiar experiment of anti-establishment and far-right forces in power is best understood against the backdrop of the post-2011 developments, which laid bare the limitations of austerity-based strategies in building sufficiently large and lasting class alliances. Thus, while essentially maintaining the core (neoliberalising) labour market policies of the past, a little additional fiscal room was deployed for measures intended for social groups that had been marginalised during the crisis, namely self-employed and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) mainly located in the North (flat tax and tax amnesty), precarious classes in the South (RdC), and older (male) workers (Quota 100). Moreover, the anti-migration and welfare chauvinist posturing should be viewed as serving the purpose of attracting support from sections of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie by pitting them against the ‘Other’, while hiding an unwillingness to challenge structural socio-economic inequalities. At the same time, welfare chauvinism continued to foster a workfarist logic premised upon the distinction between people ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ of the (supposedly scarce) resources available for social protection, albeit in its nativist variant prioritising Italians as the ‘deserving poor.

The one issue with this is that Meloni and the Fd’I don’t even have a particular interest in prioritizing the Italian oligarchy. Her government is busy selling the country to Americans. the They sold off the fixed-line network of Telecom Italiato New York-based private equity firm KKR, which includes former CIA director David Petraeus as a partner. They are also declaring that  “Italy Is For Sale,”  with plans for 20 billion euros worth of privatizations, including more of the state rail company Ferrovie dello Stato, Poste Italiane, Monte dei Paschi bank and energy giant Eni. And there could be many more on the way:

🇮🇹 will have to do fiscal consolidation of ~1.1% of GDP per year (improvement in structural balance) under reformed EU fiscal rules without reform extension. Over 2010-2013 (€crisis)🇮🇹fiscal consolidation was 0.9% of GDP per year.

Many are oblivious about the austerity outlook. pic.twitter.com/nr4epEZrAk

— Philipp Heimberger (@heimbergecon) June 16, 2024

2. More frighteningly, the possibility exists that the Meloni-style right is effectively taking anger at Brussels-Rome economic policy and NATO foreign policy and redirecting it towards immigrants, therefore strengthening both of the former in the process.

Maybe that’s part of what this recently unveiled street art mural in Milan is depicting?

Il murale “Santa Giorgia” dello street artist AleXsandro Palombo apparso a #Milano pic.twitter.com/y22i1oilJF

— Altri Mondi Gazzetta (@AltriMondiGazza) June 10, 2024

In the written form, Jonas Elvander, the editor of foreign affairs at the Swedish socialist magazine Flamman and a PhD researcher in history at the European University Institute in Florence, makes a compelling argument this is what is happening:

Since the euro crisis of the 2010s, the EU has gone from projecting its soft-power outward to becoming more defensive and inward-looking, according to Kundnani. The union’s leadership today sees it as being encircled by threats, which since the migration crisis have increasingly become synonymous with non-white migrants and political instability in the neighboring regions. This point was illustrated two years ago by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borell, when he described the EU as a ”garden” surrounded by a ”jungle”.

This new rhetoric is indicative of what Kundnani calls the EU’s ”civilizational turn”; the civic and cosmopolitan elements of European identity are increasingly being replaced by an emphasis on Europe’s common cultural and civilizational heritage, that is, a more exclusionary understanding of what it means to be European.

When Ursula von der Leyen was picked as new President of the European Commission in 2019, she decided to show that she had heard the voice of the European peoples, which had just given the far right a large increase in seats in the European Parliament. This was translated into a focus on issues like migration and security, as well as the creation of the new Commission portfolio ”Promoting our European Way of Life”, a phrase first used in the early 2000s by the French socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to describe the West European welfare states. What this new position entailed was not very clear; policy areas included migration, security, education, religious dialogue, and the fight against antisemitism (but not islamophobia). Symbolically, however, the move was significant.

In March 2020 a crisis erupted on the border between Turkey and Greece, with migrants trying to enter the EU before being violently pushed back by Greek border security. Even though the violence broke against the rules of conduct of the European border agency Frontex, Von der Leyen hailed the Greek police as Europe’s aspida – Greek for ”shield”.

