Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Part of the difficulty in reading economic statistics to discern where we are in the cycle is the huge crater of 2020. A full shutdown like this had never happened before. All data just went nuts, seesawing one way down and then the other way up. Everyone is looking at this and trying to understand the implications.

Whatever you want to say about business cycles in the past, they followed patterns that could be traced. Theories could be mapped to explain them and policies constructed to avoid them. But it becomes a very different matter when you have suddenly imposed a global forced crash of nearly everything. We can only watch with amazement.

We have to add to this what seems to be a new problem, which is the outright gaming of the data for political reasons. We see it in all the big releases, from GDP to jobs to inflation. The spin in the press release has often contradicted the underlying data. Wall Street only follows the spin, and it is left just to a handful of people who care to unpack precisely what is going on.

The jobs data has all these problems. Each month, we hear about glorious job creation, only to find out later that they are mostly part-time jobs, mostly held by non-natives, while full-time jobs keep shrinking as real income continues to fall, now three years in a row. Parsing all of this and comparing it with the pre-2020 world becomes nearly impossible.

The latest jobs report underscores the point. The headline number seems amazing until you drill down into the jobs themselves. Looking at the more accurate household survey, instead of the establishment survey, we find a huge loss of 625,000 full-time jobs, and those are mitigated by an increase of part-time workers of 286,000. This is not a strong and vibrant market by any stretch. The press releases are pitching job losses as job gains.

It’s because of all this flimflammery that I’ve stuck with my sense that we have never really left the forced recession of March 2020. All the rest is just an illusion. Our disorientation is so severe that it is hard to process intellectually and psychologically. Despite all the cheerleading we get from the White House, the bottom line is that the whole country and the whole world are much poorer today than they were five years ago.

At some point, this problem, unless reversed dramatically with new policies, will come home to hit the jobs market. So far, this has not really been much of an issue because so many businesses lost employees during the lockdowns. There has been a recovery of sorts in hospitality and there has been a pent-up demand for labor there. We have seen some shift to the service industry from white-collar employment, and to part-time from full-time.

What we haven’t experienced on a large scale just yet is an outright shortage of places to work. But that might be starting to change now, with inflation driving up costs of everything including labor. Employers now find themselves in the position of grave reluctance to hire. Instead, they are squeezing existing payrolls for every bit of labor they can.

As a result, job openings are falling, and dramatically so. Even now, labor participation still has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

This is quite the change for many young people. Only a couple of years ago, jobs were plentiful, maybe not full-time and maybe not high-paying, but they were there. It’s no longer reliably true. Job seekers are now encountering a market that seems ever more stuck in the mud, with fewer positions being offered and ever-higher standards for employment.

Those with solid positions are clinging to them tightly, with a growing awareness that this is no time to switch or otherwise take risks. Feeling trapped in a job that is not quite to your liking means a more miserable life. This is doubly true if you hold a mortgage at a low rate from the past but dread the idea of taking on a new one at a much higher rate. As a result, people are feeling bound not only to their current positions but also trapped by their own plywood palaces.

This is not how a vibrant and flourishing economy is supposed to work. It only adds insult that people at the top of the food chain frequently deny that anything is going wrong at all. We are told daily that the economy is performing well and that we have experienced a robust recovery. There is not one person on Main Street who believes this.

The underlying finances of households right now are on track toward disaster, with credit card debt still rising despite high interest rates and saving rates far below pre-lockdown levels. This is simply not sustainable.

News media continues to speculate about whether we will have a soft landing. But the metaphor is all wrong. The plane never took off in the first place. No matter where you look, if you look carefully, you see a degraded economic structure of stagnation plus inflation. This is not a good omen for the future.

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

A new study finds that space weather, such as solar storms, impacts heart rate variations in women more than men. This research emerges just as Solar Cycle 25 has entered a maximum period, bringing a surge in solar activity such as sunspots, solar flares, and more frequent auroras. Notably, just a month ago, Earth was hammered by one of the most powerful solar storms in decades. 

Maria-Christina Papailiou and Helen Mavromichalaki from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens led the study titled “Space Weather Effects on Heart Rate Variations: Sex Dependence.” They found that space weather affects heart rate variations in men and women.

Researchers analyzed heart rate measurements and geomagnetic activity data of 687 men and 534 women in Greece from 2011 to 2018.

