Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

The kinetic war in Ukraine has gotten less attention over the summer than in past periods due to the much-previewed-and-hyped counteroffensive in the southern oblast of Zaporzhizhia being worse than a bust. Yet we’ll give some examples below of how the Western press, to a large degree, is applying unimaginable amounts of porcine maquillage to Ukraine’s deteriorating situation. At best, this is a desperate effort to keep the war going in the hope that somehow, someway, luck or divine intervention will shift the tide in the West’s favor. But the damage to Ukraine is catastrophic, and the cost to the European economy from sanctions blowback, to arms stocks in the US and NATO member states, and of the fiscal commitment distorting national priorities (guns over butter in societies already showing social decay and fracture) is not shabby either.

From time to time we’ve repeated the advice we first heard from the investment bankers at Lazard to their CEO clients, of the dangers of believing their own PR.

Here we see this psychopathy as a mass phenomenon as too many individuals in or near positions of authority keep repeating things that are bunk and genuinely seem to believe them.

And that is occurring even as more and more Administration-friendly outlets are signaling the counteroffensive is going badly.

Another sign of problems are the complaints from the US and NATO officials that Ukraine deviated from its orders training of “combined arms warfare” (gotta love those talismanic phrases) to small unit infantry attacks after its initial attempts fared badly against heavy Russian mining. It does not take a great deal of insight to recognize that this is pre-positioning the scapegoating of Ukraine. However, it goes unsaid that “combined arms warfare” US-style presupposes air supremacy, something Ukraine has never enjoyed in the conflict areas.

An optimistic view is the inconsistent messaging is a sign of divisions in policy-making circles, and specifically, of the realists (reported particularly to be military officials who know the West can’t win a land war against Russia) starting to get the upper hand.

But this apparent increase in “realism” still has a lot of fuzzy thinking. For instance, overwhelmingly, the op-eds that discuss peace talks or some other endgames, exhibit another pathology we’ve described: that the West is talking to itself about what Russia will accept as if that were true. Exhibit 1 is the frozen conflict idea, that Russia will agree to what amounts to a standstill. The wee problem with that is that Anthony Blinken stated in a Washington Post interview last fall, that the US would keep arming Ukraine after the war and planned to retake any territory Ukraine ceded to stop fighting now. From the Washington Post:

The Biden administration, convinced that Vladimir Putin has failed in his attempt to erase Ukraine, has begun planning for an eventual postwar military balance that will help Kyiv deter any repetition of Russia’s brutal invasion.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined his strategy for the Ukrainian endgame and postwar deterrence…

Russia’s colossal failure to achieve its military goals, Blinken believes, should now spur the United States and its allies to begin thinking about the shape of postwar Ukraine — and how to create a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity and allows it to deter and, if necessary, defend against any future aggression. In other words, Russia should not be able to rest, regroup and reattack.

Blinken’s deterrence framework is somewhat different from last year’s discussions with Kyiv about security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5. Rather than such a formal treaty pledge, some U.S. officials increasingly believe the key is to give Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself. Security will be ensured by potent weapons systems — especially armor and air defense — along with a strong, noncorrupt economy and membership in the European Union.

The Pentagon’s current stress on providing Kyiv with weapons and training for maneuver warfare reflects this long-term goal of deterrence. “The importance of maneuver weapons isn’t just to give Ukraine strength now to regain territory but as a deterrent against future Russian attacks,” explained a State Department official familiar with Blinken’s thinking. “Maneuver is the future.”

In other words, Blinken saw the war as ending without any deal. The West would then pump Ukraine full of weapons again to rinse and repeat and somehow expect a better outcome.

Ukraine neutrality was and is a key Russian demand. And Russia has the big conundrum that after the Minsk Accords were revealed as a big France/German/Ukraine con, that Russia can’t trust any NATO/Ukraine pledge.

Recall that Mark Milley had had the temerity to suggest that Ukraine consider peace talks after the much-bruited-about counteroffensive of course resulted in Ukraine territorial gains so it could then negotiate with Russia from a strong position. That was what precipitated the rejoinder-via-the-Washington Post from Blinken.

That optimistic belief appears to have been the basis for the recent Jeddah “peace plan talks” which did not include Russia. It appears a prime aim was to dent Global South tacit and explicit support for Russia after Russia was presumed to look weaker after the grand counteroffensive. Despite Ukraine trying to claim the summit was a success, other reports say participants questioned how anything could be accomplished with no Russian participation and did not back Ukraine’s maximalist peace terms.

So what we see are that two ideas from how the war would end, formulated before Russian mobilized forces were trained and deployed and started to show their stuff, appear to be on auto-pilot. Blinken and Biden both are still banging on about how Putin has already lost the war. There’s no sign of a meaningful change in position as the US/NATO plans are doing a big faceplant.

To state what should now seem obvious, the problem here is the dogged refusal to recognize facts on the ground, like no way, no how is Ukraine getting back Crimea or more than trivial amounts of territory Russia has taken, is that this is setting the stage, not for a Korea-style outcome, but the collapse of the Ukraine military and potentially much of what is left of Ukraine as a nation.

It resulted in huge losses of men without Ukraine even getting to, much the less penetrating, Russia’s first of three fortified lines. Douglas Macgregor, who has good contacts, puts the deaths (not wounded, deaths) from this operation that started in early June at approaching 40,000. There’s informal corroboration via graveyards all over Ukraine being reported as out of space, overflowing hospitals near the combat area, and blood shortages. Oh, and more evidence of manpower strains come via Zelensky announcing another mobilization3 and making a show of stopping bribery to evade service….when anyone who had the dough to do so has almost assuredly already done so.

In Ukraine, the mobilization resource has actually been exhausted, so the military commissars are “raking out” even those citizens who should not be touched in wartime.

The problem was raised by a former adviser to the President’s Office Oleksiy Arestovich, according to whom the… pic.twitter.com/7af3VTkc84

— — GEROMAN — time will tell – 👀 — (@GeromanAT) August 6, 2023

Mobilization in Ukraine will affect every man, the country will have to send hundreds of thousands more men to the front, everyone will fight, said Taras Chmut, head of the help fund of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “Come Back Alive”. pic.twitter.com/AOEfQYyDGW

— Leandro Romão 🇵🇹🇷🇺 (@leandro_ptbr) August 11, 2023

As the Ukraine counteroffensive in the South has failed, Ukraine has also been contesting Bakhmut4 at high cost and not much to show for it. In the last few weeks, Russia been pushing in a measured manner into Kharkiv. The Hill has just declared this campaign to be an offensive, but the level of manpower and materiel deployed is well below what Russia could commit if it chose to.5

Russia may simply have intended to apply enough pressure to create yet another meat grinder and force Ukraine to commit more forces, either by redeploying from the south or by drawing upon its reserves. Alexander Mercouris has said (IIRC two days ago) that Ukraine was sending its last remaining reserves to this front. He also speculated (yesterday) that Russia may be taking its sweet time about re-taking Kupiansk, a city it had abandoned when it pulled out of Kharkiv last year, so as to better attrit Ukraine. Regardless, if Russia retakes the territory in Kharkiv that it ceded last year, this would be a big psychological blow to Ukraine and its supporters.

With that long-winded intro, let’s look at a sampling of news reports. This screenshot is from the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Sunday:

Now admittedly, the third headline clearly signposts shortcomings of Ukraine operations.6 But let’s look at the first. Its opening paragraphs:

Ukraine’s current campaign to retake territory occupied by Russian forces could still have many months to run. But military strategists and policy makers across the West are already starting to think about next year’s spring offensive.

The shift reflects a deepening appreciation that, barring a major breakthrough, Ukraine’s fight to eject Russia’s invasion forces is likely to take a long time.

When Kyiv’s counteroffensive began in spring, optimists hoped Ukrainian troops could replicate their success last year in routing Russian forces. But an initial attempt to use newly supplied Western tanks and armored vehicles to punch through fortified Russian lines stalled.

Since then, progress has been slow and painful, relying on small-unit tactics. A renewed push could still be in the offing. But military leaders and policy makers already are grappling with the question of what can be achieved in the next few months and how to prepare for a protracted conflict.

A nagging concern in Kyiv and Western capitals is that politicians and voters may come to see the war as a quagmire and sour on supporting Ukraine. Even if Kyiv’s Western backers stay resolute, clocks are ticking as Ukrainian forces burn through munitions, manpower and stamina for a grueling fight.

