Justice: absence of legal discrimination, access to justice, maternal mortality ratio, son bias
Safety: intimate partner violence, community safety, political violence targeting women, and proximity to conflict
Which Are the Best Countries for Women?
All of the top 10 countries for women received index scores above 0.9, significantly higher than the global average of 0.65. Nine of them are located in Europe, with New Zealand (#10) representing the only regional outlier.
The highest-ranked country was Denmark, which scored particularly well across inclusion (such as financial inclusion and parliamentary representation) and justice (such as absence of legal discrimination and access to justice) metrics. Its Scandinavian peers—Sweden (#3) and Norway (#7)—followed closely behind.
Overall, the group of best countries for women feature low maternal mortality, high education rates, and a lack of political violence against women and proximity to conflict.
Other Takeaways
Canada (#17), the UK (#26), and the U.S. (#37) all rank relatively high but didn’t make the top 10 list. Lower rankings for parliamentary representation, maternal mortality, and community safety dragged the score for the U.S. down to lower than European counterparts.
If you found this interesting, check out this visualization that looks at the countries with the most gender-equal pay among OECD countries.
Fire Rages At Large Russian State Oil Depot, Still Two Days After Ukraine Drone Attack
A massive fire has been raging in the southern Russian city of Proletarsk (in Rostov region) for nearly two days, after a cross-border Ukrainian drone strike on its major state fuel storage facility ignited fuel warehouses.
Large crews of firefighters have been working to extinguish the blaze for well over 24 hours straight at this point, leaving over 40 of them injured.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for the Sunday morning drone strike on the “Kavkaz” oil and petroleum storage facility, while Russian authorities said that a diesel fire ignited after local anti-air defense batteries downed inbound drones over the city.
The Kyiv Independent cited Rostov officials who described “Russian air defense units thwarted the drone attack but their efforts caused debris to strike the facility, setting it on fire.”
Ukraine officials further noted that “oil and petroleum products, which were supplied to the Russian occupation army were stored here.”
Follow-up videos after the initial attack showed new explosions at the site, which could be seen at a great distance. An official state of emergency for the area has been declared.
“As of now, 41 firefighters have been hospitalized. Eighteen of them required extended care, with five in intensive care,” Golubev Rostov region hast stated on Telegram.
One widely circulating video shows a fireball and smoke plumes so large that firefighters are forced to stand helplessly by and appear unable to do anything while the flames rage several stories high.
❗️Meanwhile, in #Proletarsk, Rostov Region, for the third day now, there has been a regular smoke blanket at an oil depot as a result of a UAV landing. Due to the high temperature, firefighting has been suspended. The smoke plume has stretched for 25 kilometers. Good luck! pic.twitter.com/7wMK8wcL5g
In total Russia’s defense ministry later said at least five drones were shot down over Proletarsk during the time when the fire erupted at the fuel depot.
Proletarsk is a significant distance from Ukraine, at some 250 kilometers (or 155 miles) from the border.
Ukraine has launched several large-scale drone attacks on Russian airfields and fuel depots during its major cross-border Kursk offensive since the start of the Aug.6 incursion.
To understand the size of the Proletarsk state reserve fuel facility, here is the satellite photo. Back of the envelope calculation is that it holds up to $200 million worth of fuel, based on the Russian domestic wholesale price of about $500 per ton of diesel. Each of these… https://t.co/rSjhCIN58gpic.twitter.com/ZHIe9wBGXK
By the looks of it, fuel worth hundreds of millions of dollars in state reserves is going up in flames.
This is the latest disaster in a series of ‘bad news’ developments for the Kremlin as Ukraine tries to desperately hit Russian territory with everything it has, even as Ukraine forces are fairing poorly and are still losing ground along the frontlines in the Donbass.
Planet Labs overhead satellite image taken Monday afternoon local time.
Russia’s Defense Ministry (MoD) has meanwhile on Monday said it captured the town of Artemovo in Eastern Ukraine (and called Zalizne in Ukraine), with the MoD describing it as one of the area’s “major population centers.”
More footage showing just how immense the blaze is…
🔥 Russia: The Kavkaz oil depot in Rostov region stored oil products for exclusive use by the Russian military.
The storage tanks continue to detonate as fire expands, for 40 hours now.
The governor initially reported that all Ukrainian drones were “intercepted.” pic.twitter.com/C4IztWUjCq
Heavier and longer summer monsoon rains are said to be fuelling a rise in child marriages in Pakistan, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Human rights workers are warning such weddings are on the rise “due to climate-driven economic insecurity”. Great story since it holds out a small hope that banning hydrocarbon use can help solve a problem of forced and under-aged female abuse that has been endemic in many cultures since time immemorial. It is just a shame about the facts. According to the World Bank climate change knowledge portal, monsoon rains in June, July and August in the period 1991-2020 were marginally less in Pakistan than fell during 1961-1990.
In an error-strewn article reproduced in many publications around the world, the French State-owned agency claimed that flooding in Pakistan in 2022 plunged a third of the country under water. Looking at a contour map would show this is unlikely – impossible even – and the true level of inundation was around 8-10%. Even the BBC’s statistical programme More or Less confirmed the much lower figures. AFP claims that “scientists say” climate change is making the monsoons heavier and longer, “raising the risk of landslides, floods and long-term crop damage”. This is said to have led to a new trend of “monsoon brides” as families give away their female children in exchange for money. But massive flooding in low-lying parts of Pakistan is not new. In the recent past – in 1950, 1992, 1993 and 2010 – it killed more people than it did in 2022.