The key findings of the report, published in Atmosphere, a peer-reviewed open-access journal of scientific studies, were:

• Women are more sensitive to changes in space weather than men.
• Geomagnetic activity affects heart rate, with significant changes noticed before and after geomagnetic storms.
• No significant heart rate changes were observed for cosmic ray variations.

“Results revealed that women tend to be more sensitive to physical environmental changes. Statistically significant results are related to the geomagnetic activity but were not obtained for cosmic ray variations,” the researchers said. 

Solar Cycle 25 has entered a maximum period. 

Here’s a more extended timeframe for Solar Cycles. 

Space Weather News’ Ben Davidson was the first to point out the study in a daily update of space weather news.

Solar Storm Coming, Impact to Heart and Cancer: pic.twitter.com/lJ71xxkndB

— SpaceWeatherNews (@SunWeatherMan) June 9, 2024

Two decades ago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta wrote a paper titled “Playing the Field: Geomagnetic Storms and the Stock Market,” outlining that “people affected by geomagnetic storms may be more inclined to sell stocks.” However, stocks are mostly traded by algos in today’s market… 

The impact of space weather on human health is far more significant than most people realize.

Last week, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene took a detour from grilling Anthony Fauci over COVID-19, to confront him with photos of beagles who had been subjected to animal testing experiments widely reported to be funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), following a 2021 investigation series by the group White Coat Waste Project.

“We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene told Fauci. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison,” she continued, adding “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.”

🚨 NEW: Marjorie Taylor Greene confronts Fauci on “disgusting and evil” experiments on beagles.

These experiments, signed off by Fauci, included injecting and force-feeding the puppies with experimental drugs, infesting them with ticks, and placing them in cages with infectious… pic.twitter.com/v8AnQii4uC

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) June 3, 2024

This opened up a can of worms which includes a response from White Coat Waste, and triggered the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler to do a deep dive into ‘Beaglegage‘ in an effort to debunk Greene.

When we first saw Greene hold up the photo, we figured this would be easy to debunk — another in a string of misleading attacks against Fauci, who became the public face of the government’s response to the pandemic. -Washington Post

Only to discover that the NIH appears to have lied about funding the experiment, which involved beagles between 6 and 8 months old obtained from the kennels of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis. In the study, the beagles were sedated and then exposed to hundreds of sand flies that had been deprived of food for 24 hours. This exposure took place as part of research into zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL), a disease carried by sand flies that can affect dogs and humans.

After ZeroHedge amplified the White Coat Waste report (archived), there was a full blown panic.

In late October 2021, CNN asked Fauci to appear for an interview, and one of his staff members suggested late on Oct. 24 that Fauci pause any TV interviews “until we get a handle on this.” Early the next morning, Fauci emailed 12 officials and asked them to “tell me what grant or contract they are referring to.” Within two hours, one replied that they might have identified the grant. (Most staff members’ names are redacted.)

“Let us find out for sure if it is that grant, and then let us take a look at what the experimental design is, and importantly whether it has received the appropriate ethical and animal care consideration,” Fauci replied in an email. “I want this done right away since we are getting bombarded by protests.”

Within two hours, one of the researchers involved, Abhay Satoskar, a professor of pathology and microbiology at Ohio State University, emailed to say that NIAID had been mistakenly cited as a funder of the study and that he would seek a correction from the journal. One NIAID official wrote in an email that Satoskar “stated that it was mistakenly cited because he was not clear of the true purpose of US funding acknowledgment” and that the program in question had been funded only by the Pasteur Institute.

Satoskar, meanwhile asked Shaden Kamhawi, the editor of the journal, to correct the article. Kamhawi initially agreed, but noted internally that she may have a conflict of interest as a NIAID employee. She then sent an email in a panic over the ZeroHedge article potentially inviting “a lot of noise & unwanted attention for [Fauci]. They also called us an “illegitimate blog of no credibility,” which is high praise considering the source.

