Authored by Denes Albert via Remix News,

Last year, the vast majority of migrants smuggled into the European Union were males, with the proportion of females only 8 percent, the European Border Agency Frontex said in its 2023-2024 risk analysis report.

In what Frontex terms “clandestine entries,” the leading group of nationals were Afghans (33 percent) followed by Syrians (15 percent) and Turks (10 percent).

The Frontex report also warned that illegal entries are likely to further increase next year:

“There is much to suggest that clandestine entry may increase in the next year in line with expected higher migratory pressure at the EU external borders in general,” it said.

“At the same time, increased vehicle traffic at select border-crossing points (not to mention possibly altered circumstances while crossing land BCPs during the introduction of the Entry-Exit System) increases the chances of clandestine migrants going undetected, often under life-threatening and inhumane conditions.”

The report also pointed out that illegal entrants come from countries (mostly Afghanistan and Syria) “where some of the largest increases in movements to Europe may be expected.”

Frontex also said that in addition to illegal migration, there was also a proliferation of drug smuggling networks into the European Union, with reported drug seizures in 2022 amounting to 1,898 cases and 252 tons of illicit drugs.

For years, critics of mass immigration have noted that most of the illegal migrants coming to Europe are fighting-age males, in sharp contrast to the majority of women who came from Ukraine when the war broke out.

In addition, the vast majority of these males are economic migrants who are not fleeing war or persecution.

Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

Marguerite Yourcenar salvaged one of the finest lines in all literature from the first version of her masterpiece Memoirs of Hadrian: “I begin to discern the profile of my death.” We are approaching that point with Ukraine, not just its military campaign, but also its economy. That baked-in collapse has been camouflaged by the bizarre pretense that there will be a huge reconstruction push, even more absurdly, funded by private sector interests. One has to think that the “rebuilding” patter is part of the cover for the fact that Project Ukraine is a lost cause.

At the end of this post, we are embedding a chapter on the devastation in Russia in the 1990s to give an idea of what the downside in Ukraine might look like. Recall that even though the USSR had suffered from underinvestment in many sectors, it still had ample resources and considerable manufacturing capacity. It did not, as Ukraine has, suffer from considerable infrastructure destruction, a fall in its population to half its former level, through flight, annexation, and death in the war, and the loss of some of its most economically developed areas.

The war is now entering a critical phase, with experts now warning of a breakdown of the Ukraine military in the not-terribly-distant future or using formulations that amount to the same thing. Scott Ritter had predicted that outcome for late summer-fall based on Ukraine’s dwindling missiles supplies, but that horizon has been extended by the US supply of cluster munitions, whose use is considered a war crime by many countries.

An indicator of the increased willingness to admit the inevitable military disintegration was coming is the early September article, How Ukraine’s Heroic Stand Against Russia Could Collapse Into Failure by Daniel Davis in 19FortyFive. Some parts of the press are admitting that the much-ballyhooed counteroffensive has failed; others are following official messaging via the revisionist history of claiming it had limited objectives and holding out the laughably false hope that Ukraine might still puncture Russian fortified defense lines and reach Tokmak before the fall mud season starts.

Seymour Hersh’s latest newsletter depicted both Biden and Zelensky as dug in on continuing the war without mentioning that Banderite guns at the back of Zelensky’s head mean he cannot act otherwise even if he wanted to. But as the saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. And there is a noteworthy failure of wishes to translate into improved capabilities. From Hersh:

There are significant elements in the American intelligence community, relying on field reports and technical intelligence, who believe that the demoralized Ukraine army has given up on the possibility of overcoming the heavily mined three-tier Russian defense lines and taking the war to Crimea and the four oblasts seized and annexed by Russia. The reality is that Volodymyr Zelensky’s battered army no longer has any chance of a victory….

“There were some early Ukrainian penetrations in the opening days of the June offensive,” the official [ with access to current intelligence] said, “at or near” the heavily trapped first of Russia’s three formidable concrete barriers of defense, “and the Russians retreated to sucker them in. And they all got killed.” After weeks of high casualties and little progress, along with horrific losses to tanks and armored vehicles, he said, major elements of the Ukrainian army, without declaring so, virtually canceled the offensive. The two villages that the Ukrainian army recently claimed as captured “are so tiny that they couldn’t fit between two Burma-Shave signs”—referring to billboards that seemed to be on every American highway after World War II….