Such incidents illustrate the ongoing shift in values that the Commission emphasizes, from openness and tolerance to security and cohesiveness. This turn has made it possible for the far right to rediscover the civilizational aspects of the EU and embrace it in the name of the defense of a common European heritage.

The EU “center” – which is plenty right itself these days – welcomes this “far-right” as long as they can control it, which they think they can. Let’s remember Ursula’s warning to Meloni:

NEW – EU Commission President on the upcoming elections in Italy, where a right-wing victory is expected:

“We will see. If things go in a ‘difficult direction’ – I have spoken about Hungary and Poland – we have tools.” pic.twitter.com/PxtvpXyCua

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 23, 2022

That begs the question, however, if today’s EU, which supports Nazis in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza is one in which the right is under control by the center, what would it would look like with an uncontrolled right?

It’s telling that both center and right are engaged in projects to rehabilitate fascists. The EU in recent years has passed resolutions conflating Nazism and communism and attempting to lay the blame for WWII equally at the feet of the Russians. The effect is to rewrite history so that those who were once considered heroes are now enemies, and those long considered the enemy –  fascists – are now heroes.

Italy’s right-wing parties are doing much the same with attempts to depict Italian fascists as victims of some communist’s alleged anti-Italian racism. Their accounts almost always completely omit the crimes of Italian fascism. While the EU helps bring the fascist fringe in from the cold across the Balkans, in Armenia, and of course Ukraine, the Fd’I in Italy has likewise helped rebrand militants on the neo-Nazi fringes as the “mainstream right.”

Could a future bargain between the center in Germany that the AfD be in the works? One that would see the AfD pledge fealty to NATO and the European Commission in return for getting to do a few of its National Socialism fantasies?

France will be telling. How will Marine Le Pen’s vote in the European Parliament, and how will it govern if it comes to power in France? The answer will likely provide a clear indication of whether Meloni and the Fd’I are a new popular prototype for furthering the EU goals of neoliberal economic policy, fascist rehabilitation, and war with Russia or if Meloni is just an one-off opportunist. [1] The fact that Le Pen has turned her back on the AfD and wants to team up with Meloni looks like a clear sign of which way she is leaning.

Italy has cycled through governments from across the political spectrum over the past few decades, none of which could (or wanted to) successfully stop the country’s decline in living standards. As a result, voters have largely given up. Germany, long a model of fragile political stability, looks to be just starting on the path that Italy has tread for years. The outcome will likely be similar.Even when voters cycle through their hard-right parties, as just happened in Finland and Sweden, they’re back to more “centrist” parties, but it’s difficult to see what actually changes aside from the accumulation of more power in Brussels under von der Leyen. That, of course, is the point.

EU governance was supposedly designed to swallow up and extinguish any of the unpredictability of nationalism that had long plagued the continent. But the Brussels Borg Cube is now on its own dangerous flight of fancy with its layers of bureaucracy and “tools” preventing anyone from disembarking.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Zelensky celebrated his country’s new security pact with the US on Thursday as “bring[ing] our relations to the level of a true alliance”, but the reality is that it’s just a consolation for the US not approving Ukraine’s NATO membership, which would give it much more meaningful mutual defense commitments. The full text can be read here while the fact sheet can be read here, and upon doing so, the reader will learn that the US is simply formalizing the support that it’s been giving Ukraine since February 2022.

There’s no obligation for the US to dispatch troops to Ukraine if it enters into another round of hostilities with Russia sometime after the ongoing one finally ends. To be sure, NATO’s Article 5 doesn’t obligate the same either, but the US would be under much more pressure to directly aid Ukraine if it were an official military ally, which is why Russia was always so strongly opposed to that country’s membership. The latest pact therefore just maintains Ukraine’s role as NATO’s anti-Russian proxy.

As was observed in mid-January after Ukraine reached its first such agreement with the UK, “Ukraine’s Hoped-For ‘Security Guarantees’ Aren’t All That They Were Hyped Up To Be”. The precedent established by that pact set the stage for all those that followed, including this latest one with the US. The bombshell that Biden dropped in early June about how peace in Ukraine “doesn’t mean NATO, they are part of NATO”, leaves no doubt that the US prefers keeping that country outside of the bloc.