Emails @WhiteCoatWaste got from Fauci & NIAID show they were specifically worried about coverage of our #BeagleGate dog lab investigation by @zerohedge that may cause “a lot of noise & unwanted attention for [Fauci]”

They call ZeroHedge: “an illegitimate blog of no credibility” https://t.co/coPIr66mRx pic.twitter.com/hZxLRFWKgf

— Justin Goodman (@JustinRGoodman) June 7, 2024

Study disappears from the database

When the story broke in 2021, the NIH scrubbed it from its database and then fed WaPo disinformation:

When The Post reported on the controversy in November 2021, the article noted: “The trapped-beagles study does not appear in a database of NIH-funded projects.” The emails show that, while it was removed before the publication of The Post article, the study had been listed in the database for months and was still listed as of the previous month, when Fauci first asked about the controversy.

“We need that to be corrected too, ASAP please,” one NIH staffer wrote on Oct. 27. The anxiety level rose as officials realized it would take several days, until Nov. 1, before the project would be removed from the database — where reporters could not then find it. -WaPo

What’s more, The NIH also issued a statement in 2021 insisting that they funded a separate study in Tunisia involving a vaccine and that the controversial experiment involving sand flies was not funded by them.

Except – internal NIH communications reveal they had no independent proof other than the principal investigator’s statement that NIH did not fund the controversial study.

Meanwhile, other documents obtained by White Coat Waste reveal that their cover story about the more benign beagle experiment was bullshit too!

Finally, other documents obtained by White Coat Waste suggest the Tunisia study funded by NIH was not as benign as the agency suggested. Instead of an “enclosed open space,” the study’s grant application shows a photograph that indicated that the dogs were kept in a cage as they were “exposed to sand fly bites each night through the sand fly season to ensure transmission.” The grant application also described how, separately, dogs would be sedated and placed in cages for two hours while they were exposed to 15 to 30 female sand flies. -WaPo

Here’s WaPo’s bottom line:

“The emails show that NIH was not fully transparent as it tried to handle a public-relations nightmare. Perhaps there was little reason to doubt Satoskar, but officials embraced his explanation without confirming as they rushed out a statement. They made no acknowledgment that they had removed the study from the NIH grant database or that the editor of the journal that quickly issued the correction had a potential conflict of interest. Moreover, the NIH study in Tunisia that the agency said it funded was cast in a positive light that is undermined by the grant application that has since been made public.“

Sounds like a National Health Institute of no credibility to us… but then again, what’s new.

“It’s such a crude strategy that it’s hard to even call it a psyop because it’s just so easy to debunk.”@lwoodhouse says Washington Post reporters were extremely eager to do the government’s bidding – even when that meant helping Dr. Fauci and his team cover up the truth about… pic.twitter.com/IhhfZdqzcv

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) June 8, 2024

When dealing with “illegitimate blogs of no credibility” always escalate it to the very top and then have them banned by twitter https://t.co/3HBMuGaJ96

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 10, 2024

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The ECB decided to cut rates by 25 basis points the same day it elevated its own inflation estimates for 2024 and 2025. You simply cannot make this up. If you wanted unmistakable proof of the lack of independence of central banks, this is it. The ECB only has one mandate, price stability, and has violated it for nearly four years.

Why?

The purpose is to fund the biggest expansion of the government’s size since the euro’s inception and uphold the delusion of a sovereign debt bubble.

We must remember that the ECB has not implemented a restrictive policy at all. It has kept the “anti-fragmentation tool,” which disguises the real risk of sovereign issuers and should be called the “anti-market tool.”

This has allowed governments that have increased their fiscal imbalances to keep an artificially low-risk premium versus the German bond. Furthermore, the ECB continues to repurchase part of the bond maturities and the EU launched the Next Generation Fund, which is another massive money-printing exercise.

The ECB has only used rate increases as a real restrictive tool. Due to higher financing costs, families and small businesses have had to bear the full negative impact of the ECB policy. Meanwhile, governments have not limited their money printing through deficit spending, nor have they simply consolidated the extraordinary expenditures of 2020. In some cases, they have even increased spending beyond that “unique” figure.

Inflation is neither a coincidence nor a fatality. It’s a policy, because the government is the biggest beneficiary of the steady rise in aggregate prices.

It is worth remembering that the consumer price index (CPI) is not “inflation”; it is a measure of inflation. Inflation is the loss of the purchasing power of a currency.

CPI inflation in the eurozone rose to 2.6% in May, according to Eurostat. In fact, all measures rose from the April level, particularly services, which are rising at a 4% annual rate. Furthermore, eight countries in the euro area reported annual CPI inflation rates of more than 3%. This means that the accumulated level of inflation from 2020 will be more than 23%. Despite the previously mentioned evidence and the upward revision of its own estimates of inflation, the ECB decided to cut rates.