“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”

This outcome is not a surprise to anyone who has ventured outside mainstream reporting to find sources that have been paying attention to what is happening on the battlefield and with weapons supplies. Russia was outproducing the entire Collective West in artillery when the war began, and if anything, that gap has widened. Russia also has the advantage in missile production, has substantially increased drone output, and already had the most advanced air defense systems. The West despite handwaves has done little to increase capacity.

Worse, Russia burning the hodge-podge of supposedly game-changing Western tanks and armored vehicles had been both so embarrassing and effective that Ukraine has been reduced to moving men on foot to assault Russia positions, resulting in predictably horrific loss rates. Alexander Mercouris has correctly called the results a killing field.

As the offensive has quietly slowed down, Ukraine’s support is also breaking down. Even if resolve had held, there was the unanswered question of where adequate weapons supplies would come from and how Ukraine would build yet another army, since by my count, its third is in the process of being destroyed. The idea of forced repatriation of military-aged men from the rest of Europe was a joke, another demonstration of Ukraine’s sense of entitlement.

But Zelensky’s effort to drum up more money and goodies from the West via his UN and Washington sales effort fell worse than flat. For one-stop shopping, see Simplicius the Thinker in Zelensky’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad D.C. Snubfest.

Zelensky’s visit revealed how the cost of Project Ukraine has become far too high as recognition rises that what would be required just to keep things going is an open checkbook…even before getting to the looming manpower problem. In an attempt to keep the optics up as Team Biden and other over-invested in Ukraine try to regroup, more and more spokescritters are shifting their patter from “Great Ukraine victory when it restarts the offensive” to the new sick fantasy of a multi-year war.

And even worse, European support is also buckling. As we discussed yesterday via Andrew Korybko’s post, Poland & Ukraine Have Plunged Into A Full-Blown Political Crisis With No End In Sight, both Slovakia and Poland have elections soon. Parties opposed to continuing high levels of support for Ukraine have good potential to win. If they were to prevail, it would knock the wind out of the pretense of NATO support for Ukraine.3

Poland in particular has been one of the most rabid supporters for Ukraine, and by virtue of location and inclination, has been imagined to be a source of troops if the US and NATO were to be so foolish as to put their own boots on the ground. Polish president Duda may be pandering to save his electoral hide by standing up to what he depicts as Ukraine’s abuse of the grain deal and describing Ukraine a drowning man that he will not allow to pull Poland down into the drink, even as Prime Minister Morawiecki says no new weapons will be sent to to Ukraine. But some things cannot be unsaid.

Now after that introduction, to the main event of the exceedingly poor economic prospects for what will be left of Ukraine… which is not even known. It’s pretty remarkable to see chipper talk in the West of rebuilding Ukraine, since it presupposes there will be a meaningful Ukraine left. It’s reminiscent of children discussing how much of an ailing parent’s wealth they expect to carve up when the process of dying could well wipe out the remaining assets.

The quality of data about Ukraine is terrible. Western reporters appear to have mainly visited Kiev, which so far has been spared most of the destruction, and only a few hardy souls have gone to the front lines. As far as I can tell, we don’t have sightings of conditions in much of Western Ukraine, save also for the shellings of Odessa. Note that Russia has increased its strikes on Lviv in the past month. So we don’t have much of an idea of how much physical damage has been done.

We have discussed Russia’s selective destruction of the electrical grid. Even though enough was patched up to keep it running, some have claimed that the repairs are glue-and-bandaid enough that parts will probably fall over on their own with increased winter load.

Russia has also been using drones a lot of late and holding back on missiles, which means it could easily rinse and repeat its grid attacks. Since only Russia makes the major components of the Ukraine electrical system, and Ukraine had been some of its replacements from former Warsaw Pact members, more Russian attacks would eventually put large parts of the electrical system beyond anyone’s ability to fix save Russia’s (the West is simply not going to build special purpose factories for the a big blip of Ukraine refitting).

So Russia if it wants to controls Western Ukraine’s future if it sufficiently takes out its power network.

Let’s consider other complicating factors. One is the loss of population, particularly of the working age. As Michael Vlahos pointed out:

However, Luttwak bases his prediction on Ukraine having a population of 30 million. That number comes from January 2022. In an analysis by the think tank Jamestown Foundation, which is connected to the American intelligence community, it is said that the Ukrainian population has today shrunk to just 20 million, slightly more than the Netherlands, but fewer than Taiwan. And of the 20 million, according to the Jamestown Foundation, retirees make up over half: 10.7 million.

