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

Fears over incentivizing global conflicts are rising as the Biden administration requests more than $105 billion in supplemental security spending.

The administration says the money, primarily for Israel and Ukraine, will be good for the economy.

President Joe Biden has described the mammoth spending package as “a smart investment” that will “pay dividends” to U.S. security interests.

Likewise, Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien described the supplemental as “a very good bargain.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the money will “flow through our defense industrial base, creating American jobs in more than 30 states.”

Many are skeptical of the administration’s claims, however, and believe that the massive investment in the defense industry will squander the nation’s ability to adequately address social and infrastructure needs.

Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Jr. is among them.

“Creating jobs is a poor excuse for a foreign policy that wreaks mayhem around the world,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times in an email.

“If we want to increase employment in good manufacturing and construction jobs, instead of making weapons we should repair our infrastructure and manufacture products that actually serve human well-being.”

Defense Contractor Windfall

Numerous analysts believe that the administration’s supplemental, in addition to its record-breaking defense funding, would effectively serve as a massive transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to the defense sector.

Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute think tank, said that defense contractors stand to reap billions from the administration’s requested supplemental, which would go “mostly to just a few companies.”

“Based on my estimate, the proposal would produce $60 billion in revenue for private-sector military contractors,” Mr. Semler said in an email.

Whether those billions of dollars will adequately serve the national interest is an open question. To that end, Mr. Semler says that the Biden administration is now “selling” the spending package as an economic boon because most people won’t believe it would improve national security interests abroad.

“If people don’t buy the foreign policy argument for spending $106 billion, the thinking goes, maybe they’ll support it if it’s framed as domestic policy,” Mr. Semler said.

Citing research from the Costs of War project at Brown University, Mr. Semler’s research suggests that shifting $100 billion from the defense budget into the energy or infrastructure sectors could create 290,000 jobs.

As such, the supplemental may actively erode the United States’ ability to create more jobs that would have a positive effect on American prosperity and well-being.

The larger issue is the record-breaking defense spending undertaken by the administration and Congress, culminating with last year’s largest-ever defense budget, according to Mr. Semler.

President Biden’s domestic spending efforts, notably the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, pale in comparison to the sums now being fed to the national defense apparatus.

“Between Biden’s foreign aid plan and the fiscal year 2024 Pentagon budget, I think military contractors can expect $559 billion,” Mr. Semler said.

“By comparison, Biden’s flagship infrastructure bill spends $548 billion over five years.”

Defense Lobby Incentivizing Conflict

A key concern of Mr. Semler and others is the continued incentivization of conflict, in which the defense industrial base may directly or indirectly work to prolong conflicts in an effort to maximize its economic gains.

Mr. Semler pointed to the defense base’s “army of lobbyists,” which pressures the U.S. government to adopt hawkish policies and spending habits in the interest of their for-profit companies.

“When the U.S. buys weapons, it’s empowering a particular set of businesses whose bottom lines depend on the U.S. either making war or preparing for it,” Mr. Semler said. “These firms then redirect a share of their profits back into the political system in an attempt to steer national policy toward more war.

“The only surefire winners are military contractors, so we know what they’ll be pushing for.”Last year, American defense companies spent over $128 million on lobbying efforts.

The effort included the employment of more than 845 lobbyists, some 72 percent of whom previously worked in government, mostly in the Pentagon or for the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Those lobbyists don’t just grease the palms of politicians; they influence the formulation of policy itself through massive cash injections to defense-focused think tanks.

A report published by the Center for International Policy think tank found that government and defense contractors spent more than $1 billion on think tanks from 2014 to 2019.

The top recipients of this funding were the RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security, and the New America Foundation, which together brought in more than 600 different donations from U.S. government or defense contractors.

“The top funders from the U.S. government were the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Air Force, the Army, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department,” the report said.

“The defense contractors contributing the most to these think tanks were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus.”

Relatedly, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman were the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh largest corporate lobbyists in 2020.

