Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The last week’s historic decisions from the Supreme Court led to an array of factual objections from critics.

In Justice Neil Gorsuch’s major free speech ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a man who believes that he is “Stewart” referenced in the case (as asking for a website for a same sex marriage) never made such a contact with the company. In Justice Sotomayor’s dissent to that case, the justice falsely claims that the Pulse mass shooting (“the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history”) was an intended anti-LGBT attack. (The shooter apparently was unaware of what type of nightclub it was).

Those mistakes, however, had little impact on the reasoning.

That is not the case with a mathematical challenge raised to the dissent of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in the North Carolina affirmative action case.

In a Wall Street Journal column, lawyer Ted Frank objects to what he argues is a “mathematically absurd claim” about black newborns in Jackson’s dissent. Jackson was arguing that affirmative action has been shown to “save lives” by allowing black doctors to give better care for black people than white doctors.

“It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

Frank objected:

“A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.”

The claim is based on a 2020 study cited in a footnote, which Justice Jackson appears to have taken from an amicus brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges.  However, Frank again objects that the study is not only “flawed” but does not make that claim:

“The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians).”

Frank says that “the AAMC brief either misunderstood the paper or invented the statistic.” He also notes that the study is flawed by relying on a linear regression given the small differential of 10 newborns a year. Instead, he claims that study did the accepted logistic model analysis in such cases but put the results in an appendix:

“There, the most highly specified model still shows an improvement in black newborn survival. But if you know how to read the numbers—the authors don’t say it—it also shows black doctors with a statistically significant higher mortality rate for white newborns, and a higher mortality rate overall, all else being equal.”

I cannot claim any particular skill at “reading the numbers.” However, this controversy captured my attention because I have always been leery of so-called “Brandeis briefs” before the Supreme Court where amici dump studies into the record.

Before joining the court, Justice Louis Brandeis filed such a brief in his brilliant challenge to work place conditions. It is now a common feature in briefing of cases as groups and associations push studies as determinative or substantial evidence on one side or another. My opposition to the brief is that the justices are in a poor position to judge the veracity or accuracy of such studies. They simply pick and choose between rivaling studies to claim a definitive factual foundation for an opinion.

It is also frustrating that, as a litigator, you fight over every entry into the record at trial. However, when you are before the Supreme Court, everyone is free to just dump statistics and studies into the record and the Court regularly uses such material to determine the outcome. It produces more of a legislative environment for the court as different parties insert data to support their own view of what is a better policy or more serious social problem. There is only a limited ability of parties to challenge such data given limits on time and space in briefing.

The result is that major decisions or dissents can be built on highly contested factual assertions. In this case, critics believe that the Jackson argument literally does not add up.

Members of a Vermont Indian tribe are demanding that the owner of Ben & Jerry’s give back ‘stolen’ land that the company’s headquarters is built on, after the ice cream company tweeted an America-hating reminder on the Fourth of July holiday that it was “high time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it.”

This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it. Learn more and take action now: https://t.co/45smaBmORH pic.twitter.com/a6qp7LXUAE

— Ben & Jerry’s (@benandjerrys) July 4, 2023

The ice cream maker further details their call to action on their website – saying that America needs to start by returning Mount Rushmore. “The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights,” the post alleged.

Don Stevens, Chief of the Nulhegan Band of The Coosuk Abenaki Nation, told Newsweek that his tribe is “always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands,” but that the ice cream company – owned by Unilever, has yet to contact them to return the land its headquarters now occupies.

“If and when we are approached, many conversations and discussions will need to take place to determine the best path forward for all involved,” said Stevens, who is a descendant of the Abenaki Nation, a confederacy of several tribes which at one time controlled an area of America that spans from northern Massachusetts to Bew Brunswick, Canada – meaning the Ben & Jerry’s Burlington, VT headquarters is now sitting on the very land the company is trying to wokeshame the country into giving back.

“If you look at the [Abenaki] traditional way of being, we are place-based people. Before recognized tribes in the state, we were the ones who were in this place,” Stevens said, claiming that the Abenaki see themselves as “stewards of the land.”

The company’s 4th of July message has sparked a nationwide boycott of the America-hating communist ice cream slingers.

@Ben&Jerry’s
It’s time to boycott Ben and Jerry’s until they give back the land that belongs to the native Americans. This is ancestral barrial grounds. Ben and Jerry’s build over the Graves of the elders of the tribe. If you want to give Reparations, give it to the Indians.#KAG pic.twitter.com/PXIzUyk0CJ

— Stephen.j.Olko (@j_olko1) July 6, 2023

Boycott Ben and Jerry’s until they return the land!!!