The AFP nonsense story is just the latest in a tidal wave of mainstream fear-mongering designed to boost Net Zero. It takes an emotional theme and tacks on unprovable claims of climate damage caused by humans. The emotion is obvious, but false claims about the volume of rainfall and the inundation of a recent flood are made. Do the people who write this stuff think that nobody will check their facts and sources? Apparently not.
AGF is an organ of the French State and it is all in on grooming the world to accept Net Zero. The climate side is run by Marlowe Hood who describes himself as the “Herald of the Anthropocene”. Certainly, all this heralding seems to be very profitable for Hood who was recently awarded £88,000 by the Foundation arm of a Spanish bank heavily involved in financing green technologies. Recently, he played a major part in organising the eventual retraction of a paper written by a number of Italian physics professors who examined climate and weather data put out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and concluded there was no climate emergency.
Led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti of Milan University, the professors found that rainfall intensity and frequency was static in many parts of the world. Other meteorological categories including natural disasters, floods, droughts and ecosystem productivity showed no “clear positive trend of extreme events”. None of this would be much of a surprise to anyone who has read the IPCC reports, but Hood claimed the data was “grossly manipulated” and “fundamentally flawed”. The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. has covered the Alimonti scandal in great detail and notes: “Shenanigans continue in climate science with influential scientists teaming up with journalists to corrupt peer review”.
Three AFP writers are currently taking a six-month sabbatical on the latest Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN) course which is funded by elite billionaire money including contributions from Sir Christopher Hohn, a past provider for the eco louts at Extinction Rebellion. They are Ivan Couronne, Future of the Planet editor, Sara Hussein, Future of the Planet reporter and agency editor Linda Tonn. The course provides an immersion in the correct political narrative surrounding climate ‘collapse’, the so-called ‘settled’ science and the need for extreme Net Zero measures. This term, BBC participants include senior climate data reporter Becky Dale and Samah Hanaysha, a London-based broadcaster for BBC Arabic. Interestingly, all these participants will be joined by Ellen Ormesher of DeSmog, a foundation-funded operation that publishes a ‘blacklist’ of so-called climate deniers. Sadly, the list does not appear to be regularly updated these days, possibly on the grounds that it has become too large!
Past speakers at the OCJN have suggested “fines and imprisonment” for those expressing scepticism about “well supported” science and cautioned journalists against the use of photographs of people enjoying themselves in the open air at times of “extreme” summer weather.
Infantile suggestions are provided asking participants to write a story about a mango, discussing why it isn’t as tasty as the year before due to climate change.
All of which explains how stories about climate change leading to more child marriages end up in the increasingly unpopular prints.
For the last three years, Paul Homewood has chronicled the climate bloopers at the BBC and he summarised this year’s edition in yesterday’s Daily Sceptic. It notes numerous howlers which have added to the gaiety of the nation. How we laughed when we were reminded of Matt – “Yes, we have no bananas” – McGrath reporting that climate change posed an enormous threat to banana supply. Production has increased six-fold since the 1960s. Or the no more beer piss-take. Apparently, it could get too hot to grow hops in Kent although that is not a problem for growers in warmer central European climes, but again don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Then there are the coral reefs about to die off, while in the real world the Great Barrier Reef continue to show stonking levels of record growth. Finally, we have the much loved rare bird sighting story. Last year it was the turn of the black-winged stilt that is moving north due to climate change. As it appears to have done for hundreds of years, according to ornithological reports. One unfortunate passing passerine even being shot in 1684. Again, as with the child bride story, why are basic facts not checked to stop all this alarmist drivel being printed in the first place? Attending climate grooming courses funded by elite billionaires with an obvious political agenda would fill any independent, investigating journalist with horror.
As Homewood notes, many have concluded that the BBC’s coverage of climate change cannot be trusted. His comments could equally apply to many other mainstream outlets. “For years their treatment has been one-sided, full of misinformation and at times factual errors, along with the omission of alternative views and inconvenient facts,” he observes. Quite so.
Starting Monday, Democrats will hold their long-anticipated national convention during which they’ll formally nominate their presidential candidate and outline to voters their vision for the future.
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) will formally lock in the presidential and vice presidential nominees for both major parties.
Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), were nominated at the Republican National Convention last month.
Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, clinched enough delegates to win her party’s nomination at the beginning of August during a virtual roll vote that left little room for last minute dissenters.
She’s expected to accept the nomination, along with her chosen running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in speeches delivered on the final two nights of the event.
This is set to be a very different convention than voters expected at the beginning of the election cycle, when President Joe Biden led the ticket for Democrats.
However, a pressure campaign forced Biden out of the candidacy after an underwhelming debate performance shock up the political landscape.
Since Harris took over the ticket, Democrats have enjoyed a boost in polling. Still, the stakes are high for Harris and the Democrats, who will need to put on a united front after months of division within the party.
Here’s what to expect during the second major party convention of the year.
When and Where
The DNC will be held from Monday, Aug. 19, to Thursday, Aug. 22, in Chicago.
Democrats have a long history of holding their conventions in the windy city—this will be the 12th time since 1864 that the convention has been hosted there.
The last DNC to be held in Chicago was in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was easily re-nominated by his party.
The main event this year is being held at the United Center, a convention center that doubles as the home stadium for the Chicago Bulls basketball team and the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team.
Around 50,000 attendees are expected, including the party’s approximately 5,000 delegates. Like most major political events, it won’t be open to the public.
However, it will stream on a variety of platforms, according to the party.
In addition to the normal media coverage of the event each night, voters will also be able to watch the convention online, courtesy of C-Span.
The event will also be streamed in its entirety via Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube using the vertical style popularized by those apps.
Additional delegate-only events that are not streamed to the public will be hosted at the nearby McCormick Center.
