Whether it begins in Eastern Europe or the South China Sea, World War III threats are mounting with each passing week. The latest data shows global military spending increased for the eighth consecutive year in 2022 to an all-time high. The surge in European spending primarily drove this increase due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Global defense expenditures increased by 3.7% in real terms to a record high of $2.24 trillion in 2022, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) wrote in a report. 

The sharpest rise was 13% in European arms budgets, the largest increase in 30 years. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred many surrounding countries, as did ones in Asia due to rising tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, to increase spending. 

Some of the sharpest military spending increases in Europe were in Finland (36 %), Lithuania (27%), Sweden (12%), and Poland (11%) — many of these countries are near Russia. The largest increases globally also include Qatar and Saudi Arabia. 

“The continuous rise in global military expenditure in recent years is a sign that we are living in an increasingly insecure world,” said Dr. Nan Tian, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. 

“States are bolstering military strength in response to a deteriorating security environment, which they do not foresee improving in the near future,” Tian said. 

SIPRI estimated that military aid to Ukraine from the US was around $19.9 billion, which accounted for a 2.3% increase in total US military spending last year. The US is still the world’s biggest military spender, nearly reaching $900 billion in 2022 (Maybe $1 trillion soon?). China is the second largest military spending, then Russia. 

Combine the military spending of the three largest arms spenders US, China, and Russia, and they all accounted for 56% of global expenditures. 

Surging military spending is a symptom of an increasingly insecure world.

Authored by Lee Fang via leefang.substack.com,

In the midst of a contentious debate about Chicago’s plan to force employers to require their workers to take the COVID-19 vaccine, Karen Freeman-Wilson, president of the Chicago Urban League, appeared on television to dismiss complaints that such rules would disproportionately harm the Black community.

“The health and safety factor here far outweighs the concern about shutting people out or creating a barrier,” Freeman-Wilson said on WTTW in August 2021.
 

Earlier that year, her group had received a $100,000 grant from Pfizer, the manufacturer of one of the most commonly used COVID-19 vaccines in the United States, for a project to promote “vaccine safety and effectiveness.” Although the Chicago Urban League is not normally shy about disclosing its corporate donors, the support from Pfizer is not listed in the “partners” section on its website. The drug industry funding likewise went unmentioned during the interview.

Pfizer’s grant to the Chicago Urban League was one of many that Pfizer made to nonprofits and trade organizations. Pfizer doled out special funding to groups across the country that lobbied in favor of government policies to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine.

The extensive list of those with funding from the pharmaceutical giant includes consumer, doctor, and medical groups, as well as public health organizations and civil rights nonprofits. Many of those groups did not disclose the funding they received from Pfizer while they were advocating for policies that would force workers to get the vaccine. 

There were several different and sometimes overlapping vaccine mandates in the country. At the federal level, President Joe Biden issued an executive order, which was ultimately struck down in court, mandating vaccinations at all employers with 100 workers or more. A number of state and local governments forced public employees to get vaccinated and tried to force private-sector employers to follow suit. And many large employers required their employees to get vaccinated without any prodding from the government. 

Critics of these employer mandates have noted that the majority of the proposed mandates, including Biden’s, made no exception for individuals with natural immunity through prior infection. Proponents of the mandates claimed that the vaccines would prevent transmission of COVID-19, an argument that lacked sound scientific basis at the time and has further unraveled.

“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” Biden falsely claimed in July 2021, as his administration and local governments were preparing mandate orders. Rochelle Wallensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, similarly stated that vaccinated individuals “do not carry the virus.”

But it wasn’t just these unsupported claims by leading government officials that shaped the groundwork for COVID-19 mandates. A coalition of highly visible groups backed by Pfizer and the pharmaceutical industry provided much of the lobbying support for coercive vaccine policies. Here are the most important examples:

• The National Consumers League, a century-old corporate watchdog group, announced support for “government and employer mandates requiring [COVID-19] vaccination” in August 2021, during roughly the same period in which it accepted $75,000 from Pfizer earmarked for “vaccine policy efforts.” The organization is also led in part by Andrea LaRue, who serves as an NCL board member. LaRue’s work as a highly paid contract lobbyist to Pfizer, focused on vaccine policy, is not disclosed by NCL’s website. 