— steve (@scanx55) July 7, 2023

BEN & JERRYS SHOULD GIVE ALL THEIR ICE CREAM FACTORIES BACK TO THE NATIVE INDIANS. IF THEY DON’T THEN THEY ARE HYPOCRITES. pic.twitter.com/6M4jsDJ9ci

— ALPHA BIG DOG (@ALPHABIGDOG2) July 5, 2023

Meanwhile, the pain gets worse for Ben and Jerry’s owners, as the Epoch Times reports, Unilever stock has lost around $2 billion in market capitalization amid calls to boycott the company.

Shares of parent Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch multinational company, dropped about 0.5 percent on Friday, 0.8 percent on Thursday, and 0.5 the previous day. It’s not clear if the drop was due to the calls to boycott Ben & Jerry’s, which has been owned by Unilever since 2000.

“Make @benndjerrys Bud Light again,” country singer-songwriter John Rich wrote in response, responding to the several-week-long boycott targeting Bud Light that has seen the beer company’s year-over-year sales plummet. While Bud Light didn’t attack the founding of the United States, the company was panned for producing a can of beer with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s face on it.

“Long overdue for the Bud Light treatment. You hate the country, fine. We won’t buy your product. All good,” another wrote in response. “When is Ben & Jerry’s giving up their land?” Jenna Ellis, a former attorney to President Donald Trump, wrote on Twitter.

Several newspapers like the New York Post and Washington Examiner, too, called for a consumer-led boycott after the Twitter post.

“The brand backed bad-joke Occupy Wall Street, for crying out loud; it aligns with the anti-Israel BDS movement. Co-founder Ben Cohen funds groups opposed to US military aid to Ukraine,” the NY Post’s editorial wrote before calling for a boycott of the ice cream company. “Remember, America, you don’t have to accept woke preening from corporate elites. Speak up—with your wallets,” it said.

The Examiner said, “It may be fun to imagine, but, of course, Ben & Jerry’s will never actually give back the land its corporate office sits on. It will simply exert pressure on others to give up their land.”

It’s now Americans’ “job to try and turn the tide” against the company, the paper said.

The company, however, is no stranger to controversy and boycott calls. Over the years, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s have taken left-wing or anti-U.S. stances, and have also often been critical of American foreign policy efforts, including Washington’s decision to provide military aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Years ago, some called for a Ben & Jerry’s boycott after it refused to sell its ice cream in Israel’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, alleging those areas are being occupied by Israel.

In June, Ben & Jerry’s announced it wouldn’t pay to advertise on Twitter and claimed that “hate speech” is on the rise across the platform since Elon Musk purchased the company last year. In a blog post weeks ago, the company wrote that changes at Twitter are causing it “great concern” and that “hate speech is up dramatically while content moderation has become all but non-existent.”

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Now that debt is rising faster than “growth,” and “growth” is dependent on speculative credit-asset bubbles, the collapse of the Keynesian dream looms large.

Unbeknownst to economists, the Keynesian bedrock of modern economics–using financial repression and government spending funded by debt to manage the business cycle of growth and recession–is an artifact of a century of expansive cheap energy and virtuous demographics.

Presented as quasi-scientific “laws of economics,” Keynesian policies of suppressing interest rates and funding stimulus with debt were only possible in an era in which energy per capita (per person) always became more abundant and affordable in terms of the purchasing power of wages, i.e. how many hours of labor does it take to buy the energy to fuel a vehicle, prepare a meal, etc.

The demographics of the 100 years of Keynesian supremacy were also uniquely favorable. The workforce paying taxes and funding pay-as-you-go social benefits to retirees (Social Security and Medicare) and the less fortunate (welfare, Medicaid) expanded smartly decade after decade, expanding government revenues and spending as the natural result of an expanding workforce.

A third uniquely favorable condition was the vast pool of natural capital that had not yet been financialized, i.e. turned into a commodity that could be used as collateral for new debt and leverage. Tapping this untapped pool of capital enabled the vast expansion of debt, public and private. (See charts below)

A fourth uniquely favorable condition was globalization, a benign-sounding term for the brazen exploitation of the planet’s remaining reserves of resources and cheap labor. Profits swelled as these last pockets of easy-to-exploit sources of wealth were tapped.

