Authored by Conor Gallagher via Naked Capitalism,

Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella The Minority Report created “precrime,” the clairvoyant foreknowledge of criminal activity as forecast by mutant “precogs.” The book was a dystopian nightmare, but a 2015 Fox television series transforms the story into one in which a precog works with a cop and shows that data is actually effective at predicting future crime.

Canada is trying to enact a precrime law along the lines of the 2015 show, but it is being panned about as much as the television series. Ottawa’s online harms bill includes a provision to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future. From The Globe and Mail:

The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says. Mr. Virani, who is Attorney-General as well as Justice Minister, said it is important that any peace bond be “calibrated carefully,” saying it would have to meet a high threshold to apply.

But he said the new power, which would require the attorney-general’s approval as well as a judge’s, could prove “very, very important” to restrain the behaviour of someone with a track record of hateful behaviour who may be targeting certain people or groups…

People found guilty of posting hate speech could have to pay victims up to $20,000 in compensation. But experts including internet law professor Michael Geist have said even a threat of a civil complaint – with a lower burden of proof than a court of law – and a fine could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

While this is a dangerous step in Canada, I also wonder if this is where burgeoning “anti-hate” programs across the US are headed. The Canadian bill would also allow “people to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission over what they perceive as hate speech online – including, for example, off-colour jokes by comedians.”

There are now programs in multiple US states to do just that –  encourage people to snitch on anyone doing anything perceived as “hateful.”

The 2021 federal COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act began to dole out money to states to help them respond to hate incidents. Oregon now has its Bias Response Hotline to track “bias incidents.”

In December of 2022, New York launched its Hate and Bias Prevention Unit. Maryland, too, has its system – its hate incidents examples include “offensive jokes” and “malicious complaints of smell or noise.”

Maryland also has its Emmett Till Alert System that sends out three levels of alerts for specific acts of hate. For now, they only go to black lawmakers, civil rights activists, the media and other approved outlets, but expansion to the general populace is under consideration.

California vs. Hate, a multilingual statewide hotline and website that encourages people to report all acts of “hate,” is coming up on its one-year anniversary, reportedly receiving a mere 823 calls from 79% of California’s 58 counties during its first nine months of operation. It looks like the program is rolling out even more social media graphics in a bid to get more reports:

A key question is why states like California are rushing to expand the definition of hate. Officials in the Golden State like Governor Gavin Newsom claimed it was because of a rise in reported hate crimes – up 33 percent from 2020 to 2021. A deeper look at the data, however, shows that Newsom is guilty of cherry picking. From Public:

But convictions of hate crimes have been flat. In 2012 there were 107 hate crime convictions in California. In 2021, there were 109, according to the same data. It’s possible that hate crimes really did rise by 80%, and juries decided not to give prosecutors convictions. …But it’s also possible that convictions stayed the same because there was no increase in prosecutable hate crimes. And it may be that Californian prosecutors simply labeled more crimes as “hate” crimes because they were primed to do so by the media’s 700% – 1,000% increased focus on racism between 2011 and 2020.

I’m likely omitting other states with similar programs, but it’s clear that there is a push across the country. No doubt, these efforts to eliminate hate also have other benefits for the ruling class.

In a state like California or New York, there is the added bonus that the program ends up being a massive giveaway to a key part of the Democratic base – the nonprofit industrial complex that is helping to bring this system into existence.

These programs also help spread fear that hate is around every corner, which could allow for an erosion of rights under the guise of eradicating “hate.”

There’s also the issue of who is providing the definitions for hate that go beyond the laws already on the books for hate crimes. The California Senate Public Safety Committee analysis stated the following about the CA vs. Hate program:

A hate incident is an action or behavior motivated by hate but legally protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

That leads to the question of why the state is encouraging people to report and is collecting information on legally protected “behavior.” And where does the expanded definition come from? The committee stated the following:

Define hate incidents with language provided by the Anti-Defamation League.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a non-governmental organization based in the US, whose stated mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”

But there’s a little more to it than that. In May 2022, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, announced that, “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” He also labeled groups that want equal rights for Palestinians in Israel as “extremists” and likened Israel critics to white supremacists. More from Boston Review:

…the ADL has consistently sought to undermine the left, leveling a charge akin to dual loyalty: that the American left’s calls for redistribution of power, its solidarity with global movements, and its prioritization of people over states threaten the very concept of the state. Indeed the ADL, in addition to its stated mission of shoring up U.S. support for Israel, is deeply loyal to the U.S. state. The second is that the ADL has waged a long, vigorous, and successful campaign, alongside AIPAC, specifically to characterize Arab American political organizing as dual loyalty.

Maybe this isn’t an organization that should be defining hate for US governments. We have the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) for that.

In March South Dakota became the 35th state to codify the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism. The law requires the consideration of the definition of antisemitism when investigating unfair or discriminatory practices.That definition includes the traditional elements of antisemitism but also inserts elements that could move the state of Israel under antisemitic protections. Consider the following from the IHRA’s definition:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

A 2022 UK study published in Springer Nature found the following about the IHRA’s definition:

…pro-Israel activists can and have mobilised the IHRA document for political goals unrelated to tackling antisemitism, notably to stigmatise and silence critics of the Israeli government. This causes widespread self-censorship, has an adverse impact on freedom of speech, and impedes action against the unjust treatment of Palestinians. We also identify intrinsic problems in the way the definition refers to criticism of Israel similar ‘to that leveled against any other country’, ambiguous wording about ‘the power of Jews as a collective’, lack of clarity as to the Jewish people’s ‘right to self-determination’, and its denial of obvious racism.