The government and its group of propagandists are attempting to persuade you that everything, with the exception of massively issuing more currency than the private sector’s demand, is the cause of price increases. However, the only thing that can cause aggregate prices to rise, consolidate that increase, and continue to go up, even if at a slower rate, is the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency that states issue by issuing much more than the private sector demands.

The most extreme interventionism asserts that inflation indicates a production deficit rather than a rise in currency quantity. It is a falsehood of such magnitude that it should not even be debated. The state generates a huge amount of money, and even if production increases, it cannot prevent everything we import, from components to raw materials, from costing us much more in local currency. No. A widespread increase in output does not eliminate inflation if the state continues to consume new currency units to artificially increase its weight on the economy.

Why are there supporters of inflationism? This is the most effective method for the government to exert its influence on the economy and seize the resources generated by the productive sector, all while using a currency that is increasingly depreciated.

Inflation is the equivalent of an implicit default on debt. The state issues a pledge of payment and returns it with a decreasing value.

There was no data on the May inflation release to justify a rate cut.

First, the latest monetary aggregate note from the ECB indicates a significant increase in the amount of money in the system. Moreover, the calculation of the total amount according to the Murray Rothbard method (True Money Supply), which includes monetary funds in financial aggregates, shows that the quantity of money has not decreased at all since September 2023 and will likely increase significantly in 2024.

The annual growth rate of the eurozone’s broad monetary aggregate, M3, rose to 1.3% in April 2024 from 0.9% in March. If we calculate the true money supply, the figure would be +4.5% in April 2024, consistent with an inflation rate of 2.6% and a cumulative of 23% since 2020.

Second, lowering interest rates is an incentive to continue increasing state imbalances in countries that have refused to control their deficits and, above all, have taken advantage of inflation to collect more taxes.

Third, a cut in interest rates is an incentive to increase the total amount of money in the system and the rate of increase on the monetary base.

Fourth, the eurozone’s problems are not caused by interest rate hikes. The eurozone was already stagnant with negative nominal interest rates, was in the middle of the Juncker Plan and is still stagnating amid the Next Generation EU Fund.

Fifth, it makes no sense to cut rates when the credit supply has not decreased (in fact, it is rising) and the credit demand remains stable. In April, the year-on-year growth rate of loans to households rose by +0.2%. Credit to non-financial corporations rose by 3%, according to the ECB.

The first impact of the ECB rate cut was a swift slump in the euro-US dollar exchange rate, which will make citizens poorer and imports more expensive.

The eurozone economy is not in stagnation due to rate hikes. It is in stagnation due to the wrong fiscal, industrial, and energy policies.

What reason is there for cutting rates?

Just one.

Cheaper funding for fiscally irresponsible states. The state promises you free things and charges you more with less purchasing power, higher taxes, and impoverishment. There is no such thing as what they call inclusive monetary and fiscal policy. It is the recipe for stagnation.

How much safer or more dangerous is the United States? The answer largely depends on the specific metrics used, and compared to when.

For instance, if we look at state-by-state homicide rates from 2012 to 2022, there’s a noticeable increase in most states. However, these rates are still below those recorded in the 1980s and 1990s.

A graphic from USAFacts offers an analysis of age-adjusted homicide rates across states for the period from 2012 to 2022, illustrating these changes. This analysis utilizes CDC data covering 46 states, with New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming lacking available data.

Comparing States by Homicide Rates

As Visual Capitalist‘s Omri Wallach notes, from 2012 to 2022, homicide rates increased in every state with available data except for Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Here are the rates for all 46 available states as well as their 10-year change in percentage:

Mississippi had the largest increase in homicide rate, more than doubling from 10.2 to 20.7 per 100,000 people. New Mexico (up 7.9 homicides per 100,000 people), Louisiana (up 7.7), Alabama (up 6.2), and Missouri (up 5.5) had the next-biggest increases.

Murder rates doubled in at least six states over the decade: South Dakota (+188%), Montana (+125%), New Mexico (+120%), Alaska (+104%), Mississippi (+103%), and Hawaii (+100%).

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

“Buy with your eyes, pay with your glance!”