These four conditions have all topped out and are now reversing. The cheap-to-access energy has been consumed, the workforce has shifted from expansion to stagnation while the populace of retirees explodes, globalization has run its course, having stripmined the planet and human populace, and every potential source of new collateral has been financialized / leveraged to the hilt.

Keynesian policies of pushing interest rates to near-zero to boost private debt and government deficit spending morphed from being “emergency policies” to permanent status quo. Given that greed and laziness are the human default settings, it was always unrealistic to think that the “emergency tools” of borrow-and-spend would be reserved for recessions / depressions. Now consumption, private and public, depends entirely on the permanent expansion of debt to fund not only consumption but the rising costs of servicing the ballooning debt.

The Keynesian fantasy always rested on one dynamic: we can expand production and consumption faster than we’re expanding debt and the cost of servicing that debt. With the four virtuous conditions now reversing, the cost of debt is rising far faster than the tepid increases in production and consumption generated by debt-funded spending.

The final desperate trick of the Keynesian fantasy is the wealth effect generated by speculative credit-asset bubbles, in which assets that were once grounded in utility and costs escape gravity and soar into the stratosphere, generating trillions of dollars in “free money” for those fortunate to have bought the assets before the bubble inflated.

The consumption afforded by this bubble-generated “free money” was the last source of Keynesian “growth”: just suppress interest rates to juice private borrowing, flood the financial system with liquidity, and voila, trillions in unearned “free money” flows to those who were already rich enough to own the assets catapulted to the moon.

But all dreams end, even the Keynesian one. The risks and costs of rising debt cannot be dreamed away, and the inevitable result is the cost of capital rises along with the risks and costs of soaring debt. Bubbles inflated by policies encouraging speculative leverage all pop, devastating those who thought the “free money” would never end.

The planet has already been stripmined of cheap-to-access resources and cheap labor. Costs are rising and playing financial games with interest rates can’t reverse real-world costs or the rising costs of capital. Demographics can’t be reversed by financial trickery, either.

The Keynesian fantasy is drawing to a close. Financialization and endless debt-funded stimulus were artifacts of four unique conditions (cheap, abundant energy, demographics, globalization and financialization) that have all topped out and are now sliding down the backside of the S-Curve. AI can put lipstick on the mirror but it is incapable of reversing the end-game decay of these four unique conditions.

Since there’s no alternative to the Keynesian dream of eternal “growth” funded by magic, we’re doing more of what’s failed until the system collapses in a heap: we’ll do more of what’s failed until it fails spectacularly.

It’s worth recalling Peter Drucker’s observation that enterprises don’t have profits, they only have costs. The same can be said of governments and entire economies. Borrowing to pay rising costs has a short-half life because debt accrues its own costs and piles up risks which have their own uniquely asymmetric dynamics.

Now that debt is rising faster than “growth,” and “growth” is dependent on speculative credit-asset bubbles, the collapse of the Keynesian dream looms large. Plan accordingly, i.e. reduce your own exposure to risk via Self-Reliance.

*  *  *

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“The intelligence of AI systems is being overhyped and, while we could get there eventually, we are currently nowhere near achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).”

Those are the words of Gary Marcus, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, as he pours cold water on the ‘AI Boom’ that has almost single-handedly supported the entire stock market for the last month.

We have seen these hype-cycles before…

Source: Bloomberg

In a conversation with Goldman Sachs’ Jenny Grimberg, Marcus explains how generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools actually work today?

At the core of all current generative AI tools is basically an autocomplete function that has been trained on a substantial portion of the internet.

These tools possess no understanding of the world, so they’ve been known to hallucinate, or make up false statements.

The tools excel at largely predictable tasks like writing code, but not at, for example, providing accurate medical information or diagnoses, which autocomplete isn’t sophisticated enough to do.

Contrary to what some may argue, the professor explains that these tools don’t reason anything like humans.

AI machines are learning, but much of what they learn is the statistics of words, and, with reinforcement learning, how to properly respond to certain prompts.

They’re not learning abstract concepts.

That’s why much of the content they produce is garbage and/or false.

Humans have an internal model of the world that allows them to understand each other and their environments.

AI systems have no such model and no curiosity about the world. They learn what words tend to follow other words in certain contexts, but human beings learn much more just in the course of interacting with each other and with the world around them.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science of creating intelligent machines. AI is a broad concept that encompasses several different subfields, including machine learning, natural language processing, neural networks, and deep learning.