From the American perspective, Ukraine has much more strategic utility functioning as NATO’s anti-Russian proxy than as an official military ally which the US would then feel pressured to directly support in the event of another conflict with Russia due to the public’s interpretation of Article 5’s commitments.

In other words, NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine would end if that country joined the bloc, but from Russia’s perspective, Kiev could unilaterally resume it in order to provoke a serious crisis.

Neither the US nor Russia wants Ukraine in NATO, each for different reasons, yet the US wants to continue militarizing Ukraine so that it can keep waging NATO’s proxy war on Russia while Russia wants to demilitarize Ukraine in order to end Ukrainian-emanating NATO proxy threats to its security. It’s the natural friction between these two’s goals that’s driving the ongoing conflict, which is expected to drag on since they’re unable to achieve their maximum objectives but also don’t want to curtail them either.

NATO can’t strategically defeat Russia through Ukraine due to its loss in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition”, which now sees Russia producing three times as many shells at one-quarter of the cost, so it can only settle for perpetuating the proxy war until Russia achieves a breakthrough. As for Russia, it can’t fully demilitarize Ukraine since NATO could conventionally intervene to asymmetrically partition the country if a breakthrough occurs, thus keeping part of Ukraine militarized under NATO’s umbrella.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned scenario could lay the basis for a ceasefire agreement if NATO forces remain west of the Dnieper while Ukraine withdraws its heavy weaponry over the river to demilitarize the eastern bank that politically remains under Kiev’s control. Russia might consider the massive buffer zone which would be created in the latter’s wake to be an acceptable compromise on its maximalist objective of demilitarizing all of Ukraine so long as NATO tacitly recognizes its new borders.

Although NATO is loath to take responsibility for any part of Ukraine due to the US wanting to avoid creating the fait accompli of that country’s membership in the bloc, it might settle for this “sphere of influence” on those terms after all that it’s invested thus far than risk losing it. The US’ newly clinched security deal with Ukraine also increases the odds of this happening since there’s now more pressure than ever on the US to prevent Russia from inflicting a strategic defeat on NATO through Ukraine.

Ukraine’s de facto membership in NATO, which would occur if part of the country came under its control in the asymmetrical partition scenario that was described, would still pose the same strategic dilemma that the US and Russia both wanted to avert by keeping it outside of the bloc for different reasons. It would therefore be incumbent on the US to force its proxy to withdraw its heavy weaponry deeper inside Western Ukraine in order to reduce the chances of it unilaterally striking Russia to provoke a crisis.

Returning to each side’s perspective that was earlier touched upon, the US’ compromise would be to abruptly halt its proxy war and tacitly recognize Russia’s new borders, while Russia’s would be to accept that part of Ukraine will remain militarized but only in exchange for a massive buffer zone. While this trade-off is rational and pragmatic, it can’t be taken for granted that their policymakers have the political will to pursue it, let alone that they’re even aware of this proposal to begin with.

There’s also the danger that World War III could break out by miscalculation during the brief partition phase of this scenario if it’s carried out ad hoc between NATO, Russia, and Ukraine. That’s why it’s imperative for a truly neutral third party like India to help coordinate the first’s intervention up to the Dnieper, the second’s restraint in not maximally exploiting the breakthrough that could trigger the aforesaid, and the third’s withdrawal of heavy weaponry over the river in that event.

Best-case scenarios rarely transpire so it would likely be that the sequence of events mentioned above would largely play out ad hoc, though with a select group of countries individually working to convey each side’s red lines to the other in order to help control mutual escalations. If NATO crosses the Dnieper or Russia exploits its breakthrough to once again march on Kiev or even Odessa, then their counterpart might escalate in self-defense (falsely perceived in NATO’s case) and thus provoke a serious crisis.

It’s only if NATO-Russian tensions remain manageable in the breakthrough-intervention scenario that the Ukrainian part could come into play with the bloc then ordering Kiev to withdraw its heavy weaponry over the river in order to complete the country’s asymmetrical partition by creating a massive buffer zone. That said, NATO might not make such an order or Kiev could refuse, in which case Russia would likely continue advancing until NATO crosses the Dnieper or Ukraine withdraws its heavy weaponry.

