Mar 04

Today’s News 4th March 2022

  • America Defeats Germany For The Third Time In A Century: The MIC, BARE, & OGAM Conquer NATO
    America Defeats Germany For The Third Time In A Century: The MIC, BARE, & OGAM Conquer NATO

    Authored by Michael Hudson via Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog,

    My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and 50s: “Wars never solved anything.” It was as if they never changed anything – and therefore shouldn’t be fought.

    Herman disagreed, and made lists of all sorts of things that wars had solved, in world history or at least changed. He was right, and of course that is the aim of both sides in today’s New Cold War confrontation in Ukraine.

    The question to ask is what today’s New Cold War is trying to change or “solve.” To answer this question, it helps to ask who initiates the war. There always are two sides – the attacker and the attacked. The attacker intends certain consequences, and the attacked looks for unintended consequences. In this case, both sides have their dueling sets of intended consequences and special interests.

    The active military force since 1991 has been the United States. Rejecting mutual disarmament of the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO, there was no “peace dividend.” Instead, the U.S. policy by the Clinton administration to wage a new military expansion via NATO has paid a 30-year dividend in the form of shifting the foreign policy of Western Europe and other American allies out of their domestic political sphere into their own “national security” blob (the word for special rentier interests that must not be named). NATO has become Europe’s foreign-policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.

    The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime aims at forcing a showdown. It comes in response to the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.

    To understand just what U.S. aims are threatened, it is necessary to understand U.S. politics and “the blob,” that is, the government central planning that cannot be explained by looking at ostensibly democratic politics. This is not the politics of U.S. senators and representatives represent their congressional voting districts or states.

    America’s Three Oligarchies in Control of U.S. Foreign Policy

    It is more realistic to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and the banking and real estate complex than in terms of political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives do not represent their states and districts as much as the industrial interests of their major political campaign contributors. A Venn diagram would show that in today’s post-Citizens United world, U.S. politicians represent their campaign contributors, not voters. And these contributors fall basically into three main blocs.

    Three main oligarchic groups that have bought control of the Senate and Congress to put their own policy makers in the State Department and Defense Department.

    First is the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) – companies such as Raytheon, Boeing and other arms manufacturers, have broadly diversified their factories and employment in nearly every state, and especially in the Congressional districts where key Congressional committee heads are elected. Their economic base is monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to Near Eastern oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus. Stocks for these companies soared immediately upon news of the Russian attack, leading a two-day stock-market surge as investors recognized that war in a world of cost-plus “Pentagon capitalism” (as Seymour Melman described it) provided a national security umbrella. Senators and Congressional representatives from California and Washington traditionally have represented the MIC, along with the Solid pro-military South. The past week’s military escalation promises soaring arms sales to NATO and other U.S. allies. Germany quickly agreed to raise is arms spending to 2% of GDP.

    The second major oligarchic bloc is the rent-extracting oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM) riding America’s special tax favoritism granted to companies emptying natural resources out of the ground and putting them into the atmosphere. Like banking and real estate, the aim of this OGAM sector is to maximize the price of its energy and raw materials so as to maximize its natural-resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major U.S. priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline threatened to link the Western European and Russian economies together.

    If oil, gas and mining operations are not situated in every voting district, at least their investors are. Senators from Texas and other Western oil-producing and mining states are the leading lobbyists, and the State Department has a heavy oil-sector influence providing a national-security umbrella for its special tax breaks. The ancillary political aim is to ignore and reject environmental drives to replace oil, gas and coal with alternative sources of energy. The Biden administration accordingly has backed the expansion of offshore drilling, supported the Canadian pipeline to the world’s dirtiest petroleum source in the Athabasca tar sands, and celebrated the revival of U.S. fracking.

    The foreign-policy extension is to prevent foreign countries not leaving control of their oil, gas and mining to U.S. OGAM companies from competing in world markets with U.S. suppliers. Isolating Russia (and Iran) from western markets will reduce the supply of oil and gas, pushing prices and corporate profits up accordingly.

    The third major oligarchic group is the symbiotic Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector is the counterpart to Europe ‘s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents. With most housing in today’s world having become owner-occupied (with sharply rising rates of absentee ownership rising since 2008 and the wave of Obama evictions, to be sure), land rent is paid largely to the banking sector. About 80 percent of U.S. and British bank loans are to the real estate sector, inflating land prices to create capital gains – which are effectively tax-exempt for absentee owners.

    This Wall Street-centered banking and real estate bloc is even more broadly based on a district-by-district basis than MIC. Its New York senator from Wall Street, Chuck Schumer, heads the Senate, long supported by Delaware’s former Senator from the credit-card industry Joe Biden, and Connecticut’s senators from the insurance sector centered in that state.  Domestically, the aim of this sector is to maximize land rent and the “capital’ gains resulting from rising land rent. Internationally, the FIRE sector’s aim is to privatize foreign economies, above all to secure the privilege of credit creation in U.S. hands, so as to turn government infrastructure and public utilities into rent-seeking monopolies to providing basic services at maximum prices (health care, education, transportation, communications and information technology) instead of at subsidized prices to voters.

    Wall Street always has been closely aligned with the oil and gas industry, back to the days of Standard Oil. These are the three rentier sectors that dominate today’s post-industrial finance capitalism. Their mutual fortunes have soared as MIC and OGAM stocks have increased. And moves to exclude Russia from the Western financial system (and partially now from SWIFT), coupled with the adverse effects of isolating European economies from Russian energy, promise to spur an inflow into dollarized financial securities

    It is more helpful to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and the banking and real estate complex than in terms of political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives do not represent their states and districts as much as the industrial interests of their major political campaign contributors. That is why neither manufacturing nor agriculture play the dominant role in U.S. foreign policy. The convergence of policy aims of America’s three rentiergroups overwhelms that of labor and even of industrial capital. That convergence is the defining characteristic of today’s post-industrial finance capitalism. It is basically a reversion to economic rent-seeking, which is independent of the politics of labor and capital.

    The dynamic that needs to be traced today is why this oligarchic blob has found its interest in prodding Russia into what Putin evidently viewed as a do-or-die stance to resist the increasingly violent attacks on Ukraine’s eastern Russian-speaking provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.

    The Rentier “Blob’s” Expected Consequences of the New Cold War

    As President Biden explained, the current military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.

    U.S. officials first tried to stop construction of the pipeline from being completed. Firms aiding in its construction were sanctioned, but finally Russia itself completed the pipeline construction. U.S. pressure then turned on the traditionally pliant German politicians, claiming that Germany and the rest of Europe faced a National Security threat of Russia turning off the gas, presumably to extract some political or economic concessions. No such demands could be thought up, and so were left obscure and blob-like.

    Germany refused to authorize Nord Stream 2 from officially going into operation, and a major aim of today’s New Cold War is to monopolize the market for U.S. shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG). Already under Donald Trump’s administration, Angela Merkel was bullied into promising to spend $1 billion building new port facilities for U.S. tanker ships to unload natural gas for German use. The Democratic election victory in November 2020, followed by Ms. Merkel’s retirement from Germany’s political scene, led to cancellation of this port investment, leaving Germany really without much alternative to importing Russian gas to heat its homes, power its electric utilities, and to provide raw material for its fertilizer industry and hence maintenance of its farm productivity.

    So the most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.

    Higher gasoline, heating and other energy prices also will hurt U.S. consumers and leave less  in family budgets for spending on domestic goods and services. This could squeeze marginalized homeowners and investors, leading to concentration of absentee ownership of housing and commercial property in the United States, along with buyouts of distressed real estate owners faced with soaring heating and energy costs in other countries. But that is deemed collateral damage to the post-industrial blob.

    Food prices also will rise, headed by wheat. (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.) This will squeeze many near Eastern and Global South food-deficit countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.

    Russian raw-materials exports may be blocked by the currency and SWIFT sanctions. This threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum (made largely from electricity). If China decides to see itself as the next nation being threatened and joins Russia in a common protest against the U.S. trade and financial warfare, the Western economies are in for a serious shock.

    The long-term dream of U.S. New Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in Western stock markets.

    OGAM still dreams of buying majority control of Yukos and Gazprom.

    Wall Street would love to recreate a Russian stock market boom.

    Russia’s Intentions to Benefit from America’s Unintended Consequences

    What does Russia want? Most immediately, to remove the neo-Nazi anti-Russian core that the Maidan massacre and coup put in place in 2014. Ukraine is to be neutralized, which to Putin means basically pro-Russian, dominated by Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. The aim is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a staging ground of anti-Russian moves a la Chechnya and Georgia.

    Putin’s longer-term aim is to pry Europe away from NATO and U.S. dominance – and in the process, create a new multipolar world order. The aim is to dissolve NATO altogether, and then to promote the broad disarmament and denuclearization policies that Russia has been pushing for. Not only will this cut back foreign purchases of U.S. arms, but it may end up leading to sanctions against future U.S. military adventurism.

    Now that it is obvious that (1) NATO’s purpose is aggression, not defense, and (2) there is no further territory for it to conquer from the remains of the old Soviet Union, what does Europe get out of continued membership? It is obvious (despite the many claims otherwise) that Russia has no desire to or interest in again invading Europe. It has no upside – as it had nothing to gain by fighting Ukraine, except to roll back the NATO-backed attacks on Novorossiya.

    Will European nationalist leaders (the left are largely pro-US) ask why their countries should pay for U.S. arms that only put them in danger, pay higher for U.S. LNG and energy, pay more for grain and Russian-produced raw materials, all while losing the option of making export sales and profits on peaceful investment in Russia – and perhaps losing China as well?

    The U.S. confiscation of Russian monetary reserves, following that of Afghanistan’s reserves (and England’s seizure of Venezuela’s gold stocks held there) threaten every country’s adherence to the Dollar Standard, and hence the dollar’s role as the vehicle for foreign-exchange savings by the world’s central banks, mutual holdings of each other’s currencies.

    On a more long-term level, Russia is likely to join China in forming an alternative to the U.S.-dominated IMF and World Bank. Putin’s announcement that he wants to arrest the Ukrainian Nazis to hold a war crimes trial seems likely to imply an alternative to the Hague court. Only a new international court could try war criminals extending from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi leadership all the way up to U.S. officials responsible for crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg laws.

    Did the American Blob Actually Think Through the Consequences of NATO’s Provocation?

    It is almost black humor to look at U.S. attempts to convince China that it should join the United States in denouncing Russia’s moves into Ukraine. The most enormous unintended consequence of U.S. foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.