Despite that effect, and despite the 2021 Hate Crimes Act, which provided more money and more programs to collect data on all “hate incidents,” there are still complaints that it all still isn’t enough because they don’t prevent “hate” but only address what takes place afterwards. To fix that, a precrime system will be necessary.

***

Predictive policing – which uses computer systems to help direct the deployment of police to crime hotspots – has been widely discredited as biased and worthless.

The Markup found that predictive policing does not work – at all. It took a look at efforts by Geolitica, known as PredPol until a 2021 rebrand, and its software that ingests data from crime incident reports and produces daily predictions on where and when crimes are most likely to occur. From The Markup:

We examined 23,631 predictions generated by Geolitica between Feb. 25 to Dec. 18, 2018 for the Plainfield Police Department (PD). Each prediction we analyzed from the company’s algorithm indicated that one type of crime was likely to occur in a location not patrolled by Plainfield PD. In the end, the success rate was less than half a percent.

It is also biased, despite efforts to make it less so. MIT Technology Review points out:

…many developers of predictive policing tools say that they have started using victim reports to get a more accurate picture of crime rates in different neighborhoods. In theory, victim reports should be less biased because they aren’t affected by police prejudice or feedback loops.

But a University of Texas study found this method still led to significant errors:

 For example, in a district where few crimes were reported, the tool predicted around 20% of the actual hot spots—locations with a high rate of crime. On the other hand, in a district with a high number of reports, the tool predicted 20% more hot spots than there really were.

While these predictive policing spatial models prove biased, what if to counter those criticisms you begin to roll out programs to “protect” minorities by preventing hate crimes? Could an approach that treats each individual as a collection of data points (including any “hate incidents”) be predictive of a future hate crime?

Efforts to do just that date back to at least the early 1970s. When UCLA tried to set up a center for the study of violence.The Center for the Long-Term Study of Life-Threatening Behavior was intended to re-think human functioning itself in terms of data and was going to compile behavioral data to understand crimes that were “in formation.”

The center never officially opened its doors, however, as it got caught in the backlash against psychosurgery when groups like the Black Panthers and Nader’s Raiders protested against it.

But the rethink of humans as a collection of data points that can predict crimes in formation never really went away, and is now inching closer to becoming a reality. What is Canada’s proposed law other than a method to use data to measure “dangerousness” and preemptively punish suspects?

As MIT Technology Review pointed out above, there are efforts underway to use victim reports to counteract bias, but the University of Texas study was still trying to use them to predict where a crime might occur and not who might commit the crime.

I should point out that it’s unclear what states are doing with all the info collected from reported hate incidents, particularly the details on the alleged perpetrators. I reached out to the California Civil Rights Division weeks ago to get an answer but have yet to receive a response.

There is a clear line of thinking that these hate incidents can be predictive of future crime, however. That’s what the Canadian bill claims. Back in 2019 NYU researchers claimed to use AI to show that “online hate” could be predictive of offline violence. Could all these efforts to gather data on hate “incidents” be laying the groundwork for precrime detention along the lines of what Canada is attempting?

For those who would like to see the adoption of a precrime system, one of the benefits of focusing on individuals and hate crimes is that it could help diffuse the bias criticism of predictive policing from groups typically suspicious of increased law enforcement powers. Indeed, many of the groups helping to implement the hate incident hotlines in US states are nonprofits focused on minority groups.

As the state efforts above show, the definition of what constitutes a bias or hate “incident” are slippery and many interested parties would like to shape that definition. Again, there are already hate crime laws on the books, and I have yet to encounter an explanation for why these laws are so ineffective that it’s necessary to encourage people to rat on one another in order to gather data on hate incidents.

Placed alongside burgeoning censorship efforts, it begins to make more sense. If we look at Canada’s effort to establish official pre-hate-crime law enforcement, it’s one that would mark the official end of free speech and lead to a dystopian society revolving around the fear of being targeted – either by an individual or AI.

Even without official precrime laws on the books, there are already ways that these efforts to combat “hate” are attempting to stifle speech. Naked Capitalism readers don’t have to look far for errors (or intentional targeting) in this system as Google’s AI targeted this site for “hateful content” among other alleged sins.

And there’s the issue with “hate.” It could mean a racist comment or action; it could also now refer to criticism of Israeli policy or a thought crime against the ruling class. It apparently does not refer to elite policy in California, for example, where the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest percentiles increased to 15.51 years in 2021 (which seems like the hateful result of hateful policies if you ask me). What happens if Californians begin to make hateful comments about that fact?

We don’t have to only look to fiction like Minority Report for answers. California’s own history provides a great example of the real use of these burgeoning programs to purportedly combat “hate.”