Speakers
The convention will feature speeches from an array of Democrat notables.
Biden will be among the first speakers. He’s expected to call into the convention via video.
As is tradition at these events, neither Walz nor Harris are expected to speak until the final two days: Walz is likely to speak on the second to last day of the convention, and Harris on the final night.
Speaker are expected to appear according to this schedule:
Aug. 19:
President Joe Biden
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker
Aug. 20:
Former President Barack Obama
Aug. 21:
Former President Bill Clinton
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
Aug. 22:
Vice President Kamala Harris
Time and Day TBD:
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)
Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.)
Platform
During the convention, Democrats will also formally adopt their party’s draft platform.
Released in July, the draft platform mentions Trump dozens of times.
It also details Democrats’ position on an array of issues.
It reiterates Democrats’ demands for a federal codification of Roe v. Wade—unsurprising as abortion is one of Democrats’ strongest polling issues.
Economically, there’s not much in the platform that’s especially new: it calls for the federal minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour by 2026, policies to increase the affordability of childcare and healthcare, and making the Child Tax Credit permanent.
Additionally, the platform repeats Democrats’ long-held demands for higher taxation of very wealthy individuals and corporations.
The draft platform also calls for securing the southern border while providing a “pathway to citizenship” for the millions of illegal immigrants in the country.
However, this platform, released in early July, hasn’t been updated since Biden dropped out.
Now, hours before the convention kicks off, it still lists Biden as the party’s candidate.
As is usually the case at major party conventions, the platform will be discussed, debated, amended, and formally ratified during the convention.
Protests
While Democrats seek to project an image of unity, there’s one factor that’s outside of the party’s control: expected protests from interest groups on the left.
Namely, protestors are expected to move full steam ahead with protests originally planned against Biden.
One protest, organized as the “March on the DNC 2024,” will feature a group of around 200 left wing-groups, and could potentially number into the tens of thousands—raising concerns about event security.
Specifically, the protestors are demanding that the DNC and Harris change their stance on Israel, calling for the United States to “stand with Palestine” and “end U.S. aid to Israel,” along with a laundry list of other left-wing demands.
The event already has the highest possible federal security classification.
Security for the event will be handled by a coalition of local, state, and federal law enforcement, including the Secret Service.
Despite the challenges, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and local police have maintained that the event will be secure.
The Washington Post (WaPo) reported on Saturday that Qatar was secretly mediating a partial Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire before Kiev’ssneakattackagainstKursk, which would have seen both sides agree not to target each other’s energy infrastructure. The Kremlin hadn’t commented by the time of that article’s publication nor this present one so it’s unclear how truthful it is. In any case, it’s worthwhile taking a look at what WaPo’s sources said, which might help discern whether or not this is believable.
The first tidbit is that “Some involved in the negotiations hoped they could lead to a more comprehensive agreement to end the war, according to the officials”. This was followed by the claim that “Russia ‘didn’t call off the talks (after Kursk), they said give us time,’ the diplomat said.” The Ukrainian “presidential office” then alleged that talks in Doha were indeed scheduled but were postponed until 22 August “due to the situation in the Middle East” and will now “take place in a video conference format”.
WaPo went on to cite “senior officials in Kyiv” who “had mixed expectations about whether the negotiations could succeed, with some putting the odds at 20 percent and others anticipating even worse prospects” even before Kursk. They still explored the reportedly Qatari-mediated partial ceasefire with Russia though because “’We have one chance to get through this winter, and that’s if the Russians won’t launch any new attacks on the grid,’ a Ukrainian official who was briefed on the talks said.”
“’Everything has to be weighed — our potential and the possible damage to our economy versus how much more damage could we cause them and their economy,” the Ukrainian official briefed on the planned Qatar summit said. ‘But energy is definitely critical for us. We sometimes forget about the economy here, but we’re facing free fall if there’s no light and heat in the winter.’” According to them, the partial ceasefire would be modeled off of the now-defunct grain deal, but Kursk changed all of that.
It’s at this point that two interconnected questions come to mind:
1) why would Russia consider agreeing not to target the energy infrastructure upon which Ukraine’s entire war effort depends, thus preventing its foes’ complete collapse and possibly perpetuating the conflict into another year?; and
2) why would Ukraine launch its sneak attack knowing that it ended any chance, at least for the time being, that Russia might give them such a reprieve that could then allow them to keep fighting into next year?
As regards the first question, if there’s any truth to WaPo’s report (the veracity of which will be assessed later), then Russia might have thought that this could soften its image ahead of the possible resumption of peace talks and create the conditions for Ukraine to comply with more of its terms. Trump’s potential return to power and his promise to swiftly end the conflict could have hung heavy over policymakers’ heads and influenced them to consider abiding by this moratorium until after the elections at least.
If such negotiations were indeed being mediated by Qatar, then that could also explain why Russia left its border with Ukraine largely undefended and might have even shrugged off reports of a buildup there since policymakers could have considered it “irrational” for Kiev to carry out any such sneak attack. RT’s Sergey Poletaev also speculated that a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ was in place between Russia and the US over the defense of the former’s border from the latter’s Ukrainian proxy this entire time.
Taken together and assuming for the sake of this thought exercise that WaPo’s report is accurate, then it might have been that Russia was lured by the aforesaid speculative ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with the US and the then-ongoing Qatari-mediated partial ceasefire talks with Ukraine into keeping its guard down. The purpose all along could have been for them to get Russia to leave large swathes of its border undefended in order to facilitate a Ukrainian sneak attack as part of an unprecedentedly risky gamble.