So, is the hype around generative AI overblown?

Marcus responds like any good academic – “Yes and no.”

Generative AI tools are no doubt materially impacting our lives right now, both positively and negatively.

They’re generating some quality content, but also misinformation, which, for example, could have significant adverse consequences for the 2024 US presidential election.

But the intelligence of AI systems is being overhyped.

A few weeks ago, it was claimed that OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model (LLM) passed the undergraduate exams in engineering and computer science at MIT, which stirred up a lot of excitement. But it turned out that the methodology was flawed, and in fact my long-time collaborator Ernie Davis pointed that out around a year ago, yet people still proceeded to use it.

We are nowhere near achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Those who believe AGI is imminent are almost certainly wrong.

Here’s how we got here…

Finally, Marcus explains that his biggest concern is that we’re giving an enormous amount of power and authority to the small number of companies that currently control AI systems, and in subtle ways that we may not even be aware of.

The data on which LLMs are trained can have bias effects on the model output, which is disquieting given that these systems are starting to shape our beliefs. Another concern is around the truthfulness of AI systems – as mentioned, they’ve been known to hallucinate.

Bad actors can use these systems for deliberate abuse, from spreading harmful medical misinformation to disrupting elections, which could gravely threaten society.

Be wary of the hype, Marcus concludes, AI is not yet as magical as many people think.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s too early to invest in AI; some investments in companies with smart founding teams that have a good understanding of product market fit will likely succeed. But there will be a lot of losers. So, investors need to do their homework and perform careful due diligence on any potential investment. It’s easy for a company to claim that they’re an AI company, but do they have a moat around them? Do they have a technical or data advantage that makes them likely to succeed? Those are important questions for investors to be asking.

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

Employers continue to cut back on temporary employment, something typically seen in the run-up to recessions.

Temporary help services is one of the most leading components of the payrolls report. Employers typically let temporary staff go first in a slowdown before full-time employees.

Temp help fell again in June and has been contracting on an annual basis for several months, anticipating the slowing trend in payrolls we are currently seeing.

As the chart above shows, there is more to come, with total payrolls potentially contracting on an annual basis by the end of the year.

Firms are not only cutting temporary employees, they are reducing hours worked, also typical of what happens before firms start to fire people. The average weekly hours worked of all employees has been steadily falling.

Stocks and yields are currently roughly back to where they were prior to the jobs date release, suggesting the market continues to believe the Fed will prioritize inflation over growth.

The pedo-loving propagandists at the once-great Rolling Stone are at it again, this time seemingly defending child traffickers with a scathing review of Jim Caviezel’s anti-child-trafficking film, Sound of Freedom – which they described as a “QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking” which is “designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer.”

REVIEW: ‘Sound of Freedom,’ the QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking, is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer. https://t.co/XSFFsWV6Me

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 7, 2023

Authored by pothead journalist Miles Klee, the review attacks Caviezel as “a prominent figure on the conspiracist right,” and slams the actor’s past claims over elite pedophile rings that kidnap, rape and murder children to harvest adrenochrome, a compound produced in the brain that reportedly contains psychedelic effects, as featured in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Apparently Caviezel’s beliefs invalidate the premise of the film, which was inspired by the very real work of Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad.

Klee writes of the film;

“It’s a stomach-turning experience, fetishizing the torture of its child victims and lingering over lush preludes to their sexual abuse. At times I had the uncomfortable sense that I might be arrested myself just for sitting through it…” [ZH: and why would that be, Miles?]

Back to reality, the Sound of Freedom currently enjoys a 99% user rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and 75% from ‘Hollywood type’ professional reviewers (if ya know what we mean).

The rag’s tweet received a blistering response;

International child trafficking benefits from open borders anarchy. And sexualizing children is new admitted tenet of the extremist Left. So I’m especially surprised Sound of Freedom is even seeing the light of day. @Cernovich @JackPosobiec https://t.co/WP7GX5mhim

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) July 8, 2023

The talking points have gone out pic.twitter.com/2wPPzrnrLk

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 8, 2023

Why would you even start to try and trash a film about thousands and thousands of intensely suffering children??

Why would you do that?
Is the government telling you to do this?