All military campaigns end at some point—even in wars that grind on for years—at what tacticians call a culmination, or the point when advancing forces can go no further due to success, impediments or lack of supplies.

Kyiv’s goal now is for its current offensive to culminate with sufficient gains to show Ukrainian citizens and backers in Washington, Berlin and elsewhere that their support hasn’t been misplaced—and should continue.

There is so much misdirection by omission that it is hard to know where to begin. For starters, there’s no indication of how badly the offensive has underperformed expectations. It was supposed to puncture Russian fortified lines in three weeks. Now well into the third month, it has not even gotten up to them.

On top of that, Ukraine does not have months left for this push. Mud season is expected to start in mid-late September. And if there is another warm winter, the ground will not harden enough for a winter campaign.

And we have the bogus claim that Ukraine defeated Russian forces, when Russia made tactical withdrawals before it had beefed up its forces via its partial mobilization, preserving men and materiel. So not only did Russia not suffer a battlefield defeat, but the Russian army now is not the Russian army as of then.

Now arguably Ukraine could regroup and refit during a fall-winter slowdown. But the fights can continue readily in urban areas….like Kupiansk in Kharkiv. Russia can also keep up missile strikes. So there is no great reason to think Ukraine will emerge next spring in better shape than it is now, even with more mobilization efforts apace. Recall Ukraine, out of desperation, has thrown these new troops into the front lines with barely any training, almost assuring their combat life will be very short.

Due to this post getting lengthy, I will spare readers more from this article or the companion Wall Street Journal articles, although I encourage readers to carry on about them in comments.

In a bit of synchonicity, reader Userfriendly sent along an even more disconnected piece: The Ukraine War might really break up the Russian Federation from The Hill. To give you a flavor:

It’s time to start taking the potential disintegration of Russia seriously.

A number of analysts see the shattering of the Russian Federation as a possible aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s catastrophic war in Ukraine.

Although the world would be better off with a much weakened Russia, its fall may not go smoothly…

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Tatiana Stanovaya occupies a middle ground, while leaning toward Ignatius. She writes that, on the one hand, “the Kremlin will be wrestling simultaneously with…a deepening crisis of Putin’s leadership, a growing lack of political accountability, increasingly ineffective responses by the authorities to new challenges, an intensifying fragmentation among elites, and a society that is growing more antiestablishment.”

Huh? Putin’s approval rating remains around 80%. People in Russia like Mark Sleboda and Gilbert Doctorow, and visitors like Alex Christaforu, report that stores are full, life in proceeds very much like normal despite the war, and economic activity is accelerating. And despite Western mythology (and Putin’s high competence, particularly as a bureaucrat), Russia has bench depth in its leadership, so it’s not as if the state depends on Putin.7 And Putin is far and away the least bellicose member at the top of Russia. The idea that Putin gone would mean a less fierce Russia is lunacy.

As Userfriendly remarked,

I just do not understand how the entire US press core can be so utterly oblivious to the facts on the ground, and so confident of how right they are. Seriously, when dawn breaks I am genuinely worried what they will do. It wouldn’t be the first time we got led into a war purely based on the obstinate ignorance of the stenographer class.

Again, there are way too many possible paths for the future of this conflict.

If I were Russia, I would be thinking hard about a big offensive in the spring or summer of next year, both due to Ukraine’s likely decay path and to discomfit Biden. But the latter also risks reckless action by the US. So perhaps Russian just keeps grinding, albeit at a harder pace, and waits for Ukraine to start visibly falling apart before it acts.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A three-month investigation by The Epoch Times of 41,000 hours of U.S. Capitol Police surveillance video has uncovered dramatic footage that in many cases challenges longstanding narratives about what took place on Jan. 6, 2021.

Since late April, the newspaper has analyzed hundreds of hours of video that was previously hidden from public view.

The first results of this ongoing investigation are presented in an Epoch TV Special Report with host Joshua Philipp and senior investigative reporter Joe Hanneman.

The Epoch Times has so far obtained 65 video clips from the U.S. Capitol Police CCTV database. Another 64 clips are pending. A few clips were withheld due to security concerns. Together, these videos cover a wide range of Jan. 6 topics.

Who is Pink Beret?

Bystanders in the huge crowds at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 couldn’t help but notice the young woman with the stylish clothes, high heels, Dolce & Gabbana handbag, and a pink beret perched on her head. She became known on social media by the hashtag #PinkBeret.

Pink Beret was in the crowd that watched the first breach of police lines near the Peace Fountain on the Capitol’s west front at about 12:50 p.m. Jan. 6 defendant Darrell Neely told a federal court in his criminal trial that Pink Beret lured him into the Capitol Visitor Center and tried to saddle him with a bag full of police gear she picked up off the floor.

“It is clear Pink Beret was on a mission to get to the Capitol as quickly as possible and to be one of the first to get there,” Neely’s attorney, Kira West, wrote in a court filing. “We know this because she ran across grass—in heels.”

The Epoch Times researched and requested a collection of video clips that document the actions of the woman.

After more than two years, the FBI put her on its Jan. 6 most-wanted page in late April. More than two months after she was named in Neely’s court filings as a potential defense witness, the FBI identified Pink Beret as Jennifer Inzunza Vargas Geller.

Ms. Geller was seen in the Capitol Visitor Center with Neely. At one point, surveillance video shows, she removed her beret, ducked down to hide herself, and ran up the escalator. Neely kept looking for her, not realizing she had ditched him. A short time later, CCTV video shows her with another male protester in a different part of the Capitol.

Ms. Geller was observed outside the Senate parliamentarian’s entrance, directing people into the building with a stick. Ms. West wrote in a court filing that the sight reminded her of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini.

On May 9, the Department of Justice charged Ms. Geller with four Jan. 6 misdemeanor counts. Her case was unusual because the DOJ almost never announces charges against defendants before they are arrested and in custody.

Her husband, Spencer Sidney Geller, was charged in July with a felony obstruction count and four misdemeanors. As in his wife’s case, Mr. Geller’s charges were announced when he was not in custody.

The Gellers are living in Thailand with their 10-month-old daughter. So far, the FBI has not made moves to arrest the pair and extradite them back to the United States to face trial.

Officer Brian Sicknick

Some of the most dramatic CCTV footage acquired by The Epoch Times showed the disabling of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the day after the Capitol protest and riots of Jan. 6.

Mr. Sicknick, 42, of Springfield, Va.—a 13-year U.S. Capitol Police veteran and central New Jersey native—died late on Jan. 7, 2021. His cause of death was two strokes. It was ruled a natural death by the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Mr. Sicknick was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia after lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda in February 2021.

Federal prosecutors charged two men with assaulting Mr. Sicknick with pepper spray: Julian Elie Khater, 34, of Somerset, New Jersey, and George P. Tanios, 41, of Morgantown, West Virginia.

The video shows that just after 2:20 p.m., Mr. Sicknick and two MPD officers charged out into the crowd of rioters, who had been pulling over security barriers with a thick freight strap.

In the center, however, an MPD commander fired numerous bursts of pepper spray from a high-velocity tank that snaked 20 feet or more into the crowd, the video shows. Both the stream of pepper spray and a plume of cast-off caused by stiff winds passed near the left side of Sicknick’s face, the video shows.

Mr. Sicknick quickly retreated from the scene, just ahead of a rioter who charged at him and an MPD officer. He rinsed out his eyes near the inauguration scaffolding, then climbed the southwest steps to the upper terrace. He remained on duty but collapsed at about 10 p.m. after officers noticed him slurring his speech.

Mr. Khater was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison on a plea deal for assault with a deadly weapon and other charges. Although he was initially charged with 12 criminal counts, Mr. Tanios pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to time served, one year of probation, and a $1,800 fine.

Mr. Khater’s father and Mr. Tanios said they never saw the video before being shown the footage by The Epoch Times.

“They [expletive] withheld this. Big time. Oh, my God. My God,” Mr. Tanios told The Epoch Times while watching the footage.

Mr. Tanios said he believes the video should have been disclosed to his and Mr. Khater’s defense teams as exculpatory evidence.

Elie Khater, Julian Khater’s father, said the video is another example of the system being tipped against defendants.

“Since it is in Washington D.C., everything is stacked against the January sixers,” Mr. Khater told The Epoch Times. “From the very beginning, they took this story and they just exaggerated, messed with the facts, lied about a lot of other things. We figured everything is stacked against us.”