This hypothesis segues into answering the second question about why Ukraine would throw away any chance, at least for now, of Russia giving them a reprieve from attacks against their energy infrastructure that could then allow them to keep fighting into next year if they make it through the upcoming winter. Kiev and its US patron might have concluded that the pace of Russia’s on-the-ground gains in Donbass will inevitably lead to their defeat unless something drastic is done to change the conflict’s dynamics.
Freezing attacks on one another’s energy infrastructure wouldn’t halt Russia’s advance, not to mention if Moscow pulls out of the deal after the elections. Despite the odds of success being low, one possible way to prevent Russia’s seemingly inevitable victory would be to seize, hold, and then swap some of its pre-2014 land in exchange for Russia withdrawing from some Ukrainian-claimed land. This plan’s obvious flaw is that Russia might achieve a breakthrough in Donbass that leads to Ukraine’s collapse before then.
It can’t be ruled out though that NATOmightconventionallyintervene in Ukraine if that happens in order to force a Cuban-like brinksmanship crisis aimed at saving its proxy from full-blown defeat. This could take the form of creating a NATO-Russian DMZ inside the disputed territories, but it’s unclear whether members have the political will to risk World War III over this. Ukraine knows that its sneak attack against Kursk leaves Donbass vulnerable so it might be hoping that this will happen if need be.
If that’s their leadership’s thought process, then the endgame might be to seize and hold some of Russia’s pre-2014 land through the winter, possibly aided by a conventional NATO intervention in its defensive support if Russia breaks through in Donbass, in order to swap it back next year. This plan assumes that Ukraine could survive until then even if its electricity sector is destroyed, which is dubious but could still happen if the abovementioned sequence of events leads to a NATO-Russian DMZ.
It also takes for granted that World War III wouldn’t break out if NATO conventionally intervenes in Ukraine to force the creation of that DMZ and then the threat thereof would remain manageable even if Russian-Ukrainian hostilities continue raging in Kursk. Another related assumption is that Russia would either allow NATO to also set up a DMZ on its pre-2014 border with Ukraine or NATO would willingly leave that frontier open and thus risk Russia launching offensives against those Ukrainian border regions.
The preceding calculations are “irrational”, but they might have still influenced the Ukrainian leadership’s thought process when deciding to launch their sneak attack against Kursk in spite of knowing that it would end any chance of a Qatari-mediated partial ceasefire with Russia, at least for now. From Russia’s perspective, such a deal wouldn’t have adversely affected the pace of its on-the-ground gains in Donbass, might have given it diplomatic leverage in new peace talks, and could always be abandoned.
It therefore appears that there might be some truth to WaPo’s report about Qatar secretly mediating a partial Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire before Kursk since both sides would have gained from those talks. Russia could have advanced its long-term diplomatic interests without curtailing its campaign in Donbass if they succeeded, while Ukraine could have kept Russia’s guard down during this process for facilitating its unprecedentedly risky gamble in Kursk aimed at staving off seemingly inevitable defeat.
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, after a coup against their former standard-bearer Joe Biden, we face a very disturbing question.
What if Kamala Harris isn’t the idiot the media has made her out to be?
Harris was clearly chosen for this role. She’s been groomed for it for nearly two decades. She isn’t the best of a list of bad choices. The Democrats drove the good choices from the party and blocked others becoming a part of it.
There were no Democratic primaries, folks.
She was placed as Biden’s Vice-President to have the inside track on this gig when they decided Joe finally had to be dragged from the stage.
The coup was penciled in on the Gantt Chart at Evil Corp. Central for the weekend of July 13th.
In 2020, Harris voters roundly rejected her for President, getting zero delegates before being roasted by Tulsi Gabbard.
She dropped out despite being the darling of the media and the donor class. Going into those primaries, she was the establishment’s pick.
Once she failed they moved to Plan B: rig the game for Biden.
They said, “We’ll install a mushroom so corrupt we can make him do whatever we want Joe just wants his money and his ice cream.”
So you force Harris onto Joe. Or the other way around… never mind she’s too old for him.
Meanwhile Harris waited. She let Joe take the heat. She said little, did less and then is installed, tabula rasa, into a campaign just days after a failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump to steal even that thunder.
We were never allowed to discuss her culpability, along with the cabinet, as to how Biden could have been running the country for the past three years without them invoking the 25th amendment out of pity for the man if nothing else.
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot Democrats don’t have emotions other than hate and envy.
She was installed as the candidate to front-run an insurgency at this week’s convention by Hillary Clinton and her merry band of Neocons. Don’t expect them to take this sitting down, there are likely to be some sparks this week in Chicago, even if they don’t turn into a bonfire.
So, that leads me to ask my question, not because I think Harris is some latent IQ160 or anything. I asked my question because this is a woman who faced zero real voters and is one vote-rigging operation away from the presidency.
So, maybe she’s a genius when measuring her political intelligence.
What if we’ve all been led down the primrose path of stooping to Trump’s level coming up with cute memes about her vast collection of knee pads or her inappropriate laughter at tragedy?
What if that is exactly the means to lull us all into thinking there’s no way anyone will vote for this woman?
And if this was any normal (a nebulous term these days at best) election, I would agree with you. But, for 90% of the fifty elections the US is going to hold for its president, who you vote for doesn’t matter.
This is, as always, a five state race.
All that matters is printing/counting the right number of votes in those five states and the rest is just a Benny Hill skit.
Harris chose uber-commie and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate to what, exactly? Shore up the only state that voted for Walter Mondale in 1984? Really?
No, it was to do a few things:
Signal that they didn’t need Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to win there.
Continue Obama’s antipathy towards Israel. They don’t need “The Jews” anymore.