— Event Horizon 🚀 (@NReclining) July 8, 2023

Rolling Stone is running cover for child-traffickers in an article designed to appeal to the conscience of pedophiles. https://t.co/GO4gSRTuR5

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 7, 2023

Does Rolling Stone believe that child sex trafficking is a myth? It would appear so from this tweet. Their scorn for all conservatives leads them to gloss over what is a truly horrifying problem that actually does exist. https://t.co/ohix3t5lxj

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) July 8, 2023

Does Rolling Stone believe that child sex trafficking is a myth? It would appear so from this tweet. Their scorn for all conservatives leads them to gloss over what is a truly horrifying problem that actually does exist. https://t.co/ohix3t5lxj

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) July 8, 2023

Why do you support child trafficking?

— George Alexopoulos (@GPrime85) July 8, 2023

Oh look, it’s not just Rolling Stone…

“Sound of Freedom,” the low-budget film about child sex trafficking almost topped the box office on July 4.

But its star, Jim Caviezel, has linked it to the QAnon movement. https://t.co/4Je2YB3CBH

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 7, 2023

Not just Rolling Stone… https://t.co/Jro2sdkbhZ

— Colin Makis (@colintheconsul) July 8, 2023

Why is establishment media attacking an anti-child-trafficking film?

Look at how they talk about Sound of Freedom vs. Cuties

One movie is about ending child trafficking and the other sexualizes kids

The media is the enemy of the people pic.twitter.com/0iHfPNWXct

— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) July 8, 2023

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was now in Russia, raising questions about the deal between Moscow and the mercenary leader that ended his short-lived mutiny.

“As for Yevgeny Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg. Maybe he went to Moscow, but he is not on Belarusian soil,” Lukashenko said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Prigozhin initially traveled to Belarus after the two-day mutiny that took place on June 23 and 24. According to media reports, the understanding was that Prigozhin was going to live in Belarus in exile and that charges against him would be dropped.

Wagner fighters were given the option of going to Belarus, signing contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, or going home to their families.

Discussing Lukashenko’s comments with reporters, the Kremlin said they would not track Prigozhin. “No, we are not tracking his [Prigozhin’s] whereabouts, have no possibilities and desire to do so,”  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Lukashenko also discussed the possibility of Wagner fighters being deployed to Belarus. Some members of the mercenary force are expected to go to Belarus, but it’s not clear how many or in what capacity. Lukashenko said those decisions were up to Russian authorities.

“It will all depend on the decision of the company’s management and Russian authorities. If they consider it necessary to deploy some troops [from Wagner] in Belarus for some rest and training, I will certainly execute my order,” he said.

The Belarusian leader said that for now, Wagner fighters were at their “permanent base camps” where they withdrew to after the battle of Bakhmut.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

July began with a series of bangs that cannot be ignored.

I’m not talking about the noise coming from both Russia and Ukraine over the ‘counter-offensive’ or who wants to blow up the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant.

I’m talking about the downstream effects that conflict has brought about. The old world is breaking down along sectarian lines as we watch Russia continue to fight the West to a standstill along the banks of the Dnieper river.

And a standstill should be the most likely outcome on all of our geopolitical bingo cards.

From capital markets to geopolitics I’ve been targeting next week’s big NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania as a potential turning point.

All of the conflicts out there today clogging up the headlines, from naval encounters in the Persian Gulf to Janet Yellen stoking conflict with China with her mere presence, reduce to a single conclusion.

Every major power faction in the West is fearing loss of power.

In 2018 this was a big insight into geopolitics. Today it’s passe and with good reason.

It’s obvious.

But that’s where the easy part ends. Because when you reach periods like this, where some players have gone off script and the plan has not survived contact with the enemy, the natural reaction to that is factionalization.

Cartels are meta-stable, all of them. From the local school board to the biggest international convocation of globalists, cartels are only as strong as the current hand held by all the players.

To use my well-worn hockey analogy, when the team is winning there are no problems in the locker room. When the losing starts, that’s when the fingers point, the voices rise, and eventually the coach gets fired because you can’t fire the whole team.

Today French President Emmanuel Macron may just be the coach.

The infighting at the top of the cabal that thinks it runs the world is reaching a fever pitch. The stench of desperation is so thick now they have to send the old folks out to do diplomacy because they don’t sweat as much.

And this brings me to France and Macron.

Long Guillotines

The riots in France have been a long time coming. The middle class has been in revolt for years over Davos policy designed to destroy their lives and force them into pods or be destroyed. From the Yellow Vests initial protests to today’s outright riots, France has been building to this moment for years.