After running pilot tests in Brazil and parts of the Asia Pacific for roughly two years, Mastercard is finally rolling out its biometric retail payments system in Europe. The world’s largest payment card company appears to be determined to wean consumers off not only cash, its eternal rival, but also credit and debit cards, its main line of business until now. To that end, it is piloting its Biometric Checkout Program in Poland in collaboration with local fintech company PayEye, which will be providing its iris and face biometric technology.

Mastercard’s global Biometric Checkout Program, represents a first-of-its-kind technology framework to help establish standards for new ways to pay, allowing cardholders to use a wide range of biometric payment authentication methods such as palm, face or iris scan. This simplifies the checkout process in store, as consumers no longer need to use a physical payment card, cash or a mobile device to pay for purchases. With Mastercard Biometric Checkout Program, secure and convenient experiences are possible simply by using your biometrics.

“Mastercard is a pioneer of innovative payment methods and drive security, and standardization and Poland is an (sic) perfect place for such a groundbreaking pilot,” said Marta Życińska, general manager Poland, Mastercard.

If you, like me, are wondering, “Why Poland?”, the answer is simple: Poles are apparently more inclined to adopt dystopian disruptive new technologies — at least according to Mastercard. From the industry publication, Biometrics Update:

The global payments giant says it chose Poland as its first European country to pilot the program because of its receptiveness to new technologies. According to their survey, four out of five Polish people say that they use or have used biometric technology while among the 18–25-year-olds category, almost all are familiar with using biometrics.

“Poland was one of the first countries where contactless payments with Mastercard cards were introduced and we know that Polish consumers are leaders in adopting innovative technologies,” says Marta Życińska, Mastercard’s general manager for Poland.

The pilots will be conducted in five stores in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Poznań and Czeladź. Empik has over 350 stores across Poland.

This will be the first time Mastercard has piloted a Biometric Checkout Program in Europe. In May, 2022, the company unveiled to much fanfare plans to launch a pilot “biometric checkout program” in the UK, but that so far appears to have come to naught. Before testing the system on UK consumers, the company first trialled it in Brazil. It then expanded its pilot programs program to the Asia Pacific region and launched its second pilot in Latin America earlier this June.

JP Morgan Chase Joins the Race

Mastercard is not the only large financial institution testing out this still relatively nascent payment technology. The company’s largest rival (after cash, of course) and fellow duopolist, Visa, recently showcased its pay-by-palm biometric payment technology at an event in Singapore. During the event, visitors were invited to try out the palm reader and link their signature to their payment card for a transaction.

“The future of biometric payments is promising and is set to revolutionise the retail experience,” said Kunal Chatterjee, Head of Innovation at Visa Asia Pacific. But it may take time for the technology to reach critical mass. Various factors, he said, influence the level of acceptance of biometric payments, including regulation, technology and consumer priorities, which can vary from country to country.

The largest bank in the US, JP Morgan Chase, is also piloting both face and palm pay technologies, with a view to fully launching a biometric checkout service with its merchants early next year. Given JPM is the largest merchant acquirer in the US, processing around 37 billion transactions in 2022, the impact on the payments landscape in the US could be huge. According to Prashant Sharma, executive director of biometrics and identity solutions at JPMorgan, merchants are highly interested in tapping biometrics, “because everybody wants to provide a streamlined, personalized experience to the consumer.”

Biometrics have already seeped into many other aspects of everyday life, including travel and communication. Many national passports these days include biometric data. Hundreds of millions — perhaps even billions — of people use a biometric authentication factor, such as a fingerprint or face scan, to unlock their smartphones and other digital devices. Soon, biometric identifiers may even be necessary to log onto social media platforms.

In other words, people are already giving away their most private data to work, communicate, cross borders, or get on planes. Will they do the same to speed up their shopping experience?

It is far from clear. As we reported last year, a push back against biometric surveillance and control systems has been gathering momentum on both sides of the north Atlantic, particularly the Western one. In the US, a small but growing handful of cities, including New York, have passed biometrics laws. Likewise, a growing number of states have followed Illinois’ lead in passing laws that expressly govern the processing of biometric data. In Illinois alone, more than 1,000 class action lawsuits have been filed under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

In the UK, meanwhile, the unmanned store experience offered by Amazon has been such a flop that the company has had to begin opening stores with actual fresh-and-blood human beings serving customers. Across the English Channel, there have been murmurings of protests in Belgium, France and other countries. But despite this growing backlash, there is a sense of inevitability to all of this. These are, after all, technologies that stand to massively benefit both governments and corporations alike while stripping the public at large of even more power, autonomy and independence.