The California Criminal Syndicalism Act of 1919 prohibited speech that suggested the use of violence for political aims. It came at a time when workers were winning important battles in the class war raging across the state. California started locking up Wobblies en masse. As Malcolm Harris describes in his book Palo Alto:

Wobblies filled San Quentin, the Bay Area’s only prison, on bullshit charges that could hold them for up to 14 years. In Southern California, the police teamed with a resurgent KKK to bust the waterfront union, and the IWW was lucky if the cops decided to merely stand by and watch. …By the end of the decade, the state organization was jailed and beaten into submission.

When NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg this week unveiled a $100 billion, five-year fund for Ukraine which he pitched to alliance foreign ministers in preparation for the July annual summit, a number of pundits and publications immediately saw through it…

NATO leadership is ultimately seeking to “Trump-proof” support for the Ukraine war amid growing ‘fears’ the GOP frontrunner will take the White House after November, after which he’s expected to pull the plug on Biden’s billions for Ukraine.

Well-known career diplomat Chas Freeman told Responsible Statecraft that this scheme is “a case of throwing good money—in this case, borrowed money—after bad.”

Freeman explained, “NATO has run out of Ukrainians to sacrifice on the battlefield as well as the armaments production needed to equip the existing, greatly depleted Ukrainian armed forces. A bond fund will neither create more Ukrainians nor produce more weapons to arm those who have so far survived.”

Stoltenberg has been fairly transparent about his aims, with the Financial Times saying he’s doing it as a means “to shield the mechanism against the winds of political change.“

Freeman has commented further that what Ukraine and Europe really need “is peace, and this demands negotiations with Russia.”

“This is a shameless attempt to use financial capitalism to avoid that reality, while further enriching munitions manufacturers. NATO is not a hedge fund and should not attempt to behave like one,” he continued. “When alliances attempt to borrow money for lost causes, you would be right to judge that they know the jig is up.”

As for Stoltenberg’s words before NATO foreign ministers on Wednesday, he said Ukraine’s government and military still has “urgent needs” and that “any delay in providing support has consequences on the battlefield as we speak.”

“We must ensure reliable and predictable security assistance to Ukraine for the long haul so that we rely less on the voluntary contributions and more on NATO commitments, less on short-term offers and more on multiyear pledges,” Stoltenberg said. “The reason why we do this is the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is serious … We see how Russia is pushing, and we see how they try to win this war by just waiting us out.”

But… as we reported previously, Hungary stands firmly in the way, having already announced its “opposition to increasing NATO’s coordination role in arms deliveries and training Ukrainian forces, refusing to participate in planning, operations, or funding,” according to a foreign ministry statement.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has issued a new rule that makes it harder to fire government employees in an apparent bid to thwart former President Donald Trump’s pledge to fire “rogue bureaucrats” and radically reshape the federal workforce.

The new rule, which bolsters job protections for career civil servants, was issued on April 4 by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which hinted in a statement that it’s targeting a promised move by a potential second Trump presidency to “drain the swamp and root out the deep state” by making it easier to fire government workers.

“In the first week of the Biden-Harris Administration, President Biden revoked an Executive Order issued by the previous Administration that risked altering our country’s long-standing merit-based civil service system, by creating new excepted service schedule, known as ‘Schedule F,’ and directing agencies to move potentially large swathes of career employees into this new excepted service status,” OPM said in the statement.

This is in reference to a Trump-era executive order issued in 2020 that allowed tens of thousands of the 2.2 million federal employees to be reclassified as political appointees, making it easier to fire them.

‘Root Out the Deep State’

Roughly 4,000 federal employees are now considered political appointees, who typically change with each administration, with the revival of a Schedule F potentially increasing that more than tenfold.

President Joe Biden nixed the Schedule F order when he took office, while President Trump said in mid-2022 that he would try to revive the concept in one form or another.

“We need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs,” President Trump said in a speech at the America First Policy Institute on July 26, 2022, promising to “drain the swamp and root out the deep state.”

The former president went further in his speech, calling on Congress to pass laws that would give the commander-in-chief the authority to fire any government employee basically at will.

“Congress should pass historic reforms empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent, or unnecessary for the job can be told ‘you are fired, get out,’” he said, adding that, after such reforms, Washington would be an “entirely different place.”

Later on the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly hinted at his intention to make good on this promise. His remarks dovetail with a long-standing desire on the part of many Republicans to prune what they say is a bloated, inefficient and, in many cases, counterproductive federal bureaucracy.

Many Democrats, on the other hand, see the potential revival of a Schedule F or similar initiative as a threat to the operations of government and a potential disruption to the provision of critical services.

“This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a statement.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is deeply committed to the federal workforce, as these professionals are vital to our national security, our health, our economic prosperity, and much more.”

The new rule, which is nearly 240 pages long, apparently seeks to put up a roadblock to prevent President Trump, or anyone else for that matter, from issuing another executive order that would reclassify civil servants.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt pointed to President Trump’s Agenda 47 plan to “dismantle the deep state and return power to the American people,” which includes an explicit pledge to re-issue the 2020 executive order, “wield that power aggressively,” and “fire rogue bureaucrats.”

What’s in the New Rule?