Mr. Khater estimated he has amassed nearly $450,000 in legal fees defending his son in criminal and civil court. He said he is nearly out of resources to pay a civil attorney to represent his son in a $30 million wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Sandra Garza, Mr. Sicknick’s former girlfriend, against President Trump, Mr. Tanios, and Mr. Khater.

The New York Times published a 2021 story claiming Mr. Trump’s supporters smashed Mr. Sicknick’s head with a fire extinguisher, causing his death. That claim was eventually retracted but is still repeated 30 months after Mr. Sicknick’s death.

The next claim was that his death was caused by a potent bear spray wielded by Mr. Khater and Mr. Tanios. While Mr. Tanios said he had bear spray canisters in his backpack in the event the men were attacked by Antifa, the spray was never used.

Mr. Khater had a Mace Brand KeyGuard pepper spray canister he received from Mr. Tanios on the evening of Jan. 5. The pocket-size flip-top device was used to spray the officers, according to prosecutors. The manufacturer says the canister emits a thin stream of pepper spray up to 10 feet.

Mr. Tanios said he did not realize that Mr. Khater had used the Mace canister until months after Jan. 6.

Jesse Binnall, an attorney representing Mr. Trump in the $30 million civil suit, said he could not comment on what impact the video might have on the lawsuit.

Oath Keepers

When five Oath Keepers defendants went on trial in September 2022 for alleged seditious conspiracy to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, a key piece of prosecution evidence was an alleged three-way phone call initiated by Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III.

Prosecutors alleged Mr. Rhodes spoke with Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs and Jan. 6 operations director Michael “Whip” Greene with instructions to attack the Capitol.

Defense attorneys argued the call never happened, and the communications Mr. Rhodes attempted that afternoon were meant to tell the Oath Keepers to get away from the Capitol, not attack it.

Video discovered by The Epoch Times shows one of the exterior terrace-level cameras was trained on Mr. Rhodes while he stood on the Upper Northwest Terrace at the Capitol between 2:51 p.m. and nearly 3:00 p.m.

In the video, Mr. Rhodes appeared to be attempting cell phone calls but was not having success. It appeared that he was interviewed briefly by a podcaster, then continued trying to make calls, the video shows.

Standing with Mr. Rhodes during the video were former Oath Keepers general counsel Kellye SoRelle and an unidentified Oath Keeper in a camouflage jacket with an Oath Keepers cap turned backward.

At one point, Mr. Rhodes walked just out of camera view. The footage shows a hand reaching in to give the camera a nudge, which kept Mr. Rhodes in view. It appears someone was at the camera location during at least part of the nine minutes Mr. Rhodes stood on that portion of the terrace.

“I never saw it,” Mr. Rhodes told The Epoch Times in a June phone interview from jail, referring to the nine minutes of CCTV video. Mr. Rhodes said the idea that he was being surveilled is “really creepy.”

Mr. Rhodes and Ms. SoRelle appeared on the left side of the camera view at 2:51:36 p.m., the CCTV video shows.

The unidentified Oath Keeper followed Mr. Rhodes into the camera view shortly after. The man was likely providing security for Ms. SoRelle, one of Mr. Rhodes’s attorneys told The Epoch Times.

“I don’t remember seeing this video,” one of Mr. Rhodes’ defense attorneys, Edward Tarpley, told The Epoch Times. “It may have been in discovery, but I certainly didn’t see it. We were given thousands of videos to review. It seems pretty clear to me that someone actually was following Stewart on the ground with the video camera.”

At 2:57:30, a hand appeared on the left side of the video frame and forcibly tilted the camera down and then to the left. Mr. Rhodes was then back within the camera’s field of view. The other Oath Keeper was visible at times on the left edge of the frame.

The video is significant because it could back up testimony given by Mr. Rhodes in FBI interviews and in court testimony that he was attempting to get Oath Keepers away from the Capitol, not to attack it.

“I was trying to call them, to get them to come to us, to get them to come to me and Whip,” Mr. Rhodes told the FBI in May 2021. “That’s all it was. I couldn’t get any [expletive] comms.”

Mr. Tarpley said he considers the newly revealed security video to be exculpatory evidence that should have been turned over by prosecutors.

“The government argued that Stewart‘s messages to everyone to come to the Capitol were his call to action for them to come and attack the Capitol,” Mr. Tarpley said. “Of course, we know that is totally false.”

Defense attorney Brad Geyer, who represented Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson in the same trial as Mr. Rhodes, said the defense presented evidence that the call never happened.

“The defense maintains that no communication occurred between Meggs and Rhodes,” Mr. Geyer said. “This video confirms that Rhodes was having operability issues with his phone and it also may suggest that Rhodes was being monitored on January 6 by law enforcement.”

Rosanne Boyland

The death of Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia, remains one of the biggest tragedies of Jan. 6. Ms. Boyland came to Washington to hear President Donald Trump speak at the Ellipse. She made her way to the Capitol and wandered into the Lower West Terrace tunnel just before an unknown gas was released in the crowed tunnel.

Information uncovered in this video investigation filled in a lot of details on what happened to Ms. Boyland after her lifeless body was pulled into the Capitol just after 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 6.

The CCTV footage shows that after medics in the Capitol basement tried to resuscitate her, Ms. Boyland was moved up one level and carted through the Crypt to meet D.C. Fire and EMS Department paramedics near the House Wing Door.

Despite early Capitol Police reports that she collapsed in the Rotunda at 5:00 p.m., the video shows that was impossible, as was the notion paramedics came upon two unnamed Capitol Police officers doing CPR on Ms. Boyland.

Dramatic resuscitation efforts continued near the House Wing Door for another 40 minutes before Ms. Boyland was placed in an ambulance for transport to George Washington University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The Epoch Times learned from Ms. Boyland’s family that she was shot in the chest by a pepper ball fired by a police officer at the rear of the Lower West Terrace tunnel. The Boyland family was told by witnesses that the pepper ball shot is what caused Ms. Boyland to fall and become trapped by the stampeding crowd.

One of Ms. Boyland’s sisters noticed a large, dark bruise on her left shoulder in a Getty Images photograph run with a July 24 Epoch Times article on Ms. Boyland’s case. No shoulder injuries were documented in the emergency room notes or in the autopsy done by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Nor was the head wound above Ms. Boyland’s right eye documented. That injury was possibly sustained when a Metropolitan Police Department Officer beat an unresponsive Ms. Boyland with a wooden walking stick as previously reported by The Epoch Times based on police bodycam footage.

Death of Benjamin Philips

Security video challenged the longstanding narrative that Benjamin James Philips—the first of four Trump supporters to die on Jan. 6—was struck by a police munition before he collapsed from a fatal cardiac event.

Video from a far-away west dome camera seems to show someone stumbling and collapsing behind the inauguration scaffolding on the Capitol’s west front at 12:59:17 p.m. That area of the grounds was breached by protesters at 12:58:52 p.m., shortly after a much larger crowd breached the low iron fence protecting the west plaza.

Overhead security video shows the first munitions used on the huge crowd were deployed at 1:10 p.m. on the south end of the west plaza.

“I got a crowd fighting with officers, pushing, throwing projectiles,” Deputy Chief Eric Waldow broadcast at 1:06 p.m. “I have given warnings about chemical munitions. I need the less-than-lethal team positioned above me to identify the agitators and start deploying. Launch, launch, launch!” The first munitions were not deployed until 1:10 p.m.

The first closeup video of Mr. Philips begins at 1:02:51 p.m. when the U.S. Capitol Police Command Center trained one of its security cameras on the area where he fell. Bystanders and a Capitol Police officer took turns doing chest compressions. The first call for help went out over the USCP radio at 1:04 p.m., according to Jan. 6 audio recordings obtained by The Epoch Times.

“Can you please have someone respond to my location with an AED [automated external defibrillator]? The bottom of the west front with an individual that’s down here, unconscious and not breathing,” a female officer broadcast on the main U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) radio channel.

At about 1:15 p.m., an out-of-breath officer announced that the D.C. Fire and EMS Department rescue squad wouldn’t come down to the scaffolding where Mr. Philips lay on the sidewalk.

“They are bringing the patient up to the ambulance right now,” he shouted on the radio. “They are refusing to come down.”

Bystanders and police placed Mr. Philips on a section of a bike rack and carried it like a battlefield stretcher to the ambulance some 100 yards away. He was turned over to paramedics at 1:19 p.m. He was later pronounced dead.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that Mr. Philips died from hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. His manner of death was listed by the pathologist, Dr. Fernando Diaz, as “natural.”