• The Immunization Partnership, a Houston-based public health nonprofit, lobbied publicly against Texas legislation in 2021 designed to prevent vaccine passports and municipal vaccine mandates. The Immunization Partnership claimed that the bills “erode the vital role of our state’s public health and medical experts in combating this pandemic.” The partnership did not disclose that it received $35,000 from Pfizer that year for “legislative advocacy.”

Subscribers to Lee Fang can read the rest by clicking here…

For anyone looking to keep their finger on the pulse of how commercial real estate is holding up, look no further than major U.S. cities like Houston, Dallas, New York And San Francisco.

Those were the four cities mentioned in a new Yahoo Finance report detailing how landlords are “having a tougher time filling their empty office buildings with new tenants”, citing data from CoStar and JP Morgan. 

The glut is a result of overbuilding while interest rates were lower, the report says, noting that Houston and Dallas “put up more new office space between 2010 and 2021 than all regions except New York”. Even more alarming is the fact that they have “millions more square feet under construction”, Yahoo says. And despite discounting, vacancies are now highest in those two cities compared to any other metro area. 

Houston and Dallas had 18.8% and 17.2% of office space vacant at the end of last year, respectively. The national average is 12.5%, with New York, San Jose, San Francisco, and Chicago posting vacancy rates of 12.3%, 12%, 16.4%, and 15.1%, Yahoo wrote. 

APOLLO: “Data from downtowns show that cellphone activity in San Francisco is at 31% of pre-pandemic levels.

New York is at 74%
Chicago is at 50%
Boston is at 54% ..

… This has implications for retail, restaurants, and office.” [Slok] pic.twitter.com/6Zk7apNspI

— Carl Quintanilla 🔥 (@carlquintanilla) April 24, 2023

The vacancies in Houston and Dallas come not only despite aggressive discounting, but even as both cities have had better luck with employees returning to the office than other cities. For example, worker attendance was 60% in Houston and 50% in Dallas, as of the first week in April 2023. Those figures are higher than cities like New York and San Jose. 

About $1 billion in outstanding commercial mortgage backed security loans in Houston, secured by office properties, are coming due this year, Yahoo writes. Dallas faces and aggregate of over $1 billion in maturities by 2024, as well. 

Itziar Aguirre, CoStar’s director of market analytics for Houston, commented: “Refinancing risk over the near term is high and it’s gonna be really tough because interest rates are so high. There’s gonna be a lot of foreclosures. I think there’s gonna be bankruptcies. There’s gonna be a lot of distressed sales.”

You can read Yahoo’s full report here. 

Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

How can it happen that an annual program would cost 94 times times what Illinoisans were told it would cost just three years ago – $188 million in its first year? With subsequent extensions it now costs nearly $1 billion per year and growing, money the state doesn’t have.

A better question: How could it not happen, given the abject disregard for cost of the program and Illinois’ routinely scandalous budget process?

And wait ’till you hear the excuse for the fiasco from Gov. J.B Pritzker’s administration.

Here’s what happened: In May 2020 Illinois, became the first state to provide Medicaid for undocumented seniors. The coverage was “tucked in near the end of the 465-page budget implementation bill that passed the Illinois General Assembly late Saturday night,” as reported by the State Journal-Register at the time. That’s how Illinois’ budget is routinely implemented. A budget plus an implementation bill, usually totaling at least a thousand pages, is put up for a vote with only hours of review.

The program would cost just $2 million per year, the bill’s sponsor said at the time. That’s Delia Ramirez, a Chicago Democrat in the Illinois House at the time. Pritzker signed the bill without any cost estimate by his office. That’s all we knew at the time.

But the cost of the program blew though the appropriation for it even within the first month of implementation and soared beyond all subsequent estimates and appropriations. That’s according to a closed-door presentation by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to lawmakers last month that became public last week.

For the year from March 2022 through February 2023, cost of care for the 65 and over age group was nearly $188 million, which is 94 times what Ramirez claimed.

Since then, the state expanded the program twice, lowering the age limit to 55 in 2021 and 42 a year later. The cost estimates of those expansions also shatter estimates made along the way. Now, the expanded program is estimated to cost $990 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That’s an increase of $768 million over this year, which was the first full year under the expanded program.

No portion of that cost is reimbursable by the federal government.

