Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Washington is actively splitting the EU in favor of a rabidly Russophobic Vilnius-Warsaw-Kiev axis.

Yeah, darlin’ gonna make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

Steppenwolf, Born to be Wild, 1967

The world has got to be thankful to the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dimitri Medvedev.   Paraphrasing that iconic Cold War era string of ads about a beer that refreshes the parts other beers cannot each, Medvedev refreshes those – sensitive – parts the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for diplomatic reasons, cannot reach.

As astonishing tectonic shifts keep turning geopolitics and geoeconomics upside down, and the Angel of History looks East while the United States, corroded from the inside, desperately clings to scraps of its dwindling Full Spectrum Dominance, Medvedev makes no bones about how much he enjoys “smoke and lighting”, not to mention “heavy metal thunder”.

Exhibit One is something for the ages. It deserves a full quote – complete with colorful English translation:

“Western politicians who have shat their pants and their mediocre generals in NATO have once again decided to scare us. They launched the largest military exercises since the Cold War.

These involve 90,000 soldiers from 31 countries of the Alliance and ‘almost block’ Sweden, about 50 warships, 80 aircraft, 1,100 ground combat vehicles, including 133 tanks.

Some stages are expected to take place in the most blatantly Russophobic and most disgusting countries to us, such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, that is, in close proximity to Russia’s borders.

The NATO blabbers were afraid to directly say who these exercises are aimed against, and limited themselves to empty chatter about ‘practicing defense plans and deterring potential aggression from the nearest opponents’.

But it is quite obvious that this convulsion of flabby Western muscles is a warning to our country. It’s like they’re saying, shouldn’t we properly threaten Russia and show the Russian hedgehog a fat transgender European ass.

It turned out not scary, but very significant.

After all, if the Alliance itself decided to conduct exercises of this level, it means they are really afraid of something.

And even more so, they do not believe not only in victory but in any military successes of the rotten neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. Plus, of course, they are working out the anti-Russian agenda for domestic political purposes, consolidating their dissatisfied electorate.

Overall this is a very dangerous play with fire.

Significant forces have been assembled. And exercises of this scale have not been conducted since the last century. So they are a well-forgotten old thing.

We are not going to attack any country in this bloc. All reasonable people in the West understand this. But if they play too hard and encroach on the integrity of our country, they will instantly receive an adequate response.

This will mean only one thing – a big war, from which NATO will no longer turn away.

The same thing will happen if any NATO country begins to provide its airfields to Bandera’s supporters or quarters its troops with neo-Nazis. They will certainly become a legitimate target for our Armed Forces and will be mercilessly destroyed as enemies.

All those wearing helmets with NATO symbols, who today swaggeringly rattle their weapons not far from our borders should remember this”.

Humiliating defeat or Totalen Krieg

Heavy metal thunder Medvedev is complemented by a superb analysis by Rostislav Ishchenko, who I had the pleasure to meet in Moscow years ago.

These are two key takeaways:

1. “Today, the readiness of the armies of European NATO members for a real war is lower than that of the Russian army in the most difficult time ‘of the 90s’”.

2. Ishchenko neatly draws the West’s choice, “between recognition of a shameful defeat, with a defeat on the battlefield of NATO units proper, and the beginning with Russia of a full-fledged war, which the European armies cannot wage, and the Americans have no strength for, for they are going to engage in China.”

The inevitable conclusion: the whole U.S. architecture of “Russian containment” is “crumbling”.

Ishchenko correctly notes that “the West is not able to wage a proxy war against Russia beyond 2024” (Defense Minister Shoigu, on the record, already said last year that the SMO will end in 2025).

Ishchenko adds, “Even if they manage to hold out not only until the fall, but until December 2024 (which is very doubtful), the end of Ukraine is still near, and to replace them, the West was not able to prepare yet another one who wanted to die for the United States in a proxy war with Russia.”

Well, they are trying. Hard. For instance by regimenting a bunch of hyenas for the Three Seas scam. And by giving the CIA’s darling Budanov in Kiev free reign to stage serial terror attacks inside the Russian Federation.

Meanwhile, a confidential memo designed at the London School of Economics suggests close cooperation between the German government, USAID and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation to build a sort of “new Singapore in Kiev”: that is, a “reconstruction” profiting corporate Germany out of a low-wage hellhole.

Well, no one knows what sort of “Kiev” will survive, and in what form. So there won’t be any remixed “Singapore”.

There will be no compromise

German analyst Patrik Baab has offered a meticulous breakdown of the key facts underlying Medvedev’s outburst.

Of course he needs to quote NATO’s Stoltenberg, who has already elliptically confirmed, on the record, that this is not an “unprovoked” war of aggression – NATO in fact provoked it; moreover it’s a proxy war, essentially about NATO’s eastward expansion.