Sweeping the Capitol

After U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, 35, was shot by Capitol Police near the House Chamber at 2:45 p.m., police made aggressive efforts to push all of the protesters out of the Capitol. The Epoch Times obtained CCTV security video showing SWAT teams clearing the Capitol.

Officers from Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department formed skirmish lines and pushed groups of protesters toward the exits while chanting, “Move back! Move back! Move back!” A large contingent of police pushed protesters across the Great Rotunda and forced them out through the exits.

At the same time, tactical teams from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and other federal agencies began sweeping the upper floors of the Capitol to ensure no protesters were left.

With rifles raised and SureFire tactical lights illuminating their paths, the tactical teams moved methodically through the building.

At one point, an ATF tactical team came around the corner near House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. A stunned Capitol Police officer in the otherwise empty hallway threw his hands in the air as if to surrender.

We’ve closely followed the investigative journalism of Chris Papst from Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore, who has uncovered what could be one of the largest education scandals in the country involving Baltimore City Schools. Papst’s latest report asks: What is the Maryland State Department of Education hiding? 

For some context, Papst and his team of reporters have dedicated six years to investigating the Baltimore City School system, the fourth most funded in the nation. Their findings are shocking: 

• 2017: “It’s Very Common”: Baltimore Teacher Admits To Passing Students That Never Showed For A Single Day Of Class

• 2017: Attendance At Baltimore City Schools Crashes To 13 Year Low Just As Juvenile Crime Spikes

• 2017: 13 Baltimore High Schools Have Zero Students That Are Proficient In Math

• 2019: Grade-Changing Scandal: Judge Orders Baltimore City Schools To Release Documents 

• 2019: Grade-Rigging Scandal: Baltimore Students Missed 100+ Days Of School, Failed Classes, Still Graduated

• 2021: After Grade-Rigging Scandal, Baltimore City Schools No Longer Holding Back Failing Students

• 2023: ‘Education Crisis’: 23 Baltimore City Schools Have No Students Proficient In Math

Baltimore City has been riddled with scandals, and one of the most concerning ones has been the school system with a $1.6 billion budget. It appears some education officials are compromising the future of America’s next leaders by rigging grades. And the corruption might not stop at Baltimore but could extend to the leadership of the Maryland State Department of Education. 

Papst spoke with attorney Scott Marder who believes that the Maryland State Department of Education under Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury may have violated the Maryland Public Information Act. 

Papst’s team found metadata for 98 text messages sent or received by Superintendent Choudhury in the first quarter of this year. The metadata was obtained through a public records request. 

When the texts were sent, Papst’s exposé on 23 schools in Baltimore City with zero students proficient in math was published. Then the state decided to change how it reports test scores. Papst believes these text messages hold the answer to why the state government made that decision.

… but it appears the public will never know because those text messages were deleted. 

In an email last week, the Maryland State Department of Education told Project Baltimore: 

“The metadata of text messages provided is all that our Office of Information Technology could retrieve due to storage limitations.” 

Put simply, the 98 text messages were deleted.

“The cell phone issued to Mohammed Choudhury by Maryland State Department of Education is a government cell phone that’s supposed to be used for government business,” Marder told Project Baltimore. 

He said, “I’m troubled by the fact that the Maryland State Department of Education says that they had to delete (the texts) because of storage issues. I find that troubling.”

Project Baltimore pointed out that if the Maryland State Department of Education “willfully” violated Maryland Public Information Act, then that could mean the school officials might face upwards of 3 years, a fine up to $1,000, or both. The law clearly states a person cannot: “destroy, remove, or conceal a public record” and “the term’ public record’ would also include, for instance, text messages and other electronic communications.”

In a separate report, Papst’s team wrote, “Hidden email address for Maryland Superintendent revealed after Department of Education removes redactions.” His team asked: 

What is the Maryland State Department of Education hiding?

Deleted text messages, a hidden email account, unlawful redactions – @Project_Bmore reached out to Maryland’s top elected officials asking for their thoughts on the State School Superintendent’s actions. We’ll have a report on their responses Monday. https://t.co/JwpB6figOk

— Chris Papst (@chrispapst) August 13, 2023

Here’s more on the reporting… 

And another report from Project Baltimore stated last week: 

A bombshell report just released by the office of the Maryland Inspector General for Education found that failures in Baltimore City Schools internal investigation into Augusta Fells, a high school in west Baltimore, hindered the chance of prosecuting those responsible.

The IG finding City Schools Staff Investigations Unit lacks a written policy regarding self-incrimination, which potentially places employees at risk during internal investigations. This lack of a written policy, which is known as a Garrity Warning and is similar to Miranda Rights, according to the IG’s report, raised major concerns among local, state, and federal prosecutors. As a result, those prosecutors declined to consider criminal charges.

Project Baltimore, in 2021, exposed a major scheme to change grades and inflate enrollment at the West Baltimore high school. Fox45 News obtained a list of 21 students who were enrolled at Augusta Fells but were not actually attending. Ghost students, as they are known by educators, are used to pad the rolls and increase the amount of funding a school receives.

Dominos are quickly falling in the nation’s fourth most funded education system that now could involve a top Maryland education official. None of this should be shocking for a state run by out-of-control Democrats. 

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Many people know ultraviolet rays and X-rays can cause cancer.

These are high-frequency, ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Ionizing EMFs are considered carcinogenic, while nonionizing EMFs, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth signals, and fields from electronic devices, are generally not. This perception has prevailed in the public mindset for decades.

However, there’s limited awareness that certain nonionizing EMFs are also classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as class 2B carcinogens—a category indicating potential human carcinogenicity.

Dr. David Carpenter, an environmental health professor at the University of Albany who received his medical doctorate from Havard Medical School, noted that radiofrequency, a type of nonionizing radiation used in telecommunications, might eventually fall under class 2A classification, denoting a probable human carcinogen.

Oxidation, DNA Changes, and Cancer

Cancer is usually caused by mutation or changes to DNA. Factors like viral infections, radiation, and environmental toxins can alter DNA sequences.

Ionizing EMFs directly damage DNA. Ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays remove electrons from DNA, causing mutations. Accumulated mutations lead to cell malignancy.

Nonionizing radiation doesn’t have enough energy to damage DNA directly. Yet various studies have linked exposure to nonionizing EMFs with DNA breakage. Cells from EMF-exposed animals and phone users have shown genetic damage.

Cancer can also be induced through stress alone. Examples of this include asbestos and arsenic, which cause cancer in the absence of DNA damage. 

For this reason, Dr. Carpenter suggests EMFs may be carcinogenic just by inducing “reactive oxygen species” that stress the cell environment through oxidation. Oxidation generated by EMFs have been shown to break DNA in human sperm and fibroblast cells, indicating potentially carcinogenic risks. 

Professor Emeritus Martin Pall, specializing in biochemistry and basic medical sciences at Washington State University, explained that EMFs are complicated in that stronger EMFs don’t necessarily mean more DNA damage. Instead, only specific frequencies and intensities cause an effect.

This has been shown in a recent University of Colorado study, finding that at a 4.2 MHz frequency, human fibroblast and fibrosarcoma mitochondria increased in mass, inducing cell stress. This effect was absent at higher and lower frequencies.

According to IARC, possibly carcinogenic nonionizing EMFs include:

1. Extremely low frequency (ELF) EMFs commonly found at frequencies of 50 to 60 Hz emitted by power lines, electronic wires, and virtually all electrically powered devices.
2. Radiofrequency EMFs emitted by wireless devices such as phones, Wi-Fi modems, TVs, and cellphone towers used in telecommunications. These are also utilized in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Research indicates chromosomal breakage after MRI sessions.

IARC rated radiofrequency as class 2B rather than 2A, with one of the reasons being the lack of evidence linking it to cancer in animal studies.

Contrastingly, the 2018 U.S. National Toxicology Program study from the 1990s presented “clear evidence” of radiofrequency-induced heart tumors in rats, along with “some evidence” of brain and adrenal cancers.

The Ramazani Institute’s 2018 study also discovered heart and brain tumors in rats, aligning with these findings.

EMFs and Brain Cancer

Senior consultant in radiation sciences Kjell Hansson Mild from Umeå University in Sweden told The Epoch Times that the link between EMF exposure and brain cancer and tumors is well-established.

A study from the 1980s revealed a 39 percent higher risk of brain cancer among amateur radio operators due to EMFs.