More Convenience. But for Whom?

Mastercard’s Biometric Checkout Program claims to offer several benefits, including increased speed, convenience and better hygiene. Consumers first have to enrol in the program, by using their phone to scan their face, before being able to take advantage of its supposed benefits.

“The new technology ensures a fast and secure checkout experience, while also empowering consumers to choose how they want to pay… No more fumbling for your phone or hunting for your wallet when you have your hands full – the next generation of in-person payments will only need a quick smile or wave of your hand. The trusted technology that uses your face or fingerprint to unlock your phone can now be used to help consumers speed through the checkout. With Mastercard’s new Biometric Checkout Programme, all you will need is yourself.”

In other words, consumers will not have to use safer two-factor authentication — biometrics plus a PIN or password — if they don’t want to. And they are essentially being encouraged by Mastercard not to.

In the interview below, Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard’s president of cyber and intelligence solutions described the company’s biometric checkout program as a “cool new technology” that “allows consumers to pay with a smile on their face or just wave.” That way, he said (emphasis my own), “you can forget the clunkiness of taking your wallet out, your devices out, your card out.” Just do your shopping, he said “go to the checkout and… pay with your face. It’s as simple as that.”

How about no…
Pay with a smile: Mastercard launches facial recognition biometrics
Source: South China Morning Post (YouTube) pic.twitter.com/wYxx5HdnWE

— Camus (@newstart_2024) December 19, 2023

Convenience, as always, is the watchword. But for whom?

It is already well established that large retailers, banks and payment card companies much prefer people to use contactless payments as much as possible because: a) they are quicker to process, which means more sales per hour and more fees for the banks and card companies; and b) (this is the key part) people tend to spend their money in a more carefree or reckless fashion, which also means more sales for the retailers and more commissions and fees for the banks and card companies. As growing numbers of cash-strapped consumers grappling with high inflation have discovered (or rediscovered), cash tends to have the opposite effect.

This was already known when contactless cards began making their appearance almost two decades ago, as a 2006 Financial Times article makes clear:

Mr Williams, [controller at The Bailey Co, parent company of Arby’s, a fast food restaurant chain based in the US], has found that customers spend about 50 per cent more when they use a contactless card than when they pay for their food with cash: “I think it is psychological: because customers are not pulling cash out of their wallet, they spend more.” Arby’s has also made productivity gains with less time being spent on counting money and taking it to the bank, Mr Williams says.

Another benefit to retailers is that cards allow them to capture data about their customers from small transactions.

“If contactless cards offer merchants better information on their customers, that could prove to be valuable,” says Mr Uzureau.

Beware of Wandering Eyes

Another potential problem with Mastercard’s biometric checkout program is the apparent risk posed by customers’ wandering eyes. As the company itself notes in its press release, using PayEye’s eyePOS terminals “requires precise calibration, such that there is no risk of accidentally looking at the terminal and paying” for somebody else’s purchases.

Other major concerns include privacy and security (or lack thereof). More or less all large corporations have suffered at least one significant data breach in recent years, often through third-party service providers. They include, of course, Mastercard, Visa and JP Morgan Chase. In March this year, American Express (Amex), the US’ third largest credit card company, alerted its customers that their credit card details may have been compromised following a third-party data breach.

“The idea of a data breach is not a question of if, it’s a question of when,” says Professor Sandra Wachter, a data ethics expert at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Welcome to the Internet: everything is hackable.”

In my 2022 book Scanned, I documented how authorities in India, the Philippines and South Korea had suffered extensive security and data breaches leading to the leaking of biometric ID information belonging to millions of people.

Since then India’s Aadhaar ID system has suffered its biggest ever data leak, the Inspector General (IG) of the US Department of Defense (DoD) has released a report revealing glaring gaps in security and management of biometric data within the DoD, and an Australian firm called Outabox has suffered a breach of personal data linked to a facial recognition scheme that was implemented in bars and clubs across the country during the reopening of the economy. As WIRED magazine reported in May this year, the Outabox incident vindicated the privacy experts who have repeatedly warned about the creep of facial recognition systems in public spaces such as clubs and casinos:

“Sadly, this is a horrible example of what can happen as a result of implementing privacy-invasive facial recognition systems,” Samantha Floreani, head of policy for Australia-based privacy and security nonprofit Digital Rights Watch, tells WIRED. “When privacy advocates warn of the risks associated with surveillance-based systems like this, data breaches are one of them.”