    Russia dreamed of creating a new world order, but it was U.S. adventurism that has driven the world into an entirely new order – one that looks to be dominated by China as the default winner now that the European economy is essentially torn apart and America is left with what it has grabbed from Russia and Afghanistan, but without the ability to gain future support.

    And everything that I have written above may already be obsolete as Russia and the U.S. have gone on atomic alert.

    With such talk I’m brought back to my discussions with Herman Kahn 50 years ago. He became quite unpopular for writing Thinking about the Unthinkable, meaning atomic war. As he was parodied in Dr. Strangelove, he did indeed say that there would indeed be survivors. But he added that for himself, he hoped to be right under the atom bomb, because it was not a world in which he wanted to survive.

    *  *  *

    Michael Hudson is a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “and forgive them their debts”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/04/2022 – 02:00

  • Reality Check: A "No-Fly-Zone" Over Ukraine Means WW3
    Reality Check: A “No-Fly-Zone” Over Ukraine Means WW3

    Via Off-Guardian.org,

    Western pundits and journalists are all in a flutter over Ukraine.

    They think it’s terribly exciting, and want to be seen to be tough and decisive. Their internal monologues probably feature the word “Churchillian” quite a lot.

    Naturally, that means a lot of them are saying some really stupid things.

    This includes widespread calls for a NATO-imposed “No-Fly Zone” over Ukrainian airspace. This proposal is all over the media, even coming out of the porcine mouth of Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the UK’s Labour party:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A dip through the #NoFlyZone hashtag on Twitter will introduce you to hundreds and hundreds of people, many of them probably NATO shill accounts, all ramping of the calls for a no-fly zone.

    It will also demonstrate that huge numbers of these people have no idea what a “no-fly zone” actually is or how it works.

    We encountered this same issue in Syria a few years ago. After the Russians entered the war at the invitation of Bashar al Assad, Western journalists got all jingoistic and started calling for no-fly zones. We had to explain how they worked back then, too.

    As we recently of our editors summarised on Twitter…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A no-fly zone is not a magic dome of cosy protection put in place with a snap of the fingers and enforced without a shot being fired.

    A no-fly zone is a declaration of war. It does NOT save lives. That’s a lie to trick stupid people into calling for escalation.

    A no-fly zone will require NATO to shoot down any Russian aircraft that enter the airspace.

    It will lead to inevitable retaliation from the Russians who will shoot down NATO aircraft & attack NATO anti-aircraft batteries. Thousands more will die immediately.

    And since Russia already has its nuclear weapons on high alert any imposition of a no-fly zone Ukraine has a very high chance of immediate escalation to nuclear war.

    And no, that would NOT be an exchange of tactical battlefield nukes. It would be strategic ICBMs.

    Thousands of kilotons of nuclear weapons unleashed on every major city in the Northern hemisphere from San Diego to Moscow.

    The war would suddenly be a mushroom cloud in YOUR backyard.

    This is why even the Pentagon won’t contemplate a no-fly zone Ukraine. It’s global suicide.

    No-fly zones do not save lives, they are not designed to. They are designed to escalate.

    To all the people out there happily sharing the #NoFlyZoneinUkraineNow hashtag: If you really want to save lives get educated about what’s actually going on in Ukraine. Stop being a manipulated war-puppet spewing hashtags you don’t understand.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 23:40

  • These Are All The Companies That Have Cut Ties With Russia
    These Are All The Companies That Have Cut Ties With Russia

    An ever-expanding list of public companies, including Apple, Exxon, GM, and Nike, are proudly announcing they are cutting ties to Russia as its invasion of Ukraine brings condemnation and sanctions.

    But while all this sounds very ‘politically-correct’ and ‘shared-sacrifice’-y, Bloomberg reports that if every U.S. tech firm followed Apple and disconnected from Russia, it would reduce revenue by only 1%-2% in a worst-case scenario, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. So far, the lost business looks like it won’t have a major impact on profits (or stock prices), especially with China being by far Russia’s largest trading partner.

    Infographic: Russia's Most Important Import Partners | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In fact, for some, like Exxon, cutting ties with Russia can spark a ‘virtue-signaling’ ESG boost with minimal impact to the company’s actual business, and as Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan remarks in a very frank opinion piece, consumer brands halting sales in Russia “smells of opportunism” to some, with transportation constrained, limited access to international payments systems, and a sinking ruble:

    “While that sounds like an appropriate response to Moscow’s brutality, it also smells of opportunism…

    …it’s hard not to wonder whether companies were taking a principled stand only once it was no longer feasible to do business in the country“

    Of course soaring oil and other commodities cost will strike at profits as expenses rise and consumers have less to spend. But, as Axios details, in the seven days since Putin’s invasion began, the following companies have unleashed their anti-Russia PR campaigns:

    • Boeing suspended major operations in Moscow, as well as maintenance and technical support for Russian airlines.

    • Airbus is halting supply of parts and services to Russian airlines.

    • Shell will sever ties with Russian gas giant Gazprom and end its roughly $1 billion financing of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

    • BP is exiting its nearly 20% stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft, and faces a potential financial hit of as much as $25 billion.

    • Exxon Mobil says it will exit Russia oil and gas operations valued at more than $4 billion and cease new investment.

    • GM, which sells only about 3,000 cars a year in Russia, says it will suspend exporting vehicles.

    • Ford suspended operations.

    • BMW stopped shipments and will stop production in Russia.

    • Daimler Truck Holdings said it would no longer send supply components to its Russian joint-venture partner.

    • Volvo Cars, owned by Chinese conglomerate Zhejiang Geely, halted sales and shipments.

    • Renault ceased operations and production at two assembly plants because it can’t get parts.

    • VW paused delivery of Audis already in Russia so it can adjust car prices to reflect the decline in value of the ruble.

    • Harley-Davidson suspended shipments to Russia.

    • Adidas suspended its partnership with the Russian Football Union.

    • Nike ceased online sales because it can’t guarantee delivery.

    • FedEx and UPS suspended shipments.

    • Yoox Net-A-Porter Group and Farfetch, luxury e-commerce platforms, are suspending deliveries in Russia.

    • Apple has paused product sales and limited services (including Apple Pay), on top of ceasing exports to Russia and restricting features in Apple Maps in Ukraine to safeguard civilian safety.

    • Dell stopped selling products.

    • Ericsson is suspending deliveries to Russia.

    • Walt Disney is pausing film debuts in Russia. Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Universal say they won’t release films in the country.

    So with companies falling over themselves to signal their anti-Putin virtue, we give Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan the last word:

    “So if we want to measure business executives’ true character, watch what they do in authoritarian countries during times of peace and abundant revenue. We need not wait for the violence to start and the money flow to stop.”

    Harsh, but fair, in the current ‘hold your nose’ over Beijing’s human rights abuses environment… and will all the same companies pull out of China when/if it invades Taiwan?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 23:20

  • "We're Now Living Out Minority Report" – ATF Unofficially Declares Solvent Traps To Be Suppressors
    “We’re Now Living Out Minority Report” – ATF Unofficially Declares Solvent Traps To Be Suppressors

    Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

    The ATF seems to have made a change related to the legal building of homemade suppressors and it has the potential to turn millions of gun owners into felons overnight.

    Earlier this year, we reported on a situation involving everyone’s favorite government agency, the ATF, and a company called Diversified Machine.

    What happened was that the ATF raided Diversified Machine because the ATF determined that Diversified Machine was manufacturing what the ATF felt constituted a suppressor and selling them to individuals. ATF also felt obligated to seize their website. 

    Here’s the problem, though, Diversified Machine doesn’t sell suppressors. They sell items known as “Solvent Traps.”  

    Solvent Traps are devices that can be used when cleaning firearms to catch the cleaning solution if poured down the barrel. The Solvent Trap helps prevent mess, and if in the field can help prevent harmful chemicals from being dumped into the environment. 

    The ATF felt that because Diversified Machine’s solvent trap had a dimpled end to it, it could be more easily drilled out and turned into a suppressor. Therefore, the ATF considered it to be a suppressor. Most solvent traps are not sold with dimpled ends.

    With proper machining and tools, Solvent Traps can be manufactured into suppressors. That does not mean that they by themselves are suppressors. Communities have popped up online, namely on Facebook and Reddit, dedicated to a process called “form 1 suppressor building” these communities of individuals build their own suppressors legally by filing a Form 1 with the ATF declaring their intent to do so and submitting themselves to the process established for items regulated by the National Firearms Act.

    Before the ATF raided Diversified Machine, there was no guidance from the ATF on solvent traps; they were completely legal to own. Regardless, in Jan. 2022, the ATF sent out a letter to many of those who had purchased these solvent traps accusing them of attempting to acquire suppressor parts.

    Now it’s being reported by the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition or FRAC that the ATF is mass denying those who want to build a homemade suppressor giving them this message:

    Here’s the important takeaway: “The part from which you intend to make a silencer already meets the NFA’s definition of a silencer. The part was not registered nor transferred in compliance with the NFA.” This is followed by: “NFA Division notes that it is unlawful for you to possess a silencer made or transferred in violation of the NFA.”

    This is a shocking admission and might seem like an error for many. But if you look across the many forums on the internet, you’ll see hundreds of people reporting the same thing. Some of those people do not even have solvent traps!

    Take a look at what people are saying across the internet:

    There have been rumors that the ATF is planning to announce new rules related to solvent traps and suppressor home builds. Including proposing a rule change to make the hollow tube itself a silencer. This change would completely outlaw solvent traps and put companies selling them out of business.

    But the consequences of that are far more reaching.

    Suppose the suppressor applications are being denied because the ATF considers the metal tubing of the solvent trap to be a suppressor. What is stopping them from considering any piece of metal tubing to be a suppressor? It wouldn’t be out of the question. In 2020 a Youtuber going by the name TruckMaster was visited by Homeland Security for buying diesel fuel filters.  

    While writing this article, QuietBore, a company that sells Solvent Trap kits, published their guidance from the ATF on Facebook (in a now-deleted post). From the looks of it, the ATF has changed their opinion on solvent traps and now considers them to be suppressors. The ATF also now seems to be considering a 6″ section of metal tubing to be a suppressor based on nothing more than “intention to create/manufacture/make a silencer”. Read the ATF’s guidance for yourself here:

    Finding this answer vague, the folks at Quietbore asked for more clarification. Here was the ATF response:

    Starting to sound familiar? The ATF has a pattern of changing definitions at a whim. They did something similar recently when they declared all Rare Breed FRT-15 triggers to be machine guns.