In 2022, the four companies hired a combined 259 former government employees who now work as lobbyists, executives, directors, board members, and trustees.

“Of course, policymaking will always be influenced by ideologies,” Mr. Semler said. “We’ve all got one. But allowing the profit motivations of weapons companies to hold sway over decisions about war and peace is a different beast entirely.

“Some people don’t think this massive redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to private military contractors is a problem. I think it is.”

Congress’s Role

The issue of war profiteering is not limited to the executive branch.

Indeed, the revolving door between Congress and the defense lobby is wide, and the real world policy implications of the administration’s proposed spending will ultimately be realized by the House and Senate.

But big money has big consequences for members of Congress who rely on agreeable think tanks and keeping defense sector jobs in their districts to stay in office.

As such, continued Congressional support for the Israel–Hamas war, the Russia–Ukraine war, and elsewhere is unlikely to radically shift without a great deal of unrest among voters.

“U.S.-backed wars, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Gaza, have direct ramifications for the U.S. defense sector,” said Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and filmmaker who was based in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020.

Read the rest here…

Hydrogen has been pitched as a promising ‘green’ fuel for the aviation industry to achieve net zero in the coming decades. Aerospace manufacturer Rolls-Royce has recently boasted about successfully testing its aircraft engine on hydrogen. Despite this, a new Bloomberg report indicates that hydrogen-powered aircraft are still quite far from becoming a reality. 

Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Officer Tufan Erginbilgic told investors on a call Tuesday that fleets of hydrogen-powered aircraft for passenger flight won’t happen anytime soon. 

“I don’t believe in the next 15, 20 years hydrogen will play a role,” Erginbilgic said. Rolls-Royce and discount carrier EasyJet Plc have been developing hydrogen technology for several years. He noted that hydrogen sustainable aviation fuel is the key to net zero.

Bloomberg also noted Rolls-Royce plans to “dispose of its electrical business that develops propulsion systems for aircraft such as flying taxis.” 

Erginbilgic said the company is making “choices on resource allocation” and that the electrical business unit would offer “better value to a third party.”

The hype surrounding hydrogen-powered aircraft as a carbon-free solution for air travel has turned out to be a dud. Recently, there has been a noticeable decline in green stocks, including wind, solar, and hydrogen energy. 

Take a look at iShares Global Clean Energy ETF versus the Nasdaq… Whoops! 

The takeaway here is that Rolls-Royce is backing away from hydrogen and electric for jet engines and now believes in sustainable fuels. What a seismic shift! 

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The stringent lockdown measures implemented worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic have been found to significantly affect the working memory and cognitive function of older individuals, raising concerns about an elevated risk of dementia, according to a comprehensive UK study.

Researchers in the UK delved into neuropsychology data from over 3,100 individuals aged 50 and above, examining cognitive health trends before and after the first two years of the pandemic.

The findings, drawn from the PROTECT study, a longitudinal aging initiative conducted online by the University of Exeter and Kings College London in collaboration with the National Health Service, revealed striking impacts on the cognitive abilities of the participants.

The study cohort included nearly 1,700 women and over 1,400 men. Their average age was 67.5 years.

The study, spanning from March 1, 2019 to Feb. 28, 2022, encompassed the tumultuous period marked by the enforcement of social restrictions, including social distancing, quarantine measures, and unprecedented “full societal lockdowns,” which the study noted “had not previously been experienced in living memory.”

“The effects of these measures are yet to be fully established,” the authors of the study noted.

Findings from the study showed a substantial decline in executive function, which refers to higher-level cognitive skills governing control and coordination. Alongside this, the study’s cohort showed a marked decline in working memory, which is crucial for short-term memory storage and various cognitive processes.

“Significant worsening of executive function and working memory was observed in the first year of the pandemic across the whole cohort, in people with mild cognitive impairment, and in people with a history of COVID-19,” the authors wrote.

The negative impact on cognitive function persisted into the second year, notably concerning executive function across the entire cohort and working memory within specific subgroups.