The rule, which is being published in the federal registry and is set to take effect next month, is poised to counter a future Schedule F executive order by entrenching the status and civil service protections accrued by federal employees.

It stipulates that the job protections accrued by a government worker cannot be taken away by an involuntary move from the competitive service (appointments that are subject to OPM hiring rules and pay scales) to the excepted service (appointments that follow a separate, often more streamlined hiring process).

Similarly, moves from one excepted service schedule to another would not strip federal employees of those protections under the new rule.

“Once a career civil servant earns protections, that employee retains them unless waived voluntarily,” the OPM said in a statement.

The rule also makes clear that policymaking classifications apply to noncareer and political appointments and cannot be applied to career civil servants.

Specifically, the new rule stipulates that the phrase “confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating” positions (which describe positions lacking civil service protections) can be used to refer only to noncareer, political appointments and may not be applied to career civil servants to strip them of protections.

The final rule also establishes new procedural requirements for moving positions from the competitive service to the excepted service and within the excepted service. In particular, it creates an appeals process for federal employees when any such movement is involuntary and involves stripping workers of their civil service protections.

“This final rule builds on three years of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to strengthen federal agencies and the federal workforce,” OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver said in a statement.

The agency said it had reviewed more than 4,000 comments submitted during the public comment period as part of the rulemaking process.

Although the price of gold has reached new record highs in 2024, gold miners are still far from their 2011 peaks.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti illustrates the evolution of gold prices since 2000 compared to the NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index (HUI), which consists of the largest and most widely held public gold production companies. The data was compiled by Incrementum AG.

Mining Stocks Lag Far Behind

In April 2024, gold reached a new record high as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled policymakers may delay interest rate cuts until clearer signs of declining inflation materialize.

Additionally, with elections occurring in more than 60 countries in 2024 and ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, central banks are continuing to buy gold to strengthen their reserves, creating momentum for the metal.

Traditionally known as a hedge against inflation and a safe haven during times of political and economic uncertainty, gold has climbed over 11% so far this year.

According to Business Insider, gold miners experienced their best performance in a year in March 2024. During that month, the gold mining sector outperformed all other U.S. industries, surpassing even the performance of semiconductor stocks.

Still, physical gold has outperformed shares of gold-mining companies over the past three years by one of the largest margins in decades.

Among the largest companies on the NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index, Colorado-based Newmont has experienced a 24% drop in its share price over the past year. Similarly, Canadian Barrick Gold also saw a decline of 6.5% over the past 12 months.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Saudi oil giant Aramco, the world’s top crude oil exporter, hiked on Friday the prices of most of its crude grades for May, as Middle Eastern benchmarks are strengthening in a market that looks increasingly tight.  

For a second consecutive month, Saudi Arabia raised the price of Arab Light, its flagship grade selling in Asia, by more than expected.

Aramco set the official selling price (OSP) of Arab Light for Asia for May by $0.30 per barrel to a premium of $2.00 over the Oman/Dubai average, the benchmark off which Middle Eastern crude going to Asia is priced.

This is the second consecutive increase in the price of Saudi oil selling in Asia, after Aramco had raised in March the OSPs for Asian buyers for April, following the extension of the OPEC+ production cut agreement until the end of the first half of the year. The price for the country’s flagship Arab Light grade was raised by $0.20 per barrel over the Oman/Dubai average for April.

Now the increase for May is $0.30 per barrel, the upper end of refining sources’ expectations polled by Reuters earlier this week. The Reuters survey of five refining sources showed that they expected Arab Light crude prices for May to be hiked by between $0.20 and $0.30 per barrel over the Middle Eastern benchmark. A Bloomberg survey of traders and refiners expected an increase of $0.10 per barrel.

Middle Eastern crude benchmarks have rallied in recent days, along with the increase in the entire crude complex as Brent prices topped $90 per barrel this week amid a tightening market and geopolitical concerns in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia typically announces around the fifth of each month its crude pricing for the following month and doesn’t comment on price changes.

This week, the OSPs came after the OPEC+ group’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) did not recommend any changes to output policy at its meeting on Wednesday.   

A top level Biden administration official has issued surprising remarks assessing Russian resiliency in the face of two years of Washington sanctions, and after a grinding war which has likely resulted in at least tens of thousands of troop losses.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke at a Wednesday event hosted by the notoriously hawkish Center for New American Security where he emphasized that Russia’s military has almost fully reconstituted its military losses in Ukraine, even as sanctions have tried to dent its military supplies, funding, and capabilities.

“We have assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily,” Campbell told the audience.

Defense News underscored this is notable and surprising given that “Campbell’s assessment seems to contradict those of the Pentagon and America’s allies in Europe.”

For example Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently claimed that Russian losses total well over 300,000 casualties since the invasion began, a staggering figure.

Further, this is from an interview with the chair of Lithuania’s national security committee, Laurynas Kasčiūnas:

Q: How long will it take for Russia to reconstitute its forces to prewar levels?

“If we consider in planning a real conventional, division-level war: five to seven years. If you imagine some semi-conventional, hybrid [war], they need maybe two to three years.”

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that Russia has certainly been able to keep its military supplies and artillery flowing to the front lines.