More details are reported in a particularly good column by Capital News Illinois.

The problem and the cost uncertainty are still growing, largely because nobody really knows how many illegal immigrants are here and millions more enter the country every year.

Undeterred, House Democrats recently filed House Bill 1570 to further expand free health benefits for undocumented immigrants by adding ages 19-41 to the program.

Why was the report exposing this discussed only behind closed doors last month in the General Assembly?

I have found no excuse.

Is anybody being held accountable?

Certainly not Ramirez.

She got a promotion from voters who elected her to the United States House of Representatives in 2022.

How about Pritzker?

Pritzker’s office has given two answers, the first of which is to blame legislators. His office says they didn’t prepare their own cost estimates before the program became law because it was a lawmaker-driven initiative. Republicans have complained that the program was never vetted in committee before being added to the budget, but that apparently didn’t concern Pritzker.

Pritzker’s second answer is a doozy, essentially saying, “How dare you you question us about budgeting. We Democrats are great with budgets.” Specifically, here’s what Pritzker’s press spokesman, Jordan Abudayyeh, told CapitalFax:

The Republicans said it’s time we have some adults in the room when it comes to budgeting. To be clear, the only lawmakers with a proven record of balancing the budget and improving state finances are Governor Pritzker and the Democratic supermajority in the General Assembly. The Governor just proposed another balanced budget that invests in education, healthcare, and communities. The credit ratings agencies have so much trust in his track record that after his proposal the state received two credit upgrades.

Let’s review some history. Who eliminated the bill backlog that reached $16 billion left by the Republican governor? Democrats. Whose prudent fiscal decisions led to eight credit upgrades? Democrats. Who paid additional pension payments? Democrats. Who invested hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild our human services infrastructure after the Republican budget impasse? Democrats. Who rebuilt the rainy day fund to nearly $2 billion? Democrats. Who balanced the budget four years in a row? Democrats.

The budget, of course, isn’t remotely close to being balanced for other reasons, as we’ve often explained.

But even if it were, the Pritzker Administration apparently wants us to accept that unbudgeted spending should be overlooked because of its supposed budget prowess.

Pritzker’s office says there is about $300 million available to cover the $768 million increased cost for the coming year over the current year. Where the difference will come from remains to be seen.

Illinois House Republicans, at a Thursday press conference, called for a moratorium and an audit on the program. They complained bitterly about how the program and each extension were slipped into other legislation with no review. “Zero transparency, zero accountability, zero public input,” said Assistant Republican Leader C.D. Davidsmeyer (R-Jacksonville),

The Republicans noted that the additional pressure on Medicaid from the program and its expansions is happening at the same time the state is expected to lose $760 million in special Medicaid federal funding for its own citizens that was provided to states during the pandemic.

Davidsmeyer indicated that he fears the pending, further expansion of the program to younger age groups will again be stuck into a budget bill or some other massive omnibus bill at the end of this legislative session, without real review.

“The sad fact is Illinois has become a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants,” he said.

“The State of Illinois gives them free healthcare benefits, driver’s licenses, mortgage and renters’ assistance, as well as other taxpayer-funded benefits. All I can say is ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

And “cost be damned,” he might have added.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang reaffirmed in Friday remarks that China would “never back down” on the issue of Taiwan – a warning to the West which came during a speech focused on China’s central contributions to the global economy. 

“The Taiwan problem is at the core of China’s core interests,” Qin said near the end of the speech. “We will never back down in the face of any act that undermines China’s sovereignty and security. Those who play with fire on the question of Taiwan will burn themselves.”

He also addressed recent and ongoing accusations that China is seeking to change the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait. “It is not the Chinese mainland but the Taiwan independence separatist forces and a handful of countries attempting to disrupt the status quo,” he asserted.

Over a month ago his words were even more forceful, and aimed directly at the United States. He said in early March, not long after taking charge as China’s foreign minister at the end of December, that “If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there surely will be conflict and confrontation.”

But on the other side the West isn’t ready to back down from supporting Taiwan security and sovereignty either, seen especially in EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell’s controversial call for the bloc’s navies to patrol the the Taiwan Strait. He published the words in a French weekly, Journal Du Dimanche, on Sunday.