“Brain gliomas associated with cellphones have the most research. The gliomas appear after 10 years of moderate cellphone use, primarily ipsilateral cancers (cancer on the same side of head where you hold the cellphone),” Professor Emerita Magda Havas told The Epoch Times over email. 

Glioma are malignant brain cancers.

A 2017 study linked long-term ipsilateral use of mobile phones with an over 40 percent increased risk of slow-growing glioma. A large French study conducted between 2004 to 2006 found that people with “heavy mobile phone use” had increased folds in glioma risk after years of use. 

In 2004, oncologist and professor Lennart Hardell from Örebro University in Sweden published a study involving over 1,600 patients with benign brain tumors. His research found a 30 percent higher likelihood of brain tumors in wireless phone users. These tumors primarily developed on the side of the head in contact with the phone, with an over 60 percent higher risk after 10 years of phone use.

Benign tumors typically do not become cancerous; they grow slower and do not invade nearby tissues or other areas of the body.

Another Swedish study in 2004 indicated no initial risk increase of acoustic neuroma (benign brain tumor) associated with phone use within the first year. However, by the 10th year, the risk surged to 90 percent.

Other research on brain tumors emerged from occupational exposure studies.

During the late 1990s, a study examined approximately 880,000 U.S. Air Force personnel with at least one year of service. This study detected 230 cases of brain cancer potentially linked to radiofrequency exposure, revealing a 39 percent heightened risk through occupational exposure. In 2001, a review (pdf) demonstrated that those working with electricity faced an up to 20 percent greater risk of developing brain cancer than the general public. Still, researchers concluded the risk was too low to warrant a discussion on causality.

Despite increased environmental radiofrequency exposures among the public, Mr. Hansson Mild’s primary concerns are power lines and occupational exposures.

He noted that phones used in previous studies emitted stronger signals than today’s phones.

“Today, you only need to reach 200 meters to the next base station. But yesterday, you needed to reach 35 kilometers to reach the base station,” Mr. Hansson Mild explained.

Read more here…

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

In order for a civilized society to function, most people have to willingly follow the rules of that society.  If that happens, law enforcement authorities can deal with the few that choose to be lawless. 

For generations, that is how things worked in America. 

There was a high standard of morality among the general population, and so the police were able to successfully handle the few bad apples that insisted on breaking the law. 

But now everything has changed.  As a result of decades of extreme moral decay, lawlessness is rampant and there are vast multitudes of young people that openly flaunt the rules of our society.  In fact, there are already some areas of the country that are literally on the verge of being ungovernable.

A perfect example of what I am talking about happened in southern California on Saturday.

Dozens of lawless young thieves systematically looted the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga mall, and they were able to get away with tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise…

Shoppers at the Westfield Topanga mall in Canoga Park were in for quite a shock when dozens of thieves ransacked the Nordstrom inside the mall on Saturday, Aug. 12, smashing displays and stealing an estimated $60,000- $100,000 worth of merchandise, authorities said.

The Los Angeles Police Department responded to the mall at around 4 p.m. after hearing reports that between 20 and 50 people ran through the Nordstrom grabbing merchandise, leaving some on the ground and taking armfuls with them.

When I was growing up, this sort of thing simply did not happen.

But now we are seeing mobs of looters go haywire all over the nation on a regular basis.

This heist was obviously well coordinated, and not one of the thieves even showed a shred of remorse.

Apparently these young people are not exactly languishing in poverty, because a BMW and a Lexus were among the getaway vehicles that they used…

After grabbing between $60,000 and $100,000 worth of goods, the crew fled in several cars including a BMW and a Lexus, cops said.

At least one guard was doused with bear spray — which causes violent eye and respiratory irritation in humans. The guard was treated by paramedics.

How are we supposed to respond to this?

As I stated earlier, we are seeing robberies of this nature so often now.

Several days earlier, dozens of  young people looted the Yves Saint Laurent store in Glendale…

Earlier this week a high-end designer store in Glendale, California was looted by dozens of people in another flash mob burglary on Tuesday.

At least 30 suspects “flooded” the Yves Saint Laurent store in The Americana at Brand Tuesday afternoon and stole clothing and other merchandise before fleeing on foot and leaving the location in numerous vehicles, said police in a statement.

The total loss is estimated to be approximately $300,000.

Some people attempt to downplay the severity of these crimes by saying that these big corporate retailers can afford the losses they are experiencing.

No, they can’t.

Overall, U.S. retailers will lose more than 100 billion dollars due to theft this year alone.

This has become a major national crisis, and as J. Lee Grady has aptly pointed out, we truly have become “the land of the free-for-all”…

You’ve probably seen the videos of thieves filling trash bags with stolen merchandise from CVS or walking out of Home Depot or Wal-Mart with armloads of tools, laptops, detergent and athletic shoes they didn’t pay for. We used to call this shoplifting, and it was a crime. Today, it’s known as “inventory shrinkage”—and it costs retailers billions of dollars in losses. But many soft-on-crime politicians are treating criminals like victims and allowing the crime wave to grow.

Some retailers are locking items behind glass cases, but that hasn’t stopped brazen criminals who just smash and grab. Other retailers actually warn employees not to try to stop thieves—and they will even fire an employee for confronting a shoplifter. Welcome to the USA in 2023: We were once known as the land of the free; now we are the land of the free-for-all, where criminals can take whatever they want from store shelves knowing that no one will stop them.

A lot of of this theft is being fueled by the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation.

Today, vast stretches of the city of Los Angeles have been transformed into giant homeless encampments that are filled with “zombie-like residents smoking drugs”…

Shocking new photos lay bear the devastating homeless crisis tormenting downtown LA – where filthy ramshackle tent cities are plagued by zombie-like residents smoking drugs, while others hawk stolen goods on street corners.

There are currently an estimated 42,260 people sleeping rough in the City of Angels – a startling 10 percent rise compared to just last year, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported.

Just this week, it emerged that the city had resorted to sending mobile teams with oxygen cylinders to Skid Row in a desperate bid to prevent overdoses amid its crippling opioid crisis.

The same thing is happening in San Francisco.

In fact, conditions have become so dangerous in downtown San Francisco that federal employees that work at “the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building” are being told to work from home for the foreseeable future…

Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advised hundreds of employees in San Francisco to work remotely for the foreseeable future due to public safety concerns outside the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building on Seventh Street.

The imposing, 18-story tower on the corner of Seventh and Mission streets houses various federal agencies, including HHS, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the office of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The area is also home to one of the city’s most brazen open-air drug markets, where dozens of dealers and users congregate on a daily basis.

I find it perfectly fitting that “one of the city’s most brazen open-air drug markets” is operating right outside of a giant office tower named for Nancy Pelosi.

Politicians such as Pelosi have been making horrendously bad decisions for decades, and that has been a major factor in getting us to this point.

We are truly reaping what we have sown, and what we are currently experiencing is just the beginning.

Eventually, conditions will deteriorate so dramatically in our core urban areas that our leaders will be forced to implement extreme measures in a desperate attempt to restore order.

But ultimately you can’t govern vast numbers of people that have no intention of being governed.

The fabric of our society really is coming apart at the seams, and we are going to see things happen in the years ahead that will completely shock all 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.

An Asian avalanche of data and headlines:

• Japanese GDP surged in Q2 – doubling expectations on export-led growth

• Japanese domestic spending weak

• PBOC surprises with rate-cuts (biggest MLF cut since 2020)

• MoF fix dramatically stronger than offshore yuan

• Yuan tumbles below 2023 lows on rate-cuts

• China 10Y yield drops to lowest since 2020

• Chinese macro data missed across the board

• China gold premium to London is soaring

• China did not report its (record high) youth unemployment rate

*  *  *

The Japanese economy grew dramatically faster than expected in the second quarter, driven by strong exports data.

GDP grew at an annualized 6.0% in Q2 (the strongest growth since Q4 2020), more than double the 2.9% growth expected…

Source: Bloomberg

Outside of the post-COVID chaos, this is strongest annualized GDP growth for Japan since Q1 2015, even as economists see headwinds on the horizon in the US, China and Europe.

The export growth was helped by a plunge in the yen during Q2 (which, again outside of the COVID craziness, is the biggest quarterly drop in the Japanese currency since Q4 2016).

In fact, as Bloomberg reports, the yen has tumbled back toward a level that triggered the first yen-buying intervention since 1998 in September as yield differentials widened.

“We believe the Ministry of Finance will start pushing back in the 145-148 range,” wrote Joey Chew, head of Asia FX research at HSBC Holdings Plc in a note.