In March Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Russia’s artillery shell production increased by nearly 2.5 times over the past year. International reports at the time also acknowledged that Moscow continues to significantly out-producing the West.

The Ukrainian side too appears to have admitted this is the case, with an officer who served under former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny describing that the front lines are at risk of collapse as “There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us.”

“We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers,” the officer added.

In light of all of this, it’s important to recall SecDef Austin’s words in 2022 wherein he said a goal of US policy is to see Russia weakened militarily and unable to recover quickly.

By Maartje Wijffelaars, Senior Economist at Rabobank

Brent crude oil extended its gains and broke through the 90 dollars a barrel threshold yesterday, for the first time since end-October last year. The commodity continues its ascend this morning and at the time of writing it’ll cost you 91.2 dollars to buy a barrel. And more support for the commodity is on the table if Russia and Iraq actually stick to the production quotas. Indeed, on Wednesday OPEC+ decided to extend its production cuts through June, but Russia and Iran have produced more than agreed recently. Ukraine strikes on Russian production facilities over the past weeks could ‘help’ Russia lowering its exports, as sites are down. The exact amount of damage is unknown, however, with multiple different figures going around.

Apart from a tighter market, rising uncertainty in the Middle East have fed oil prices since Monday. At the start of the week, Israel hit Iranian military officials in Syria, stoking fears of an escalation of the Israel-Hamas conflict into the broader region.

Yesterday’s ECB accounts of its March meeting showed that uncertainties with respect to the developments of energy prices are on the ECB’s radar. Specifically they mentioned that “Upside risks to inflation included the heightened geopolitical tensions, especially in the Middle East, which could push energy prices and freight costs higher in the near term and disrupt global trade.” And that “It was important to keep in mind that wrong assumptions on energy prices would eventually feed through to all inflation components, either through input prices or indirectly, via wages.”

Overall, the accounts strongly point to a June move, but also underscore the likelihood of a cautious approach for the trajectory afterwards. For more on our ECB view please keep an eye on the preview for next week’s meeting our ECB watcher Bas van Geffen will send out today.   

Meanwhile, yesterday’s PMI figures for March narrowly lifted activity in the Eurozone to expansionary territory, for the first time since May 2023. The composite figure came in at 50.3, despite an accelerated contraction in manufacturing (46.1), owing to improved conditions in the services sector on the back of rising new orders, output and employment (51.5).

Indices for individual member states continued to show quite some divergence among member states. Specifically, they showed that things are going rather well in the South, with a composite PMI of 55.3 in Spain and 53.5 in Italy, but (still) not too good in Germany (47.7) and France (48.3). It’s a story that has been playing out for quite some time now due to a multitude of both longer- and shorter-term reasons.

For example, Germany has been struggling with low demand in China and a loss in competitiveness not only due to the ‘recent’ surge in gas prices, but also due to relatively high labour cost growth – outpacing that of many peers for years now – and increased competition from Chinese car manufacturers. A very tight labour market has also been putting a lid on business’ abilities to grow.

Meanwhile, Italy has benefitted from increased competitiveness due to both relatively weaker wage growth and quality gains over the past years, supporting export growth. Indeed, it’s real effective exchange rate based on relative unit labour costs has been steadily in decline since the GFC. It has furthermore been able to tap into high-growth niche markets such as maritime transport production and has suffered less than Germany from supply chain disruptions during the pandemic.

Another important driver of Italy’s post-pandemic boom is the Superbonus tax credit scheme which has fuelled construction investment since 2020 – support from the latter is expected to come to end, however, as the scheme is being faced out. Finally, Italy has benefitted from EU grants from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) – also known as the EU pandemic recovery fund. Conditional on reform and investment progress, it is entitled to grants worth in total EUR 72bn (3.4% of 2023 GDP). So far it has received just over half of the amount it’s eligible to, although part of that money is still waiting to be spend.

Both wage moderation and significant support from the EU recovery fund have also helped Spain. The latter is entitled to as much as EUR 80bn in EU grants (5.5% of 2023 GDP) and has so far received a little less than half, although not all money received has been spent yet. More beneficial demographic developments have also helped Spain when compared to both Germany and Italy – this partly results from immigration. Another important factor of Spain’s more recent outperformance is that it has been playing catch up lately. It took longer for its hospitality and tourism driven economy to pick up from the pandemic slump. Furthermore, while its relatively small industrial sector – with a relatively strong focus on car manufacturing – has meant that Spain’s economy benefitted less from the strong industrial production growth during the pandemic years, past year(s)’ slump in the sector has also acted as a smaller drag.

German factory orders for February (0.2% m/m and -10.6% y/y) and industrial production in France (0.2% m/m and -0.8% y/y), out this morning, confirmed both countries’ rather weak start to the year. Yes, both saw a minor monthly uptick after a major contraction in January, but performance was worse than expected and in year-on-year terms both indicators weakened compared to January. At the same time, Spain’s industrial output in February exceeded expectations and picked up both compared to January (0.7% m/m after 0.4% m/m in January) and a year ago (+1.5% y/y in February after -0.6% y/y in January).