Borrell wrote that the self-ruled island “concerns us economically, commercially and technologically” – and urged for European navies to ensure its protection. He said, “That’s why I call on European navies to patrol the Taiwan Strait to show Europe’s commitment to freedom of navigation in this absolutely crucial area.“

As for Beijing, it has spent years warning the West not to “play with fire” regarding the status of the self-ruled island. Officially, China’s policy is to see peaceful reunification via political means, but sees Washington’s frequent high level contacts with Taipei’s leadership as interference.

Chinese state-owned Global Times has specifically responded to Borrell’s plan as follows: “If European warships still want to show off their might in the Pacific today, the result would only be an embarrassing failure.” The CCP mouthpiece added: “For the People’s Liberation Army, which has powerful strength to defend its homeland, facing European warships that come to provoke and show off is not even worth raising an eyebrow. We advise them not to bring shame upon themselves.”

Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,

Lawmakers questioned the feasibility of new vehicle tailpipe emissions proposals from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which the agency predicts will lead to the mass adoption of electric light- and medium-duty vehicles within a decade.

The April 18 hearing was held by the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee.

Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-Mass.) lauded the proposals, which the EPA released on April 12.

He suggested that the new EPA standard for light-body vehicles “could be expanded upon,” saying that over $135 billion in spending last Congress was being used “to build America’s electric vehicle future.”

“Strong proposed regulations are critical to driving climate progress forward, but they are more doable than ever, thanks to the billions in clean vehicle investments passed by Congress,” Markey said.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) speaks during a press conference in Washington on Sept. 10, 2020. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Green New Deal Network)

Describing the advantages of stricter regulations, he argued that “those benefits are a bonanza of benefits to our climate, to drivers, and to our health.”

“We need to make sure they also benefit Union-American workers,” he added.

Lummis Questions Mineral Sourcing

Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) voiced skepticism regarding the EPA’s vision.

Lummis asked one expert witness, Kathy Harris of the Natural Resources Defense Council, whether focusing on tailpipe emissions alone ignored greenhouse gas emissions from the rare earth mining needed to produce electric vehicle batteries.

“There have been many studies that have shown that electric vehicles today, from well to wheel, are still cleaner than compared to a gasoline vehicle,” Harris responded.

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) meets with the media in Washington on Nov. 9, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

The Wyoming senator also ran through a list of minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, pointing out that China, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo dominate production and downstream processing.

“Do any of these countries have anywhere near the stringent environmental regulations the United States has?”

“I cannot speak to that today,” Harris said before apologizing and correcting herself: “Not to my awareness.”

“I have a rare earth mine in my state that has been trying to open for over ten years and still doesn’t have the environmental permitting to open,” Lummis said.

A staffer for Lummis told The Epoch Times that the lawmaker had in mind the Rare Element Resources Bear Lodge Project.

Soil containing various rare earth elements for export at a port in Lianyungang, China, in a file photo. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

“There is no way that the standards and the materials needed to produce and manufacture in the United States can happen in ten years, and to ramp up the supply even in foreign countries that have far lower environmental standards, not to mention human labor standards—this is not possible to do,” Lummis said.

‘Not Even a Consideration for Trucking’

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) questioned another expert witness, Andrew Boyle.

Boyle is co-president of the trucking company Boyle Transportation and first vice chairman of the American Trucking Associations, a trade group representing the trucking industry.

Boyle had earlier testified to the risks of a rapid push for electric-powered trucks because of their current technological limitations.

“A clean diesel truck can spend 15 minutes fueling anywhere in the country and then have a range of about 1,200 miles before fueling again. In contrast, today’s long-haul battery-electric trucks have a range of about 150 to maybe 330 miles and can take up to ten hours to charge,” he said.

Cramer asked Boyle about the cost of insuring a large electric truck.

“It’s hard to tell because the consumer-facing EV product is so much further ahead,” Boyle said.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol Building on Oct. 06, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

He told the senator about what he sees as the negative consequences of another recent EPA decision—namely, granting California a waiver for its clean vehicle regulation, which would mandate that all drayage trucks purchased in the state be zero-emission starting in 2024. Old trucks would be grandfathered in by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

“If the power and the infrastructure’s not available, it’s not even a consideration for trucking, yet California wants to make it effective next January, that’s the only choice—no diesel trucks,” he said.