Baab also correctly acknowledges that after the peace negotiations in Istanbul in March/April 2022, imploded by U.S. and UK, there is zero trust in the Kremlin – and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – of collective West politicos.

Baab also refers to one of Sy Hersh’s Deep State sources:

“The war is over. Russia has won.”

Still, the key point – which does not escape Medvedev’s attention – is that “no concessions are to be expected in Washington. The military confrontation continues. The war has become a battle of attrition.” That ties in with Medvedev already making it explicit that Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov, Mykolaev and Kiev are “Russian cities.”

Hence, “a compromise is therefore de facto ruled out.”

Russia’s Security Council clearly understands how the strategic concept adopted by NATO at the 2022 summit in Madrid totally militarizes Europe. Baab: “It proposes multi domain warfighting against a nuclear-armed peer-competitor. In other words, nuclear war. It says: ‘NATO enlargement has been a historic success.’”

That’s the rhetoric parroted non-stop by Stoltenberg straight out of NATO’s think tank, the Atlantic Council.

Feeling the pulse in Moscow, in a series of in-depth exchanges, it becomes clear that the Kremlin is prepared for a nasty war of attrition that could last years – beyond the current Raging Twenties. As it stands, the song remains the same in Ukraine: a crossover of snail technique and the ineluctable meat grinder.

The endgame, as Baab clearly understands, is that “Putin is seeking a fundamental security agreement with the West.” Even as we all know it’s not gonna happen with Straussian neocons dictating policies in the Beltway, the facts on the – geoeconomic – ground are unmistakable: sanctioned-to-death Russia already surpassed Germany and the UK and is now the strongest economy in Europe.

It’s refreshing to see a German analyst quoting historian Emmanuel Todd (“WW III has already begun”) and crack Swiss military analyst Jacques Baud, who explained how there has been “a sophisticated philosophy of war in Russia since Soviet times”, including economic and political considerations.

Baab also refers to the inimitable Security Council’s Scientific Council stalwart Sergei Karaganov in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “Russia has completed its European journey… The European and especially the German elites are in a state of historical failure. The foundation of their 500-year dominance – the military superiority on which the West’s economic, political, and cultural dominance was built – has been stripped away from them (…) The European Union is moving… slowly but surely towards disintegration. For this reason, European elites have shown a hostile attitude towards Russia for about 15 years. They need an external enemy.”

When in doubt, read Shelley

It’s now crystal clear how Washington is actively splitting the EU in favor of a rabidly Russophobic Vilnius-Warsaw-Kiev axis.

Meanwhile, the “no compromise” in Ukraine is deeply determined by geoeconomics: the EU desperately needs access to Ukraine’s lithium for the “decarbonization” scam; the vast mineral wealth; the rich black-earth soil (now mostly property of BackRock, Monsanto and co.); the sea routes (assuming Odessa does not revert to its status of “Russian city”); and most of all, the ultra-cheap workforce.

Whatever happens next, Baab’s diagnosis for the EU and Germany is gloomy: “The European Union has lost its central function”, and “historically, it has failed as a peace project.” After all now it’s the Washington-Vilnius-Warsaw-Kiev axis that “sets the tone.”

And it gets worse: “We are becoming not only the backyard of the United States, but also the backyard of Russia. The energy flows and container traffic, the economic centers are moving eastwards, forming along the Budapest-Moscow-Astana-Beijing axis.”

So as we crisscross Medvedev, Ishchenko and Baab, the inevitable conclusion is that the proxy war on country 404 will keep going on and on and on – in myriad levels. “Peace” negotiations are absolutely out of the question – certainly not before the November elections in the U.S..

Ishchenko understands how “this is a civilizational catastrophe” – perhaps not “the first since the fall of the Roman Empire”: after all, several civilizations collapsed across Eurasia since the 4th century. What is blatantly clear is that the collective West as we know it is fast flirting with a one-way ticket to the dustbin of History.

And that brings us to the genius of Shelley encapsulated in one of the most devastating sonnets in the history of literature, Ozymandias, published in 1818:

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

As we keep searching for light in the darkness of insanity – complete with a genocide running 24/7 – we may visualize the pedestal standing in the middle of a vast desert, painted by Shelley with a couple of sublime alliterations, “boundless and bare” and “lone and level.”

This is all about a vast empty space mirroring a political black void: the only thing that matters is the blind obsession for Total Power, the “sneer of cold command” asserting the perpetuity of a hazy “rules-based international order”.

Oh yes, this a heavy metal thunder sonnet that outlasts Empires – including the “colossal wreck” vanishing in front of our eyes.

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Chinese-born researcher has been arrested for allegedly stealing trade secret technologies developed for the U.S. government to detect nuclear missile launches and to track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Chenguang Gong, 57, of San Jose, California, was arrested in San Jose on Feb. 6, prosecutors said.