Immigration has riven the strong French identity apart. And now we have the predictable inter-racial violence sparked by the death of a 17 year-old Algerian. But is that the real story? Is it the only angle on this story?

Of course it isn’t. And I’m not here to tell you I know what that real story is but I can tell you, as always, that the timing is dubious especially considering what’s happening at the international level as we approach next week’s NATO summit.

My good friend Alex “All Roads Lead to London” Krainer published a thoughtful piece on France and, predictably, he came to the tentative conclusion that the current explosion of violence in France bears all the hallmarks of a British-led color revolution.

And it’s hard to disagree with him.

France has been a thorn in the side of the march towards NATO expansion and US/UK-led dominance of policy for decades going back to DeGaulle. Even committed globalist leaders like Francois Hollande and Jacques Chirac opposed the way NATO has morphed since the end of the Soviet Union (see Alex’s brief history lessons for context).

Now, it’s not as simple as Macron would like you to believe; he’s the good cop to everyone else’s bad cop when it comes to war with Russia and/or China. But you would be hard-pressed to believe otherwise if you just scanned certain headlines and didn’t dig even a millimeter deeper.

Everyone in the EU has their assigned roles and they play them to the hilt perfectly. The problem comes when those roles clash with the other members of the cabal, some of whom are either getting cold feet or believe the current leadership is off-program.

This is what I think is happening between the Anglosphere and France, in particular.

Macron was not playacting when he was blindsided by the AUKUS alliance and the cancellation of the submarine contract in 2021. His powerbase rests on keeping both the French military, held in very high regard by the French people, and the French military contractors happy.

Losing that contract was a major slap in the face to both. So, this lends some credence to Macron being the point man for the EU’s power play to control/undermine NATO and replace it with his long sought after EU Army.

In the run up to the current war against Russia being fought in Ukraine, Macron has presented himself as the guy trying to stop the madness and avoid war. He very publicly made a call to Moscow before the war broke out to try and intermediate.

Of course the Russians let it be known that Macron only called to reiterate the same old tired demands about Ukrainian territorial integrity. As far as his being the voice of reason in Europe it’s all theatre all the time with Macron.

He’s a master virtue signaler.

What he really wants is what I’ve been saying Davos has wanted from the beginning of the Biden administration: a half-crazed US/UK going to total war against Russia in Ukraine to weaken both sides while he positions France and Germany to be the new defense contractors for Europe.

This would set the stage domestically for Europe to then push for the end of NATO, further subsume national sovereignty into the EU regulatory Borg and eventually roll all of this up into a UN-led global government.

On this front he’s been a useful idiot for old British globalist powers (c.f. Episode #146 of the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast with Richard Poe)

I’ve amended that to now add in marginalizing Italian industry to ensure Franco/German hegemony over the EU as part of the part. We all learn as we go here, folks.

Now, I’m not saying this is a smart plan, or even a very likely outcome, but it is clearly what he and the rest of the fart-sniffing, out-of-touch, arrogant Eurotrash commies want and continue to believe they can get.

So, Macron is playing the long-game for Davos to get Europe independent from the US/UK security architecture of NATO while leading an internal French takeover of the EU itself. And don’t think for a second that he/Davos don’t want to flip this whole project on its head leaving the British as the serfs this time.

This is rankling the old British Neoconservatives and their partners-in-crime at the US State Dept., National Security Council, K-Street think tanks and the CIA.

It’s nothing new, folks.

France and England have always been rivals. And the Brits are constantly triangulating France and the US to keep both off-balance all the time. They use Polish and Baltic Russophobia to triangulate against Germany all the time as well.

It’s what pathological malignant narcissists do.

Triangle Offense

That said, the machinations within the EU are still there with France working with Germany to keep the Italians down while setting itself up to invade northern Italy under the 2021 Treaty of Quirinale signed by PM Mario Draghi (job well done) and witnessed by President Sergio Mattarella.

Both of them Davosians to their core.

Sure it’s hailed as a ‘new level of cooperation between France and Italy,” but it’s exactly what you think it is, a poison pill to ensure Italy has a tougher time leaving the EU and giving France easy access to buying up Italian companies, subverting Italian sovereignty and ingenuity for the glory of France.

Consistently in recent months Macron has been playing “good cop” while on global tour. During the recent meeting between EU leaders and China, for example, the Germans reprimanded China about human rights and supporting Ukraine while Macron signed a big deal for Airbus.