Cognitive Decline

Key factors for this cognitive decline were identified via regression analyses. Those factors included the fact that, amid lockdowns, people were exercising less and consuming more alcohol across the entire cohort. These factors also contributed to more people experiencing loneliness and depression.

The authors noted that concerns were expressed about the neuropsychological effects of the pandemic social restrictions, with particular respect to the context of potentially increased dementia risk in older adults.

A 2020 Lancet commission highlighted that lifestyle and mental health factors are major contributors to cognitive health, with risk factors that can be controlled contributing to 40 percent of dementia cases.

“These factors map closely to the population-wide changes in health and lifestyle seen during and after the lockdowns, raising the important question of the effect of the pandemic on cognitive health and risk across populations,” the study’s authors wrote.

The lockdowns, which drastically changed the lifestyles of millions, led to an increased use of alcohol—according to a systematic review of 200,000 participants—a reduction in physical activity, and an increase in sedentary behavior, according to another systematic review of 86,000 participants.

This was compounded by social restrictions that resulted in less social contact and networking. The study notes that “social isolation is closely associated with loneliness, and these constructs contribute to depression.”

The study noted other studies that found a poor mental health indicators have been a growing concern compared with pre-pandemic levels. These factors are closely related to dementia risk, leading the researchers to urge more research into the “effect of the pandemic on cognitive health” for older adults.

“The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a significant worsening of cognition in older adults, associated with changes in known dementia risk factors,” the authors wrote. “The sustained decline in cognition highlights the need for public health interventions to mitigate the risk of dementia—particularly in people with mild cognitive impairment, in whom conversion to dementia within 5 years is a substantial risk.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared all the way back in July that his country’s longstanding objection to Sweden’s entry into NATO had been reverse. This was seen as the beginning of Sweden’s accession, and yet now as the year’s end approaches, it still hasn’t happened.

Certain legal and procedural hurdles remained within Turkish parliament, but it has delayed a final vote, leading to fears that Erdogan’s government is stalling due to the Israel-Gaza War.

Erdogan just a week-and-a-half ago in an incredibly awkward joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin attacked the West for allowing Israel to slaughter civilian men, women and children in Gaza. He even went so far as to say at the time that what Israel is doing is against the Jewish religion.

“Shooting hospitals or killing children does not exist in the Torah, you can’t do it,” Erdogan said. He also strongly suggested that Germany is too afraid to direct any criticisms against Israel because of the history of the Holocaust.

“I speak freely because we do not owe Israel anything. If we were indebted, we could not talk so freely,” he had said. “Those who are indebted cannot talk freely. We did not go through the Holocaust, and we are not in such a situation.” He’s also directly lashed out at Israel, calling the country “out of its mind” for the war in Gaza.

So it seems clear that a furious Turkish president is indeed stalling on Sweden’s accession over the Gaza issue. In light of this, the Untied States and France are making a new push for Turkey to come through on finalizing approval.

NATO Foreign Ministers are currently meeting in Brussels. At the meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that Swedish membership must be ratified “as soon as possible”.

And French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna appealed to a sense of NATO strength and unity: “The strength and credibility of our alliance are at stake. We must not lose another day,” she said.

Amid the delay, the timing of an upcoming trip by Erdogan is also interesting:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Hungary’s capital in December, his second trip to Budapest this year at a time when both countries remain the only NATO members not to have ratified Sweden’s accession into the trans-Atlantic military alliance.

#NATO wanted to raise the Swedish flag today but Erdogan continues to dither on approval with no end in sight.

Meanwhile, Sec Gen Stoltenberg is again treating 🇹🇷 with kid gloves, repeatedly underscoring its terrorism concerns even as he notes Sweden has fulfilled its pledges. pic.twitter.com/uSmNpENkF8

— Teri Schultz (@terischultz) November 28, 2023

Hungary has recently lashed out at Stockholm for telling “blatant lies” concerning the state of Hungary’s democratic system. Turkey, on the other hand, has charged Sweden with hosting ‘terrorists’ – a reference to Kurdish and PKK dissidents and activists who are allowed to live in Sweden.