    Up until this admission from the ATF, solvent traps were completely legal as well. 

    Unfortunately, as with the Rare Breed situation, this change has the potential to cause many people to become felons overnight! If you are a gun owner and have a 6″ section of metal pipe in your house for a child’s science project or for any other reason the ATF may just declare that piece of metal to be a silencer! That is an extremely dangerous precedent to set.

    This overreach probably will not come as a shock to long-time gun owners. ATF is currently moving to regulate anything that “could be made into a firearm” through their new rule on redefining what constitutes a frame or receiver. It was only a matter of time until suppressors received the same treatment.

    Steph from TMGN Breaks Down How This May Affect You:

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 23:00

  • Former Top Democrat In Illinois Charged With Public Corruption
    Former Top Democrat In Illinois Charged With Public Corruption

    And just like that, another powerful Democrat from the state of Illinois has been indicted on federal charges.

    Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan has been indicted on racketeering charges stemming from Madigan’s alleged attempts to solicit bribes for himself and his friends, CBS News reports.

    The 22-count indictment includes charges including racketeering conspiracy, along with counts of using interstate facilities in aid of bribery, wire fraud and attempted extortion. All charges stem from alleged abuses of his official position supposedly committed by Madigan.

    The investigation was overseen by US Attorney John Lausch, who announced Wednesday that a federal grand jury had returned the indictment. Lausch’s description of Madigan’s wrong-doing included phrases like “no show jobs” that were once features of American mafia prosecutions of a bygone era. One of the businesses that were allegedly solicited for bribes was Commonwealth Edison, the largest utility in Illinois and the sole electricity provider in Chicago.

    “Madigan and McClain unlawfully requested that various companies with interest in state legislation, including utility company Commonwealth Edison, paid Madigan’s associates as a reward for their loyalty to Madigan; at times in return for performing little to no legitimate work for those businesses,” Lausch said. “The indictment also accuses Madigan of engaging in multiple schemes to secure business for his law firm, including work from parties with business before the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago.”

    “Unfortunately, this type of criminal conduct drastically undermines the public’s confidence in our government,” Lausch said continued. “Simply put, it’s not a good thing.”

    Madigan’s attorneys issued the following statement, where he vehemently rejected the allegations.

    “I was never involved in any criminal activity. The government is attempting to criminalize a routine constituent service: job recommendations. That is not illegal, and these other charges are equally unfounded.

    “Throughout my 50 years as a public servant, I worked to address the needs of my constituents, always keeping in mind the high standards required and the trust the public placed in me.”

    “I adamantly deny these accusations and look back proudly on my time as an elected official, serving the people of Illinois.”

    The longtime Illinois powerbroker, nicknamed “the Velvet Hammer” for his insistence on strict party discipline, was previously the longest-serving state House speaker in modern US history. During his tenure in office, a procession of Illinois politicians – including three governors – have faced federal charges. But given his reputation as a savvy operator, few ever expected Madigan to face prosecution.

    The longtime speaker only resigned his state rep seat in February 2021, as the prosecutors drew closer following a deferred prosecution agreement involving ComEd for the bribery scheme. Madigan also resigned his seat as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party around then.

    As Lausch, the US attorney who brought the case against Madigan, told CBS, Illinois has a “very stubborn” public corruption problem.

    “We have a very stubborn public corruption problem here in Illinois. Rooting out and prosecuting public corruption has been and will always be a top priority of this office,” Lausch said.

    Fortunately for Illinoisans, their current governor, JB Pritzker, is already a billionaire, and thus would seemingly have little use for bribes.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 22:40

  • Major Banks Doubt Chinese Potential GDP Goal Is Reachable
    Major Banks Doubt Chinese Potential GDP Goal Is Reachable

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live Reporter and Analyst

    Beijing is widely expected to set the growth target this year at 5%-5.5% when top officials lay out their economic policies at the National People’s Congress starting this weekend. A number of high-profile economists at Goldman Sachs, Nomura and Bank of America are skeptical that such a target is attainable. It underscores the challenges Beijing is facing with significant constraints from its housing and Covid policies.

    In retrospect, many investors underestimated the significance when Beijing set its 2021 GDP target at a low level (“above 6%”) earlier last year. It turned out that Beijing planned to take advantage of the relatively strong post-Covid recovery to unleash a range of far-reaching and economically costly reforms, from regulatory crackdowns in tech industries to housing deleveraging. China managed to grow 8.1% last year. But by Q4, growth decelerated to an annualized 4%, well below the potential GDP that officials estimate to be about 5%-5.7%. The MSCI China Index lost 23% in 2022 and defaults by developers soared.

    The priority for this year has shifted back to stabilizing the economy. Based on the growth targets released by provinces earlier, most economists expect the GDP goal this year to be set between 5% and 5.5%. The consensus in a Bloomberg survey is for a growth rate of 5.2% this year.

    But a number of prominent investment banks think reaching 5% will be challenging. Nomura kept its growth estimate at 4.3%, the lowest in the Bloomberg survey. Forecasts from Goldman (4.5%), Citigroup (4.7%), Barclays (4.7%) and Bank of America (4.8%) are all at the low end of the spectrum.

    The skepticism stems from questions about how much China can stimulate the economy, without significant changes to its restrictions on housing and Covid policies. “We expect Beijing to set this year’s GDP growth target at ‘around 5.5%,’ which, in our view, is too high to realistically achieve,” wrote Nomura’s economist Lu Ting and colleagues.

    There seems to be a softening tone on both policy fronts recently. Dow Jones reported officials are exploring ways to exit from the zero-Covid policy. Guo Shuqing, the chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission who last year warned that the real-estate bubble is the biggest “gray rhino,” suggested this week that he doesn’t want adjustments in the housing sector to be “too drastic.”

    But under the mantra that housing is not for speculation, it’s hard for China to drastically spur home demand. And any potential change in the Covid policy later this year may come too late to help growth in 2022.

    China rarely misses its GDP target. Justin Yifu Lin, a former chief economist at the World Bank, said last month that keeping a relative high speed of growth in the foreseeable future is a political task and that allowing China to grow slower than the U.S. (the Fed forecasts GDP this year at 4%) may affect confidence. How to get there, tough, is the question.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 22:31

  • Couple Who Live In Self-Built 'Clay' Home Haven’t Had To Pay Any Bills For Over 10 Years
    Couple Who Live In Self-Built ‘Clay’ Home Haven’t Had To Pay Any Bills For Over 10 Years

    Authored by SWNS via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A family who lives in an impressive off-grid self-built “clay” home have paid no bills for over a decade—saving them about US$55,000 (CA$70,000) a year.

    Misty Murph’Arien, 36, and her husband, Bryce, 46, have become homesteaders—self-sufficiency experts—since moving into a remote Canadian forest 15 years ago.

    The couple, who have daughters, Sage, 7, and Aurora, 5, are almost entirely self-sufficient, cooking their meals on a wood stove, getting their food from a vegetable farm and a range of animals, their electricity from solar panels, and their water from a well.

    The ‘cob home’ in winter. (SWNS)

    The couple met while working as chefs in Hamilton, but quickly realized they weren’t suited to living in the big city.

    Misty, from Dundalk, Ontario, said: “From the moment we met, we instantly knew we wanted to live an alternative lifestyle.”

    After visiting Bryce’s grandmother’s cob cottage in rural Durham for 54 weekends in a row, they eventually moved there in 2006, falling in love with the rural lifestyle.

    “Bryce’s grandmother’s cottage was so peaceful and we were constantly disappointed when we had to leave and go back to the city,” Misty said. “I’ve always suffered with intense migraines but when we moved to the countryside they started to become less and less frequent.

    “Six months after moving they’d stopped completely and I’m convinced it was the noise and the city environment which had been the cause of my discomfort.”

    Misty Murph’Ariens and her husband, Bryce. (SWNS)

    For the first three years, they spent time learning how to lead the homestead lifestyle, before going out on their own and buying a piece of farmland in the local area in 2009 for CA$37,500 (approx. US$30,000).

    “Rural living immediately made sense to us, and the idea of being completely self-sufficient was really appealing,” Misty recalled.

    The couple spent weeks cleaning up the land, which was covered with trash and abandoned materials. They then took four months to build their “cob” home—a natural material made of clay, sand, and straw—for just CA$10,000 (approx. US$8,000).

    Every summer since the move, the family has expanded and improved their home. Misty homeschools their daughters and teaches them a traditional syllabus with the addition of key primal skills, animal care, and building techniques.

    Aurora and Sage are at the north side of the house. (SWNS)

    In order to make their earnings, Misty and Bryce run a small catering business in the local community. They get around by cycling, walking, or traveling on horseback, as they don’t have a car.

    Bryce claims the reason their family is financially stable despite their lack of consistent income is their low-cost, self-sufficient lifestyle.

    “We’ve worked out over the years that our annual living costs amount to approximately CA$15,000—and that’s with raising two kids,” he said. “We try to be as self-sufficient as possible, farming and harvesting all the food we eat.”

    Bryce transporting wood. (SWNS)

    Most of their food comes from their own cows, chickens, and ducks, as well as a vegetable patch. The couple grows all the traditional orchard fruits and produces a variety of nuts and vegetables, which they harvest on a weekly basis.

    They do get the occasional shopping delivery to the nearest road but state that it is only for a very select range of essential items.

    Norweigan fjord horses in the forest. (SWNS)

    “I think the difference with our lifestyle is not so much what we do, but why we do it,” Bryce said. “Of course, we do have to acquire money, but the focus of our day is finding the most sustainable and fulfilling way to live.”

    According to Bryce, most people spend the majority of their time working to afford the necessities of life. However, he and his family, he says, spend their time working to acquire these necessities directly.

    “Granted its not a life for everyone, but it works for us, and, as a family, we’ve never been happier,” Bryce said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 22:20

  • How A "Rogue" Juror In The Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Could Vacate Her Guilty Verdict
    How A “Rogue” Juror In The Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Could Vacate Her Guilty Verdict

    A “rogue” juror at the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, who reportedly spoke about his own childhood sexual abuse during deliberations for the trial, will now have to undergo a hearing to try and determine whether or not Maxwell’s conviction should be overturned.

    The juror, who is begin referred to by his first and middle name, Scotty David, plans on pleading the fifth at the hearing, Bloomberg reported this week. 