Ukraine’s government is now substantially if not totally dependent on Western funding. Federal spending was $35 billion in 2021 and $61 billion in 2022. A substantial portion of US aid was to prop up the government.

And even if spending falls from war-level peaks, Ukraine’s fall in GDP (estimated at 25%, which seems low) in combination with not just an aged population, but now a large number of war disabled, including many amputees, means an increased social burden with greatly diminished productive capacity.

And we have not even factored in what happens if Russia eventually marches up to the Dnieper, getting even more of Ukraine’s most productive farm land, and/or takes the Black Sea coast, turning Ukraine into an even poorer landlocked rump state. The fact that the US is unwilling to make any concession to the key Russian demand of no Ukraine ever in NATO means Russia will prosecute the war until it has subjugated Ukraine, by whatever combination of conquest, installation of a captive government, and economic destruction needs to happen.

Consider what has happened to the hryvnia under the tender ministrations of the US:

What happens when the Western budget support to Ukraine dries up?

Huge deficit spending.

And what do big deficits in combination with a big loss of economic productive capacity produce? Hyperinflation.

Now with these sorry prospects, we nevertheless have the touting of the reconstruction plans, because big private sector names like BlackRock are attached to them.

President Biden just appointed the multi-billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker – Obama’s chief mega-donor – to oversee the profiteering plans in Ukraine of BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs: to “rebuild” the country with US funds once Raytheon and Boeing are done profiteering… pic.twitter.com/y10rI8alYx

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) September 16, 2023

People like Greenwald are concerned, but not to worry. This rebuilding program is a hollow mandate. The fact that various players might skim some fees while spinning their wheels does not meant there is a prospect of anything meaningful happening. I could go on at great length and may do a fuller kneecapping later. But this will hopefully do for now.

First, those who remember the 2015 Greek bailout crisis may recall that the Troika tried hawking Greek assets, hired agents, and had planned to reap €50 billion. As we wrote in Look What You Can Buy in the Greek Liquidation Sale!, that figure was wildly exaggerated. As far as I could tell, aside from the sale of the port of Pireaus, the effort was a huge flop. And remember, Greece was suffering merely from a very depressed economy and the related loss of workers with employment prospects in the rest of Europe, as it was nothing even remotely as bad a basket case as Ukraine will be.

Second, by making reconstruction a private sector initiative, governments are effectively washing their hands of Ukraine.4 The most critical parts of Ukraine to rebuild will be the foundations of functioning communities: roads, water systems, bridges. Those are built by governments because they are shared goods. Pray tell, what kind of society would Ukraine have if it ran on the infrastructure fund basis of having only/mainly toll roads and bridges?

Third, the numbers Ukraine needs are ginormous. Even the $300 billion of Russia assets that “seize not freeze” Ursula von der Leyen would like to get her hands on is not enough. Zelensky in July said Ukraine needed $750 billion for reconstruction.

Even if Zelensky were miraculously to get the funding, where would the know-how and skilled laborers come from? Very few Western countries (France and Australia high on the list) are good at large scale infrastructure. But all of the members of the Project Ukraine would want their piece of the reconstruction pie. Imagine the squabbling and the low odds that the best qualified players would get the green light.

Fourth, Zelensky is again selling hopium. Per the Daily Mail:

The meeting discussed the creation of a platform for attracting private capital to rebuild Ukraine. Zelensky also focused on directions of large investment projects in Ukraine specifically in green energy, IT, and agricultural technologies.

All those initiatives presuppose a functioning economy, such as a decent number of high-end professionals and well-functioning logistics. Those are conditions not likely to be much in evidence.

Finally, for an initiative this large to have any chance of success, you’d need to divvy the work among top infrastructure players around the world. Instead, Team Biden threw a US party. Note how far down on the Infrastructure Investor list below BlackRock is. Ukraine’s lead adviser JP Morgan is #78. KKR, which is #4, has strong Republican ties, which is the presumed reason for them not being much in evidence in this effort despite being the best qualified US player:

In other words, the Ukraine tragedy will not be over if and when the war ends. Americans should be embarrassed that we plan to add investor looting to the damage, even though as indicated that is actually unlikely to get much of anywhere.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Last month in the middle of the surreal “Bidenomics” hype I published an article titled ‘Nothing Is Over: Inflation Is About To Come Back With A Vengeance.’  I outlined the misconceptions surrounding CPI and how it is not an accurate model for the effects of inflation.  I also noted that the index had been manipulated downwards by Joe Biden as he flooded the market with oil from the strategic reserves.  Because so many elements of the CPI are connected to energy, Biden had created an artificial drop in CPI using this strategy.