“But, if it does not, short positions on yen will likely be rebuilt further.”

Source: Bloomberg

Perhaps the apparent strength of the Japanese economy will provide ‘room’ for the ‘buying’ intervention to stop the yen’s freefall?

The anemic yen has been a double-edged sword for the economy, said Takahide Kiuchi, an economist at the Nomura Research Institute.

“It can be a positive for exporters, increasing competitiveness and revenue,” he said.

“However, it could undermine consumption.”

And sure enough, while strong external demand supported the growth, domestically things aren’t so rosy as rising inflation made domestic households more hesitant to spend with private consumption dropping 0.5% QoQ – the weakest since Q1 2022…

“Compared with the January-March period, the improvement seen in consumption driven by increased activity has weakened,” said Harumi Taguchi, principal economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Rising prices are increasingly causing consumers to hold off on buying items.”

Source: Bloomberg

Additionally, the high reliance on exports makes the recent growth vulnerable to other countries’ malaise. Recent softness in China, Japan’s largest trade partner, is a particular source of worry.

“We see clear signs of slowing in China and Europe,” Mr. Kiuchi, of the Nomura Research Institute, said.

That means “the stability of this high growth is unclear.”

Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, and the largest creditor by far… meaning its growth or fragility reverberates around the world…

“The only problem – it was all export driven and masked rocky conditions in domestic demand,” Bloomberg economist Taro Kimura explains.

“The drop in consumption, despite a tailwind from this year’s reopening, reflects the impact of wages lagging far behind cost-push inflation.”

…but tonight we also get a data dump from the world’s second largest economy – China.

Amid a growing debt crisis, China’s trade outlook looking similarly dire (with overseas shipments tumbling in July by the most in more than three years, and imports contracted for a fifth consecutive month), and China’s banks having extended the smallest amount of monthly loans since 2009, and aggregate financing was less than half the level forecast by economists; the signals heading into tonight’s data suggest that China’s economy weakened further in July and  Beijing was slow to arrest the decline.

Ahead of the China data dump, there was much excitement as the PBOC surprised with more ‘easing’ – sooner than most expected:

• PBOC conducts 401b yuan of 1-year medium-term lending facility at a yield of 2.5% vs 2.65% in the last operation, the central bank says in a statement.

• PBOC also sells 204b yuan of 7-day reverse repo at a yield of 1.8% vs 1.9% in the last operation

Today’s MLF operation is “totally out of expectation,” says Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy of Standard Chartered Plc:

“The cut has been aggressive, indicating the urgency of stepping up measures to shore up credit growth,” Liu notes that today’s cut “will almost certainly” be followed by cuts to China’s loan prime rates on August 20.

This was the second cut this year (the last one was in June)…

Source: Bloomberg

While the PBOC delivered a surprise rate cut, its net injection this month was merely one billion yuan, the smallest since December, when the central bank started to pumping in funds in the operation.

Given the slump in new yuan loans and aggregate financing last month, this is understandable – there’s not much demand for credit at the moment.

Redmond Wong, market strategist at Saxo Capital Markets, makes the point that today’s unexpected rate cuts follow incredibly weak loan data released late last week. Chinese banks extended the smallest amount of monthly loans since 2009 in July.

“The PBOC wants to get the banks to lend, but it seems it’s not being successful as both loan demand from households and credit-worth corporations have been weak. Banks are reluctant to lend to property companies and other private enterprises with more uncertain repayment abilities. Cutting rates can help at the margins but it may not be very effective in boosting loan demand when confidence is still weak in the corporate and household sectors.”

China fires a mini-bazooka…

The surprise action weakened the offshore yuan further (below 2023 lows)…

Source: Bloomberg

And China’s 10-year government bond dropped 6bps to 2.56%, lowest since 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

And as the yuan weakens, we note that China’s gold price is rising against levels in London, a trend that local traders say is due to government curbs on imports of the precious metal.

Source: Bloomberg

Gold’s attractiveness as a potential capital outflow could be rising on the back of the weaker domestic currency, and authorities may potentially stymie that trade – lending some support to the yuan – by squeezing import quotas.

And an additional sign of support is the dramatically ‘strong’ fixing for the Yuan…

Source: Bloomberg

In context, that is a serious gap and we note that China has set a stronger-than-expected fixing everyday since late June (to little or no avail)…

Source: Bloomberg

And that was all before the deluge of data (suggesting Beijing knew exactly what was about to hit the wires).

Everything Missed

The July data was as follows:

• China Industrial Production YTD YoY +3.7% vs +3.8% exp and +3.8% prior

• China Retail Sales YTD YoY +7.3% vs +7.6% exp and +8.2% prior

• China Fixed Asset Investment YTD YoY +3.5% vs +3.7% and +3.8% prior

• China Property Investment YTD YoY -8.5% vs -8.1% exp and -7.9% prior

• China Surveyed jobless rate rose to 5.3% vs 5.2% exp and 5.2% prior

• China Youth (16-24) Unemployment Rate was not disclosed in this report (was at record high 321.3% last month)

Now that explains why they pre-emptively cut rates…

Perhaps the most notable is the fact that NBS’ Fu says China will pause releasing the youth unemployment rate due to complexities in surveying.

The bureau will conduct more research on the data point, he adds.

In the US, bad data is just
“seasonally” massaged and birth/deathed until it is +300,000.

In China, they just stop reporting it.

*CHINA TO STOP PUBLISH DATA FOR YOUTH JOBLESS RATE pic.twitter.com/uNdAYho9wo

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 15, 2023

Raymond Yeung, chief economist for greater China at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.:

“July’s economic data are significantly below market consensus. The data turn out to have rationalized the surprising interest rate cut early in the morning.

In addition, the authorities are also aware of the recent financial events in the trust sector. There is a pressing need to revive market sentiment too.”

Finally, we note that this all matters and the Biden administration knows it.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called China’s economic woes a “risk factor” for the US, but one that doesn’t significantly dent her optimism for the American economy.

“China’s slowdown will have the largest impact on its Asian neighbors, but there will be some spillovers to the United States,” Yellen told reporters following a speech in Las Vegas, where she’s touting the economic policy accomplishments of the Biden administration.

Yellen’s comments come days after President Joe Biden blasted China’s economic problems as a “ticking time bomb” and referred to Communist Party leaders as “bad folks.”

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Two prominent climate scientists have taken on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new rules to cut CO2 emissions in electricity generation, arguing in testimony that the regulations “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”

Citing extensive data to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations are not based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong. 

“The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen stated. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule.”

“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data,” they stated. “The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.”

Climate models like the ones that the EPA is using have been consistently wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes, Mr. Happer told The Epoch Times. He presented the table below to the EPA to illustrate his point.

“That was already an embarrassment in the ‘90s, when I was director of energy research in the U.S. Department of Energy,” he said. “I was funding a lot of this work, and I knew very well then that the models were overpredicting the warming by a huge amount.”

He and his colleague argued that the EPA has grossly overstated the harm from CO2 emissions while ignoring the benefits of CO2 to life on Earth.

Many who have fought against EPA climate regulations have done so by arguing what is called the “major questions doctrine,” that the EPA does not have the authority to invent regulations that have such an enormous impact on Americans without clear direction from Congress. Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen, however, have taken a different tack, arguing that the EPA regulations fail the “State Farm” test because they are “arbitrary and capricious.”

“Time and again, courts have applied ‘State Farm’s’ principles to invalidate agency rules where the agency failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, or cherry-picked data to support a pre-ordained conclusion,” they stated. The case they referred to is the 2003 case of State Farm v. Campell (pdf), in which the Supreme Court argued that “a State can have no legitimate interest in deliberately making the law so arbitrary that citizens will be unable to avoid punishment based solely upon bias or whim.”

According to Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen’s testimony, “600 million years of CO2 and temperature data contradict the theory that high levels of CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming.”

They present CO2 and temperature data indicating much higher levels of both CO2 and temperatures than today, with little correlation between the two. They also argue that current CO2 levels are historically at a low point.

“The often highly emphasized 140 [parts per million] increase in CO2 since the beginning of the Industrial Age is trivial compared to CO2 changes over the geological history of life on Earth,” they stated. 

In addition, the scientists’ testimony to the EPA stated that the agency’s emissions rules fail to consider the fact that CO2 and fossil fuels are essential to life on earth, particularly human life.

“Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create more food for people worldwide, including more food for people in drought-stricken areas,” they stated. “Increases in carbon dioxide over the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 parts per million to about 420 ppm, caused an approximate 20 percent increase in the food available to people worldwide, as well as increased greening of the planet and a benign warming in temperature.”

More CO2 in the atmosphere leads to more plant growth and higher farming yields, they argued. In addition, synthetic fertilizers, which are derivatives of natural gas, are responsible for nearly half the world’s food production today. “Net zero” goals would reduce CO2 emissions by more than 40 gigatons per year, reducing the food supply proportionally, they said.

In addition to disregarding the benefits of CO2, they stated, the EPA’s emission rules and the global warming narrative that has been used to justify them are based on flawed data.

In addition to teaching physics at Princeton, Mr. Happer’s decades of work in physics has focused on atmospheric radiation and atmospheric turbulence, and his inventions have been used by astronomers and in national defense.

“Radiation in the atmosphere is my specialty,” Mr. Happer said, “and I know more about it than, I would guess, any climate scientists.” 

His expertise, he said, “involves much of the same physics that’s involved in climate, and none of it is very alarming.”

The global warming narrative argues that as people burn fossil fuels, they emit higher concentrations of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs sunlight and creates a “greenhouse effect,” trapping the sun’s radiation and warming the earth. 

But one aspect of CO2 emissions that global warming models fail to take into account, Mr. Happer said, is a phenomenon called “saturation,” or the diminishing effect of CO2 in the atmosphere at higher concentrations.

“At the current concentrations of CO2, around 400 parts per million, it decreases the radiation to space by about 30 percent, compared to what you would have if you took it all away,” Mr. Happer said. “So that’s enough to cause quite a bit of warming of the earth, and thank God for that; it helps make the earth habitable, along with the effects of water vapor and clouds.”

“But if you could double the amount of CO2 from 400 to 800, and that will take a long time, the amount that you decrease radiation to space is only one percent,” Mr. Happer said. “Very few people realize how hard it is for additional carbon dioxide to make a difference to the radiation to space. That’s what’s called saturation, and it’s been well known for a century.”

In addition to scientific arguments about why global warming is overblown, the scientists also cite data showing large discrepancies between global warming models and actual observations. In some cases, Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen say, data has been disingenuously manipulated to fit the climate-change narrative.

“The most striking example of that is the temperature record,” Mr. Happer said. “If you look at the temperature records that were published 20 years ago, they showed very clearly that in the United States by far the warmest years we had were during the mid-1930s. 

“If you look at the data today, that is no longer true,” he said. “People in charge of that data, or what the public sees, have gradually reduced the temperatures of the ‘30s, then increased the temperature of more recent measurements.”

An example of misleading data used by the EPA as proof of global warming is shown in the chart below, Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen claimed. 

“This chart does not actually show ‘daily temperatures,’” they state. “Instead it show a ‘ratio’ of daily record highs to lows – a number that appears designed to create the impression that temperatures are steadily rising.”

By contrast, the scientists presented the following table, which indicates significantly higher temperatures in the 1930s versus today. 

The Scientific ‘Consensus’ for Climate Change

Proponents of the global warming narrative often state that it is “settled science” and that nearly all scientists agree that global warming is real and the result of human activity.

According to an official NASA statement, “the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists—97 percent—agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world.”

A report by Cornell University states that “more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies.”

But Mr. Happer argues that consensus is not science, citing a lecture on the scientific method by renowned physicist Richard Feynman, who said, “if it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”

“Science has never been made by consensus,” Mr. Happer said. “The way you decide something is true in science is you compare it with experiment or observations.

“It doesn’t matter if there’s a consensus; it doesn’t matter if a Nobel Prize winner says it’s true, if it disagrees with observations, it’s wrong,” he said. “And that’s the situation with climate models. They are clearly wrong because they don’t agree with observations.”

The National Library of Medicine cites a speech by physician and author Michael Crichton at the California Institute of Technology in 2003 in which he said, “consensus is the business of politics.”

“Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world,” Dr. Crichton said. “In science, consensus is irrelevant. What are relevant are reproducible results.”

“The initial predictions of climate disasters had New York flooded by now, no ice left at the North Pole, England would be like Siberia by now,” Mr. Happer said. “Nothing that they predicted actually came true. You have to do something to keep the money coming in, so they changed ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change.’”

The Price of Dissent

Regarding the consensus in published literature cited by Cornell University, some experts counter that academic publications routinely reject any submissions that question the global warming narrative. 

“I’m lucky because I didn’t really start pushing back on this until I was close to retirement,” Mr. Happer said. He had already established himself at that point as a tenured professor at Princeton, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and director of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.

“If I’d been much younger, they could have made sure I never got tenure, that my papers would never get published,” he said. “They can keep me from publishing papers now, but it doesn’t matter because I already have status. But it would matter a lot if I were younger and I had a career that I was trying to make.”

In an interview with John Stossel, climate scientist Judith Curry said she paid the price for contradicting the narrative and called the global warming consensus “a manufactured consensus.”

Ms. Curry, the former chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said that when she published a study that claimed hurricanes were increasing in intensity, “I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star; I was flown all over the place to meet with politicians and to give these talks, and lots of media attention.”

When several researchers questioned her findings, she investigated their claims and concluded that her critics were correct. 

“Part of it was bad data; part of it was natural climate variability,” she said. But when she went public with that fact, she was shunned, she said and pushed out of academia. 

Mr. Lindzen tells a similar tale, once he began to question the climate narrative.

“Funding and publication became almost impossible,” he said, “and I was holding the most distinguished chair in meteorology,” which was MIT’s Sloan Professorship of Meteorology. 

Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Clauser told The Epoch Times that he, too, was abruptly canceled from giving a speech on climate at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on July 25.

Mr. Clauser had stated during a previous speech at Quantum Korea 2023 that “climate change is not a crisis.”

He said that climate is a self-regulating process and that more clouds form when temperatures rise, resulting in a compensatory cooling effect. Although he agrees that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, he argued that the gas’s effect on global warming is swamped by the natural cloud cycle.

However, only days before his IMF discussion was to take place, Mr. Clauser received an email indicating that the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) director, Pablo Moreno, didn’t want the event to happen. An assistant who was coordinating the event wrote to Mr. Clauser: “When I arranged this the Director was very happy about it but things have evidently changed.”

The IMF’s current policy on climate change is that “large emitting countries need to introduce a carbon tax that rises quickly to $75 a ton in 2030, consistent with limiting global warming to 2° [Celcius] or less.”

The Climate Money Machine

Asked why there would be a need to censor, alter, and cherry-pick data to support the global warming narrative, Mr. Lindzen said “because it’s a hoax.”

Mr. Clauser said of the climate consensus, “We are totally awash in pseudoscience.”

“There is this huge fraction of the population that has been brainwashed into thinking this is an existential threat to the planet,” Mr. Happer said. “I don’t blame the people; they don’t have the background to know they are being deceived, but they are being deceived.” 

The World Bank announced in September 2022 that it paid out a record $31.7 billion that fiscal year to help countries address climate change, a 19 percent increase from the $26.6 billion it paid out over the previous fiscal year. And according to Reuters, the United States is projected to spend about $500 billion to fight climate change over the next decade, including $362 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, $98 billion from the Infrastructure Act, and $54 billion from the CHIPS law.

“What would happen to sustainable energy, the worthless windmills and solar panels if suddenly there were no climate change emergency,” Mr. Happer said. “They’re really not very good technology and they’re doing a lot more harm than good, but nevertheless people are making lots of money.”

Many investors, most notably BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, have cited government regulations and subsidies as a key reason why investments in “green” energies would be profitable. 

Research grants to study climate change are offered by many government agencies, including the EPA, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as by non-profits including Bloomberg Philanthropies and the MacArthur Foundation, which paid out $458 million since 2014.

“Going back to [19]88 to ’90, funding went up by a factor of 15,” Mr. Lindzen said. “You created a whole new community.

“This was a small field in 1990; not a single member of the faculty at MIT called themselves a climate scientist,” he said. “By 1996, everyone was a climate scientist, and that included impacts. If you’re studying cockroaches and you put in your grant, ‘cockroaches and climate,’ you are a climate scientist.”

Asked to respond to the professors’ comments, an EPA spokesperson stated: “The Agency will review all comments we received as we work to finalize the proposed standards.”