“We have the cart before the horse right now.”

Last week, an internal memo from Walt Disney warned about the second round of layoffs that would impact thousands of positions across their TV, film, and theme park divisions, along with corporate groups in every area. A Bloomberg article now confirms that the second phase of job cuts begins today.

The second phase of the three-round job cut lasts until Thursday and is expected to eliminate 4,000 workers from its entertainment unit, theme parks, and experiences and product divisions. 

Cuts are coming to all of the company’s divisions, stretching from the company headquarters in Burbank, California, to Connecticut, where its ESPN sports networks are based. Hourly workers at the theme parks will not be affected, the company said. –Bloomberg 

Disney announced in February it planned to eliminate 7,000 positions from its 220,000 workforces, a move to save $5.5 billion per year.

“The difficult reality of many colleagues and friends leaving Disney is not something we take lightly,” Disney said in a statement.

Disney’s old and then-new again CEO, Bob Iger, came out of retirement in November to lead the restructuring efforts. He elevated key allies in the company, including Alan Bergman and Dana Walden, the co-chairmen of Disney Entertainment.

It appears that Disney overhired. 

Disney shares have been halved since peaking in early 2021 and roundtripped to Covid lows. 

The third round of layoffs is expected to occur sometime in the summer. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

It appears that the crisis facing auto dealerships is far more dire than any of us thought. 

Financial institutions are starting to get extremely tight with their money, and that is putting extreme stress on dealers all over the nation.  Many of us expected that this would happen, but it seems that things are moving much faster than anyone would have anticipated. 

Last week, I came across a tweet that absolutely floored me. 

It was posted by a highly respected account known as “CarDealershipGuy”, and it contained some rather ominous news…

Past 10 days have been wild:

— Capital One shut off all dealer floorplans (aka inventory lines of credit)

— USA Auto Sales shut down 39 dealerships after losing its Ally floor plan

— Wells fargo laid-off all its junior Auto loan underwriters and capped future loans

Insanity.

Is all of this true?

I had to find out.

So I started digging around, and I discovered that Capital One has indeed decided to completely get out of the “floor plan financing” business…

It’s been a weird few years for the car market, and things could get weirder still. As first reported by Twitter user CarDealershipGuy and now confirmed by Automotive News reports, Capital One is out of the dealer “floor plan financing” business, and while I realize this may not sound like the sexiest of topics, it could have some interesting effects on the car market. In case you think of homes when you think of the term “floor plan,” allow me to introduce the way dealers are able to hold massive inventory.

Here’s a little secret: Dealerships usually don’t pay for every car on their lots, just like how consumers don’t usually buy cars outright. Instead, they take advantage of a form of financing called floor plan financing. Companies that offer this sort of financing give dealers lines of credit to buy vehicles with an interest-free period. If a car on floor plan financing sells within that period, the dealer takes the customer’s money or the customer’s lender’s money and uses some of it to pay off the line of credit. If a car doesn’t sell within that period, the dealership gets charged what has usually been a small fee since credit was nearly free for a decade. This allows a dealership to have very little money tied up in inventory despite amassing a huge selection of cars.

This is a really big deal.

A lot of dealers will simply not be able to operate without such financing.

Which brings us to the second point in the tweet.  According to the official website of U.S. Auto Sales, they have “temporarily closed” all 39 of their dealerships…

Attention U.S. Auto Customers. We have temporarily closed our dealerships and are working on a solution to re-open them as soon as possible. But don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere! U.S. Auto’s affiliated loan servicing company (USASF Servicing LLC) is still open to accept your payments and assist in servicing your account. Please continue to make your payments as scheduled and reach out to us with any account questions.

Hopefully U.S. Auto Sales will be able to secure another source of floor plan financing, but that may not be easy in this environment.

Another major chain, American Car Center, suddenly shut down more than 40 dealerships in February and has now filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy…

American Car Center, the Memphis-based used car dealer which suddenly closed all locations in February, has officially filed for bankruptcy in a Delaware court.

According to federal court records, the company, also known as RAC Dealership, LLC, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court on March 14.

Sadly, this is probably just the beginning.

A lot more dealerships are likely to go belly up as we get deeper into this economic downturn.

And as economic conditions deteriorate, financial institutions are likely to get even tighter with their money.