I argued that as the strategic reserves ran out and Biden lost his leverage, CPI would rise again and prices on a number of necessities would climb.  This is happening now, with the biggest jump in CPI in 14 months and gas prices clawing back towards all-time highs.

Inflation is not going away anytime soon, but the bigger issue at hand is who benefits most from inflation and rising prices? The answer might be obvious to some but many people are oblivious to the root cause of inflationary dysfunction and often see it as a consequence of random economic chaos rather than a product of clever engineering. The truth is, banking oligarchs and political authorities revel in the inflationary tidal wave because it is a perfect opportunity to institute far reaching socialist controls over resources.

In most cases central bankers are the primary culprits behind the creation of an inflationary event, and the word “creation” best applies because it is nearly impossible for overt inflation to occur without them. While money supply is not the only factor when dealing with inflation (sorry purists, but there are indeed other causes), it is the most important. More money chasing less resources triggers supply-side instability and prices go up. Central banks have a number of excuses as to why they “need” to conjure up more dollars or pesos or pounds or marks, but there is no doubt that they know what the ultimate end result will be.

It’s happened too many times for them not to know…

These inflation events trigger a predictable set of dominoes in society as well as in economy and finance. Price spikes, diminished savings, rising poverty, rising crime, and rising interest rates – This is then followed in most cases by failed rate hikes, more inflation, then more hikes, diminishing foreign investment in debt, foreign currency dumps (causing more inflation), plunging consumer spending and job losses.

This same pattern has been witnessed from 1920s Weimar Germany to 1970s America to 1990s Yugoslavia to 2000s Argentina and Venezuela and beyond. But what happens next? In each case the trend leads first to price controls on producers and distributors, which ultimately fail. Then comes government rationing and the complete takeover of necessities including the food supply.

Think it can’t happen in the US? It already has. In 1971 Richard Nixon issued Executive Order 11615, (under the Economic Stabilization Act which was established in 1970); the order demanded a 90 day freeze on wages and prices in order to counter inflation. It was an exceedingly rare action outside of a world war and conveniently took place during the election cycle. Keep in mind, the real inflationary crisis had not happened yet, but the price controls gave markets a short term boost and gave Nixon an election win.

In 1973, controls returned during the Arab Oil Embargo. They failed and resulted in long term gas price inflation. Gerald Ford then called for American businesses to institute price controls under his “Whip Inflation Now” campaign; it was the subject of ridicule and was even made fun of by a young Joe Biden (who now falsely claims to have solved his own inflation problem with his useless Inflation Reduction Act).

Finally, Jimmy Carter introduced price and wage “guidelines” (controls) which rewarded businesses that raised prices below a set percentage. Any businesses that raised prices above the percentage and made a pre-tax profit above the previous two years would be penalized. In no case could a firm increase its dollar profit by more than 6.5 percent unless the excess was attributable to increased unit sales volume. This plan, of course, also failed to stop inflation.

Ultimately, the Fed had to jack rates up to around 20% in 1980-1981 to stop exponential inflation, which led to considerable business losses and high unemployment.

The problem is simple, price controls lead to lost profit incentive which leads to less production. Less production leads to less supply and less supply leads to rising prices. This is on top of the root cancer that is fiat money creation. Politicians will rarely if ever address the actual cause of an inflationary crisis:  The government and the central banks. Instead, they try to blame free markets, “greedy” businesses and profit taking in times of distress.

Sadly, the pattern is repeating again today as it is now becoming clear to the public that central bank interest rate hikes are not having a significant effect and the public is still paying between 25%-50% more on the majority of goods they purchase compared to three years ago. As inflation grinds forward, multiple leftist governments are now openly discussing price controls.

Recently, Canada’s Justin Trudeau ordered top grocery chains in the country to cut prices while admonishing them for making higher profits, insinuating that they are the cause of inflation.  In Canada, profit margins among grocers are actually flat due to rising costs. If one looks only at raw profits without taking into account inflation in producer costs as well as transportation, distribution and wages, then it might look like these companies are pulling in the cash. There is zero evidence to support this claim.