Circling back to the lede, while the US’ security pact with Ukraine is indeed consolation for not approving its NATO membership, this deal paradoxically increases the possibility that Ukraine will become a de facto NATO member despite the US wanting to avoid that through these means. The US would be more pressured than ever to approve a conventional NATO intervention if Russia achieves a breakthrough instead of risk losing all of Ukraine, which could result in part of it coming under NATO’s control.

By formalizing the US’ existing support for Ukraine, which is aimed at perpetuating NATO’s proxy war on Russia, the US raises its reputational stakes in the conflict to the point where it couldn’t accept Russia inflicting a strategic defeat on it by fully demilitarizing Ukraine. It’s therefore more likely than ever to either directly intervene if Russia achieves a breakthrough or at least authorize its NATO allies to so, thus escalating everything towards uncertain ends that can either result in a ceasefire or World War III.

Authored by Jonathan Draeger via RealClearPolitics,

One of the defining features of former President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was his – at least at the time – unorthodox opinions on trade. With the notable exception of Bernie Sanders, the other candidates parroted the longstanding bipartisan consensus on free trade. Trump promoted protectionist policies and tariffs.

“We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world,” Trump said at a 2016 campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In his remarks on the campaign trail, you could hear echoes of his interviews from the 1980s, where he aired his frustration with how the United States handled trade, specifically regarding Japan and the Middle East. “I think a lot of people are tired of watching other countries ripping of the United States” he said. “This is a great country. [Other nations] laugh at us behind our back, they laugh at us because of our own stupidity.”

Now his protectionist views have become mainstream. President Biden recently imposed a fresh set of tariffs on China, including 25% on steel, aluminum, batteries, ship-to-shore cranes, and some medical products, 50% on semiconductors and solar cells, and 100% on electric vehicles.

Before Trump came along, the prevailing wisdom on trade was that free trade and low-to-no tariffs was the best policy to bolster the global economy, including that of the United States. The North American Free Trade Agreement was first envisioned by Ronald Reagan, introduced by George H.W. Bush, and signed into law by Bill Clinton. Ross Perot objected vociferously to NAFTA, but he finished third in 1992 and 1996, and the issue was settled – or so it seemed, based on the presidents who followed Clinton.

Reading from George W. Bush’s trade representative Robert Zoellick’s 2001 trade agenda, the primary focus was building “a new consensus to promote open markets for trade in the decades to come.” Barack Obama’s 2009 agenda focused slightly more on workers’ rights and the environment, but still prioritized free trade: “Free and fair trade with a proper regard for social and environmental goals and appropriate political accountability will be a powerful contributor to the national and global well-being.”

Departing from the previous mantra, however, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have made the goal of their trade policies increased domestic production and jobs for working-class Americans. Trump trade representative Robert Lighthizer highlighted this in 2017, saying the focus of their trade policy would be to help everyday people: “By expanding export market access through negotiating good trade deals and enforcing U.S. trade laws, we can raise wages and help level the playing field for American workers, farmers, ranchers, and job-creators.”

The Biden administration has carried a similar tune. In line with the working-class appeals of the “Build Back Better” approach to growing the economy, United States trade representative Katherine Tai said at the start of her tenure she would pursue “a worker-centered trade policy.”

Differences in Trade Policy

Although Trump and Biden largely agree on the objectives of trade policy, their specific policies differ. The first difference is the Biden administration’s focus on equity and environmental issues. Unlike Trump’s 2017 agenda, which exclusively prioritized U.S. strength, the U.S. economy, and protecting U.S. sovereignty, Biden’s also included the pillar of “building sustainable infrastructure and a clean energy future.”

Although there haven’t been any sweeping regulations that enforce this pillar, this has come into play with policies such as “green public procurement,” which outlined “best practices” to promote “sustainable and green solutions.” Some examples they suggested included “building buildings for net-zero emissions and increasing water and energy efficiency” and “pilot programs for carbon pollution-free electricity.”

The other primary difference between the two presidents’ policies on trade is the extent and particulars of their tariffs. Former president of the National Foreign Trade Council William Reinsch told RealClearPolitics the difference between the two is that Trump is “using an ax and Biden’s using a scalpel.”