    Lawyer for the juror, Todd Spodek, told the judge this week that his client would “invoke his constitutional right against to self-incrimination to not answer questions at the March 8 hearing in Manhattan federal court,” Bloomberg wrote.

    Meanwhile, Maxwell’s lawyers are using the juror as a potential linchpin to try and get a new trial. They are pointing to comments David gave, post-verdict, to the press where he admitted to bringing up his own sexual abuse experiences to sway the jury to convict Maxwell. 

    Lawyers argued that David should have disclosed the abuse during the voir dire process. During jury selection, David filled out a questionnaire where he answered “no”, under penalty of perjury, to a question about whether or not he, or anyone close to him, had been an abuse victim. 

    David told reporters that he “flew through” the questionnaire. Prosecutors have said a new trial isn’t necessary because David may have “simply made a mistake” and because he “answered truthfully when asked about other topics that might have resulted in his dismissal”. 

    Federal prosecutors will attempt to ask the judge to compel David to answer questions under oath, the report says. 

    David works as an executive assistant at Carlyle Group. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 22:00

  • Putin: Crazy Like A Fox
    Putin: Crazy Like A Fox

    Authored by Scott Ritter via Consortium News,

    As the Russian invasion of Ukraine goes on, the world wonders what the reason was behind such a precipitous act. The pro-Ukraine crowd has put forth a narrative constructed around the self-supporting themes of irrationality on the part of a Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his post-Cold War fantasies of resurrecting the former Soviet Union.

    This narrative ignores that, far from acting on a whim, the Russian president is working from a playbook that he initiated as far back as 2007, when he addressed the Munich Security Conference and warned the assembled leadership of Europe of the need for a new security framework to replace existing unitary system currently in place, built as it was around a trans-Atlantic alliance (NATO) led by the United States.

    Vladimir Putin with Russia’s long-serving minister of defense, Army General Sergey Shoygu, in 2013. Wikimedia Commons

    Moreover, far from seeking the reconstitution of the former Soviet Union, Putin is simply pursuing a post-Cold War system which protects the interests and security of the Russian people, including those who, through no fault of their own, found themselves residing outside the borders of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    In this age of politicized narrative shaping, which conforms to the demands of domestic political imperatives as opposed to geopolitical reality, fact-based logic is not in vogue. For decades now, the Russian leadership has been confronting a difficult phenomenon where Western democracies, struggling to deal with serious fractures derived from their own internal weakness, produce political leadership lacking in continuity of focus and purpose in foreign and national security relations.

    Consistent Leadership

    Whereas Russia has had the luxury of having consistent leadership for the past two decades, and can look to another decade or more of the same, Western leadership is transient in nature. One need only reflect on the fact that Putin has, in his time in office, dealt with five U.S. presidents who, because of the alternating nature of the political parties occupying the White House, have produced policies of an inconsistent and contradictory nature.

    The White House is held hostage to the political constraints imposed by the reality of domestic partisan politics. “It’s the economy, stupid” resonates far more than any fact-based discussion about the relevance of post-Cold War NATO. What passes for a national discussion on the important issues of foreign and national security are, more often than not, reduced to pithy phrases. The complexities of a balanced dialogue are replaced by a good-versus-evil simplicity more readily digested by an electorate where potholes and tax rates matter more than geopolitics.

    Rather than try to explain to the American people the historical roots of Putin’s concerns with an expanding NATO membership, or the impracticalities associated with any theoretical reconstitution of the former Soviet Union, the U.S. political elite instead define Putin as an autocratic dictator (he is not) possessing grandiose dreams of a Russian-led global empire (no such dreams exist).

    It is impossible to reason with a political counterpart whose policy formulations need to conform with ignorance-based narratives. Russia, confronted with the reality that neither the U.S. nor NATO were willing to engage in a responsible discussion about the need for a European security framework which transcended the inherent instability of an expansive NATO seeking to encroach directly on Russia’s borders, took measures to change the framework in which such discussions would take place.

    Russia had been seeking to create a neutral buffer between it and NATO through agreements which would preclude NATO membership for Ukraine and distance NATO combat power from its borders by insisting the alliance’s military-technical capabilities be withdrawn behind NATO’s boundaries as they existed in 1997. The U.S. and NATO rejected the very premise of such a dialogue.

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine must be evaluated within this context. By invading Ukraine, Russia is creating a new geopolitical reality which revolves around the creation of a buffer of allied Slavic states (Belarus and Ukraine) that abuts NATO in a manner like the Cold War-era frontier represented by the border separating East and West Germany.

    West Germany joined NATO in 1955, which led to the formation of the rival Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Via Wikimedia Commons

    Russia has, by redeploying the 1st Guards Tank Army onto the territory of Belarus, militarized this buffer, creating the conditions for the kind of standoff that existed during the Cold War. The U.S. and NATO will have to adjust to this new reality, spending billions to resurrect a military capability that has atrophied since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    Here’s the punchline — the likelihood that Europe balks at a resumption of the Cold War is high. And when it does, Russia will be able to exchange the withdrawal of its forces from Belarus and Ukraine in return for its demands regarding NATO’s return to the 1997 boundaries.

    Vladimir Putin may, in fact, be crazy — crazy like a fox.

    * * *

    Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 21:40

  • China's Military Strategists Watching Russian Invasion Closely With Eye On Taiwan
    China’s Military Strategists Watching Russian Invasion Closely With Eye On Taiwan

    Amid speculation in some Western policy circles that China could move on Taiwan ‘at any moment’ given currently the world has its total focus on the Ukraine war, the prospects for some kind of surprise rapid invasion of the democratic island wasn’t helped by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit this week. 

    Pompeo was there in the capacity of a “private citizen” – the White House had previously stressed – also while separately an official US defense delegation visited. But Pompeo’s words likely spoke louder in terms of evoking the ire of Beijing, given he provocatively stated that Taiwan is a “great nation” on his visit. Beijing promptly responded by calling him “despicable”. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    He said when he arrived at the Taipei airport on Wednesday: “It is wonderful to be here. I’ve been looking forward to coming to visit with the people of Taiwan for a very long time,” according to Reuters.

    “I’m so much looking forward to my trip to meet with business people, people from government, people all across your great nation,” he added. It goes without saying that such talk is a bright red line for Beijing – though it should also be noted that Pompeo is already under official Chinese sanction.

    Since last Thursday’s Putin-ordered invasion of Ukraine which shocked the West, there’ve been a number of high profile op-eds in major US news outlets comparing the Ukraine and Taiwan situations. Taiwan’s own media asked the same question…

    “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow?” some headlines in Taiwanese media asked on Friday.

    Naturally this led to Beijing firmly addressing the issue, underscoring that “Taiwan is not Ukraine” – given that in China’s eyes the Taiwan question has nothing to do with sovereignty given it never had it in the first place (again, speaking strictly from Beijing’s perspective). To review, Chinese officials were scathing in batting down any comparisons:

    China’s Foreign Ministry has said that Taiwan is “not Ukraine” and has always been a part of China, following Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s call to bolster vigilance in the face of the territorial crisis in Eastern Europe.

    The comments come after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cited the risk for Taiwan in a warning about the damaging global consequences if the West failed to live up to its vows to support Ukrainian independence in the face of threats from Russia.

    Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying dismissed any link between the issues of Ukraine and Taiwan.

    “Taiwan is not Ukraine,” she said.

    “Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. This is an indisputable legal and historical fact.”

    But without doubt, policy and military strategists in Beijing are following events in Ukraine very closely, as fresh analysis featured in The Wall Street Journal lays out:

    Russia’s initial struggles in its invasion of Ukraine have offered a vivid illustration to China’s leaders of the military challenges if they tried to seize control of Taiwan through force.

    The most prominent is the possibility of fierce resistance from local people defending their homes and sovereignty from any invasion.

    A US naval war college professor and retired military officer, Bernard Cole, offered this insight in the report: “The chief surprise for Russia, which may well be the chief lesson that China takes, is the willingness of the Ukrainian people to fight it out.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But as WSJ underscores, China’s military has recently made rapid advances over years of President Xi’s military modernization initiative: “China would start any invasion with one advantage compared with Russia: an even bigger and better-equipped military. China has around one million ground troops, the largest navy in the world and a military budget more than three times as large as Russia and around 13 times the size of Taiwan’s budget.”

    The White House at the start of this week sought to assure the public and the world that if it came down to it, the US military is capable of fighting on two major fronts: President Biden’s top Asia official on the National Security Council said Monday that the US can still focus on increasing its “engagement” in the Asia Pacific to counter China. Let’s hope that humanity never sees this day where the US is facing off with two nuclear-armed enemies.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 21:00

  • Russia Halts Rocket Engine Supply To US As ISS Partnership Threatened
    Russia Halts Rocket Engine Supply To US As ISS Partnership Threatened

    Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos halted deliveries of rocket engines to the US following a series of devastating financial sanctions by the US, according to Russian state-owned news agency TASS.

    “Today, we have made a decision to halt the deliveries of rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash to the United States. Let me remind you that these deliveries had been quite intensive somewhere since the mid-1990s,” Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV on Thursday. 

    United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, uses Russian RD-180 engines to power Atlas V launch vehicle’s main propulsion systems. ULA has been developing a new rocket called Vulcan, which would use American-made engines. Those engines, called BE-4s, are being developed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and are almost ready for testing. ULA CEO Tory Bruno told The Verge, “the very first Vulcan flight, slated to take place this year.” 

    Northrop Grumman Corp. also uses Russian engines on its Antares rocket to lift a spacecraft packed with cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).

    Rogozin said Russia had delivered 122 of the RD-180 engines to the US since the 1990s, and about 98 have been used. He said Russia would no longer service the remaining 24 engines, adding that plans to supply the US with an “additional 12 RD-181 engines in 2022-2024” can no longer be fulfilled. 

    Days ago, Rogozin threatened the ISS partnership, which has been intact for two decades. He said if Russia abandons the 500-ton space station, it will tumble out of low Earth orbit in an “uncontrolled de-orbit.” Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk tweeted that if the Russians pull out of the ISS, his company, SpaceX, would save the station.  