What Trudeau is doing is pretending to be stupid while engaging in a very clever strategy of scapegoating. It’s the government and the central bankers that are the foundational cause of inflation, but by blaming individual business sectors he sets the stage for government enforced price controls. When these fail and create a crisis in supply he will then introduce rationing, and once the government has conditioned the public to accept rationing the elites then control the entire population’s access to food and necessities.

Some people may say “Well that’s Canada, what about the US?” The same agenda is in progress in America, but is being pursued at a city and state level. For example, the socialist Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, just announced a plan for the city (using state and federal tax funds) to build government run grocery stores in “food deserts.” These are places where a combination of inflation and shoplifting has forced grocers to leave certain areas of the city.

The Chicago program would include price control measures and there’s ample opportunity for these institutions to use rationing in the future. Similar projects are also being considered in other cities across the country. In other words, leftist cities are scaring away businesses while planning to replace “essential services” with government run operations.

I wrote about the inevitability of government rationing after price controls last year in my article ‘The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing.’  Rationing generally comes when price controls fail. It’s been a long time since the US has faced these kinds of conditions but we are likely to in the near future. This time around, I believe that if the establishment is given rationing power they will never let go again.

Rationing could also be used to lure the public into accepting Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).  Government run food centers can easily restrict purchases of goods to a limited list of items, and also demand payment using specific methods (like digital currencies).  In a short period of time, cash would be removed because retailers, pressured by government, will refuse to accept it.

It’s hard to say what the future will bring in terms of politics, given that the next presidential campaign is looking like a complete circus. Historically speaking, though, both Democrat and Republican presidents have tried price controls in the past. Public pressure must be applied (at the state level at minimum) to stop this from happening. As convenient as it might seem to blame producers and distributors, the real threat is coming from governments and banks. We cannot let the people who caused the crisis also benefit from it by giving them even more power.

* * *

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

A new government report has found that U.S. F-35 fighter jets are only ready for a mission about half of the time, with the remaining time spent awaiting maintenance.

On Thursday, the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report (pdf) which concluded that the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, was only mission capable about 50 percent of the time for the A and B variants and 57 percent for the C variant of the fighter. These mission capability rates, the GAO report states, are “far below program goals” of 90 percent for the F-35A variant and 85 for the B and C variants.

The F-35—which is operated by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as a host of U.S. allies—is one of the most advanced systems in Western arsenals. The 5th Generation fighter jet is made with an array of special radar-absorbent materials and other “stealth” features. The multirole fighter jet boasts capabilities for a range of different mission types, and the F-35B variant operated by the Marine Corps has unique short take-off and vertical landing capabilities.

The F-35 is also one of the most expensive systems in Western arsenals. The U.S. Department of Defense has estimated the F-35 program will cost the department about $1.7 trillion over its life cycle. A majority of this estimated lifetime cost, $1.3 trillion, is expected to go toward maintenance. The GAO said it conducted this latest sustainment study of the F-35 in part because of this high program cost.

Contributing to this low mission capability rate, the GAO report concluded the F-35 program is heavily reliant on contractors for maintenance work and the DOD has been slow to take over the program’s responsibilities.

The GAO report said the DOD is still working to determine the right balance of government and outside contractor roles to sustain the F-35 program going forward. The DOD also lacks both the technical data and training to support its desired program sustainment model.

While the GAO report identifies challenges with the F-35 program, it also describes an opportunity to overhaul the program to both bring down costs and improve the maintenance process that drags on it.

“The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments—specifically to the contractor-managed elements,” the report states. “Reassessing its approach could help DOD address its maintenance challenges and reduce costs.”

Repairs Department on Secretive Spare Parts List

The new GAO report derived its conclusions about the F-35 program over the course of visits to two military F-35 depots and three military installations that host F-35 squadrons. A recurring problem for military aircraft maintainers at these depots and installations have limited information about the spare parts needed to keep their aircraft running.

The list of parts for the F-35 program is maintained in a database that is proprietary to the program’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Corporation. With all this proprietary information, the military has to outsource much of its maintenance to Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors.