Mr. Gong became a U.S. citizen in 2011. He got his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Clemson University and completed some work toward a doctorate at Stanford University, according to court documents.

From January 2023 to April 2023, Mr. Gong worked as an engineer for a research and development company based in Malibu, California. The company was referred to only as the “victim company” by the DOJ and in court documents.

Court documents said much of the company’s work—the development of infrared sensor technology for space-based and military missions for missile detection—was funded through contacts with the Pentagon and other government contracts.

Mr. Gong allegedly transferred 3,600 files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices from March 2023 to April 2023, according to court documents. Hundreds of documents marked as confidential or proprietary belonging to the company were discovered on devices taken from his temporary residence in Thousand Oaks, California, following an FBI search in May 2023.

The DOJ said the technology allegedly stolen by Mr. Gong would be “dangerous to U.S. national security if obtained by international actors.”

“Many of the files Gong allegedly transferred contained proprietary and trade secret information related to the development and design of a readout integrated circuit that allows space-based systems to detect missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles while providing resilience and a readout integrated circuit that allows aircraft to track incoming threats in low visibility environments,” the DOJ stated.

Other files were related to the development of the company’s “next-generation sensors,” which can “detect low observable targets while demonstrating improved survivability in strategic space applications,” the court document says.

The information Mr. Gong allegedly stole was among the company’s “most important trade secrets,” worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the DOJ said, adding that some of the files were marked “EXPORT CONTROLLED.”

“The theft of trade secrets, especially of sensitive military technology, undermines our national security, erodes U.S. competitiveness in the global market, and harms the businesses and individuals who have invested time, resources, and creativity into developing innovative technologies,” Donald Alway, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement.

After becoming aware of his activities, the company terminated Mr. Gong’s employment in late April 2023.

According to the DOJ, Mr. Gong is charged with theft of trade secrets, which, if he’s convicted, carries a statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.

He was released on $2.5 million bond with location monitoring and curfew on Feb. 7 following a hearing in San Jose, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said, according to NBC News.

China

The FBI also uncovered Mr. Gong’s employment history in China. For three years in the 1990s, Mr. Gong was a “government employee” of a provincial-level association under the leadership of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang, according to court documents.

Before joining the Malibu-based company last year, Mr. Gong worked for “a number of prominent U.S. technology companies, as well as an international defense, aerospace, and security company,” according to court documents.

While employed in the United States, Mr. Gong repeatedly contacted Chinese authorities. According to court documents, he submitted “numerous applications” for China’s “Talent Programs” from 2014 to 2022.

The regime in Beijing offers hefty financial incentives—including research funding, salaries, and housing—via many different talent recruitment programs to entice overseas Chinese and foreign experts into working in China’s science and tech sectors. The CCP hopes to quickly turn China into an industrial and innovation powerhouse through these programs, one that ultimately outperforms Western countries.

The FBI has long warned about these Chinese programs, saying that they encourage trade secret theft and economic espionage.

“Talent plans usually involve undisclosed and illegal transfers of information, technology, or intellectual property that are one-way and detrimental to U.S. institutions,” the FBI says on its website.

In recent years, federal authorities have prosecuted academics who have allegedly concealed their links to China’s talent programs.

In 2017, Mr. Gong wrote to the 38th Research Institute of the state-run China Electronics Technology Group Corp. requesting funding. He stated that he “would like to apply for funding for entrepreneurial teams” to develop high-performance analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters similar to those produced by his U.S. employer, according to court documents.

He told the institute that he would use the funding for his startup company, which would “become the leader in the field of data converters in China, providing customization for the military and civilian fields,” according to court documents.

Mr. Gong traveled to China twice to participate in talent program conferences in 2019. In an email translated from Chinese to English by the FBI, Mr. Gong remarked that he “took a risk” by traveling to China to participate in the Talent Programs “because [he] worked for … an American military industry company” and thought he could “do something” to contribute to China’s “high-end military integrated circuits,” according to the DOJ.

In a 2020 talent program application, Mr. Gong proposed to develop “low light/night vision” image sensors for use in military night vision goggles and civilian applications, according to the DOJ.

“In a video presentation included with Gong’s [2020] submission, Gong used a video containing the model number of a sensor developed by an international defense, aerospace, and security company where Gong worked from 2015 to 2019,” the DOJ said.

“We will do everything to protect our nation’s security, including from foreign threats,” Martin Estrada, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement.

“We know that foreign actors, including the PRC [People’s Republic of China], are actively seeking to steal our technology, but we will remain vigilant against this threat … by safeguarding the innovations of American businesses and researchers.”

Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Many writers decry the American political scene as “too divisive.” But I don’t think this goes to the root of our political problems. A much more serious concern is that a very powerful minority of Americans reject the core principles upon which our Constitution and our society rest: principles of Western Civilization, republican government, and the Judeo-Christian heritage.

In the view of this minority, the American Founding was a crime, people should be judged largely on race and gender, elections should be manipulated (to protect “our democracy”), the traditional family structure should be abandoned, sexual mores should be perverted, and government should be nearly omnipotent.

These ideas resemble a variant of fascism in which everyone serves the state and individual rights—economic and political—are exercised only by the elite’s permission. This minority not only believe these things themselves, but they want to force you to accept them also. They’re authoritarian, even totalitarian.

When the rest of us push back against their agenda, it isn’t “divisiveness.” It’s self-defense.

The Power of the Elite

Despite our efforts of self-defense, this group has been remarkably successful in setting the national agenda. One example: From 1998 to 2014, there were 30 state referenda on the definition of civil marriage. The advocates of traditional marriage—that is, between a man and a woman—won all these referenda, and most of them by decisive supermajorities.

But the agenda-setters wanted same-sex civil marriage; therefore, now it’s imposed on every state, no matter what the voters might think. So much for “our democracy.”

Once same-sex civil marriage was secured, the agenda-setters proceeded to implement even more outré policies: critical race theory, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and, at least in some states, infanticide and the mutilation of children.

And despite the fact that most Americans think we have too much government and not enough freedom, under the guidance of the agenda-setters, government continues to grow.

Who Are They?

Scott Rasmussen, the national pollster, set out to learn who these agenda-setters are. His polling results—some of which were publicized in The Epoch Times by Newt Gingrich—provide some answers. Mr. Rasmussen’s results also point toward the culprits who created this dangerous class of people.

When conducting general surveys, Mr. Rasmussen noticed that most people expressing extreme leftist views share three characteristics: (1) they are very urban; (2) they hold postgraduate university degrees; and (3) they are relatively wealthy. People meeting all these criteria make up about 1 percent of the general population.

I would have guessed our agenda-setters comprise more than 1 percent, but as it turns out, they amount to even less than that.

Anyway, Mr. Rasmussen decided to poll a national sample of these people: urbanites with post-grad degrees who had an income of more than $150,000 per year.

He found that their economic situations and political views are remote from those of most Americans. While most Americans have been suffering hardship during the Biden years, the 1 percent has been prospering. While most Americans are concerned about inflation, illegal immigration, and border security, the 1 percent couldn’t care less.

Mr. Rasmussen also uncovered just how unsympathetic to American ideals this group is and how authoritarian it is:

• Nearly half of the elite group say Americans have too much freedom.
• 70 percent trust government to do the right thing most of the time. (What planet are they living on?)
• Over three-quarters want to restrict your right to eat meat and use electricity.
• Nearly three-quarters want to abolish your right to have a gasoline-powered car.
• Nearly 70 percent would deprive you of your right to choose a gas stove.
• More than two-thirds favor letting teachers (who usually are government employees) dictate to parents what children should be taught.
• Decisive majorities would take away our SUVs, air conditioning, and any air travel they deem “non-essential.”

Nearly a third of these people are focused on politics—and the views of that third are even more alarming. For example, 69 percent of them said they would rather cheat on an election than lose one! (The comparable figure among all citizens is only 7 percent.)

This is the faction that has been setting the national agenda. The left sometimes tries to raise resentment against the wealthiest 1 percent, but the Rasmussen poll shows that the real danger lies with a different 1 percent.

Who’s to Blame?

In several Epoch Times columns, I’ve commented on the leftist extremism prevailing on many of our university campuses. The Rasmussen survey suggests the establishment media bear some of the blame for the elite’s attitudes. (Seventy-one percent of the subset Rasmussen designates as the “politically obsessed” elite have a “very favorable” opinion of journalists.) But the survey also suggests that the prestige universities bear much of the blame as well.

Seventy-six percent of the “politically obsessed” elite have a “very favorable” opinion of professors. Roughly half of the entire elite attended at least one of 12 prestigious universities: Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

In a prior Epoch Times column, I contended that university “affirmative action” policies were less about race and gender than about gerrymandering student admissions and faculty hiring to benefit leftists and exclude conservatives (especially Trump voters). Rasmussen reports that 65 percent of Harvard’s entering class describe themselves as “progressive,” while only 8 percent describe themselves as “conservative.”

Even more astonishing, he reports that Protestant Christians—who make up nearly half the American population—comprise only 6 percent of Harvard’s entering class. Perhaps some at Harvard rationalize this situation by telling themselves that conservatives and Protestants are just too stupid to get into their school.

If the universities were performing their duty of transmitting the culture, conveying knowledge, and promoting free thought, the political and cultural imbalances in entering classes would even out somewhat as those classes progressed through college. But the Rasmussen numbers suggest prestige universities are also indoctrinating the young people they’re supposed to be educating.