    In 2014, lawmakers passed a measure requiring US companies to phase out the Russian-made rocket engines for US ones by the early 2020s. NASA has a few options, but perhaps the most promising and proven has been SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, equipped with Raptor engines (all US hardware), that can send both people and cargo to the ISS. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 20:40

  • Germany Sends 2,700 Anti-Aircraft Missiles To Ukraine Despite Moscow's Warning
    Germany Sends 2,700 Anti-Aircraft Missiles To Ukraine Despite Moscow’s Warning

    Germany on Thursday confirmed that it’s ramping up military aid to beleaguered Ukraine, after days ago reversing its long-standing policy of neutrality which banned any country from shipping German arms into conflict zones. Now after one week of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Berlin is sending an additional 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Kiev.

    It comes after an initial arms shipment already arrived, upon the request of the Ukrainian government. Given that also on Thursday the White House confirmed that it’s sharing “real-time intelligence” with Ukraine’s military – all of this suggests the NATO allies are slowly getting sucked in more directly amid Ukraine’s efforts to defend its territory.

    The Strela goes all the way back to the Cold War, via WeaponsSystems.net

    It should be noted of course that obviously NATO has been supporting Ukraine on a military and intelligence level for a long, long time at this point, which the Kremlin has cited as one of the reasons for the extreme action now being taken. 

    The Wall Street Journal details in a fresh report that what’s essentially Germany’s version of the more well-known US Stinger system is called the Strela:

    The shoulder-fired weapons, known as Strela, can be used against helicopters and airplanes and will be transported to Ukraine within days. The Soviet-made rockets belonged to the armed forces of the former East Germany and are among the most widespread weapons of that type in the world. They were mothballed years ago and are now stored by the environment ministry.

    The initial German weapons shipment earlier this week included 1,000 anti-tank missiles, and additionally 500 American Stingers. Berlin’s complete 180-turn on the issue also allowed Baltic states like Estonia to begin shipping in German-made weapons.

    This poses a huge problem for those in the West not wishing for direct Russia-NATO confrontation. Moscow this week warned that if its forces come under fire by foreign-supplied weapons, then those external countries behind the shipments will “bear the responsibility.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But many reports suggest this is already happening, particularly given Ukraine has long had an abundance of US Javelin anti-tank missiles. By some estimates, Ukraine’s military has already used literally hundreds of Javelins against the invading Russian army.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 20:00

  • Fire At Ukrainian Nuke Plant Contained; Lindsey Graham Calls For Putin Assassination
    Fire At Ukrainian Nuke Plant Contained; Lindsey Graham Calls For Putin Assassination

    Update (1850ET): President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the Russian attack at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in a fire which broke out in a training building outside the plant’s perimeter, according to Reuters.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Biden and Zelensky ‘urged Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site,’ according to a readout of their call.

    And now, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is calling for Putin’s assassination.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to Ukrainian authorities, the plant is now secured.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *

    Update (1745ET): The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says it’s aware of reports of shelling at the nuclear power plant and is in contact with Ukrainian authorities about the situation, after Ukrainian officials told AP that they had detected elevated levels of radiation at the plant.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Online radiation monitors near the plant can be found here.

    Meanwhile, President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky are reportedly speaking (or have spoken), according to NBC News‘ Peter Alexander.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *

    Update (1658ET): Unit 1 of the Zaporizhzhia power plant has been hit, according to the plant’s Facebook page (via Bloomberg).

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *
    Risk assets are sharply lower, with futures and euro tumbling, offset by a flight to safety which has sent Treasuries, the dollar, yen and gold soaring, after reports that Russia has started shelling Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Europe’s largest, which accounts for one quarter of Ukraine’s power generation, and which has caught fire.

    “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe,” AP reports Andriy Tuz as saying Reuters reporter Phil Stewart confirmed the report in a tweet, citing local town mayor. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba  has confirms Zaporizhzhia fire, saying “If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Futures as noted have plunged almost 80 points on the news. Nasdaq is now down 3% on the day…

    … and 10Y yields have tumbled 15bps, back below 1.70%

    Gold spiked back above $1950…

    And WTI is back above $112…

    Wheat Futures are instantly limit up at $1209 (up from $750 just over a week ago)…

    Rate-hike odds have tumbled…

    It seems clear from the market’s reaction that few have heard UBS veteran floor broker Art Cashin’s story. Barry Ritholtz retells the story in 2015 that…

    Over dinner not too long ago, Cashin related the story of something that happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Everyone was on edge as the U.S. and Soviet Union approached the brink. One day, word began to spread that Russia had launched its nukes, which would arrive in 11 minutes. A trooper to the end, Cashin ran around the exchange floor trying to sell short, but was unable to do so. The 11 minutes passed, but nuclear annihilation never came. Soon after, Cashin reported to his boss. He told him what occurred, and was told that in the future, upon learning of the end of the world, the proper trade is to go long, not short.

    He asked his boss, Why go long if the world is ending?

    “It never does end,” his boss told him, and even if it does, “who are you going to settle the trade with?”

    For now, as Bloomberg notes, traders are understandably skittish of any news, which suggests a worsening of the situation on the ground. Until there are more details which provide clarity, a defensive posture will prevail across markets.

    Live feed from the NPP is below:

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 19:42

  • Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Goes Into Liver Cells And Is Converted To DNA: Study
    Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Goes Into Liver Cells And Is Converted To DNA: Study

    Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The messenger RNA (mRNA) from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA, according to Swedish researchers at Lund University.

    A nurse prepares the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Southfield, Mich., on Nov. 5, 2021. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

    The researchers found that when the mRNA vaccine enters the human liver cells, it triggers the cell’s DNA, which is inside the nucleus, to increase the production of the LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.

    The mRNA then leaves the nucleus and enters the cell’s cytoplasm, where it translates into LINE-1 protein. A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccine’s mRNA and reverse transcribes into spike DNA.

    Reverse transcription is when DNA is made from RNA, whereas the normal transcription process involves a portion of the DNA serving as a template to make an mRNA molecule inside the nucleus.

    “In this study we present evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 is able to enter the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in Current Issues of Molecular Biology. “BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA as fast as 6 [hours] after BNT162b2 exposure.”

    BNT162b2 is another name for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that is marketed under the brand name Comirnaty.

    The whole process occurred rapidly within six hours. The vaccine’s mRNA converting into DNA and being found inside the cell’s nucleus is something that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said would not happen.

    “The genetic material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells,” the CDC said on its web page titled “Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines.”

    This is the first time that researchers have shown in vitro or inside a petri dish how an mRNA vaccine is converted into DNA on a human liver cell line, and is what health experts and fact-checkers said for over a year couldn’t occur.

    The CDC says that the “COVID-19 vaccines do not change or interact with your DNA in any way,” claiming that all of the ingredients in both mRNA and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines (administered in the United States) are discarded from the body once antibodies are produced. These vaccines deliver genetic material that instructs cells to begin making spike proteins found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 to produce an immune response.

    Pfizer didn’t comment on the findings of the Swedish study and said only that its mRNA vaccine does not alter the human genome.

    “Our COVID-19 vaccine does not alter the DNA sequence of a human cell,” a Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “It only presents the body with the instructions to build immunity.”

    More than 215 million or 64.9 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated as of Feb. 28, with 94 million having received a booster dose.

    Autoimmune Disorders

    The Swedish study also found spike proteins expressed on the surface of the liver cells that researchers say may be targeted by the immune system and possibly cause autoimmune hepatitis, as “there [have] been case reports on individuals who developed autoimmune hepatitis after BNT162b2 vaccination.”

    The authors of the first reported case of a healthy 35-year-old female who developed autoimmune hepatitis a week after her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine said that there is a possibility that “spike-directed antibodies induced by vaccination may also trigger autoimmune conditions in predisposed individuals” as it has been shown that “severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection are characterized by an autoinflammatory dysregulation that contributes to tissue damage,” which the virus’s spike protein appears to be responsible for.

    Spike proteins may circulate in the body after an infection or injection with a COVID-19 vaccine. It was assumed that the vaccine’s spike protein would remain mostly at the injection site and last up to several weeks like other proteins produced in the body. But studies are showing that is not the case.

    The Japanese regulatory agency’s biodistribution study (pdf) of the Pfizer vaccine showed that some of the mRNAs moved from the injection site and through the bloodstream, and were found in various organs such as the liver, spleen, adrenal glands, and ovaries of rats 48 hours following injection.

    In a different study, the spike proteins made in the body after receiving a Pfizer COVID-19 shot have been found on tiny membrane vesicles called exosomes—that mediate cell-to-cell communication by transferring genetic materials to other cells—for at least four months after the second vaccine dose.

    The persistence of the spike protein in the body “raises the prospect of sustained inflammation within and damage to organs which express the spike protein,” according to experts at Doctors for COVID Ethics, an organization consisting of physicians and scientists “seeking to uphold medical ethics, patient safety, and human rights in response to COVID-19.”

    “As long as the spike protein can be detected on cell-derived membrane vesicles, the immune system will be attacking the cells that release these vesicles,” they said.

    Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist, wrote on Twitter that the Swedish study’s findings have “enormous implications of permanent chromosomal change and long-term constitutive spike synthesis driving the pathogenesis of a whole new genre of chronic disease.”

    Whether the findings of the study will occur in living organisms or if the DNA converted from the vaccine’s mRNA will integrate with the cell’s genome is unknown. The authors said more investigations are needed, including in whole living organisms such as animals, to better understand the potential effects of the mRNA vaccine.

    “At this stage, we do not know if DNA reverse transcribed from BNT162b2 is integrated into the cell genome. Further studies are needed to demonstrate the effect of BNT162b2 on genomic integrity, including whole genome sequencing of cells exposed to BNT162b2, as well as tissues from human subjects who received BNT162b2 vaccination,” the authors said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 19:40

  • Russian Firms Rush To Open Accounts At Chinese Banks
    Russian Firms Rush To Open Accounts At Chinese Banks

    As US and European sanctions make life increasingly difficult for Russian businesses, one Chinese bank claims it has seen a surge in requests from Russian firms trying to open new bank accounts, according to an anonymous source quoted by Reuters.

    It’s the latest example of a phenomenon first described by Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Poszar, who warned during a recent interview with Bloomberg that sanctions against Russia- along with the ban of most Russian banks from SWIFT –  could lead to greater reliance on the Chinese yuan by Russian companies. As we said, China’s yuan, which presently accounts for just 2.7% of world reserves, is one option for anxious reserve managers in Moscow or elsewhere.

    “Over the past few days, 200-300 companies have approached us, wanting to open new accounts,” the person, who works at the Moscow branch of a Chinese state bank and has direct knowledge of its operations, told Reuters.

    The source added that most of the firms looking to open an account with their bank do a lot of business with China.