On a positive note, figures for Germany, France, and the Eurozone were upwardly revised from preliminary estimates. This suggests that the economy gained some steam in the final weeks of the quarter. This suggests growth in the Eurozone is likely to pick up in Q2, from a rather flat start this year. This is in line with our forecast, as private spending is projected to benefit from improved household purchasing power and a decline in long-term interest rates, while investment in general will be supported by the RRF funds – especially in Southern member states. Overall, Spain is expected to largely outperform peers this and next year, while France and Italy are projected to perform broadly in line with the Eurozone average;  Germany is to underperform.

Authored by  ‘Eugyppius’ via Substack,

The German Interior Ministry continues to defend its controversial and widely criticised plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), our domestic intelligence service and political police, have sacrificed substantial popular regard in the face of this campaign. According to a poll published last month, a plurality of Germans believe that the BfV is being misused for political purposes. The sentiment is prominent across all parties, except of course for the Greens, who believe that all is well with the Federal Republic.

The creepy, dissolute and rodent-looking BfV chief, Thomas Haldenwang, has taken to the pages of the Frankfurter Allgemeine to defend the conduct of his office and his plans to shape the “thought and speech patterns” of ordinary people through official repression.

The thing about “freedom of expression,” Haldenwang explains, is that it “is not carte blanche for enemies of the constitution”.

Recently, public discourse has repeatedly featured headlines and articles calling the work of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) into question. There is talk of an “opinion police,” a “language police” and even a “Government security service”. They say the BfV discredits political opinions “on command” as extremist as soon as they depart from the social and political mainstream, or when they embark upon criticism of Government action or the work of the democratic parties.

One thing should be unmistakably clear: freedom of opinion prevails in Germany – and that is a good thing! Freedom of opinion is a fundamental element of our constitution and one of the greatest assets of our liberal democratic order. As such, it is also protected by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

“Freedom of opinion,” Haldenwang explains, is what “distinguishes a democracy from an autocracy or a dictatorship.” In the Federal Republic even “offensive, absurd and radical opinions” are protected.

Well, kind of:

[E]ven freedom of expression has its limits. The outermost boundaries are set by criminal law, for example with regard to punishable propaganda offences or incitement to hatred. Even within the limits of criminal law, however, expressions of opinion, despite their legality, can become relevant for constitutional protection. [emphasis mine, here and below]

In theory, you can think and say whatever you want in Germany, so long as what you think and say does not violate the law. Within the range of legal expression, however, there is a grey area that Haldenwang and his minders in the Interior Ministry get to define. If you enter this danger zone, you may end up inviting the unwelcome attention of the political police even though you have not broken any laws.

Put less charitably, there is clearly illegal speech on the one hand, and on the other hand there is speech which is alas not yet illegal, but which existing authorities will use all the administrative tools at their disposal to dissuade you from. Such speech, we might say, is pre-illegal, and only reluctantly permitted because the hurdles to banning it are too substantial.

Specifically, you become susceptible to surveillance and harassment by the BfV whenever you express opinions that suggest you are interested in “eliminat[ing] the free democratic order” of the Federal Republic. Your mere freedom of expression is “not a licence to evade observation and evaluation” by the political police if there are “factual indications” that your thought is tending in unconstitutional directions.

Unsurprisingly, the scope of what is “unconstitutional” in thought and speech turns out very wide indeed:

For example, if elements of our free democratic basic order are attacked, e.g. if the human dignity of members of certain social groups or political actors is violated, if permissible criticism and democratic protest escalates and turns into aggressive, systematic delegitimisation of state conduct (including calls for violence), when legitimate criticism and opinions turn into extremist agitation intended to shake the foundations of our democratic order and thus prepare the ground for unpeaceful and violent activities – such statements can constitute evidence of endeavours directed against the free democratic order.

As I posted last month, the BfV has been targeting political dissidents it deems guilty of “delegitimising” the state since 2021 – a concept that takes aim at a wide range of expression and that reminds one of defunct DDR laws against “defaming the state”. Here, Haldenwang quietly expands this concept, explaining that you may become a case for the BfV if your “permissible criticism” crosses some invisible boundary to become the “delegitimisation of state conduct”. Comparing the Federal Republic to the DDR is an example of delegitimising the state; comparing the behaviour of the BfV to the behaviour of the Stasi is presumably an example of delegitimising state conduct. The goal here is to make it effectively impossible to criticise the German Government for its antidemocratic and unconstitutional policies without drawing the attention of the BfV, because attacking our nominally democratic leaders for antidemocratic behaviour is the very definition of “delegitimisation”.

Otherwise, to understand how ominous this is, you must remember that the present political establishment in general, and the BfV and Haldenwang more specifically, exercise a total sovereignty of interpretation over everything you say. It doesn’t matter whether you intend to violate “the human dignity of members of certain social groups” with your statements, or even if this is a remotely defensible interpretation of your words. It only matters if the constitutional protectors decide you are guilty of doing so. Thus if our constitutional protectors decide that your statements are “intended” to call into question “our democratic order” or “prepare the ground for unpeaceful and violent activities”, you’re on the radar of the BfV, regardless of what you said or how you meant it. This is a licence to go after anyone saying anything our political leaders don’t like.

Haldenwang believes that “in the post-War history of our country, democracy has rarely been in such danger as it is now”.