Which brings us to Wells Fargo.  Apparently the bank really is giving the axe to all junior auto underwriting staff…

Wells Fargo laying off all junior Auto underwriting staff.

As of 4/27 any auto loans greater than 110% loan-to-value and 15% payment-to-income will be declined.

For more than a decade, the U.S. economy operated in an environment in which money was flowing like wine and it was really easy for everybody to get credit.

But now even officials at the biggest banks in America are openly admitting that a “credit crunch” has begun…

The credit crunch stemming from the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank has begun, with data showing clear tightening of lending standards by banks, according to Morgan Stanley’s top stock strategist Mike Wilson.

In a note on Sunday, the Morgan Stanley CIO said that the last two weeks have shown the steepest decline in lending on record as banks scramble to offset the breakneck pace of deposit flight, which has accelerated in the month since SVB failed.

“The data suggest a credit crunch has started,” Wilson said in the note, adding that $1 trillion in deposits has been withdrawn from US banks since the Federal Reserve began raising rates a year ago.

There is no possible way to spin “the steepest decline in lending on record” to make it sound good.

Our economy runs on mortgages, auto loans and credit cards, and so a dramatic reduction in lending will inevitably lead to a dramatic reduction in economic activity.

A lot of people are comparing this new crisis to what we went through in 2008 and 2009, because that is the only downturn in recent memory that is comparable.

Unfortunately, I am entirely convinced that this new crisis will eventually greatly surpass what we experienced during the Great Recession.

So I would encourage you to do whatever you need to do to get ready for harsh economic times, because what is ahead is not going to be pleasant for any 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.

Following the weekend announcement by the State Department that all US personnel and their dependents had been safely evacuated from the US Embassy In Khartoum, which included about 70 US staff members, the White House has followed up by saying the spiraling security situation is “not conductive” for a large-scale military evacuation of all US citizens from the country.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday said that the worsening civil conflict means remaining Americans are on their own in terms of an evacuation, but that the State Dept. will continuing assisting them “in planning for their own safety.”

“Well, we have military forces still prepositioned nearby in the region … if they’re needed, but quite frankly, the situation is not conducive and not safe to try to conduct some kind of a larger military evacuation of American citizens. He continued, “Actually, the violence is increasing is more dangerous today than it was just yesterday, the day before,” Kirby said in an interview on “CNN This Morning.”

“And so the best advice we can give to those Americans who did not abide by our warnings to leave Sudan and not to travel to Sudan is to stay sheltered in place, stay safe and secure and off the streets of Khartoum,” Kirby said.

He stressed the US Embassy there had warned repeatedly that US citizens should make plans to safely exit the country ahead of the week of fighting which the world just witnessed. Over 400 people have been killed and more than 3,500 have been wounded thus far as rival generals – Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan of Sudan’s armed forces and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – fight for control of the country. 

Kirby still said that US officials will do their best to help guide remaining Americans out of the country, but also stressed that many are dual nationals who live and work in Sudan, and who may not desire to leave. 

“I want to push back on this idea that there’s 16,000 Americans who want to get out. We don’t have firm estimates of the exact number of American citizens who are in Sudan,” Kirby said. “We think the vast majority of these American citizens in Sudan … are dual nationals. These are people who grew up in Sudan, who have families there, work there, businesses there, who don’t want to leave.”

But he also defended the rationale of not wanting to have a large-scale military-led evacuation effort as fighting in Khartoum is “not in a situation where we would want people moving about too freely or too aggressively right now.”

“The White House made it clear that they don’t intend to do a military evacuation.”

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense @MickMulroy joins us after U.S Embassy staff in Sudan have been evacuated amid fighting in the country. pic.twitter.com/sjNMCUhrBk

— ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) April 24, 2023

At this moment, multiple other countries are rushing to send military transport planes to evacuate their citizens. For example, France and Germany announced the evacuation of about 700 people after a German air force plane landed in Berlin early Monday.

Authored by John Rubino via Substack,

It took a while, but some of the biggest “official narrative” scams and cons of the past few years are finally being exposed.