Then there is Macron’s recent attempt to worm his way into the upcoming BRICS Summit in August to which he was rejected to no one’s surprise. But again, it’s just like the phone call to Putin before the war.

“See! He’s the nice Eurotrash commie globalist. He wants to make nice nice with the dirty Slavs and Muslims.”

It’s all so very tiresome.

And that brings me to the arguments made by Alex Krainer and others that the current riots in France look like an attempted color revolution against Macron. Macron’s behavior induced, I’m sure, more than a little schadenfreude in Russian President Vladimir Putin who only last week had to shut down what still looks like a US/UK play against him through Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

After years of watching Macron sneer viciously during attempted overthrows of Assad in Syria and Lukashenko in Belarus only to remain silent during Prigozhin’s rebellion two weeks ago, Macron is now decrying ‘foreign influence’ in France’s troubles demanding social media be shut down, like he was some horrific Iranian mullah, and now openly using dictatorial powers to spy on people through their phones.

I mean, what is he, some kind of vile authoritarian dictator?

Where’s George Soros and his pathetic Open Society Foundation (now having to cut staff drastically as the funding dries up) to decry the clash of governance models? Isn’t France now no better than Russia or China?

The stunning silence is golden as it were.

Heading Off NATO at the Pass

If the UK was behind this French powder keg exploding what would be the proximate cause for it?

It’s no secret that the British are fuming about Defense Secretary Ben Wallace no longer in the line of succession to lead NATO. President Biden, now openly owned and operated by so many people he can’t possibly know who he’s representing anymore as the noose closes in around him at home, crushed Wallace’s candidacy to retain Jens Stoltenberg for another year as General Secretary.

Why Stoltenberg? Consistency in leadership to run out the clock. Because the true heir apparent Ursula Von der Leyen’s term is up next year as EU Commission President, that’s why. Von der Leyen is Klaus Schwab’s girl through and through. And her rising to the top of NATO is all just part of the real plan to deprecate NATO as the EU goes its own way.

In the lead up to next week’s summit Stoltenberg made comments that pricked up the ears of Andrew Korybko who noted the omission of continued arms support to Ukraine in his expectations of what would be achieved.

Stoltenberg:

“I expect Allied leaders will agree a package with three elements, to bring Ukraine closer to NATO. First, we will agree a multi-year programme of assistance. To ensure full interoperability between the Ukrainian armed forces and NATO. Second, we will upgrade our political ties. By establishing the NATO-Ukraine Council. And third, I expect Allied leaders will reaffirm that Ukraine will become a member of NATO. And unite on how to bring Ukraine closer to its goal.”

I agree with Andrew that there is something happening here that the UK, Poles and Baltics are not going to like one whit. They’ve been trying to set up a backdoor treaty with Ukraine to create a NATO tripwire. Polish and Lithuanian presidents were in Kiev in late June discussing the formation of a joint brigade with Ukraine for later this year.

Setting the table for Von der Leyen to succeed Stoltenberg leaves a very Davos taste in NATO’s mouth which would suit Macron to a tee and leave the UK hopping mad.

Have the Europeans finally realized they can’t outlast the Russians in Ukraine because the US military and banking system are saying, “That’s quite enough of that, thank you very much?” If you want to fight for Ukraine, you do it.

If so, then they are ready to call it a day in Ukraine and let their plans to have Blackrock et.al. rebuild the country in Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution image.

With President Biden coming under increasing pressure the window for escalating this war past the point of no return for NATO and the US is closing. Hence the rapidity with which cards are hitting the table and markers getting called in.

And if that is the case then wouldn’t it make sense for the UK to accelerate civil unrest in France, sow internal division at the exact wrong moment, when the Fed and the Bank of Japan are squeezing the European continent between the twin millstones of higher energy costs driving inflation and higher interest rates blowing gaping holes in national balance sheets?

City of London is losing its control over its US colony. The Fed is now wholly independent of the LIBOR board. Our capital markets will trade independently of the concerns within the UK and/or Europe.

It’s no longer “Our banks, your problem” for the US. It’s now “Our dollars, your problem” for Europe.

Think back to Macron’s bitching about the cost of US LNG and the UK announcing major offshore oil and gas investments. This led directly to the ouster of Prime Minister Liz Truss and Europe’s Rishi Sunak coming into power.

With everything moving so quickly, mapping who works for whom at this point is nearly impossible to work out unless you keep the basic principles of triangulation and colonization in mind.