Put the Quarter-Black HR Nanny in charge of the cucked White Guy.
After that, all you have to do is use AI and special effects to make fake crowds supporting fake polls and faker ads to sell everyone on the idea that this woman is what Americans want to rule them over this…
The sad part is that too many people still think this is all just part of the game. But it isn’t. It’s nothing more than the same playbook run in 2020 to create just enough plausible deniability that Harris can win this election before they steal it and dare us to do one damn thing about it.
Or did you miss how upset the French and British are at their recent outcomes?
So, Kamala cackles her way through scripted interviews. She and Walz dance around bringing “joy!” to the world. But when you actually get her talking about policy, about what she believes in, the cackling stops, the fangs come out, it’s just communism all the way down.
I was asked by Sputnik News to comment on her announced economic plan. In short, it’s the same warmed-over ‘Eat the Rich,’ politics of envy the Democrats have used for decades to set the table for a class war where the soon-to-be permanent underclass is used to finish off destroying the middle class so that they both can live in squalor and be thankful for whatever thin gruel is left over.
Those that don’t like it can go die in a meat grinder overseas somewhere else. Hey, at least it’s ‘3 hots and a cot’ right? Or is her ascension to the throne the moment when everyone gets just uncomfortable enough for the wolf to come out in a few million of us?
No, I don’t think Harris is at all stupid. And I think we’d all do well to put away the memes and get serious about making sure that we make this a November 5th to her not to remember.
Sputnik’s Questions and my full answers:
1) Harris presented something that she called an “opportunity economy”. How different do you expect this to be from “Bidenomics”?
Not much, to be honest. Democrats are looking to rebrand the same agenda they had during both Obama’s two terms and “Biden’s” one term. It’s all an extension of the original plan, which is to nationalize all the important sectors of the economy – housing, health care, energy, transportation – that the Federal Government didn’t already control, e.g. communication and defense.
This strategy is simply to break the private economy — dislocate trillions of investment capital, displace millions of workers, disrupt supply chains – and then create new “opportunities” for those most harmed by these policies, the lowest strata of wage earners young people, by giving them handouts. This is classic ‘divide and rule’ politics engaged in by the oligarch class to set the lower class, in their terminology the ‘proletariat,’ against the middle class, the “bourgeoisie.’
Nothing new here. Typical “Break your legs and hand you a crutch” politics.
2) How are the measures that Harris’ economic plan includes going to be paid for?
Debt at first and the hoped for transition to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) after the debt passes the point of sustainability, where they just print money and tax your earnings at whatever rate they need to in order to maintain power, via programmable Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
3) Harris promised to push forward a federal government law against price gouging as a solution to Americans’ frustration with the high cost of living. What effect would a law like this have on prices? How would a small business react to such a law?
The Democrats have been prepping this talking point for more than a year by sending out Elizabeth Warren to complain about corporations gouging us on food prices. But if you look at retailer, especially supermarket, corporate profits you’ll see their costs rising with our costs. The average bottom line margin for a supermarket chain is around 2%. If Harris and Warren think this is “Price Gouging” then they have no idea what the term means.
Real costs of production will rise. Prices will rise. The government will then use a flat fining structure to punish the bad guys.
Because of this small businesses will go under. Larger firms can always absorb the cost of new regulations better than smaller businesses. They are the primary target because they are the engine of economic growth. Harris is nothing new, just another in a long line of doctrinaire communists promoted via anti-democratic processes to serve an overclass desperate to hold onto power as their old system of wealth extraction reaches its terminal stage.
4) How do you assess the possibility that a federal law against price gouging might backfire and trigger shortages?
All price floors and price ceilings lead to shortages, never surpluses. This is literally first semester macro-economics. Harris and her handlers know this. In fact, they are counting on creating shortages. It’s part of the strategy in the end to destroy the country they lead.
This is not stupidity or incompetence. It is policy.
5) Harris promised to address housing affordability by issuing $25K support for first-time house byers. How would you expect such a measure to affect the housing market?
It can’t stop the deflation of housing prices, it will only further dislocate the market by keeping prices up and suckering people who can’t afford a home into thinking they can. What needs to happen is sincere price corrections which reallocate scarce capital back to generating jobs that create wealth rather than subsidizing the things you buy once you have wealth.
Starter homes now cost $180-200 per square foot to build in the US. At those prices, there are no new affordable homes. The tiny home industry in the US is booming. People are trying to right size their debt with their income. And are now coping with the insanity by telling themselves they can raise a family in 500 sq.ft. They can’t.
So, again, what’s the goal? It’s not to put people in new homes. It’s to put people in smaller homes and/or choose to live in a rented space whose cost is subsidized by the government in the medium-term to nudge them towards the preferred outcome… living in cities with no food security, no real security, and constant/total surveillance.
6) How realistic do you find Harris’ promise to build 3 million new houses?
We can build any number of houses. The US has more than enough productive capacity to build 3 million houses. That’s not the right question. The right question is should we build any new houses, and for what price?
It’s a talking point. A pathetic attempt to buy young voters who are increasingly looking at them and thinking they are crazy people.
7) How successful do you expect Harris to be in distancing herself from the criticisms and negative effects that the Biden/Harris administration’s policies had on the US economy in recent years? How would you describe her target audience and why would this tactic work for it?
She won’t be. You can’t run as the “reform candidate” when you are the incumbent. And nothing she has proposed is functionally any different than what was done previously while she was in office. Her target audience for this is the wholly unsophisticated young voter who is entering a broken workforce and economic landscape today and seeing nothing but a lack of real opportunities. They are hoping for a new round of “Obama Youth” to marshal into an effective fighting force for “Hope and Change.”