    He declined to be named or have his bank identified as he is not authorized to speak with media.

    It was not clear how widespread Russian demand for new accounts at Chinese banks was, but the banker source told Reuters many of the companies seeking new accounts do business with China and that he expected yuan transactions by such firms to increase.

    Still, it’s a sign that Russian Central Bank will likely need to keep more reserves denominated in the Chinese yuan.

    China has repeatedly voiced opposition to the sanctions, calling them ineffective and insisting it will maintain normal economic and trade exchanges with Russia.

    A number of Chinese state banks operate in Moscow, including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank. Although none of these banks agreed to speak with Reuters.

    Another Chinese businessman with strong ties to Russia had this to say: “It’s pretty simple logic. If you cannot use U.S. dollars, or euros, and US and Europe stop selling you many products, you have no other options but to turn to China. The trend is inevitable.”

    And as Reuters concludes: he willingness of emerging market giants such as China to sustain business relations with Moscow is indicative of a “deep rift over what the western press has described  as Europe’s biggest crisis since WWII.

    Ultimately, this trend promises to chip away at the dollar’s dominance in global trade. 

    That’s not to say that the devaluing of the ruble hasn’t created problems: many Chinese firms are trying to delay delivery to avoid potential losses on their ruble holdings.

    “Companies will be switching to yuan-rouble business but in any case things will become two, three or four times more expensive for Russians because the exchange rate between the yuan and rouble is also changing,” said Konstantin Popov, a Russian entrepreneur in Shanghai.

    Shen said Russian demand for Chinese goods will nevertheless grow in the long term. “The key is to solve trade settlement issues” in the face of sanctions, he said.

    Still, it’s expected that Russian demand for Chinese products will only grow from here. Russia’s central bank has already hiked its benchmark interest rate to 20% to try and protect the ruble, which hit a record low of 106 to the dollar yesterday.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 19:20

  • Digital Brownshirts And Their Masters
    Digital Brownshirts And Their Masters

    Authored by David Souto Alcalde and Thomas Harrington via Thee Brownstone Institute,

    We are under siege. A nihilistic fanaticism is running free among us thanks to the emergence of a journalistic “ethos” that establishes an almost complete equivalence between the “truth” and those utterances that support the strategic goals of the great economic and digital powers of our time.

    A few months ago Facebook censored an article in the British Medical Journal that highlighted serious irregularities in Pfizer’s clinical vaccine trials. Then two weeks ago, fact-checkers from the Spanish websites Newtral and Maldita burst into the public square to accuse professor of Pharmacology, renowned expert in drug safety, and ex-WHO adviser, Joan Ramón Laporte of foisting lies and disinformation onto the Spanish populace. This, in reaction to Laporte’s testimony before a Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the country’s vaccination effort.

    Despite his towering credentials, his intervention was quickly tarred as problematic by the media and subsequently banned by YouTube. The crime of this new Galileo Galilei? Alerting the assembled parliamentarians to the existence of grave procedural irregularities in the trials for the vaccines, and questioning the wisdom of a health strategy that aims to inject every Spanish child over the age of six with a new, poorly tested, and largely ineffective medication.

    This incident reveals that the fact-checkers will attack anyone who does not accept the truth as dictated by the great economic and government centers of the world. This is not the usual official media obfuscation to which we’ve become accustomed over the years, but rather a brazen McCarthyist intimidation device, designed to frighten citizens into submission by appealing to their lowest and most ignoble instincts, an approach lain bare in Maldita’s smug and Manichaean slogan: “Join and support us in our battle against lies.”

    Under this harsh binary logic, an internationally famous scientist like Laporte is not even given the opportunity to be judged wrong or misguided in good faith. Rather, he is immediately accused of being a willful and dangerous liar who must be immediately banished from public view.

    Fact-checkers as destroyers of science and the public sphere.

    Nowadays the word “fascist” is used so profligately that it has lost most of its meaning. But if we are really serious about describing the operational logic of fact-checking entities like Maldita and Newtral we must recur precisely to that term, adding the prefix “neo” to avoid confusion with the original version of this totalitarian sensibility.

    Whereas the original model of fascism sought to enforce social conformity through physical intimidation, the new variant seeks to do so by aggressively enforcing the “acceptable” (to big power, of course) parameters of both scientific discourse and the idea of the public sphere, a direct product, like science, of the Enlightenment. Their objective is to liquidate these flawed but essential spaces of debate in all but name, and thus deprive us of two of the only remaining vehicles we have for defending ourselves against the abuses meted out by the liberal state and its corporate and military allies.

    The fact-checking industry was born as a consequence of fake news, that great invented crisis whose sole objective was to provide a pretext for enhancing elite control over any democratic impulse that might arise in response to the sudden and often harsh imposition of neoliberalism and digital technologies in our lives. 

    But what initially began as a pathetic, overreaching and classist attempt to prevent the unwashed from even considering, say, that people in Hillary Clinton’s entourage might have prostituted minors in a pizza-house basement, quickly morphed, during the Covid era, into something much more sinister and consequential.

    It is now the menacing cudgel of an ever-growing exercise in illegitimate corporate and state power, a weapon that allows elites to effectively disappear world-renowned experts like Laporte who dare to put the interests of society ahead of the economic interests and control agendas of Big Pharma and Big Tech.

    These Digital Brownshirts are just the most visible and forward-leaning elements of a much broader effort to install the logic of the algorithm—a providential and vertically-imposed concept of truth that vitiates traditional fact-finding and admits neither human intelligence nor scientific debate—as a cornerstone of our human interactions and cognitive processes. Under this paradigm, a linear relationship between power and truth is presented as wholly and completely natural.

    When analyzed in this light we could say that while the libels launched against Laporte by Maldita and Newtral are not strictly-speaking algorithmic in origin, they are profoundly algorithmic in spirit in that they are designed, like Neil Ferguson’s well-publicized if completely errant epidemiological models, to radically preempt the search for truth over time through empirical observation and informed debate.

    The methods these fact-checkers use to dictate what is to be presented to the public as “true” operate under few, if any known, procedural standards. Rather, in forming their “arguments” it seems they simply cherry-pick the opinions of an expert or two who is known to be on board with the particular “algorithmic” project of social change or social mobilization. 

    This, regardless of the at times massive gap between the slim credentials and in-field experience of the project-compliant experts (not to mention the fact-checking journalists) and the demonstrated international skill and renown of the objects of their efforts in cognitive cleansing like Laporte, or earlier on in the Covid crisis, Michael Levitt and John Ioannidis.

    In short, these fact-checking processes follow neither the basic principles of journalistic ethics—which requires that one enter into a given question without any unduly strong presuppositions—or the necessary back and forth of the scientific method, which insures, or is at least designed to insure, that dissident opinions be considered in the process of establishing operative, if still always provisional, notions of truth.

    The only recognizable “strength” the new fact-checkers have—and here we see perhaps the clearest link to the thugs that were strategically deployed by Mussolini and Hitler— is their backing from the very highest levels of social and economic power.

    The seriousness of the current situation lies in the way the fact-checkers have—before the often dumbfounded acquiescence of much of the academy itself—successfully arrogated to themselves the right, for all practical purposes, to smash the day-to-day freedom and epistemic authority of scientists, as well as the processes designed to insulate intellectual inquiry from the undue impingements of concentrated power, or to put it more simply, from the possibility that an oligarchy-sponsored mediocrity, or pack of mediocrities, can summarily cancel the widely institutionally recognized wisdom of a Joan Ramon Laporte.

    The authoritarianism of the fact-checkers not only cripples science but effectively annuls the very idea of the public sphere by naturalizing the idea that the robust, and at times, conflictual exchange of ideas is in some way perverse. Is it any wonder that observing a world like this, many of our students, who should at their age be bursting with a desire for healthy conflicts in the service of growth, have confessed to us both in private how scared they are to express themselves freely and openly in class?

    If the largely anonymous fact-checkers are the shock troops of this campaign to override both epistemological rigor and the idea of the public sphere, the media-anointed “science-explainers” are its field generals.

    There is, of course nothing wrong with seeking to make often arcane fields of knowledge accessible to the general public. Indeed when done well by a real scientist like Carl Sagan it is a high art.

    The problem comes, as is so often the case today, when the popularizer lacks a grasp of the fundamental debates in the field, and from there, the ability to confidently wade into them as a participant. Painfully aware that he or she is in over his head, they will do what most people unable to compete on their own merits in the field to which they have been assigned tend to do: seek the protection in the arms of power.

    This produces a perverse reality, in which the people ostensibly tasked with introducing the public to the complexity of both science and public policy, end up shielding them from an acquaintance with either. And knowing their continued prominence depends on pleasing the powers who have elevated them to the spotlight and who are seeking to destroy existing epistemologies of knowledge in order to facilitate the imposition of their algorithmic logic, they take delight in mocking those few highly accomplished people who have decided not to relinquish their principles in the face of the constant propaganda onslaught.

    A good example of this practice of hooliganism in Spain is Rocio Vidal, who works for La Sexta, the country’s most-watched TV network. From a swivel chair in her home office, she ridicules anyone, from the singer and actor Miguel Bosé to the head of Allergic Diseases at Ourense Hospital in Galicia who questions the official dogma of the unprecedented virulence of Covid, and the self-evident wonders of the vaccines. The specific crime of the doctor from Galicia? Stating that the not fully tested Covid mRNA vaccines are, in fact, not fully tested and thus are by definition experimental.

    What these medical influencers are doing, no doubt with the full knowledge, approval and perhaps even training of the great financial, governmental and pharmaceutical powers is to effect—under the rubric of the freedom of the press—a rapid sorpasso of the institutions that, with all their faults, have long guaranteed a more or less reliable structure for adjudication of competing claims of scientific truth. Unaccustomed to the aggressiveness, relentlessness and speed of these attacks, most doctors have, sadly, reacted like the proverbial deer in the headlights to them, hoping against hope that this plague of intellectual vandalism will somehow, someway be brought to an end. But it would appear that no such relief is in the offing.

    Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this inquisitorial logic and praxis in the long run is that it tries to make citizens believe that there is no relationship between science and politics, and that politics—the art of dissent—is a dangerous practice that must be eschewed by every conscientious citizen.

    The fact-checkers as the great landowners of the new virtual world.