This may not be news to regular readers but it bears repeating: biometric data is the most precious data of all. If it is hacked, leaked or compromised in some other way, the damage is often permanent. You cannot change or cancel your iris, fingerprint or DNA like you can change a password or cancel a credit card. As Illinois’ BIPA law notes, once biometric identifiers are compromised, “the individual has no recourse, is at heightened risk for identity theft, and is likely to withdraw from biometric-facilitated transactions.” This is what makes the relentless march toward a future of biometric-enabled surveillance and control so dangerous.

More troubling news is brewing for coffee lovers from the world’s top-producing country in Southeast Asia.

New export data reveals a sharp decline in robusta beans, commonly used in instant coffee and espresso and as a filler in various ground coffee blends. This development is part of a broader trend of tightening global supplies and soaring bean prices, exacerbating food inflation and hitting cash-strapped working poor consumers.

Bloomberg data shows Vietnam’s coffee exports plunged to the smallest volume in at least 15 years in May. Low exports are expected to persist for several months, which will only pressure prices higher. 

Shipments from the world’s biggest producer of the robusta variety slumped to less than 80,000 tons in May, down 47% from a year ago, customs data show. That’s the lowest amount of beans exported for the month since 2009. -Bloomberg

Do Ha Nam, chairman of top shipper Intimex Group and deputy head of the Vietnam Coffee Cocoa Association, said monthly export data would be “insignificant” until the harvest of new beans begins in October. He warned stockpiles are quickly being depleted by farmers. 

Tightening global supplies have rocketed robusta futures in London to the highest in 16 years. 

About a third of the world’s robusta beans come from Vietnam.

Companies, such as J.M. Smucker Co., whose brands include Folgers, Dunkin’, Café Bustelo, Pilon, and Medaglia d’Oro, recently warned of imminent price hikes across its brands due to the surge in bean prices. 

The coffee category continues to experience commodity volatility and overall meaningful inflation. In response to recent higher green coffee costs that we will begin to incur during the first quarter, we are taking a list price increase across parts of our portfolio in early June. As always, we will continue to manage our coffee business through a strategy that demonstrates a balance between recovering inflationary input costs, while providing consumers with attractive options ranging from value to premium.

Translation: Supermarket prices for coffee, especially J.M. Smucker’s brands, are set to move higher, if not already, thus raising food inflation for consumers.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Ukrainian Air Force head of aviation Sergey Golubtsov told US state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview over the weekend that Kiev plans to store some of its F-16s in NATO states for reserve and training purposes. While this might sound like a pragmatic policy, particularly since it would deter Russia from destroying its entire fleet since President Putin recently mocked speculation about him plotting to attack NATO as “bullshit”, it actually raises the risk of World War III.

To explain, although US Air Force chief Frank Kendell claimed last summer that the F-16s are “not going to be a game-changer” for Ukraine and Golubtsov himself confirmed in his latest interview that they’re “not a panacea and we do not wear rose-colored glasses”, both downplay the nuclear dimension. President Putin brought it up earlier this spring when he noted that “F-16 aircraft can also carry nuclear weapons, and we will also have to heed this while organising our combat operations.”

The Russian leader also warned that “we would see them as legitimate targets if they operate from the airfields of third countries, no matter where they are located.” Mutual mistrust between Russia and the US is at a record high and continues rising by the week, made all the worse by Ukraine’s recent attack(s) against Russia’s early nuclear warning systems that might have been tacitly approved by America. This comes as the US is playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia.

It’s with all this in mind that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month that “We cannot help but consider the supply of these (F-16) systems to the Kiev regime as a deliberate signaling action by NATO in the nuclear sphere.” He added though that his country’s recent tactical nuclear weapons exercises might “bring some sense” to NATO and deter them from crossing the ultimate red line. Judging by what Golubtsov just said, however, the US wants to up the ante in its game of nuclear chicken.