What they are doing is purposefully increasing the possibility of full-blown civil war.
8) How should we expect Harris’ economic plan to increase the US national debt?
Exponentially. Again, that is the goal. They will use ruinous fiscal policy to run out the clock on Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve who are telling them that if they want their Communist revolution they will pay for it at 5.5% or higher. All of these ‘subsidy’ programs –food, housing, etc.—are meant to extend the current pricing regime until after the end of Powell’s term in 2026 and then close the loop, bringing the Fed back into the fold.
“Wet Winter Whirlwind”: Farmers’ Almanac Releases New Winter Forecast For US
It’s that time of year again—while many visit the beach and or mountains before the school season kicks off in just a few weeks, others are already beginning to prepare for the upcoming winter season, with new forecasts from the Farmers’ Almanac.
The 208th edition of the Farmers’ Almanac is titled “Wet Winter Whirlwind”and revealed, “There will be a lot of precipitation and storms”—all dependent on location.
Winter Temperatures – How Cold?
The Almanac is predicting a deep chill to settle over the Northern Plains and Great Lakes regions for much of the winter season. But don’t think the South is off the hook. Southern areas can still expect some frigid blasts from Old Man Winter, even if the temperatures are slightly more moderate overall. Cold snaps are forecast to hit during the final week of January into early February, with the Northern Plains potentially seeing the most extreme cold.
Snow?
The Northeast is in the bullseye for a barrage of storms this winter, with the Farmers’ Almanac calling for above-normal amounts of winter precipitation. Ski-lovers will enjoy nice powder days. Snow will likely be more plentiful in the interior and mountainous regions of New England and the Northeast, while those near the coast can expect more sleet and rain. And if you live in the Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes, or Southeast, get ready for a wet, white, and slushy season.
On the flip side, the Southwest and South Central States are looking at a drier winter with below-normal precipitation.
Here is the Farmers’ Almanac’s forecast map for the upcoming 2024-25 winter season across the Lower 48.
Farmers’ Almanac Editor Sandi Duncan told USA TODAY, “It definitely looks more wet than white in many areas,” adding, “Obviously, depending on where you live, there might be more white than wet, but we’re focusing in on the wet winter ahead.”
The weather prediction formula that Farmers’ Almanac uses revolves around a climate pattern known as La Niña, likely to emerge in September-November.
Remember that the emergence of La Nina can impact weather conditions across the Lower 48 this coming winter season.
Duncan said, “The coldest temperatures look like they’re going to be over the North Central States into the Great Lakes area.”
She noted that much of the country can expect a wet Thanksgiving holiday, “except for way out in the Southwest,” and even said Christmas “looks wet rather than white for most areas.”
An extremely serious debate is already raging among selected circles of power/intelligence in Moscow – and the heart of the matter could not be more incandescent…
To cut to the chase: what really happened in Kursk? Was the Russian Ministry of Defense caught napping? Or did they see it coming and profited to set up a deadly trap for Kiev?
Well-informed players willing to share a few nuggets on condition of anonymity all stress the extreme sensitivity of it all. An intel pro though has offered what may be interpreted as a precious clue: “It is rather surprising to see such a concentration of force was unnoticed by satellite and drone surveillance at Kursk, but I would not exaggerate its importance.”
Another intel pro prefers to stress that “the foreign intel section is weak as it was very badly run.” This is a direct reference to the state of affairs after former security overseer Nikolai “Yoda” Patrushev, during Putin’s post-inauguration reshuffle, was transferred from his post as secretary of the Security Council to serve as a special presidential aide.
The sources, cautiously, seem to converge on a very serious possibility: “There seems to have been a breakdown in intel; they do not seem to have noticed the accumulation of troops at the Kursk border”.
Another analyst though has offered a way more specific scenario, according to which a hawkish military faction, spread across the Ministry of Defense and the intel apparatus – and antagonistic to the new Minister of Defense Belousov, an economist – let the Ukrainian invasion proceed with two objectives in mind: set a trap for Kiev’s top enemy commanders and troops, who were diverted from the – collapsing – Donbass front; and put extra pressure on Putin to finally go for the head of the snake and finish off the war.
This hawkish faction, incidentally, regards Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov as “totally incompetent”, in the words of one intel pro. There’s no smoking gun, but Gerasimov allegedly ignored several warnings about a Ukrainian buildup near the Kursk border.
A retired intel pro is even more controversial. He complains that “traitors of Russia” actually “stripped three regions from troops to surrender them to the Ukrainians.” Now, these “traitors of Russia” will be able “to ‘exchange’ the city of Suzha for leaving the fake country of Ukraine and promote it as an inevitable solution.”
Incidentally, only this Thursday Belousov started chairing a series of meetings to improve security in the “three regions” – Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.
Hawks in the siloviki apparatus don’t make it a secret that Gerasimov should be fired – and replaced by fabled General Sergey “Armageddon” Surovikin. They also enthusiastically support the FSB’s Alexander Bortnikov – who de facto solved the extremely murky Prigozhin affair – as the man now really supervising The Big Picture in Kursk.
And the next one is Belgorod…
Well, it’s complicated.
President Putin’s reaction to the Kursk invasion was visible in his body language. He was furious: for the flagrant military/intel failure; for the obvious loss of face; and for the fact that this buries any possibility of rational dialogue about ending the war.
Yet he managed to turn the upset around in no time, by designating Kursk as a counter-terrorist operation (CTO); supervised by the FSB’s Bortnikov; and with an inbuilt “take no prisoners” rationale. Every Ukrainian in Kursk not willing to surrender is a potential target – set for elimination. Now or later, no matter how long it takes.