    We must face the fact that the news verification agencies are part of the global control framework set in motion by those who claim for themselves the right to be the owners of all our time and and all of our actions. Behind information verification software services like Newsguard, we find fervent defenders of illegal spying on citizens like former CIA and NSA chief and congressional perjurer Michael Hayden, and US army assassination team leader Stanley McChrystal.

    The International Fact-Checking Network to which the aforementioned Spanish fact-check agencies Maldita and Newtral belong is financed in part by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and a major player in, among many other shady oligarchic pursuits, the NATO-linked Allegiance for Securing Democracy.

    There is nothing politically neutral about these people. Nor has any of them ever shown a great predilection or support for disinterested intellectual inquiry. What all three have shown in abundance is an abiding delight in marshaling power for the present US-led global order and the exercise of often brutally administered schemes of control over others.

    The prime objective of fact-checkers—as recognized, for example, by Newtral on its website—is to use algorithms to harvest and manage citizen information, and in this way, usher in a new era in which the minds of individuals will be so seamlessly “pre-directed” to “positive” and “benevolent” ends and behaviors (as so defined by the members of the enlightened classes) that politics in all its forms will come to be seen as superfluous.

    This explains why, between them, Google and Facebook currently employ 40,000 “verifiers” who exercise an invisible censorship aimed at swaying our perceptions of the world in ways deemed to be “constructive” by the controllers of those firms and those with whom they have forged political and business alliances.

    These efforts lie at the core of the post-humanist gospel as preached by people like Klaus Schwab and Ray Kurzweil. Their clear message to us about the coming world is that while you might be born free, your destiny and the design of your being—and what we used to call its unique sensibilities— will be firmly entrusted to others. Like who? Like the aforementioned gentlemen and their friends who, of course, have much more far-seeing minds than your own.

    But if there is one thing that the Digital Brownshirts fear more than the Wicked Witch of the West fears water, it is real politics. Thus far, these informational terrorists have been able to exploit our natural indulgence of the value of free speech for their own ends. Let’s be clear. These censors are, in effect, engaging in mass consumer fraud. And if it is illegal to sell horse meat as beef, and refined sugar as a nutritional supplement, then it should also be illegal for hired guns to arrogate to themselves the right to define truth and destroy long-standing deliberative processes and institutions.

    Sadly, however, we cannot wait for our deeply compromised political classes to take the lead on this necessary criminal prosecution. Rather we, as informed citizens, must take the lead in denouncing these vandals and the powers that have cynically unleashed them upon our shared scientific and civic spaces. 

    In this process, we must help our ever more present-minded citizens, enslaved to the idea—so useful to the elites— that the world is fundamentally entropic, that these nihilists did not just appear on their TV screens by accident, but rather that they were placed there to do someone else’s dirty work, and that our survival as free people depends on the tenacity with which we hunt down those “someone elses” and subject them to one of the more fundamental types political action: popular justice.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 19:00

  • Ukraine To Issue NFT Collection To Fund Armed Forces; Pussy Riot Raises $6.6 Million With Flag Pic
    Ukraine To Issue NFT Collection To Fund Armed Forces; Pussy Riot Raises $6.6 Million With Flag Pic

    Ukraine has abandoned plans to reward crypto donors with an ‘AirDrop’ – a term used to describe a free transfer of a digital asset – and will instead issue its own collection of NFTs in order to fund its war with Russia, according to Ukraine’s vice-prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

    Adidas ‘bored ape’ NFT

    “we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens,” he said in a Thursday tweet.

    Ukraine’s embrace of digital assets as a way to fund its armed forces comes after it raised approximately $200 million in “war bonds,” according to the Financial Times.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe use of cryptocurrencies has soared in Ukraine over the past several weeks, with Bitcoin trading at a 6% premium on Binance’s Ukrainian Hryvina (UAH) market. So far, $42.9mm has been donated to the Ukrainian government, according to data provider Elliptic.

    NFTs are collectible digital tokens that are fixed on the blockchain and cannot be replicated (though one can always take a screenshot and possess a non-blockchain version). Last year, sales of digital assets surged – bringing the global market to $40bn.

    illustration via coinquora.com

    It is unclear what these NFTs will consist of or whether they will be transferred for free or sold in an auction, for additional fundraising.

    Ukraine has already disbursed $14mn of the cryptocurrency to invest in the conflict, Michael Chobanian, president of Ukraine’s Blockchain Association and a central figure in the fundraising effort, told CoinDesk TV on Tuesday.

    Uniswap, a decentralised cryptocurrency exchange, has also allowed listed tokens on its site to be swapped into ethereum and donated to Ukraine in a single transaction.

    An NFT of a pixelated smoking man wearing a blue bandanna and sunglasses from a popular collection called CrptoPunks, worth around $200,000, was also sent to Ukraine’s crypto wallet this week. -FT

    Meanwhile Russian activist musical group Pussy Riot has raised $6.6 million selling an NFT of the Ukrainian flag to donors through a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) backed by the band.

    Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood donated $5.8 million to the Ukrainian government via Polkadot, while another DAO backed by Solana and the Ukraine government has raised around $1.4 million to “go directly to aiding Ukrainians on the ground,” according to FT.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 18:40

  • Nuclear Negotiators Announce Being "Very Close" To Final Iran Deal
    Nuclear Negotiators Announce Being “Very Close” To Final Iran Deal

    At a moment that the Biden administration is coming under severe scrutiny over why it hasn’t targeted or blocked Russian oil imports with sanctions – Thursday witnessed significant rumblings that world powers negotiating with Iran are on the cusp of a restored nuclear deal. 

    One top EU foreign policy official confirmed that the Vienna process is now in the “final stages” but still cautioned “we are definitely not there yet” while an early evening CNN report cited a State Department official who said negotiators are “inching forward” toward reaching a deal. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “While there has been significant progress and we are close to a possible deal, a number of very difficult issues remain unresolved,” the official told CNN.

    A huge part of the “pressure” on the US side to wrap up the deal is now tied into the Ukraine and what’s looking to soon be continually soaring energy and gas prices. The White House last month revealed it was in a full-court press to talk to Asian, African and Middle East companies about urgently getting ‘alternative’ supplies to Europe, also as the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline has been halted.

    Though the latest Biden admin statements have urged caution (the US has been negotiating indirectly via European mediation) European negotiators on Thursday issued highly optimistic statements:

    “We are very close to an agreement,” chief British negotiator Stephanie Al-Qaq said on Twitter. “Now we have to take a few final steps.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Among the hurdles that remains, notes The Wall Street Journal Thursday evening, includes terror designations put in place under the Trump administration: 

    U.S. and Iranian officials cautioned there was at least one big issue that still needed solving: Iran has been pushing for more sanctions relief if the nuclear deal is restored. In particular, it wants the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be taken off Washington’s most significant terror sanctions list, the Foreign Terrorist Organization.

    Image source: IAEA

    Meanwhile, Iran hawks in Congress as well as Saudi Arabia have weighed in voicing concern over a “weak deal” that’s being rushed…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Earlier in the day…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Followed by these earlier headlines that may indeed suggest negotiators are still merely “inching” toward a completed deal…

    • IRAN CONTINUES TO BREACH MANY KEY LIMITS SET BY 2015 NUCLEAR DEAL, INCLUDING URANIUM ENRICHMENT LEVEL AND ENRICHED URANIUM STOCK -QUARTERLY U.N. ATOMIC WATCHDOG REPORT
    • IRAN RAISES STOCK OF HIGHLY-ENRICHED URANIUM BY 83%: IAEA
    • IRAN HAS CONTINUED RESTRICTING IAEA ACCESS TO DATA

    Another key issue is the question of “guarantees” that a future US administration would stick by a restored JCPOA. Republicans have by and large promised they would torpedo any potential deal should they take back the White House. Israel too has long lobbied especially the Republican side of the aisle to do just that. This is hugely concerning for Iran.

    “Nobody can say the deal is done until all the outstanding remaining issues are resolved,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh also weighed in. “Extra efforts needed,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 18:20

  • Rosneft CEO's $120 Million Super-Yacht Seized At French Port After "Preparing For Urgent Departure" 
    Rosneft CEO’s $120 Million Super-Yacht Seized At French Port After “Preparing For Urgent Departure” 

    Not all Russian oligarchs have escaped Europe with their assets, as the Biden administration made it very clear earlier this week they will “seize the yachts, luxury apartments, and private jets” of Russian billionaires. 

    We asked the question on Wednesday: “Are Russian Oligarchs Fleeing By Sea To Indian Ocean As Biden Aims To Seize Billions?” 

    The answer appears to be ‘yes.’ Come to find out, not all Russian oligarchs made it out. France announced it impounded the superyacht belonging to Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin. The move comes as part of continued EU sanctions against Russia, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire disclosed this week. 

    The yacht is called the Amore Vero (true love), and it was “confiscated overnight in the Mediterranean port of La Ciotat,” Bloomberg reported on Thursday morning. The report says that the port is located near Marseille, on the French Cote d’Azur.

    Bloomberg wrote that when it was confiscated, the yacht was “preparing an urgent departure.” 

    The French Finance Ministry said: “At the moment the inspection was carried out, the boat was readying to weigh anchor urgently, without having finished the planned work.” 

    Le Maire said this week on Twitter: “Thanks to French customs for enforcing the EU sanctions against people close to Russia’s leaders.”

    French Budget Minister Oliver Dussopt clarified that the yacht was “prevented from leaving” but that the asset hadn’t been frozen, the report clarified. It was initially planned to stay at the port until April 1, after arriving in early January. 

    We pointed out some of the biggest Russian-owned luxury yachts are sailing around the Indian Ocean. 

    President Biden warned in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that the U.S. and Europe would “seize” the assets of Russian billionaires.

    “Tonight, I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who built billions off this violent regime — no more,” Biden said. “We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

    The movement of Russian oligarchs worldwide after the Ukrainian invasion comes as western sanctions are complicating things for Russia and the elite class. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/03/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Mar 03

Today’s News 3rd March 2022

  • Ukraine Learns The Value Of An Armed Citizenry, But Far Too Late
    Ukraine Learns The Value Of An Armed Citizenry, But Far Too Late

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    In all the world the US as a nation is utterly unique in its tradition of citizen rights to self defense. There is no other protection written into any constitution anywhere that is as solid and unapologetic as the 2nd Amendment. Whenever I end up in a debate with a gun control advocate from another country that wants to “educate me” on the level of firearms ownership overseas I have to laugh because these people just don’t get it.