It may all come down to the next couple of weeks in France as this revolt against Macron may just be the biggest blackmail gambit we’ve seen in a long time.

But nothing less than the fate of a 300 year project for world government hangs in the balance. Everyone of these horrific factions wants to rule the world but none of them have the means by themselves to pull it off. So, watching them maneuver each other into the line of fire would be hilarious if the stakes weren’t so freaking high for the rest of us.

But that’s enough for today.

In part II I’ll try and tackle why the financial side of this is almost more interesting than the political side.

*  *  *

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Over the course of ten months, benchmark cocoa futures prices in London have surged by more than 51%, driven by the worsening global shortage of this crucial ingredient used in the world’s sweet snacks. 

Bloomberg pointed out, “The biggest cocoa trade in more than a decade is rattling the London exchange,” noting gyrations in the cocoa markets bring back memories of Anthony Ward, who co-founded trading house Armajaro, tried to corner the entire cocoa market in a legendary trade known as “Chocfinger.” 

Traders have said the worsening multi-year deficits of cocoa have reduced stockpiles, forcing some chocolate makers with no other choice but to panic buy. This has unleashed a massive squeeze, sending the cocoa contracts for July to £240 a ton premium versus the next contract. 

The last time this happened was when commodities trader Ward via Armajaro’s CC+ fund, took one of the largest-ever cocoa deliveries in 2010. It led to an eruption in price. 

One commodity firm has said chocolate makers have depleted reserves and are left with no other choice but to buy in the open market:

“Buyers have been behind in purchases.

 “As prices climbed and there were concerns of even higher prices, they threw in the towel to buy more,” said consultant Judy Ganes, president of J. Ganes Consulting. 

That’s all happening around the biggest net-short position on record by commercial players being unwound earlier this year, plus the devastating effects of El Nino on crops. 

… and what does this mean for consumers? Well, higher chocolate prices are ahead. 

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Antti Lindtman, a favorite to replace Sanna Marin as his party’s chair, told a Finnish tabloid newspaper the embarrassing photographs were not intended for public viewing…

A top Finnish politician in the running to replace former Prime Minister Sanna Marin as leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has sought to explain how he came to be photographed stark naked, save a balaclava and Santa hat, with a group of friends giving Hitler salutes.

Antti Lindtman, the current chairman of the Social Democratic Parliamentary Group and a member of parliament for the Finnish district of Uusimaa, has admitted to being one of the individuals in a number of resurfaced photos taken when the 40-year-old politician was 18 years old.

The photographs, which show Lindtman and four other individuals posing in Santa hats and full face masks, equipped with replica firearms, and giving the Sieg Heil salute, have been circulated on social media and among the Finnish media since Tuesday. The SDP politician has now commented on the scandal via the Iltalehti tabloid newspaper.

“I am in the picture in the back with a plastic bullet gun in my hand,” Lindtman admitted.

“These pictures were not meant to be made public, mainly because we are scantily clad,” he told the newspaper, adding that the photographs had been uploaded to a private website more than a decade ago and that Lindtman had asked the site’s administrator to remove the images years ago.

The Finn said of those giving Nazi salutes that they had “obviously gone too far with posing,” and insisted the photographs were taken at a Christmas party for his high school film group when he was still a teenager.

“The pictures were taken as a thank you to those who helped us make a short film,” Lindtman told the Finnish tabloid newspaper.

“I wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer then, and I’m not now,” he insisted. “Even then, I could not have been in favor of the neo-Nazis because of my opinions.”

Lindtman took to Twitter on Wednesday accusing saboteurs of manipulating the photographs; however, there is no evidence the photograph has been doctored in any way, and the politician himself has admitted he participated in the photo shoot.

The SDP politician is considered the favorite to take over the chair of his party from outgoing leader Sanna Marin at the party congress in early September.

It is too soon to say whether this scandal will prove fatal for his political ambitions, but it’s safe to assume it won’t help.

Lindtman has been particularly outspoken in his criticism of the newly formed coalition government between the center-right National Coalition Party and the right-wing populist Finns Party.

He condemned Vilhelm Junnila, a member of the Finns Party who has already resigned as a minister of the coalition government after it was revealed he made Hitler jokes and spoke at an event attended by neo-Nazis.

“A country that sends a person known for Nazi sympathies to market Finland to international companies can cause itself genuine reputational harm and damage,” Lindtman tweeted last week.