Bortnikov is the hands-on specialist. Then there’s the Overseer of the whole military/civilian response: Alexey Dyumin, the new secretary of the State Council, who among other previous posts was the deputy head of the special operations division of GRU (military intel). Dyumin does not respond directly to the Ministry of Defense nor the FSB: he is reporting directly to the President.
Translation: Gerasimov now seems to be at best a figurehead in the whole Kursk drama. The men in charge are Bortnikov and Dyumin.
The Kursk P.R. gambit is set to massively fail. Essentially, the Ukrainian forces are moving away from their lines of communication and supplies into Russian territory. A parallel can be made with what happened to Field Marshall von Paulus at Stalingrad when the German Army became overextended.
The Russians are already in the process of cutting off the Ukrainians in Kursk – breaking off their lines of supply. What’s left of the crack soldiers launched into Kursk would have to turn back, facing Russians both at their front and back. Disaster looms.
Irrepressible commander of the Akhmat special forces, Major General Apti Alaudinov, confirmed on Rossiya-1 TV that at least 12,000 Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) entered Kursk, including a lot of foreigners (Brits, French, Poles). That will turn out to be a “take no prisoners” on a massive scale.
Anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows Kursk is a NATO operation – conceived with a high degree of probability by an Anglo-American combo supervising the Ukronazi cannon fodder.
Anything Kiev does depends on American ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and NATO weapons systems of course operated by NATO personnel.
Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the sweaty green T-shirt actor in Kiev, admitted that Kiev “discussed” the attack “with Western partners”. The “Western partners” – Washington, London, Berlin – in full cowardly regalia, deny it.
Bortnikov won’t be fooled. He succinctly stated, on the record, that this was a Kiev terrorist attack supported by the West.
We are now entering the stage of hardcore positioning combat bound to destroy villages and towns. It will be ugly. Russian military analysts remark that if a buffer zone had been preserved way back in March 2022, mid-range artillery activity would have been restricted to Ukrainian territory. Yet another controversial decision by the Russian General Staff.
Russia will eventually solve the Kursk drama – mopping up small Ukrainian groups in a methodically lethal way. Yet very sensitive questions about how it happened – and who let it happen – simply won’t vanish. Heads will have to – figuratively – roll. Because this is just the beginning. The next incursion will be in Belgorod. Get ready for more blood on the tracks.
At critical moments over the past 25 years, the New York Times has aided the interests of a power faction within the Chinese Communist Party responsible for atrocities against practitioners of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong.
On top of implicating itself ethically, the paper has also, as a result, distorted its China coverage and misled its readers, as revealed by an analysis of The New York Times’ China coverage as well as interviews with half a dozen experts on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politics and geopolitics.
Due to the paper’s disproportionate influence on policy, its skewed coverage has likely led to a loss of life and treasure that is difficult to quantify, some experts said.
The New York Times has for decades positioned itself as a global newspaper, insisting on a necessity of access to China, according to former staffers. That meant convincing the communist regime that the paper’s presence would benefit it.
The paper has never explained what price it has paid for access to the country.
“There’s always the issue of, if you want to be a global newspaper, what do you have to do to keep China happy and stay in business there?” Tom Kuntz, a former editor at the paper, told The Epoch Times.
“There’s always been tensions, and I know they’ve, like a lot of companies, tried to maintain access to China.”
Bradley Thayer, a former senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, expert on strategic assessment of China, and a contributor to The Epoch Times, was more blunt.
“If they don’t cover the regime the way the regime wants to be covered, they’re going to be blackballed. They’re not going to be able to return,” he told The Epoch Times.
“So all of these individuals have a vested interest, if you will, in toeing the Party line.”
Covering Chinese politics, The New York Times has ascribed sincerity where deception is expected and glossed over where it should have dug deeper, all in a pattern of affinity with the interests of a CCP clique aligned with former Party leader Jiang Zemin, multiple experts affirmed.
Jiang’s influence has waned since 2012, when incoming CCP leader Xi Jinping exhibited an unexpected dexterity in eliminating his opponents. Only a minority of Jiang’s acolytes have maintained influence since his death in 2022. Despite the shift in power, however, The New York Times has maintained the pro-Jiang pattern.
The New York Times did not respond to a detailed list of emailed questions for this article.
Privileged Position
The paper developed a special connection with Jiang in 2001, when its then-publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and several editors and reporters were granted a rare audience with the dictator.
The paper ran a flattering interview headlined “In Jiang’s Words: ‘I Hope the Western World Can Understand China Better.’”
Within days, the CCP unblocked access to The New York Times’ website in China.
A month later, the CCP unblocked several other Western news sites, including those of The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the BBC. The sites were blocked again within a week.
The New York Times, on the other hand, remained accessible. Users then reported that content on the site was being blocked selectively, giving the paper a chance to benefit from access to the Chinese market to the degree that it kept within bounds acceptable to the CCP.
The interview came at a sensitive time for Jiang. He had only a little more than a year left before he was supposed to hand over Party control to Hu Jintao, fulfilling the succession line stipulated by Deng Xiaoping, his predecessor.
But things weren’t going well for Jiang. His persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, a political campaign that was supposed to whip the Party and the nation into conformity under his control, was failing to reach its goals. Even worse, foreign media, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, were taking apart the CCP’s anti-Falun Gong propaganda and highlighting accounts of wrongful detention and torture.
The New York Times, by contrast, appeared most helpful to Jiang’s campaign. By the time of the 2001 interview, the paper ran several dozen articles on Falun Gong, almost all of them profusely parroting the propaganda portraying the practice as a “cult” or a “sect.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline consisting of slow-moving exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was introduced to the public in China in 1992, and by the end of the decade, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people were practicing it.