This shows up in the polling data: The views of members of the elite who attended a university recently were far more extreme than the views of older members.

Thus, among those 55 years of age or older, only 10 percent believe there’s too much individual freedom. This is below the number for the general population (16 percent).

But among members of the elite under 35—and therefore most recently out of college—54 percent think Americans have too much freedom.

The Rasmussen poll supports the view that America is under attack from what French author Julien Bender called La Trahison des Clercs—The Treason of the Intellectuals. For some proposed cures, see my Epoch Times series, “What’s Wrong With the Universities and How to Fix It.”

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

Authored by James Marks via RealClear Wire,

Normally a new year brings a renewed focus on getting things done in Washington. But with Congress accomplishing little in 2023 and attentions now shifting to the November elections, it is more prudent than ever that the policy agenda of our nation’s leaders reflect what’s best for our collective future, not politics.

Take this administration’s campaign to spread electric-vehicle (EV) technologies. There is no doubt that EVs will be part of America’s future. But decisions made by President Biden and his allies to incentivize and rush the adoption of EVs into the American transportation sector will have unintended consequences. Most unrecognized being the implications on our national security priorities.

Back in April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced a rule that would regulate the tailpipe emissions of light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. The rule aims to have roughly two-thirds of automobiles sold in 2032 to be electric. However, proponents of these types of heavy-handed government policies fail to account for the realities of the global EV market and importantly the dominance held by the Chinese.

For the last 15 years, China has solidified various investments within the EV value chain, fortifying its position of power in this rapidly expanding market. China dominates the market for rare earths reserves, mineral extraction, and battery production, all of which are integral to the production of EVs. And while the U.S. Geological Survey estimates China only has about 36% of the globe’s rare earths reserves, it has come to control 70% of the world’s extraction capability and nearly 77% of the world’s battery manufacturing capacity.

It’s this condition that makes a concerted push toward EVs risky because clearly to get more electric vehicles, Americans will increase our reliance on China.

Recently a letter cosigned by me, and 16 other national security experts highlight these details and the associated risk that continued overexposure to China could mean for public officials. the U.S. automobile market will be inadvertently tied to Chinese interests, making prices and markets more susceptible to Chinese manipulation.

For example, in October China announced intentions to enforce export restrictions on graphite, a mineral that makes up the largest amount by volume and mass of an EV battery. The country has a history of weaponizing trade as a means to exert its power. As Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy explained, the move was clearly “part of China’s broader strategy of flexing its economic muscle in response to escalating trade tensions with the United States.” If we continue to push the status quo, Americans will more likely face a trade war with China rather than a fully integrated, electrified future.

Instead of electrification strategies and regulations that will artificially increase EV demand, we need to ensure that domestic investment and infrastructure opportunities are our first priority and establish policies that will level our playing field with China. One place to start would be enabling more domestic mineral and battery production with a timely and effective permitting process.

Thankfully, national security voices like ours aren’t the only ones sounding the alarm. Recently, dozens of Congressional members in both the Senate and House wrote a likeminded letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, expressing concern over this aggressive plan to reduce vehicle emissions and flood the nation with EVs. Additionally, the House passed the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales Act of 2023 (CARS Act) at the end of last year, which affirms American security and independence, and would force leaders to think of solutions that will responsibly and equitably transition people to EVs.

Pushing forward with emissions rules and mandates will only serve to undermine Americans’ national security. President Xi Jinping’s recent speeches at the G20 make it clear that China wants to maintain its position at the top of this market and is continuing investments to do so. As stated in our letter, we must strengthen our market share and capabilities before hastening the clean energy transition. In this way, we can stand up for freedom and democracy, rather than submit to Chinese domination, and secure a prosperous economic future for us all in the 21st century.

James “Spider” Marks is a retired U.S. Army major general.

So what changed in just a few short years, San Francisco Mayor London Breed?

A few years back. 

Fast-forward to this week. 

Breed’s sudden U-turn has been in the making since last summer.

A ZH report titled “San Francisco Mayor Makes U-Turn To Fund Police After Company Exodus Pressures City Finances” shows last June that after years of defunding the police, the mayor decided to refund them. This was primarily because of the tsunami of violent crime triggered by failed social justice policies that led to a massive exodus of residents and businesses. And with the exodus, the metro area also deals with a commercial real estate crisis. 

Breed is up for election. And recent polling data, according to The San Francisco Standard, shows the mayor’s job performance has tumbled to only 13%. Respondents pointed to the mayor’s inability to manage homelessness and crime. Respondents want the return of law and order after years of failed social justice reforms (they’re starting to sound like MAGA). 