This is because “the number of extremists and the potential for extremism have been on the rise for years”, because “digitalisation and virtualisation” are helping bad people “spread their ideologies”, and because “authoritarian states” are propagating “disinformation” which “often meets with approval and applause from domestic organisations and actors”.

What Haldenwang is really terrified about, of course, are the upcoming elections for the EU Parliament and for the state parliaments of Brandenburg, Thüringen and Saxony.

That is why we have to read so much in the press every day about “Right-wing extremism”, why the police are going after 17-year-old girls who post AfD Smurf videos to TikTok and investigating inflatable snowmen for fascism and why leading Green politicians are having ordinary people prosecuted for political satire.

In the Federal Republic there is nothing so threatening to democracy as free and open democratic elections.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

If you’re getting the feeling like the globalists are really pushing hard for WWIII these days, you’re not alone.

In the past few months there has been multiple instances of European and US officials hinting at the possibility of a new military draft, the EU has talked openly about boots on the ground in Ukraine, NATO officials have stated unequivocally that they WILL NOT accept a loss in Ukraine to the Russians and the Kremlin has warned once again that nuclear weapons are on the table if western troops enter the war. The US government has recently asserted that Ukraine will be joining NATO, a red line in the sand for Russia.

Then there’s Israel and Gaza. I warned months ago in my article ‘It’s A Trap! The Wave Of Repercussions As The Middle East Fights “The Last War”’ that the war in Gaza would expand into a multi-front conflict that would probably include Iran. I also warned that it would be to Israel’s benefit if Iran entered the war because this would force the US to become directly involved. To be sure, Iran has already been engaging in proxy attacks on Israel through Lebanon, but Israel’s attack on the Iranian “embassy” or diplomatic station in Syria basically ensures that Iran will now directly commit to strikes on Israeli targets.

In other words, much like WWI, the situation is being escalated by the political elites despite the fact that the general public in the west is increasingly opposed to participating in the conflict. The globalists want to send us to war whether we like it or not.  Every decision they have made so far makes peaceful resolution impossible.

One saving grace that is perhaps new in the entire history of geopolitics is that the public is far more awake and aware of the fact that it’s not necessarily their “duty” to blindly go fight when their government calls on them to do so. Social media has also given a platform for people to widely voice their concerns about war, whereas in the past objectors felt isolated.

Obviously, some of this is based purely on fear – A large percentage of Gen Z is unequipped mentally or physically to go to war, which is why more than 70% of potential military recruits today are rejected before they even get to boot camp. These are many of the same young people who post Ukrainian flags to their social media profiles and jump headfirst into anti-Russian rhetoric, but now that they are faced with the possibility of having to sacrifice themselves for Ukraine they are angry and terrified.

However, there is also a large contingent of capable (and mostly conservative) men with the background and the aptitude for combat that still want nothing to do with Ukraine. The reason is simple: They believe that far-left western governments and globalists want to use them as cannon fodder to get rid of them. Once they are used up in war, there will be no one left to oppose the leftist takeover at home.

For most of us in America, Ukraine is irrelevant and we grow tired of wars in the Middle East. Whether left or right, we have no interest in fighting for them. But that’s not going to matter much, at least in terms of preventing a global war.

European Fear Mongering

War with Russia will depend more on European involvement than US involvement. While the US has been the largest provider of armaments to Ukraine by far, the ultimate goal I believe is to integrate European troops into the Ukrainian front, which would be an automatic declaration of global war.

The basis for mobilization of troops from Europe is “domino theory” propaganda. We’ve heard some of it here in America but nowhere near the same level as the EU populace. Governments assert that Russia’s goal is to clear Ukraine as a pathway to invade the rest of Europe. This is the same claim used as justification for the US war in Vietnam: “If we let one country fall to the enemy, all the surrounding countries will fall also.”

Both Ukrainian and NATO leadership suggests that war must continue in Ukraine in order to contain it. There has been no serious discussion of diplomacy, which is utterly bizarre considering the stakes involved. A peace proposal should have been broached the moment the war kicked off and there should have been ongoing efforts to come to an agreement. Instead, even limited peace talks have been thwarted before they truly begin.

A military draft in Europe is far more likely to succeed, given the socialist nature of the population and the fact that only a tiny percentage of civilians are armed to defend themselves. Even with a public protest movement I have little doubt EU governments will be able to secure a large enough force to send into Ukraine and escalate the war.

According to the evidence, it’s clear that some NATO troops have already been deployed to Ukraine and have been there for some time. As I’ve noted in past articles, the strategies used during the first Ukrainian counter-attack were far too advanced for Ukrainian troops and leadership to pull off without help. Anti-armor tactics in particular were very familiar; similar in execution to tactics used by US and British special forces. Not surprisingly, as soon as foreign mercenary recruit rates dropped off, Ukraine’s momentum fizzled.

The Russians are likely well aware of this situation, but as long as smaller groups of soldiers can be sent under the guise of mercenary forces, there’s not much they can do about it. It’s the open deployment of NATO battalions that is cause for greater worry.

There is zero basis for the domino narrative. Not once has Russia indicated since the start of the conflict that they intend to invade the EU. In fact, Putin has long stated that the war in Ukraine is about protecting the separatists of the Donbas region from Ukrainian reprisal, and about the continued escalation of NATO armament.