When in January 2001 CCP state media claimed that several people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing were Falun Gong practitioners, The Washington Post dispatched a reporter to fact-check the story. The New York Times, on the other hand, immediately took the CCP line as fact.
If the paper employed its much-touted investigative acumen, it would have discovered, as others have, that the incident was staged. After the first man allegedly set himself alight in the middle of the square, four policemen somehow managed to obtain several fire extinguishers, rush to the scene, and put out the fire, all in less than one minute.
Given the distances involved on the giant square, that wouldn’t have been physically possible—unless the officers already had the fire extinguishers ready and knew in advance where on the square they would be needed that day, several independent investigations concluded, pointing out dozens of other inconsistencies.
Even without any investigation, the incident made little sense. The victims supposedly followed a belief that burning themselves alive would bring them to heaven. But Falun Gong includes no such belief. In fact, its literature treats suicide as killing a human life, which it explicitly prohibits.
The New York Times didn’t even find it strange that since Falun Gong’s public introduction in 1992, of the tens of millions of people practicing it, none of them had publicly set themselves on fire until that day, and none had done so since.
Even after The Washington Post investigation traced several of the alleged victims back to their hometown and found that none had ever been seen practicing Falun Gong, The New York Times continued to parrot the CCP’s propaganda.
Jiang was apparently pleased with The New York Times, calling it during the 2001 interview “a very good paper.”
Getting in Jiang’s good graces on the Falun Gong issue would have been particularly critical, as it struck at the heart of a core principle of CCP politics, several experts affirmed.
Partners in Crime
One of the bedrocks of the CCP’s internal politics is ensuring one’s own safety, particularly upon retirement. Cadres are well aware of the pitiful fate of many high-ranking comrades. Infamously, Liu Shaoqi, once No. 2 to the CCP’s first leader, Mao Zedong, was purged during the Cultural Revolution, arrested, and tortured to death.
When Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, looked for somebody to helm the CCP after him in 1989, he picked Jiang Zemin, the Shanghai Party secretary who supported the CCP’s deployment of military to crush the 1989 student protests.
“Because Jiang was implicated in the repression of the students, Deng could trust Jiang to be his successor. Jiang could not in the future use the massacre against Deng without implicating himself,” explained Matthew Little, a senior editor of The Epoch Times, in a 2012 analysis.
The persecution of Falun Gong played much the same role for Jiang, who encouraged his cronies to build “political capital” by backing the campaign. Some did so with fervor, escalating the persecution to a point of unspeakable barbarity, particularly in encouraging torture to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith, The Epoch Times previously reported.
These officials, tied by shared complicity in the atrocities, were at the core of Jiang’s power faction, sometimes called the “Shanghai gang.”
In exchange for their support, Jiang let the gang abuse their offices and plunder state-owned assets, setting the tone for a nationwide culture of corruption.
That culture served a dual purpose for Jiang. On one hand, it allowed him to buy supporters, especially in the 1990s, when he struggled to form a power base among CCP cadres, who generally saw him as incompetent, according to an unofficial biography of Jiang published by The Epoch Times.
On the other hand, he could eliminate his rivals in the name of “anti-corruption.”
But the sword of anti-corruption cuts both ways. As Xi later demonstrated, it could be applied selectively against the Jiang faction, too.
The bond through culpability in the Falun Gong repression was more solid. The crimes became so extensive that none of the culprits would have risked their revelation, some China experts said.
There was a problem, though: Jiang’s designated replacement, Hu Jintao, showed little enthusiasm for the Falun Gong campaign.
“Jiang tried to push Hu to persecute Falun Gong and found he was quite reluctant,” said Li Linyi, a China commentator, expert on CCP internal politics, and Epoch Times contributor.
“Their relationship started to deteriorate after that. Jiang just felt more and more concerned about Hu.”
Just as the CCP under Deng redressed some victims of the Cultural Revolution, Hu could, at least theoretically, redress Falun Gong, blame Jiang, and purge his faction.
In reality, this was unlikely to happen, Li said.
“There was a huge price for redressing the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “Not only did some top CCP leaders get purged, but the CCP admitted they made a big mistake. That is not good for them in order to hold power in China in the long term. The CCP is still criticized for what they did during the Cultural Revolution.”
CCP leaders would only backtrack on Falun Gong as a last resort, if they felt it would save the regime, he said.
That didn’t mean, however, that Hu and his supporters couldn’t use the Falun Gong issue to endanger Jiang and his faction in other ways. Indeed, there’s evidence that they have.
“All [Jiang’s] policies could have continued to be carried out by Hu Jintao, except this one. … The only thing Jiang Zemin worried about was the policy of persecuting Falun Gong,” said Heng He, a veteran China commentator with NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times.
Jiang was thus extremely motivated to constrain Hu and prop up his own image, several experts confirmed.
The New York Times proved helpful in this pursuit.
Shoring Up a Dictator’s Legacy
By 2002, The New York Times was in pro-Jiang mode. Parroting the Party propaganda, the paper declared that Falun Gong had been successfully “crushed.”
Citing CCP sources, it suggested that Falun Gong was already passé and that it only ever had 2 million practitioners. It went as far as claiming that the figure cited by Falun Gong sources, 70 million, was baseless.
Yet a few years earlier, before the persecution began, multiple Western and Chinese media, including The Associated Press and The New York Times, provided figures of 70 million or 100 million, generally attributing them to estimates by the Chinese State Sports Administration, which had the best insight due to a massive survey of Falun Gong practitioners it conducted in the late 1990s.