Specifically, he was referring to Trump’s sweeping 2018 and 2019 tariffs on China, which affected $380 billion worth of goods. In addition to these tariffs, Trump has floated the idea of a 10% tariff on all imports and a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods if he is elected for a second term. Andrew Hale, the Heritage Foundation’s senior policy analyst in trade policy, told RCP that he thinks these 10% tariffs on all goods are just “election trail bravado that will be dialed back if he returns to the White House,” since others, namely Lighthizer, have not indicated support for tariffs on all goods.

The Biden administration has used a more focused approach, with recently announced tariffs affecting only $18 billion worth of Chinese imports. The press release announcing the tariffs said they were put on specific goods because “China’s unfair trade practices concerning technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are threatening American businesses and workers.”

This policy differs from Trump’s tariffs on most Chinese exports, focusing instead on specific goods made using unfair trade practices. This goods-based approach, former lead economist in the Office of Tax Policy under the Biden administration Kimberly Clausing told RCP, is “much more narrowly targeted” than Trump’s trade policy, which she characterized as “protectionism without any restraint.”

Effects of Policies

Clausing also questioned the degree to which Trump’s tariffs helped U.S. workers. Although the unemployment rate in the manufacturing industry went down marginally, from 4.2% in January 2017 to 3.4% in January 2020, the U.S. trade deficit increased from around $516 billion in 2017 to $559 billion in 2019. The tariffs did coincide with a small decrease in the trade deficit with China, falling from around $375 billion in 2017 to $342 billion in 2019, but by 2022 it had risen again to $382 billion, even though Biden did not remove most of the Trump tariffs.

Experts say the tariffs might not have had the intended long-term effects due to a variety of factors. Clausing pointed to retaliatory tariffs put in place by China, such as their 2018 25% tariff on $50 billion worth of goods, which decreased U.S. exports to China. Therefore, although imports from China decreased, exports to China also decreased, leaving the trade balance with China largely unchanged. William Reinsch also told RCP that China employed tactics to avoid the tariffs, such as sending steel to Vietnam or Korea, and then “substantially transforming” the steel into wire, for example, so it wouldn’t be subject to the U.S. tariff on Chinese steel.

Biden’s recent tariffs haven’t escaped criticism either. Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, criticized the tariffs on environmental goods such as EVs, saying that the increased prices of these goods “deters the administration’s own environmental objectives.” Lincicome also critiqued the idea of tariffs more generally, saying that the industries “protected” by tariffs don’t use the added profits from higher prices to become “hyper innovative and efficient” but just tend to “pocket the win, and then when tariffs or subsidies are going to disappear, go back to Washington and lobby for more of them.”

Another far-left social fallacy bites the dust, this time because of their own data.  A long running theme of anti-gun rhetoric has been the claim that men who own guns are compensating for hidden insecurities.  A tactic common among women in particular, the argument is designed to shame anyone who opposes leftist efforts to undermine the 2nd Amendment.  Instead of addressing the issue on the basis of facts and evidence, they instead assert that if you support gun rights you must be a “weak man” with a “small d*ck.”

The political left’s obsession with genitalia is well known – The majority of their politics revolve around sex, sexual identity, sexual fetishes and the sexualization of children.  So, it’s no surprise that they would actually fund a study intended to show a relationship between gun owners and feelings of sexual inadequacy.  The assertion being that men suffering from penis dissatisfaction are more likely to have psychological distress and instabilities associated with violence.  The problem is, the study backfired.

Paid for by the group Change The Ref, an organization that works closely with David Hogg’s March For Our Lives, the study titled ‘Size Matters? Penis Dissatisfaction and Gun Ownership in America’ ultimately found no connection between small penis size, insecurity and gun ownership.  In fact, it found the opposite to be true.  Authors state:

“Guns are clearly phallic symbols. Guns are clearly associated with masculinity…However, in our analyses, penis size dissatisfaction is unrelated to mental health. The psychosexual theory of gun ownership consistently fails in its assertion that men who have trouble with their penises or are dissatisfied with their penises are especially likely to acquire guns as a means of compensation.”