Now Breed is scrambling to restore confidence (a little too late for that) by joining a Republican-led campaign to eliminate parts of a law that allowed criminals to stay on the streets, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

Where are Henry Lee & Da Lin? Recall the SF DA. https://t.co/hC3zuDSGEo

— Elmano Gonsalves (@Elmanogonsalves) February 1, 2024

On Thursday, Mayor London Breed endorsed a proposal known as “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act,” which aims to increase jail sentences for distributing fentanyl, streamline the process of charging drug dealers with murder, and extend incarceration for those who participate in organized retail crime. It’s noteworthy that the mayor previously supported Prop. 47, a 2014 law approved by voters that nearly eliminated punishment for criminals who stole less than $950.  

“Our goal is not to keep people locked up,” said Breed, who is running for reelection in 2024, according to the Chronicle. “But when there are no real consequences for crimes that are committed in this city, that’s a real problem.”

The theft of 49 iPhones from an Apple store in San Francisco highlights the ongoing challenge of retail theft in urban centers. It’s crucial for businesses and law enforcement to work together to address this issue and ensure public safety. #RetailSecurity #BeAware #Collaboration pic.twitter.com/sCOUfxrgKc

— Andy Beltran (@Andy080195) February 8, 2024

Democrats in the progressive and imploding state are running far away from their party’s own disastrous social justice reforms so they can be re-elected, as the people have spoken loud enough: return law and order. 

Now that downtown SF has banned cars on market street and is rampant with vacancies and drug tourists, the motorcycle gangs roam the streets with impunity.

Great job @LondonBreed 🤡 pic.twitter.com/fQ6X3XqpX4

— Morgan Bender (@MorganWBender) February 7, 2024

Voters should be demanding accountability for Democrats who pushed failed policies and triggered what appears to be real-world ‘Grand Theft Auto’ across the metro area.  

Authored by Clayton Baker via The Brownstone Institute,

I am thinking of a certain industry. See if you can guess what it is…

This industry is huge, constituting a large portion of the nation’s GDP. Millions of people earn their living through it, directly or indirectly. The people at the top of this industry (who operate mostly behind the scenes, of course) are among the super-rich. This industry’s corporations lobby the nation’s government relentlessly, to the tune of billions of dollars per year, both to secure lucrative contracts and to influence national policy in their favor. This investment pays off richly, sometimes reaching trillions of dollars.

The corporations supplying this industry with its materiel conduct advanced, highly technical research that is far beyond the understanding of the average citizen. The citizens fund this research, however, through tax dollars. Unbeknownst to them, many of the profits gained from the products developed using tax dollars are kept by the corporations’ executives and investors.

This industry addresses fundamental, life-or-death issues facing the nation. As such, it relentlessly promotes itself as a global force for good, claiming to protect and save countless lives. However, it kills a lot of people too, and the balance is not always a favorable one.

The operational side of this industry is emphatically top-down in its structure and function. Those who work at the ground level must undergo rigorous training that standardizes their attitudes and behavior. They must follow strict codes of practice, and they are subject to harsh professional discipline if they deviate from accepted policies and procedures, or even if they publicly question them.

Finally, these ground-level personnel are handled in a peculiar manner. Publicly, they are frequently lauded as heroes, particularly under declared periods of crisis. Privately, they are kept completely in the dark regarding high-level industry decisions, and they are often lied to outright by those at higher levels of command. The “grunts” even significantly forfeit some fundamental civil liberties for the privilege of working in the industry.

What industry am I describing?

If you answered, “the military,” of course you would be correct.

However, if you answered “the medical industry,” you would be every bit as right.

In President Eisenhower’s farewell speech of Jan. 17, 1961, he stated that “… in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Sixty-three years on, many Americans understand what he was referring to.

They see the endless cycle of undeclared wars and decades-long foreign occupations that are undertaken on nebulous or even outright false pretenses. They see the ever-hungry mega-industry that produces super-expensive, high-tech killing devices of every imaginable form, as well as the steady stream of traumatized soldiers that it spits out. War (or, if you prefer its Orwellian nickname, “defense”) is big business. And as Eisenhower warned, as long as those profiting from it drive the policy and the money stream, it will not only continue, it will continue to grow.

Other mega-industries – the medical industry in particular – have generally fared better in public perception than the military-industrial complex. Then came COVID.

Among its many harsh lessons, COVID has taught us this: if you substitute Pfizer and Moderna for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and swap the NIH and CDC for the Pentagon, you get the same result. The “medical-industrial complex” is every bit as real as its military-industrial counterpart, and it is every bit as real a problem.