Sweden has taken a number of steps in the face of Turkish criticisms, including extraditing Kurdish suspects ‘wanted’ by Turkey. Ankara has even demanded at times that Sweden restrict free speech, in order to crackdown on pro-Kurdish, anti-Erdogan demonstrations on its soil.

Not helping matters, and adding fuel to Turkey’s anger, are also the recent words of the leader of the ultra-conservative Sweden Democrats’ Jimmie Åkesson, who argued that Swedish authorities must be handed the power to requisition and demolish mosques that are proven to be used to promote messages incompatible with Western values.

Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

Germany’s welfare system is being dragged down by the country’s growing immigrant population, with data from the country’s Federal Employment Agency showing that over six out of 10 welfare recipients deemed able to work are migrants.

The country’s welfare system, once referred to as Hartz IV, but now relabeled as citizen’s money (“Bürgergeld”), is now flowing to the country’s migrants, even though they make up a small share of Germany’s overall population. In fact, in some German states, they take in over 70 percent of all welfare money at a time when services and benefits are being cut for Germans across the country.

Overall, 62.6 percent of all welfare recipients are migrants, and within the 15 to 25 age group, this number goes up to 71.3 percent, according to German news outlet NIUS.

In the state of Hessen, which is home to Frankfurt, 76 percent of welfare recipients are migrants. In Baden-Württemberg 73.7 percent are migrants, in Hamburg the share is 72.3 percent, Bavaria features 64.4 percent, and in Berlin this figure is 67.8 percent. In the vast majority of states, the share is over 50 percent. Only the eastern German states, which have historically been far poorer and feature far fewer migrants, is the share below 50 percent. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has the lowest share of migrants at 29.2 percent, but it also has one of the lowest numbers of migrants in all of Germany.

The Alternative for Germany, which has called for mass deportations to help save Germany’s budget, is pointing to the data to show the failure of the current left-liberal government’s approach to migration.

“The migration policy of the last few decades has failed catastrophically,” said AfD MP René Springer, who also serves as policy spokesperson.

“Rigorous measures are now needed to stop further immigration into our social systems.”

He said this means Germany needs “complete border protection and rejections at our national borders, consistent deportations, and from now on only benefits in kind instead of cash for asylum seekers and refugees.”

Perhaps most troubling, most of these welfare recipients with a migration background were actually born in the country. That means they may be German citizens speaking German, but they are still unable or unwilling to work.

The data will further poke holes in arguments that migrants are needed to prop up Germany’s pension system and fill the country’s workplaces. Instead, migrants are choosing simply not to work and collect welfare in huge numbers.

In addition, almost 60 percent have remained unemployed for over a year, which bodes poorly for this segment of the population integrating into the workforce in the future.

Previous data shows that Germany is expected to spend an enormous €36 billion on migrants in 2023 alone at a time when inflation and unemployment are growing.

…

Read more here…

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A top U.S. intelligence official who also serves as a consultant with the World Health Organization played a key role in downplaying the theory that COVID-19 came from a laboratory in China, a former official says.

Adrienne Keen was “very involved in discrediting the information that we were trying to present to the secretary of state,” Thomas DiNanno, a former U.S. acting secretary of state, told Sky News.

He said that Ms. Keen was an advocate for zoonosis, or the idea that COVID-19 comes from animals, even though no animal has been identified as the origin years after the disease first appeared.

Mr. DiNanno, who helped efforts to probe the COVID-19 origins, said he learned later that Ms. Keen held a job with the World Health Organization (WHO), which is part of the United Nations (UN).

“They are a political agency. They’re a UN agency. So it’s just not appropriate to do work for a foreign power. And that would include the United Nations,” he said.