Not having ready access to part numbers hinders the repair of the aircraft because it delays the ordering and receipt of needed parts,” the GAO report states. “Maintainers at one installation we visited told us that they would not need contractors on the flight line if they simply had access to part numbers. However, since access to part numbers is an issue that can affect readiness of the aircraft, units and squadrons need contractors on a daily basis.”

As of March 2023, the F-35 program had a backlog of over 10,000 F-35 parts in need of repair.

In a press statement to NTD News, Lockheed Martin spokesperson Jacqueline Lorenzetti said the corporation provides “all data required under its F-35 government contracts and is committed to providing data required for the Department of Defense to sustain the aircraft under applicable sustainment contracts.”

Ms. Lorenzetti said the U.S. government has unlimited access to all Operation, Maintenance, Installation, and Training (OMIT) data for the aircraft. She also said 90 percent of parts in the F-35 program are performing better than expected and the average time that parts remain on F-35 aircraft before failure is more than twice that of a typical 4th Generation fighter jet.

The GAO report provided a list of recommendations, advising the military to assess whether they or private contractors will take primary responsibility for various components of the F-35 program, as well as what resources and proprietary information the Department of the Air Force and Department of the Navy will require for these revised responsibilities.

Ms. Lorenzetti said Lockheed Martin is partnering with the government to increase repair capacity for the F-35 fleet.

“We stand ready to partner with the government as plans are created for the future of F-35 sustainment ensuring mission readiness and enabling deterrence,” Ms. Lorenzetti said.

Via The Cradle,

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Friday announced the launch of the China-Syria strategic partnership during a meeting in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

“Today, we will jointly announce the establishment of the China-Syria strategic partnership, which will become an important milestone in the history of bilateral relations,” Xi told Assad.

“Faced with an international situation full of instability and uncertainty, China is willing to continue to work together with Syria, firmly support each other, promote friendly cooperation, and jointly defend international fairness and justice,” he added.

For his part, Assad expressed his “happiness” at being invited to China, a country he says “stands with the just causes of the peoples … which form the basis of Chinese policy in international forums and which are based on the independence of countries, respect for the will of the people, and rejection of terrorism.”

It seems China is willing to send a message to the West, given the enthusiastic red carpet reception of Assad to the airport on Thursday, complete with military parade and welcome ceremonies…

مشاهد الاستقبال الرسمي لوصول الرئيس #بشار_الأسد والسيدة الأولى #أسماء_الأسد إلى مطار خانجو الدولي. pic.twitter.com/4hPQ9MKdtF

— Syrian Presidency (@Presidency_Sy) September 21, 2023

“This visit is important in its timing and circumstances, as a multipolar world is being formed that will restore balance and stability to the world,” Assad continued.

“It is the duty of all of us to seize this moment for the sake of a bright and promising future, and I hope that our meeting today will establish broad and long-term strategic cooperation in various fields,” the Syrian leader, who is under US sanctions said.

The two presidents also oversaw the signing of three cooperation agreements in the fields of economic cooperation and development, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) “on the common context of a cooperation plan within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).”

President Assad in China today. pic.twitter.com/v6x2IxY806

— SAM 🇸🇾 (@SAMSyria0) September 22, 2023

Assad arrived in China on Thursday, leading a high-level political and diplomatic delegation in his first official visit to the Asian giant in nearly 20 years. Following his arrival, the Chinese foreign ministry said his visit would take China-Syria ties to a “new level.”

Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, a suspect charged with murder in Minnesota has been released from jail due to a “clerical error”, just two days after he was arrested.

28 year old Kevin Mason was recently arrested in Indiana on a murder warrant after a two year manhunt. Then, he was promptly mistakenly released from jail, NBC News wrote this week. 

Now, authorities are on the hunt for him in Indiana again. They have kept his accidental release quiet for six days, supposedly to gain a “tactical advantage” over him, the article says. 

Colonel James Martin with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office described his arrest warrants: “One being for homicide, one being for a parole violation, and the other being for a firearms possession.”

Mason was charged with second degree murder “in connection with a shooting in June 2021 in the parking lot of the Shiloh Temple in Minneapolis that killed Dontevius Ahmad Catchings,” the report says. 

Martin said this week: “On Sept. 12 one of our inmate records clerks thought she was correcting different bookings for Mr. Mason. She removed two of the holds leaving one additional hold for Mr. Mason. The next day on Sept. 13, Ramsey County, out of Minnesota, lifted the last and final hold that we had booked on for Mr. Mason.”