High-ranking US officials have apparently been lying about public health, election integrity, and (of course) war. Among the things that have just come to light:

The Secretary of State created the laptop letter

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is being investigated by the Committee on the Judiciary and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for his prominent role in persuading 51 former intelligence officials to falsely discredit the “New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop as supposed Russian disinformation” during the 2020 Presidential election. The intelligence assessment led to a nearly blanket censorship of investigative stories exposing the alleged corruption.

During the campaign, Blinken was a senior campaign advisor to then former Vice President Joe Biden and recruited the direct assistance of then former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell, who was one of the 51 signatories of the public statement.

The CDC director lied about vaccine efficacy

In a hearing Wednesday, Rochelle Walensky told the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds her agency that COVID vaccines only stopped preventing transmission of the virus due to “an evolution of science,” contradicting her own agency’s uncertainty about the products during the early mass vaccination campaign and its contemporaneous data.

The exchange was prompted by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) reminding Walensky that she told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow March 29, 2021 that CDC data suggest “vaccinated people do not carry the virus” or “get sick,” based on both clinical trials and “real-world data.”

Walensky responded that the statement was true at the time, when the “wild-type” virus was dominant, but then revised it by saying “even if they got sick” infected people could not transmit COVID. Because of the “evolution of the virus” that’s no longer true, she told Clyde.

Hearing watchers quickly noted the CDC pulled the rug out from Walensky three days after her Maddow interview in a statement to The New York Times. “The evidence isn’t clear” on transmission by “fully vaccinated” people, which is “possible,” the agency said.

Fauci lied about using Twitter to push vaccinations

“A lot of people are spouting out a lot of things about me and Twitter,” Fauci told Fox News. “I’ve never had a Twitter account. I don’t intend on having a Twitter account, and I’ve had nothing to do with Twitter. So I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say that.”

Fauci made similar claims during an almost 7-hour deposition. While under oath, the then-medical advisor to President Biden denied using Twitter or even paying attention to social media.

“I don’t do social media.”

“Since I don’t have a Twitter account, I don’t see tweets.”

“I’m so dissociated from social media … I’ve never gotten involved in any of that.”

“The social media and Twitter, I told you, I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t tweet. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do anything.”

Not true according to a new Twitter File showing Anthony Fauci…taking over the White House’s Twitter account. “Dr. Anthony Fauci did an account takeover for @WHCOVIDResponse,” reads a Twitter internal COVID-19 monthly update.

Recent Pentagon leaks show everyone was lying to everyone else

Among other things, recent leaks showed South Korean leaders avoiding calls from US officials trying to convince them to arm Ukraine, Egypt secretly sending weapons to Russia, Hungary labeling the US an “adversary,” the US and Ukraine both lying about the state of Ukraine’s military. Scariest of all, the US now has soldiers operating secretly on Ukrainian soil.

Speculation is now rife that the strange circumstances of this leak point to it being a false flag designed to justify expanded surveillance of online forums. Before dismissing this out of hand, recall that many, if not most of the past few years’ conspiracy theories have turned out to be true.

Bill Gates’ BioNTech pump ‘n dump

In 2019 — before the pandemic — the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested $55 million in vaccine startup BioNTech. Gates then spent the next two years telling everyone who would listen that covid was deadly and the new vaccines were our only hope for survival. In 2022 he cashed out for a massive profit — and then immediately started saying things like this:

We also need to fix the three problems of [COVID-19] vaccines. The current vaccines are not infection-blocking. They’re not broad, so when new variants come up you lose protection, and they have very short duration, particularly in the people who matter, which are old people.

What we have here is a classic pump ‘n dump of the type employed by scuzzy hedge funds and low-rent investment banks to fleece their sheep. It’s illegal but also hard to prove, and Gates is part of the “too big to jail” aristocracy, so his stock manipulation will go unpunished.

What does all this mean?

It means Wake Up, virtually everything you see or hear on corporate media outlets or in government briefings has been shaped not to clarify or educate but to further a narrative that benefits one or another team. When truths occasionally emerge, they’re frequently part of a strategy to surround a Big Lie with enough verifiable data to make it seem plausible.

The solution? Seek out sources of information that aren’t operating as propaganda arms for corporations and/or governments. Many of those sources can be found here on Substack. Many others are on independent news outlets like this, this, this, and this.

Reality is out there. It’s just not available on CNN, MSNBC, Fox (with one apparent exception), or in the White House briefing room.