Ms. Keen is listed on LinkedIn as holding multiple positions, including being a consultant for WHO, director for global health security for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and an adviser for the U.S. State Department.

In audio from a Jan. 6, 2021, meeting involving Ms. Keen, she promoted the viewpoint of Ralph Baric, a U.S. scientist who has worked closely with scientists at the lab, according to Sky News. Ms. Keen was responding to an analysis from Dr. Steven Quay, who has said evidence points to COVID-19 coming from the lab.

“I think Ralph pointed out some of the issues with the probabilities you’ve come up with Dr. Quay. I share a lot of those concerns,” Ms. Keen was quoted as saying during the meeting.

“It would be in the best interest of the public to know what were ‘the comments of a natural origin advocate, Ralph Baric’ during the January 6, 2021 meeting mentioned,” Bryce Nickels, a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and co-founder of the group Biosafety Now, told The Epoch Times via email.

Ms. Keen and Dr. Quay did not respond to requests for comment.

The Epoch Times has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the audio and related materials.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to dispute the quote.

A spokesperson for the office told The Epoch Times in an email that the office’s work on the COVID-19 origins “complied with all of the intelligence community’s analytic standards, including objectivity.”

“All other possible places of [the] virus’s origin have been proven false,” the unsigned assessment stated.

The U.S. intelligence community in April 2020 said in a brief statement that it “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified” and that it was working “to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Despite the consensus claim, some scientists believed, and still do to this day, that the virus may have been manmade or modified.

In May 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence community was divided between an animal origin and a lab origin, with two elements leaning toward the former and one leaning toward the latter. The majority of elements said there was insufficient information to lean one way or another.

Most of the community said in August 2021 that there was still not enough information to assess.

In June 2023, the community was still divided on the matter.

Inside the community, the Department of Energy and FBI have been identified as the two elements that assess the evidence supports a lab leak, while a majority of other agencies have determined that a natural origin was most likely.

Two agencies, including the CIA, remained unable to lean one way or another.

John Ratcliffe, who headed the community until early 2021, has said that the available evidence only supports a lab origin.

Citing evidence largely withheld from the public, he said that “were this a trial, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that the coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for spawning a global pandemic.”

A Senate investigation also concluded that the lab was the origin, although it said the leak was not intentional.

In another interview released by Sky News as part of a new program, Robert Kadlec, who led that investigation, said he worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped fund the Wuhan lab but repeatedly downplayed the possibility of a leak, to downplay the leak theory.

“I wake up at usually about 2 or 3am and think about it honestly, because it’s something that we all played a role in,” Dr. Kadlec told the Australian broadcaster.

He said the reason the leak was initially downplayed was to encourage China to cooperate early in the pandemic, but that he thinks Dr. Fauci’s goal was to divert attention from the Wuhan lab since Dr. Fauci’s agency, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided funding to it.

“That would be a natural reaction of him or anybody, particularly I think, for him saying, what could this do to me and to our institute as a consequence if we were found to have some culpability or some involvement in this?” Dr. Kadlec said.

Dr. Fauci did not respond to a request for comment.

Authored by Antonio Graceffo via The Mises Institute,

In March, at the National People’s Congress, Beijing set its annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth target. Since 1985, in every year but one, China has met or exceeded its official projections, raising doubts about whether or not Beijing’s claims of rapid growth can be believed. The New York Federal Reserve issued a report in 2020 that challenged the numbers, saying that China’s GDP growth chart was too smooth for the data to be authentic.

Typical of a communist system, the central government’s growth target is divided up and assigned as quotas for provincial governments, who in turn set quotas for local governments, and so on down the line. Politicians who fail to meet quotas can expect negative consequences so they are incentivized to lie, pumping up the numbers. The reports are inflated at each level until they no longer reflect reality by the time they reach the top. China’s National Bureau of Statistics knows this and uses a 5 percent deflator to adjust the reported numbers down. This single fact proves that China’s official GDP values are based on falsified data. Additionally, there is no evidence that the 5 percent reduction brings the numbers back to reality. Neither does it explain why China’s GDP growth hits the target year after year.