“Our clerk that was reviewing it sees three Minnesota holds, didn’t realize what she was doing obviously. It’s a critical error, critical mistake. They’re identified very specifically by the originating agency that did it. They have a specific ID number, they’re all different and the case numbers are all different,” Martin added.

Ramsey County lifted their hold on Mason as a result of the error, freeing him.

Martin said: “This was an error. This should have not happened. Mason should not have been release from out custody. This was discovered shortly after he was released.”

Since then, authorities have been engaged in an “around the clock” manhunt. They suspect he is in Indianapolis and that people are actively helping him evade arrest.

“I also want to assure the public we will not rest until he’s captured,” Martin concluded.

Well, that makes us feel better…

Authored by  Efthymis Oraiopoulos and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There is evidence that cancers are occurring in excess after people receive COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Harvey Risch.

Dr. Risch is professor emeritus of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His research has focused extensively on the causes of cancer as well as prevention and early diagnosis.

In an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Dr. Risch said patients must now wait months, not weeks, to get an appointment at an oncology clinic in New York.

here is difficulty in observing whether a vaccine can cause cancer, because cancer usually takes time to develop, Dr. Risch said. It can take anywhere from two years to 30 years, depending on the different types of cancer, from leukemia to colon cancer.

“What clinicians have been seeing,” said Dr. Risch, “is very strange things: For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don’t have family histories of the disease—that’s basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they’re seeing in very young people.”

He said this is not how cancer normally develops.

McDonald’s advertising efforts portray its promotion of family values in Japan, whereas, in the West, it subverts society with ‘woke’ propaganda. 

X account End Wokeness first pointed out McDonald’s advertisements in a post titled “McDonald’s Japan vs McDonald’s USA. Try and spot the difference” on Thursday. The cholesterol-laden fast-food chain appears to embrace sanity in Japan while promoting woke insanity in the US. 

McDonald’s Japan vs McDonald’s USA. Try and spot the difference. pic.twitter.com/yUD1pTIa5K

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 22, 2023

Let’s begin with the Japanese ad. McDonald’s understands Japan doesn’t tolerate mental illness and instead embraces family traditions. After all, Japan is in the middle of a demographic winter. 

特別じゃない、しあわせな時間。 pic.twitter.com/P7Og6hbMsx

— マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) September 20, 2023

In the West, McDonald’s has seized the opportunity to boost its Diversity and Inclusive Index score to the moon by out-woking all other burger joints with this ridiculous ad, “Black trans women have a very simple message: stop killing us.” This is DEI at work and a small minority imposing their ideals and beliefs on the vast majority. Very few in the majority want to hear about what this morbidly obese black trans woman says while chowing down on a cholesterol-laden burger. 

“Black trans women have a very simple message: stop killing us” – @imarajoneshttps://t.co/KLsZbLzH7i pic.twitter.com/F7IGLPlAK4

— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) June 29, 2020

Hundreds of X users reacted to End Wokeness’ post, with many expressing disbelief at the stark contrast in advertising between countries. 

My take:https://t.co/DuO1VEXwCj

— Jonathan Wong (@WGthink) September 22, 2023

I won’t be eating McDonald’s anymore.

— Freddy (@FreddyDEFI) September 22, 2023

Good to see some places in the world aren’t taken over by this ideology

— Rob Coates 🇺🇸 (@LuckyHippie926) September 22, 2023

pic.twitter.com/Sd2ryjnRJX

— Stephen Lloyd (@apparentlysteve) September 22, 2023

We must point out the black trans ad debuted in 2020, and since then, McDonald’s has scrubbed its website of the now-controversial acronym ESG, which represents environmental, social, and corporate governance principles. 

If consumers don’t like McDonald’s woke propaganda, maybe it’s time to ditch the pink slime for healthier options, such as buying food from local farms and small businesses. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

It turns out that we really do need the police after all.  Do you remember a few years ago when blue cities all over the nation wanted to defund the police?  Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well.  Wherever police budgets were slashed, crime rates shot up.  Today, we are in the midst of a massive crime wave that is sweeping the country.  In fact, it has gotten so bad that even many our most liberal politicians are desperate to restore law and order.  But that won’t be so easy, because after everything that has transpired blue cities are discovering that they are having a really difficult time finding enough warm bodies to serve in their crime-ridden communities.