Today marks 45 days after the end of the first quarter, also known as the day when Q1 13-F season begins (and ends) and while we will have a comprehensive summary of what hedge funds did in the first quarter (which, again, ended 45 days ago and in a world where the average holding period is a few minutes, is largely meaningless by now) we start our reporting with the grand daddy of all modern day taxpayer-backed hedge funds, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Which actually was not that much: the reported value of Berkshire’s long-only equity portfolio rose by just 7% to $348BN as of June 30 from $325BN in Q1 (which in turn was an 8.7% increase from $299BN in Q4) to $325BN, largely thanks to stock price appreciation because as previously noted, in Q2 Buffett “harvested” (read sold) his positions for the third quarter running, dumping a net $8.0BN (down from $10.4BN in the previous quarter, and from the $15BN net he sold in Q4, both of which are a small fraction of his portfolio of ~$350BN).

With that in mind, here are the most notable changes in Q2:

Three new buys, all homebuilders:

• DR Horton: bought 5.97 million shares valued at $726.5 million
• NVR: bought 70.6 million shares valued at $70.6 million
• Lennar Group: bought 152,572 shares valued at just $17.2 million, in what may have been a fat finger purchase as it is completely meaningless for a firm the size of Berkshire

As Bloomberg notes, the largest US homebuilders have been outperforming smaller rivals despite soaring mortgage rates, with stocks rallying and the companies welcoming an onrush of buyers frustrated by a severe shortage of existing-home listings. Lennar, D.R. Horton and NVR are all up more than 30% this year.

Four exits:

• McKesson Corp: 2.3 million shares, valued at $815 milion as of June 30, 2023
• Marsh & McLennan: 404,911 shares valued at $67 million
• Vitesse Energy: the unwind of last quarter’s “fat finger” purchase which was just 51,026 shares valued at $1 million.

Added holdings in just two positions:

• Occidental Petroleum: bought 12.4 million shares, bringing the new total to 224.1 million shares, valued at $13.2 billion
• Capital One: added 2.549 million shares to prior stake of 9.9 million, bringing the total to 12.471 million, valued at $1.364 billion.

Trimmed holdings in five positions, including:

• Chevron: reduced by 9.3 million shares to 123.1 million shares valued at $19.4 billion
• Activision Blizzard: reduced stake by another 34.8 million shares, following the sale of 3.3 million shares in Q1, bringing the latest total to just 14.7 million shares valued at $1.3 billion and largely missing out on the July surge in the stock when the MSFT deal was tentatively approved
• General Motors: continued the stake reduction with another 18 million shares following the sale of 10 million shares in Q1, bringing the new total to 22  million shares valued at $848 million.
• Celanese: another quarter of selling here, which reduced the position by 3.460 million shares to 5.4 million shares, from 8.8 million shares, and valued at $620.5 million
• Globe Life: reduced by 3.8 million shares to 2.5 million shares valued at $276 million

Recent disclosures from Berkshire related to its stock portfolio revealed a departure from the company’s long-held strategy of buying shares and holding them for the long term. The conglomerate revealed a stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. last year, only to largely rotate out of that position in subsequent months. Buffett said the decision to cut the stake in TSMC was his, citing geopolitical tensions as the motivation behind the move even as he continued to praise the chipmaker.

“I feel better about the capital that we’ve got deployed in Japan than in Taiwan,” Buffett said earlier this year. “I wish it weren’t so, but I think that’s the reality, and I re-evaluated that in the light of certain things that were going on.”

Of course, by now readers know but we will remind them anyway, the holdings reported here exclude derivatives and total values may include debt securities. The equities listed may not reflect current holdings. New holdings and exits may be caused by updated disclosure requirements rather than investment changes.

Full details of all Berkshire Q2 moves can be found in the table below.

Authored by Megan Redshaw JD via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law in December 2016, was created to help accelerate medical product development and “bring new innovations and advances” to patients quicker and more efficiently. Yet some researchers suggest the law is being used to bypass the once rigorous and evidenced-based standards for new drug approvals, allowing novel drugs to flood the market without adequate data and public transparency.

According to a research letter published on August 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open (JAMA), 24 of the 37 drugs approved in 2022 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were based on a single study, with only four drugs having more than three studies to support their approval.

“I’m not surprised,” David Gortler, a pharmacologist, pharmacist, and FDA reform advocate at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Epoch Times in an email. As a former senior advisor to the FDA commissioner, Mr. Gortler said he saw the agency grant expedited approval to a medication called aducanumab—used to treat Alzheimer’s disease “based on zero positive studies.”

“They did the same with other monoclonal antibodies for Alzheimer’s disease,” Mr. Gortler said.

According to the research letter, most of the 413 studies evaluating the 37 drugs approved in 2022 were sponsored by the industry—meaning they were manufactured, funded, and analyzed by the company producing the product, seeking FDA approval, and standing to benefit financially from the drug.

Of the studies available for analysis, only 25 percent of study results have been made publicly available, with the results of six percent of those studies published after the FDA had already approved the drug for use.

Furthermore, researchers found that only 55 percent of studies evaluating drugs in 2022 consisted of randomized clinical trials—the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine—despite the FDA justifying most approvals based on randomized clinical trial data.

For comparison, only 20 percent of medical products in 2016 were approved based on a single study, and 55 percent were approved based on three or more studies, whereas 65 percent of drugs in 2022 were approved based on a single study, with only 11 percent having three or more studies.

“We believe consumers deserve access to the full range of evidence for the drugs they are considering, not just from the selected studies released to the public,” the authors wrote.

The researchers say their results “highlight a trend toward less rigorous standards for novel drug approvals that has evolved over the past few decades” and are consistent with other reports showing a widespread decrease in the number of trials used for drug approvals.

“The authors point to the deterioration of the quality and rigor of the regulatory review and approval of new drugs over time,” Sasha Latypova told The Epoch Times in an email. Ms. Latypova is a retired pharmaceutical industry executive with 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development and co-founder of several organizations that work with pharmaceutical companies to design, execute, collect data, and submit clinical trial data to the FDA.

FDA Cures Act Made It Easier for Pharma and Regulatory Agencies to Cut Corners

The FDA, on its website, states the intent of the Cures Act (pdf) passed by Congress in December 2016  was to “incorporate the perspectives of patients into the development of drugs, biological products, and devices in FDA’s decision-making process” and enhance its ability to “modernize clinical trial designs,” including the use of “real world evidence” to speed up the development and review of novel medical products, including emergency and preparedness response countermeasures used to justify rapid authorization of COVID-19 vaccines.

Read more here…

We’ve all heard the stories about workers not wanting to return to the office. 

But it isn’t just the adults who are eager to do away with responsibility after the multiple-year free-for-all that was Covid – it’s now also the kids. A new report from Fortune details how Covid has “permanently severed something” relating to children and young adults attending school. Attendance is “plummeting”, the report says. 

The report details the story of Rousmery Negrón and her 11 year old son, who said that school was “less welcoming” after the pandemic. “Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry,” the report details, and parents were no longer allowed in the building without appointments. As a result, her son missed more than five months of sixth grade. 

Fortune writes about how this one case is symbolic of a larger trend across the country. Students have been absent at “record rates”, the report says and more than 25% of students missed “at least 10%” of the 2021-22 school year. Prior to Covid, this number stood at just 15% of students. 

6.5 million additional students became chronically absent, the report concludes, citing a study by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee in partnership with The Associated Press. After looking at data from 40 states, they found that absenteeism was more pronounced among black, Latino and low income students. 

Students not only miss out on education, but also on steady meals, counseling and socializing, the report says. Those who miss 18 days or more a year are at a higher risk of not learning how to read or dropping out altogether. 

Seven states saw the rate of chronically absent kids double for the 2021-22 school year from 2018-19. 

Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit addressing chronic absenteeism, told Fortune: “The long-term consequences of disengaging from school are devastating. And the pandemic has absolutely made things worse and for more students.”

Elmer Roldan, of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, added: “For almost two years, we told families that school can look different and that schoolwork could be accomplished in times outside of the traditional 8-to-3 day. Families got used to that.”

Recall, just days ago we wrote about 66% of finance workers said they would quit if they were forced back into the office. The revelation came as part of a survey published this week by Deloitte, reported on by Banking Dive. 

We have also been writing about how Wall Street banks have been mandating that their employees come back to the office now that the Covid hysteria has subsided. In March 2023, we wrote about how the era of working from home was drawing to a close. Returning to the office hasn’t gone over well everywhere. In Seattle, Amazon employees are protesting returning the office due to “climate change”, among other idiotic reasons, we wrote about in June.