Last month, China’s former premier—the man who used to be in charge of the economy—Li Keqiang passed away. Having a PhD in economics, he knew the importance of free markets and wanted to liberalize the economy, prioritizing the private sector. However, he never managed to have a great impact or make historic changes to the economy because Xi Jinping seized control of the economy, taking all power from the premier. For foreign economists, though, Li’s greatest achievement is one that most people in China are unaware of, one that cannot be discussed or published in the country: the Li Keqiang Index.

According to WikiLeaks, Li stated, “GDP figures are ‘man-made’ and therefore unreliable.”

Consequently, he used proxy data to attempt to quantify the economy.

Li’s approach relied on three key indicators:

1. electricity consumption,
2. railway cargo volume,
3. and bank lending.

His rationale was that if electricity usage was up, then the factories must be working. The same is true of rail cargo if the trains are busy taking products to distributors and seaports. Finally, the volume of bank lending suggests how many new factories or expansions of existing businesses are being undertaken.

In 2014, the Chinese government claimed a 7.5 percent GDP growth, but Citibank economists had their doubts. The bank decided to apply the Li Keqiang Index with these specific weightings: railway freight traffic (25 percent), electricity consumption (40 percent), and medium—and long-term loans (35 percent). Sure enough, the index suggested that the GDP growth was much lower than Beijing’s claims. Citibank then looked at other proxies, such as commodity prices. China alone accounts for such a significant percentage of world demand for commodities that increased industrial and construction activity in China drives up world prices. However, in 2014, those prices were coming down.

The Li Keqiang Index is a good jumping-off point, but Western economists have added other elements of consideration, such as nighttime lights measured by satellites. Nighttime lights have been used, at least informally, in the past. It is common, when describing the difference in wealth between North and South Korea, to mention the fact that North Korea is nearly dark at night while South Korea is brilliant. Other data used are “retail sales, floor-space construction newly started, real estate investment, air passenger traffic, and exports.” This data can be corroborated with data from outside of China, such as real Chinese imports as reported by exporting countries.

A University of Chicago paper found that growth claims by autocracies were on average 35 percent larger than growth estimated by nighttime lights. For China specifically, the official data is believed to have been off by about a third. Four economists conducting a forensic investigation of Chinese GDP claims found that Beijing had falsified the data by an average of 1.7 percentage points per year. Using 2008 as a base year, they determined that, by 2018, the Chinese GDP had been overstated by a cumulative 20 percent.

For Beijing, this discrepancy is important because Xi Jinping has set a goal of exceeding the nominal GDP of the United States by 2049. That objective will now be delayed. For the common Chinese citizen, a smaller GDP means a smaller per capita GDP. The official per capita GDP is $12,556 per year, or more than $1,000 per month. Given the adjusted GDP numbers, China’s per capita GDP will not exceed that of the US until 2076.

The assumption that China’s per capita GDP is lower than Beijing’s claims seems very likely given the low salaries many Chinese receive. The country’s highest minimum wage is in Shanghai, where it is $370 per month. Other major cities and regions have minimum wages closer to $270 a month while the lowest is in Liaoning, where it is $195. According to official data, urban salaries are more than double rural salaries. An estimated 295 million rural dwellers have migrated from the countryside to the cities to take factory jobs. This represents nearly half of the country’s labor force.

The central government believes it controls the economy, but Li Keqiang proved that all they control is the reporting of the economy. The Chinese Communist Party can order falsified results, but they are powerless to change the underlying realities or force the numbers to add to a desired sum.

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a dire warning for Gaza this week, saying that if the humanitarian aid situation is not immediately improved, more Palestinians could die of disease than Israeli’s bombing campaign.

“Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

It’s a shocking statement given the already immense death toll after seven weeks of fighting. Even the lower end estimates put the Gazan death toll at above 10,000 – while Palestinian sources this week have said it topped 15,000. 