Just look at what is happening in Minneapolis.  Since the death of George Floyd, the number of officers serving in the MPD has fallen by about 35 percent…

The Minneapolis Police Department is experiencing historically low staffing shortages, with ranks down approximately 35% since the death of George Floyd in 2020.

According to a June report from the Department of Justice, the MPD had 892 sworn officers in 2018, but that number has since dropped to just 585. An officer told the DOJ that the police department’s morale “is at an all-time low.”

Once upon a time, Minneapolis was one of the most beautiful cities in the country.

But now it is a crime-infested hellhole, and at this point the city “has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population” in the entire nation…

Some days, the department has only four officers working a given precinct, the outlet reported. The MPD is often so understaffed that it does not have anyone available to work the station’s front desk.

Minneapolis has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population, with 1.4 officers per 1,000 residents, while the national average is 2.4.

Similar things could be said about San Francisco.

The “City by the Bay” is one of the epicenters of our rapidly growing national drug crisis, and they are having such a hard time finding police officers that they have decided to start recruiting in Texas…

San Francisco is trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers, after businessman Marc Benioff slammed the city’s homeless and drug problems.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is visiting four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive.

Candidates from outside of the state of California will take a written test, a physical ability test and an interview to see if they make they cut.

Yes, things have really gotten this bad.

Blue cities are having such difficulty hiring police officers that they must try to recruit them from red states.

This month, the SFPD will be making recruiting trips to four different Texas universities…

• Texas Southern University in Houston;

• Sam Houston State University in Huntsville;

• Prairie View A&M University; and

• Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.

If you always dreamed of serving as a police officer in a lawless city with hordes of drug addicts, this is your chance.

In Prince George’s County just outside of Washington D.C., authorities have decided to search for hundreds of new recruits in Puerto Rico because the shortage of police officers has become so severe…

Officer shortages are so dire in the Washington, D.C., area that one county police department is planning to send officials to Puerto Rico in an attempt to bring back hundreds of new recruits, the department announced Monday.

Law enforcement officials in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, which borders D.C., told the city’s Fox affiliate that they plan to travel to the Caribbean island “soon” in an attempt to hire the roughly 350 officers they need to achieve a full staff. In addition to the tropical recruitment trip, the county’s police department is targeting Hispanic communities at parades and other events across the country and running ads in Spanish.

At least they are still trying.

Other communities seem to have given up completely.

In Seattle, citizens are being instructed to “give up their car keys” and to give criminals “whatever they’re looking for” when they inevitably encounter violent thugs…

The best thing to do if you are ever confronted by criminals while in Seattle is to simply give them “whatever they’re looking for,” according to King County Sheriff David Robinson.

Instead of trying to fight criminals when they attempt to, say, steal your car, Robinson suggests that residents and visitors of Seattle “give up their car keys” and avoid provoking these robbers and thieves.

“Give the criminals what they want,” Robinson told Seattleites about how to live in their city, which is currently facing the highest violent crime rate in 15 years.

I have been to downtown Seattle, and I don’t plan on going back any time soon.

Of course these days you can literally be robbed anywhere.

On Sunday, a wealthy man in Connecticut was actually carjacked inside his own garage…

A Connecticut man pulled his Aston Martin convertible into his garage Sunday and encountered two masked men who attacked him and stole the vehicle in a brazen broad daylight carjacking captured on home security video.

“Get out, get out,” a masked man can be heard telling the victim as he sits in his own Bayberry Lane garage in an exchange captured by a Ring camera in the corner of the room.

A second man opens the passenger door and then rifles around inside another luxury car parked to the side.

Driving an expensive vehicle can be fun.

But in our current social environment, it makes you a target.

It appears that those two criminals followed that man home.

Sadly, this sort of crime is rapidly rising all over the nation.

So from this point forward, make sure that nobody is following you when you are headed back to where you live.

If you do suspect that you are being followed, pull into a gas station, but don’t get out.

Circle around and watch to see if the vehicle that was potentially tailing you follows suit.  If you are still being followed at that point, call the police and head toward the nearest police station.  Only really stupid criminals will follow you there.

I wish that we did not have to constantly be on guard like this, but it is imperative to understand that our society has been fundamentally transformed.

Lawlessness reigns in major cities all over the United States, and I fully expect violent crime to get even worse during the years ahead of us.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.