As a physician, I am embarrassed to admit that until COVID, I possessed only an inkling that this was so—or more accurately, I knew it, but didn’t realize how bad it was, and I didn’t worry about it too much. Sure (I thought), Pharma engaged in dishonest practices, but we’d known that for decades, and after all, they do make some effective drugs. Yes, physicians were increasingly becoming employees, and protocols were dictating care more and more, but the profession still seemed manageable. True, healthcare was far too expensive (gobbling up a reported 18.3 percent of the U.S. GDP in 2021), but healthcare is inherently expensive. And after all, we’re saving lives.

Until we weren’t.

By early-to-mid 2020, it became obvious to those paying attention that the COVID “response,” while promoted as a medical initiative, was in fact a military operation. Martial law had effectively been declared approximately on the Ides of March 2020, after President Trump was mysteriously convinced to cede the COVID response (and practically speaking, control of the nation) to the National Security Council. Civil liberties—freedom of assembly, worship, the right to travel, to earn one’s living, to pursue one’s education, to obtain legal relief—were rendered null and void.

Top-down diktats on how to manage COVID patients were handed down to physicians from high above, and these were enforced with a militaristic rigidity unseen in doctors’ professional lifetimes. The mandated protocols made no sense. They ignored fundamental tenets of both sound medical practice and medical ethics. They shamelessly lied about well-known, tried-and-true medicines that were known to be safe and appeared to work. The protocols killed people.

Those physicians and other professionals who spoke out were effectively court-martialed. State medical boards, specialty certification boards, and large healthcare system employers virtually tripped over each other in the rush to delicense, decertify, and fire dissenters. Genuine, courageous physicians who actually treat patients, such as Peter McCullough, Mary Talley Bowden, Scott Jensen, Simone Gold, and others, were persecuted, while non-practicing bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci were hailed with false titles like “America’s Top Doctor.” The propaganda was as nauseating as it was blatant. And then came the jabs.

How did this happen to medicine?

It all seemed so sudden, but in fact it has been in the works for years.

COVID taught us (by the way, COVID has been such a harsh tutor, but haven’t we learned so much from her!) that the medical-industrial complex and military-industrial complex are deeply connected. They are not just twins, or even identical twins. They are conjoined twins, and so-called “Public Health” is the tissue shared between them.

The SARS CoV-2 virus, after all, is a bioweapon, developed over a period of years, funded by U.S. tax dollars in a joint effort between Fauci’s NIH and the Department of Defense to genetically manipulate the transmissibility and virulence of coronaviruses (all done in the name of “Public Health,” of course).

Once the bioweapon was out of the lab and into the population, the race was on within the medical-industrial complex to develop and market the supremely profitable antidote to the bioweapon. Cue the full-on military takeover of medicine: the martial law lockdowns, the suppression of cheap and effective treatments, the persecution of dissidents, the ceaseless propaganda and anti-science, and the unabashed whoring of most hospital systems for CARES Act money.

We know the rest. The ill-conceived, toxic, gene-therapy antidote, falsely billed as a “vaccine,” was foisted upon the population by blackmail (“the vaccine is how we end the pandemic”), the effective bribery of medical authorities and politicians, as well as other Deep-State directed psyops designed to divide the population and scapegoat dissenters (“pandemic of the unvaccinated”).

The end result even sounds like the aftermath of a gigantic military operation. Millions are dead, many millions more are psychologically traumatized, economies are in tatters, and a few warmongers are fantastically rich. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel (who, incidentally, oversaw the construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology years ago) is a freshly minted billionaire. And not one of those who caused all the mischief are in prison.

At this writing, virtually all the major healthcare systems, specialty regulatory boards, specialty associations, and medical schools are standing at attention, still in lockstep with the received—and by now, clearly false—narrative. Their funding, after all, be it from Pharma or the Government, depends upon their obedience. Barring dramatic change, they will respond in the same fashion when orders come down from above in the future. Medicine has been fully militarized.

In his farewell address, Eisenhower said something else that I believe is most prescient here.

He described that a military-industrial complex fostered “a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.”

Enter Disease X.

A New York Fed survey published earlier this week indicated that, in the fourth quarter of 2023, auto loan delinquencies reached levels not seen since right after the Great Recession more than a decade ago. 

As a refresher, the data from Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed (read: ZH report here) the rate at which car owners are behind on their payments hit an annualized rate of 7.7%, the highest level since 2010. 

“Delinquency transition rates have pushed past pre-pandemic levels, and the worsening appears to be broad-based,” researchers at the NY Fed wrote in a blog post. 

Given that we already covered this in a report titled Credit-Card & Auto Delinquencies Soar, Especially Age Group 18-39, as well as other eye-opener credit reports in recent weeks:

• Banks Report Tighter Standards, Weaker Loan Demand But Some Improvement As Financial Conditions Ease
• Stunning Collapse In Credit Card Debt Change As Average APR Hits New All-Time High

… perhaps there is reason to believe an increasing number of households have hit the proverbial brick wall despite the Biden administration cheering ‘Bidenomics’ on legacy corporate media outlets. 