But health authorities are sounding the alarm after all hospitals across the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which faced unrelenting aerial bombardment and a ground invasion prior to the temporary truce which took effect last Friday, have ceased functioning.

Not only have fuel and supplies long ceased to north Gaza, but the sanitation system has collapsed and there has been no drinking water.

According to Al Jazeera, summarizing the WHO spokesperson’s briefing: 

She described the collapse of al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza as a “tragedy” and voiced concern about the detention of some of its medical staff by Israeli forces who took over the complex earlier this month.

She also repeated concerns about a rise in outbreaks of infectious diseases in Gaza, particularly diarrhoeal diseases.

Citing a United Nations report on the living conditions of displaced residents in northern Gaza, she said: “[There are] no medicines, no vaccination activities, no access to safe water and hygiene and no food.”

Cholera outbreaks are a growing fear, after thus far the WHO has documented 44,000 cases of diarrhoea and 70,000 acute respiratory infections.

A UN official who represents a children’s relief department said there’s been a rise gastroenteritis from drinking dirty water in Gazan neighborhoods. “They don’t have access to safe water and it’s crippling them,” the official said.

Hundreds of people are being forced to share a single toilet and shower as overcrowding soars in south Gaza

Aid workers fear diseases such as cholera could break out @mollyblackall reports https://t.co/ogPMEMLGF7

— i newspaper (@theipaper) November 24, 2023

Since Friday’s truce took effect, hundreds of international aid trucks have been allowed entry from Egypt through the Raffah crossing. It’s as yet unclear if the aid convoys will be able to continue should the ceasefire collapse, however. Currently, the CIA chief and Mossad director are in Doha, Qatar seeking to extend the ceasefire. Already there are reports of progress, and the truce is expected to endure for at least two more days.

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has denied former President Donald Trump’s motion to subpoena records from the House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 committee, arguing that his requests are like a fishing expedition.

Her seven-page decision criticized the scope and alleged vagueness of President Trump’s requests. It also argued that he was improperly applying Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 17 to information that could be obtained through other means.

“Defendant has not met his burdens with respect to his proposed Rule 17(c) subpoenas,” Judge Chutkan said.

“He has not sufficiently justified his requests for either the ‘Missing Materials’ themselves or the other five categories of documents related to them.”

Quoting the United States v. Cuthbertson, she added that the “broad scope of the records that defendant seeks, and his vague description of their potential relevance, resemble less ‘a good faith effort to obtain identified evidence’ than they do ‘a general fishing expedition that attempts to use the [Rule 17(c) subpoena] as a discovery device.'”

President Trump’s initial motion from Oct. 11 requested purportedly “missing materials” that the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 had allegedly failed to preserve and transfer to another congressional committee.

Fox News reported in August that Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the Committee on House Administration, accused the select committee of failing to provide certain communications with the Biden administration, as well as video recordings of depositions and interviews leveraged by the select committee.

“President Trump is fully entitled to seek the missing records by subpoena,” the defense wrote in its October motion.

“It is also equally important to determine if these records have been lost, destroyed, or altered.

“The requested subpoenas are narrowly tailored to achieve these legitimate ends, which are fundamental to ensuring President Trump’s right to a fair trial under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

“As the missing records are currently unavailable, the requested subpoenas would not be duplicative of any other records either publicly available or produced in discovery.”

In addition to those materials, President Trump made requests for five other categories of materials—communications and documents—related to the original.

“Without these documents, President Trump cannot possibly have a fair trial,” the defense said.

President Trump is currently preparing for a trial in which the Justice Department is accusing him of conspiring to undermine the 2020 election results.

The Biden administration has tied President Trump to the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, prompting fierce opposition from the defense.

Issued on Nov. 27, the order comes 10 days after Judge Chutkan denied President Trump’s request to strike certain “inflammatory” statements related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, from the DOJ’s indictment.