The study shows that men scoring low on masculinity and those that were unhappy with the size of their package were less likely to own a firearm.  In other words, men who avoid firearms are more inclined to have insecurities over their penis size.  It’s really the progressives that have “small penis syndrome”, and this helps explain a wide spectrum of their unhinged behaviors.  

Gun owners and men scoring higher in masculinity were more likely to be confident in their penis size.

It should be noted that the vast majority of violent crime across America takes place in Democrat run cities under progressive policies.  Many of these cities have aggressive anti-gun laws, yet they continue to deal with expansive gun violence.  

Then there is the growing question of contradictory crime stats.  For example, according to the data gun crime across the US is in decline while gun ownership has recently hit record highs.  Democrats have been bragging about Joe Biden’s record of “crime reduction” while at the same time fear mongering over the threat of mass shootings and calling for gun bans.  They can’t have it both ways; either gun crime is going down or guns are a overarching danger to society.

In reality many cities across the country have not been reporting full crime stats to the FBI since 2020 due to a sudden change in the FBI’s data collection methods.  Full data will not be available until 2025, which means there’s no way of knowing if crime is rising.  In the meantime, leftists are worried more about male penis insecurity that political integrity.    

Whether or not guns are “phallic symbols” is irrelevant to the greater question of why anti-gun activists think penis size matters at all in the conflict over gun rights and the right to self defense.  It is more a reflection of their inability to win the debate based on rational discourse.  As noted, gun ownership is at historic levels and the stigma progressives have created around firearms is fading fast. The attempt to penis-shame gun owners is a pathetic strategy exploited by mentally (and physically) inadequate activists who are finally realizing their side is losing badly.  

Something big is happening on the heavily militarized Korean border, following several days of soaring tensions which has included North Korea flying hundreds of trash and feces-filled balloons into the south.

There are several reports of dozens of North Korean soldiers having briefly crossed the border, and soon retreating, after warning shots were fired by South Korean border troops, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

Per Reuters, citing Yonhap at about 11:00am local time: “South Korea’s military fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers crossed the Military Demarcation Line near the border, the Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday citing the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

A Yonhap wire has further said “Korea military suffers ‘multiple casualties’ in landmine explosion near border.”

While details of exactly what is happening are still emerging, this comes one week after a live fire incident occurred along the border. Last Tuesday, South Korean border forces fired warning shots after troops on the other side ‘accidentally’ crossed the border in the south. 

Here is what happened exactly one week ago:

“There were no unusual movements other than the North Korean army immediately moving north after our warning shots,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman, Col. Lee Sung-jun, told a briefing.

He generally downplayed the incident which happened Sunday, and suggested there was no indication the enemy troops were seeking to invade territory.

“The South Korean military is closely monitoring the movements of the North Korean military and taking necessary measures.”

If casualties among DPRK troops are confirmed, this could be the start of a major live fire incident between the two historic enemies, also as Kim Jong-Un has been warning he could restart nuclear tests.

#UPDATE Several North Korean soldiers working near the heavily fortified border with the South were injured in a landmine explosion, the Yonhap News Agency reports, citing Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“North Korean military suffers multiple casualties due to a mine explosion… pic.twitter.com/sR2jSkmFt3

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 18, 2024

US state-funded Stripes reported yesterday:

North Korean troops have been observed creating anti-tank barriers, reinforcing roads and carrying out other military projects within the Demilitarized Zone, according to the South’s military on Monday. South Korean intelligence agencies spotted the improvements near the border in recent days, army Col. Lee Seong-jun, a spokesman for the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a news conference Monday.

Lee declined to elaborate on the North’s activities at the border and said the South’s military was still analyzing its operations. North Korean troops were also observed building walls and roads between the Military Demarcation Line — the actual border between the two Koreas — and the Demilitarized Zone, an unidentified military source said in a Yonhap News report Saturday. The 2½-mile-wide DMZ spans 150 miles across the Korean Peninsula from coast to coast.

Nuclear saber-rattling has been coming out of Pyongyang since last summer, when the US Navy parked a nuclear submarine in South Korea for the first time in years.

Pyongyang has also reportedly deployed extra troops the border amid the escalating tit-for-tat.

developing…