The households who piled on insurmountable auto and credit card debt through the Covid era and the current high-interest rate environment are likely the folks running into financial turmoil. 

An Edmunds report from last year showed the percentage of drivers with plus $1,000 monthly payments jumped to an all-time high of 17.1% in the second quarter of 2023 compared to 16.8% in the first quarter. The reason is that the average amount financed for a new vehicle is around $40,000, plus auto loan rates are at a generational high.

“The double whammy of relentlessly high vehicle pricing and daunting borrowing costs is presenting significant challenges for shoppers in today’s car market,” Edmunds’ director of insights Ivan Drury said last year. 

This leads us to two posts made by X user Clown World. They shared what appears to be an auto dealer sharing several images online of new customers financing vehicles with payments that are as much as monthly mortgage payments. 

One person purchased a 2023 Tahoe with $2,550 monthly payments on an 84-month term! 

Another person bought a 2023 Sierra 2500 Denali with $3,000 monthly payments, locked in a 96-month term! 

What a deal 😅😳 pic.twitter.com/r0Sjhma5gC

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) February 9, 2024

Here’s what folks on X said in response to the two posts:

$288,000 for a truck that will depreciate to 1/5 of that long before it’s paid off.

— Caballero 🏹 (@HughAkston0) February 9, 2024

Dude could be almost 1/3 of the way through a 30 year mortgage on an expensive house when he pays off his truck.

— Branos (@thesonofbran) February 9, 2024

What’s with this trend of people posting their garbage “deals” at dealerships.
Nice flex 😂

— T M (@T_morgan61) February 9, 2024

The repo industry silently cheers. 

Authored by Sam Bourgi via CreditNews.com,

With Democrats pushing for all-out student debt relief, the Department of Education is planning further negotiations on expanding financial aid to more borrowers.

The department will hold a fourth “rulemaking session” on Feb. 22-23 to discuss which borrowers may qualify for student debt cancellation. Specifically, the negotiations center around student debt forgiveness for borrowers experiencing “financial hardship.”

Known as Plan B, this is the Biden administration’s second attempt at comprehensive debt relief—the first of which was struck down by the Supreme Court last summer.

At the time, the court ruled that Biden’s $400 billion loan cancellation plan was unconstitutional because it exceeded the power of the executive branch.

A source familiar with the matter informed Business Insider that the new round of negotiations will remain within the limits of the Supreme Court’s decision.

That decision appears to have provided the government with more certainty on how to navigate the murky waters of student debt forgiveness. Under Biden’s tenure, the Education Department successfully canceled $136 billion worth of loans for more than 3.7 million Americans.

As Creditnews reported, the Biden administration also fast-tracked debt cancellation for millions of borrowers who qualified under the SAVE Plan.

There’s a reason why Biden is pushing hard for student debt relief: 2024 is an election year, and he promised more than 40 million borrowers they’d receive assistance.

The clock is ticking.

Racing against the clock

Not everyone is pleased with the government’s progress on student debt relief.

“Over 40 million people were promised cancellation, a number that dwarfs the 3.7 million who have received some measure of relief,” said Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors.

As Bloomberg reports, young voters don’t think the president has gone far enough to address the student debt crisis.

In a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll, 43% of Gen Z voters in swing states said Biden is doing “too little” to address student debt. More than a quarter (27%) of all voters in these key states agreed.

According to Eli Yokley, a political analyst with Morning Consult, Biden is “making no gains among groups he is going to need to pull off a victory” in 2024. And here’s where Biden faces the biggest conundrum.

The same poll showed that Gen X and baby boomer voters generally agree that the president has already done too much around student debt cancellation—which means they don’t want more taxpayer dollars going toward debt relief.

As it turns out, the issue of student loans isn’t just about whether they should be canceled. The resumption of student loan payments this past fall has also weighed on voters.

Political “rug pull”?

The Intercept analyzed polling data from research firm Positive Sum Strategies to determine how young voters straddled with student debt plan to vote in 2024.

“As of November 30, voters burdened with student debt under the age of 45 prefer Trump over Biden by 3 percentage points,” wrote Ari Rabin-Havt, the former deputy campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Rabin-Havt likened the resumption of student loan payments to a political “rug pull”—meaning, loan repayments took away a benefit that voters previously enjoyed.

“The taxpayers who were benefiting now feel poorer than when they started because they are forced to cover a shortfall once covered by the government,” he wrote.

According to Creditnews’ real-time student debt tracker, the average student loan borrower is on the hook for between $200 and $299 in monthly payments. That was money they got to keep during the three-and-a-half years of loan forbearance.

“While Biden could win back “rug pull” voters over the course of the campaign,” he “needs to do substantive work to bring these voters back into the fold,” Rabin-Havt concluded.