The requested subpoenas targeted the Archivist of the United States at the National Archives and Records Administration, the Jan. 6 select committee, White House and Homeland Security Department attorneys, and Mr. Loudermilk, select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), and the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Thompson denied an obligation to provide the video recordings requested by Mr. Loudermilk. He added that some of the records weren’t provided because they were undergoing review by the executive branch because of national security and other concerns.

“This was part of the select committee’s effort to accommodate the Executive Branch in appropriately protecting certain sensitive information while also complying with the archiving rules of the House,” Mr. Thompson said.

“The Executive Branch was still conducting its review of that material to provide appropriate archiving guidance at the time the Select Committee dissolved.

“Accordingly, the Select Committee did not have the opportunity to properly archive that material with the rest of its records with the benefit of the Executive Branch’s guidance to ensure witness safety, our national security, and law enforcement sensitive information.”

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. reported on Tuesday that Charlie Munger has died at the age of 99.

According to the family, he passed peacefully this morning at a California hospital. He would have been 100 on January 1st.

“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” said Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, in a statement.

Munger, in addition to Berkshire’s Vice Chairman, was a member of the Costco board, chairman and publisher of the Daily Journal Corp, a philanthropist and an architect. His fortune was estimated at $2.3 billion earlier this year (while Buffett’s is estimated at around $100 billion).

Munger dropped out of college in 1943 to join WWII, serving in the US Army Air Corps. Upon his return to the states, he applied himself – taking graduate courses without an undergraduate degree, after which he was eventually accepted into Harvard Law School. He began his career at Wright & Garrett, making $3,300 per year.

Munger and Buffett met in 1959, after Munger returned to Obama following military service at the age of 35 in order to close his late father’s legal practice – after his eight-year marriage ended in divorce which left him in dire financial straits because his wife received the majority of their assets.

Munger had also lost his son at the age of 9 to leukemia.

A year after his divorce, Munger faced a devastating blow when his 8-year-old son Teddy was diagnosed with leukemia. In an era devoid of medical insurance and effective treatments for the disease, Munger shouldered the medical expenses while grappling with the emotional turmoil of his son’s illness. He juggled his responsibilities as a father to his other children and his law practice, even as he watched Teddy’s health decline.

Munger’s friend Rick Guerin recalls the heart-wrenching moments Munger spent at the hospital with Teddy and his solitary walks through Pasadena, California, overwhelmed with grief. Teddy’s death at age 9 left Munger shattered. –Benzinga

And how did Munger later reflect on that period in his life?

“Envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought,” he later said. “Self-pity gets close to paranoia. … Every mischance in life is an opportunity to behave well and learn. It’s not to be immersed in self-pity but to utilize the blow constructively.”

That year he was introduced to the then-29-year-old Buffett by one of Buffett’s investment clients, and the two hit it off.

Munger served as chairman and CEO of California-based insurance and investment company Wesco Financial between 1984 and 2011, when Buffett’s Berkshire purchased the remaining shares. According to Buffett, Munger convinced him to invest in higher-quality, underpriced companies as opposed to those in distress.

An early example of the shift was illustrated in 1972 by Munger’s ability to persuade Buffett to sign off on Berkshire’s purchase of See’s Candies for $25 million even though the California candy maker had annual pretax earnings of only about $4 million. It has since produced more than $2 billion in sales for Berkshire. –CNBC

“He weaned me away from the idea of buying very so-so companies at very cheap prices, knowing that there was some small profit in it, and looking for some really wonderful businesses that we could buy in fair prices,” Buffett told CNBC in May 2016.

At one point Buffett started calling Munger the “abominable no-man” for his wholesale rejection of potential investments.

Charlie Munger’s formula for success is simple and perfect:

– Spend less than you earn
– Invest prudently
– Avoid toxic people and toxic activities
– Defer gratification
– Never stop learning pic.twitter.com/8IiJNngsdg

— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) November 28, 2023

RIP Munger, titan of the game pic.twitter.com/uhHK4NQEeA

— Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) November 28, 2023