My suspicions about Putin’s connections to the globalists aside, if we look at the war from a basic cost/benefit analysis there is really nothing for Russia to gain by threatening Europe.

Then there’s the problem of logistics. If Russia is supposedly struggling in Ukraine, how could they have the means to fight on an expanded front against the combined military might of Europe and the US? The only end result would be nuclear war, which both sides would lose. But if you look at the situation objectively, there is a group of people out there that have a lot to gain…

Attacks On Russian Interior Accelerate

Smaller attacks on Russian supplies as well as civilians have been escalating in the past month. The terror attack in Moscow (which US intel blames on ISIS) resulted in the deaths of at least 130 people and drone attacks are threatening oil depots along with other resources. In the grand scheme of the war these attacks are inconsequential, but they will undoubtedly lead to extensive bombardment of Ukrainian cities and the further disablement of Ukrainian infrastructure. Power, water and other utilities will be destroyed and a resource crisis will ensue.

Compared to the US invasion of Iraq, Russia has managed to keep civilian casualties in Ukraine very low. But, each new attack on Russian soil instigates a larger Russian retaliation. And maybe this is the goal – To get the Russians to crater a larger Ukrainian population center thereby giving NATO an excuse to send troops to the region.

Iran And The Oil Imperative

In the Middle East the primary driver for international involvement is oil. We all know this. But oil access is not the end goal to the war in Gaza, just a mechanism for getting the US involved.

I’ll reiterate here that I don’t care which side started the fight or how far back the conflict supposedly goes in history. This is irrelevant. What I do know is that Hamas started this particular war by killing civilians in Israel and you should not start a war unless you’re willing to accept the consequences. That said, I do find it suspicious that Israel’s defensive measures were so useless that they were completely unaware of the Hamas incursion until it was too late.

In any case the conflagration is guaranteed to bring in other larger military elements. Iran is going to enter the fray now, there’s no way around it. This might happen first in the form of economic warfare, and the Strait of Hormuz is the most likely target. Shutting down 30% of the world’s oil traffic would be disastrous for the west. So, America’s entry is thus also guaranteed.

The Inflation Factor, US Elections And How Globalists Benefit

Joe Biden has been struggling for the past three years to manipulate oil prices down by dumping strategic reserves on the market. By artificially keeping oil prices down he keeps energy prices down, and by keeping energy prices down he reduces the growth of CPI.

The Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil depots have helped to spike gas prices in the past month exactly because Russian oil is still being purchased by western countries through back channels. You can’t just cut off one of the largest energy suppliers in the world without huge effects on prices at the pump. And these attacks are revealing how sensitive the oil market is to the slightest threat to supply.

Any major conflict in the Middle East will seal the deal and gas prices will explode. Inflation is not just going to be the death knell of Biden’s presidency (assuming presidential elections still matter), it’s going to be the death knell of the leftists and globalists overall UNLESS they can delay a larger economic calamity until they have a scapegoat, or, until they can start a massive war.

That scapegoat will either be Trump and conservatives, or, Russia and the BRICS (or both). If Trump replaces Biden in 2025 then a crash will be fast and assured and it will be blamed on conservative movements. If Biden stays in a crash will be slower but will still hit hard after it can be blamed on the widening wars.

Then there’s the scenario of globalists securing a war BEFORE elections take place. Perhaps with the intention of preventing or delaying the vote. Perhaps with the intention of creating enough chaos that the vote can be rigged, or giving the impression that it was rigged, triggering civil unrest. Perhaps with the intention of declaring martial law.

Obviously, this is where the globalists benefit; either by preventing conservatives from taking power or by embroiling conservatives in a global calamity that they eventually get blamed for. Keep in mind that any conservative/independent opposition to the globalist establishment can now be accused of “Russian collusion.”

What’s the value of this? Well, it’s an age-old strategy for demonizing freedom fighters – If they are seen by the public as fellow citizens fighting for their rights, then they might be treated as heroes. But, if they’re painted as foreign assests and terrorists seeking to destabilize society, then the public sees them as villains. It’s just another advantage that explains why globalists seem so intent on creating a world war.

I believe that the reason the establishment is pressing so hard for WWIII is partly because of the upcoming elections and also because their covid agenda failed. Covid lockdowns and the vaccine passport system were their big play to create a permanent authoritarian environment with the ability to crush conservative groups that refused to submit. And no matter how you slice it they didn’t get what they wanted. World war is the natural Plan B.

It’s important to understand that every crisis created by globalists is meant to destroy the freedom minded. The true target is not Russia or Iran; they are peripheral. These events are designed to create an environment conducive to tyranny, they act as cover for engineered economic collapse, and they act as cover for the REAL war against those people that still defend liberty.

You could say that WWIII has already started, at least in economic terms. I also highly doubt that the end game for the globalists is a worldwide nuclear exchange; why spend decades building a massive control grid only to vaporize it all in seconds? I do think the danger of kinetic warfare is skyrocketing and that US and European citizens will be directly affected. It will take a sizable resistance movement to change the path we are being forced to follow, and things will get much worse before they get better.

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