What’s meant is that Russia can’t know whether any attacking F-16 are nuclear-equipped, especially if one of them from Ukraine’s “reserve” based in NATO states takes off from there and carries out a mission without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield. From the Kremlin’s viewpoint, it could appear that a nuclear-equipped and NATO-piloted F-16 is preparing to carry out a first strike. In response, Russia might preemptively destroy the base from which it departed, with or without a tactical nuke.

The New York Times already cited an unknown number of Biden’s unnamed advisors to report that the US and Ukraine’s priorities are diverging, warning that “Ukraine has nothing left to lose from escalating with Russia” while “Mr. Biden does”. It therefore can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.

Seeing as how Denmark approved of Ukraine using their donated F-16s to strike inside of Russia’s universally recognized territory, which followed its NATO peers approving of Ukraine using other arms to do the same, this is a frighteningly real scenario that the US might be powerless to stop. The only way to prevent it is for the US to force its partners not to allow Ukraine to store its F-16s on their territory, but Biden likely doesn’t have the political will since he fears accusations that he’s afraid of President Putin.

The West’s most ideologically radicalized anti-Russian hawks and their media proxies could also claim that coercing Ukraine to store all of its F-16s inside the country runs the risk of Russia destroying them and therefore making a total waste of NATO’s months-long preparations for this latest escalation. This could be seized upon by his political opponents at home ahead of November’s elections so it’s unlikely that he’d want to take the chance of turning more voters against him with this so-called “stupid policy”.

Of course, the knife also cuts both ways, and his opponents could also claim that the most “stupid policy” is actually him letting Ukraine store F-16s in NATO states since that raises the risk of World War III as was explained in this analysis. Seeing as how these the US and Ukraine’s leading Air Force officials don’t even consider these arms to be a “game-changer” or a “panacea” by their own respective admissions, they shouldn’t even be fielded in the first place due to this irresponsible risk.

Nevertheless, the F-16s will now inevitably be used after all the time and investment that went into training Ukrainian pilots, not to mention the media hype over all these months. The decision has already been made to store some of them in NATO states so it remains to be seen whether Zelensky is truly willing to risk it all by authorizing a mission for attacking Russia directly from one of those bases. He has the motive and opportunity, which is why it wouldn’t be surprising if he gave it a shot in desperation.

Authored by Denes Albert via ReMix News,

Arguably Germany’s most famous currently serving mayor, Tübingen’s Boris Palmer, has attributed the success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party among young voters to the consequences of mass migration, which have transformed the school.

“They experience what irregular migration means on a daily basis,” Palmer wrote on Facebook on Monday.

“Above all, the young men who have arrived alone are changing the living environment of young people. In the park, in the club, on the street, on the bus, at the train station, in the schoolyard,” he added.

Notably, Palmer was once a Green party mayor, but as he became known more and more for his outspokenness against mass immigration and other political taboos, the party worked to eject him. Nevertheless, he remained so popular with the people of his city that they elected him as an unaffiliated mayor, which means he is running Tübingen independent of any political party.

He warned that anyone who is in contact with young people in Germany knows that they repeatedly note “their fear of migrants’ propensity for violence,” but that this view is not taken seriously or “discredited as racism.”

Palmer’s assertion is backed by the country’s own crime data from the federal interior ministry, which shows that violent crime hit record highs in 2023, with foreigners producing six out of 10 violent crimes. His point about migrant violence on trains is also backed by data as well. In regard to the school system, the deleterious effect migrants are having, including in terms of violence, is an open topic in the German media.

Furthermore, Palmer points to the “dogmas of wokeness and open borders,” which do not match the reality of young people’s lives.

As a result, “they are reorienting themselves and voting for a party that at least doesn’t dismiss their concerns as bad and wrong from the outset.”

Palmer claims that the AfD will not “solve the problem” and says that most young people are not “stupid enough” to believe the AfD can do this. However, these young people will not vote for parties that attempt to label them as racist or as part of the problem.

He said that the left is also harming the cause of climate protection, as they link the struggle against climate change to the struggle against the right, including with activists such as Luisa Neubauer.

“This is gambling away the social majorities for climate protection, even among young people,” said Palmer.

The AfD surged to become the second-largest German party in the EU parliament after Sunday’s EU elections, jumping to 16 percent of the vote. The AfD has promised to deport millions of migrants, combat migrant crime, and secure the German school system.

Read more here…