    There are many countries where some guns are allowed to be owned by the public, but in every case this is treated as a PRIVILEGE which the government can give and take away anytime it pleases. Only in America is gun ownership an individual right regardless of what the government and the so called “majority” likes or dislikes. The government’s opinions on personal firearms are meaningless. The majority’s opinions on gun rights are meaningless. I own guns because natural law and the constitution says I have an inborn right to self defense. And, if someone wants to take those weapons from me they better be prepared to die in the process.

    This is not an attitude shared by most of the rest of the world because most of the world has never fought and defeated a global power to achieve independence. This experience of freedom is not written into their cultural subconscious. In fact, most nations have lived under one level of authoritarianism or another for centuries. Many people inherently want freedom, but very few people have ever risked everything to get it and succeeded.

    The only time you will see a mass awakening in favor of public self defense in these places is when a country faces an existential threat, then suddenly people start to question why they are completely disarmed and helpless.

    This is a revelation that the Ukrainian people are experiencing today. As I write this the capital of Kiev is being surrounded by Russian forces and the nation’s government is calling on all able bodied citizens to take up arms and repel the invasion. This all sounds rather noble and the media in the west is waxing romantic about it. However, the situation reveals a foolishness that plagues most countries today. Why wasn’t the Ukrainian public ALREADY armed and organized?

    Ukraine’s gun laws are not as strict as many in Europe or Eastern Europe, but they are certainly not conducive to civilian defense. It’s generally not legal for anyone to own a pistol for any reason other than special government issue, while a person must be at least 25 years old just to qualify for a permit to get a rifle. The types of arms allowed are select and few, and magazines are limited to ten rounds or less. Overwhelmingly, it is the upper middle class and the rich that obtain most of the permits, as is often the case through the majority of Europe. Middle class and poor people are rarely allowed to own firearms.

    I’ll say it again: When some European leftist tries to argue with you online about how there are “gun owners everywhere” in their country despite their strict laws, remind them that firearms ownership is ‘pay to play’ in most countries outside the US. If you are not relatively wealthy you are probably never going to be allowed by the government to get a permit to own a gun. The rich are allowed firearms because the rich are more naturally inclined to support the status quo.

    This kind of elitism has left Ukraine with a highly disarmed population, with only 1 in 10 people having access to weapons of any kind, and a majority of these weapons are bolt action rifles and shotguns which are generally not effective for military defense (unless we are talking about bolt action rifles set up for long range shooting, and there are scant few people that have the knowledge to actually use such tactics effectively). In many countries you aren’t even allowed to own military grade scopes or red dots.

    The reason for this is easy to figure out and it has nothing to do with preventing crime – Rather, government elites want to ensure there is little chance of the public ever overthrowing them should they implement controls that push the people too far. We have seen this everywhere in the wake of covid mandates and vax passport laws.

    There is a reason why these draconian measures were unsuccessful in the US; we are heavily armed and there’s nothing Biden or anyone else can do about it without risking annihilation. It’s the same reason why the US has not seen a major military invasion attempt since the Mexican-American War (I am not counting the minor incursions by the Japanese into Alaska during WWII). An invasion of the US would be a quagmire unlike anything in history and far deadlier than trying to take over a country like Afghanistan.

    This is not opinion, this is FACT given the amount of arms, training and combat knowledge common within the American population. The only way the US can be taken over is from within, which is a subject for another article.

    One area which Americans have failed to remain secure is in the abandonment of the citizen militia, which is an element of the 2nd Amendment that is just as important as gun rights. For many decades we have allowed the National Guard, which is now basically federalized, to take the place of the militia system. This is completely unacceptable and not a viable replacement in any way. Luckily, there has been a resurgence of local organization in recent years, and though the “M word” has yet to make a major reappearance, this is what will inevitably happen as mainstream systems continue to fail and people look to their own communities for safety instead of the government.

    In Ukraine there used to be a more concerted citizen call-up effort but again, this was a strictly centralized government affair. The only organized militias in the country are among the pro-Russian separatists. Today, as Russia invades, the Ukrainians don’t even have basic measures in place. Their ability to hold off the Russians at all is predicated on American missile systems like the Javelin which are being steadily funneled into the Ukrainian military.

    SIDE NOTE: Also, the methods which Ukrainian forces are using to ambush Russian tank columns are rather advanced and familiar. I suspect the possibility that there are outside military “advisers” (perhaps US advisers) on the ground right now in Ukraine. The advanced guerrilla-style ambush tactics and the results look similar to training that is often given to Green Berets or SAS. The UK did send anti-tank weapons along with a small group of “trainers” to Ukraine in January.

    Maybe I am mistaken, but if this is the case it would be diplomatically disastrous if such adviser teams were ever discovered to be involved in the fighting.

    Despite all the help from the west, large chunks of Ukraine territory are now in the hands of Russia including two major cities so far. The Ukrainian government has offered to arm up any citizen who wants to fight, but the training I have observed in video footage is clearly substandard. Most of these people have never handled military grade arms in their lives, never fired a gun and never shot a 3-5 round group at 100 yards let alone faced the prospect of a two-way firing range and the sheer panic this can cause in untrained men.

    Even more disturbing to me is that many of these call-ups for volunteers are peppered with women young and old. Guys bringing along their tiny girlfriends and wives as if the whole thing is a vacation at a Crossfit camp. This is delusional for a number of reasons, including the fact that having a loved one (especially a female) with you in the middle of combat can be a deadly distraction from the mission. Where is the soldier’s attention going to be? On the enemy in front of him, or his wife next to him who is screaming in horror as bullets zip past her head? When she realizes it’s not like the movies where every woman is a natural sniper that can go hand-to-hand with 200 pound men, will she then try to convince her husband to abandon the fight and leave with her?

    It boggles the mind! At least make sure the women and children are safe in another place before going to fight.

    The reason this desperation is happening at all is because of Ukraine’s complete lack of readiness. I find it hard to believe that president Zelenskyy was really tricked into believing that Putin was bluffing about invasion. Even if he thought that was the case, he should have been preparing defenses anyway and forming citizen militias. He had months of prior warning to do this, yet he did not.

    I’m not going to field any theories here on why the Ukraine government was so unprepared (though I have a pretty solid idea), and it’s not my intention to support one side or the other politically. As I have written in previous articles, Ukraine is a globalist engineered distraction from bigger things, including the inflationary decline of the global economy. My purpose here is to examine the reasons why Ukraine was so easily invaded and to use it as a cautionary lesson.

    The bottom line is this: If Ukraine had true self defense rights and a militia system in place then Russia may not have been able to invade at all.

    I also find it interesting that the political left in the US, which has always been rabidly anti-gun rights for decades, is now cheering the prospect of the Ukrainian government arming civilians to fight a guerrilla war against the Russians. This reveals a dangerous hypocrisy which conservatives have suspected for some time – Leftists are not necessarily “anti-gun”, they are are just anti-gun when it comes to any person that disagrees with their ideology. When crisis strikes they become pro-gun, as long as they are the only people with guns.

    The Ukraine event sets an important example for conservatives and moderates in America in that it reinforces the reality that owning guns alone is not enough. Local organization and public militias are the key to the survival of a society under threat. In fact, public militias can even act as a deterrent to future attacks from without AND from within.

    Finally, local organization requires time and training. It’s not something you can slap together at the last minute and trying to form public security groups after an attack has already occurred is going to be a mess. One thing that has always bothered me about the Hollywood notion of the Red Dawn scenario and tales of regular people networking to fight foreign invaders is that these unprepared groups rarely if ever actually get very far in a real life fight. Rather, its the groups of people that were ready BEFORE the crisis happened that make the most difference.

    You almost never see prepared people portrayed in the movies. I suspect because mainstream society has been conditioned to view preparedness as militancy, and militancy as extremism. God forbid a person is labeled as “extremist,” better to be apathetic and ineffective. It is always the people that step outside the artificial limitations of the mainstream that end up making a difference in the world, and it’s always the people that conform that end up becoming refugee fodder and victims of the historic tides. The Ukrainians are paying the price right now for this kind of attitude, lets not allow the same thing to happen here in America. It’s time to organize.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 23:40

  • A Guide To Cannabis In The US
    A Guide To Cannabis In The US

    Providing an overview of the status of cannabis in the U.S. is challenging at best. On the federal level, things are fairly straight forward. Cannabis is federally illegal and has been for 88 years and counting. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Aran Ali detail below, getting down to the state level, however, changes things.

    This map from Tenacious Labs breaks down the legal status of cannabis across every U.S. state, and details how lenient each one is when it comes to criminalization.

    No Cannabis Allowed

    Cannabis—the plant from which marijuana is made—is still considered a dangerous and criminal substance in many U.S. states. In fact, there are six states where cannabis is illegal, of which five are yet to decriminalize. This means an individual can be criminally prosecuted for possessing certain amounts.

    Most states began decriminalizing marijuana decades ago, but not all have chosen to partake in this trend. Prosecutors in Alabama for example are able to charge someone with a felony offense for possessing marijuana.

    In most states where cannabis is illegal, it is not decriminalized. In particular, only one illegal state has decriminalized the substance—Nebraska.

    Medical Use Only

    In some U.S. states, approved medical usage of cannabis could be a precursor towards full legalization. Just as it was for states like California and Oregon. However, some states that allow medical usage have chosen not to decriminalize cannabis for recreational purposes.

    Many states have lists of qualifying conditions which allow a person to carry prescribed amounts of cannabis—often for ailments like glaucoma or cancer. States like Iowa allow cannabis to treat medical conditions, but only if it is CBD-based rather than THC-based.

    Interestingly enough, all CBD-based cannabis products with THC levels less than or equal to 0.3% are fully legal on a federal level.

    Cannabis Allowed

    Some states are famously legal, like Colorado. The legalization of cannabis in Colorado, for example, has added numerous jobs, investments, and a new market to the economy—not to mention billions of dollars.

    Overall, there are 18 states (and Washington D.C.) which have fully legalized cannabis—allowing both medical and recreational usage—and over 20 which have legalized cannabis for medical use only.

    With the current Democratic government, federal legalization seems more likely. In fact, the MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act) was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives pushing forward the progress for federal cannabis legalization in America.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 23:20

  • Shellenberger: The West's Green Delusions Empowered Putin
    Shellenberger: The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Common Sense with Bari Weiss,

    How has Vladimir Putin – a man ruling a country with an economy smaller than that of Texas, with an average life expectancy 10 years lower than that of France – managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine?

    In a Greenpeace action, a CO-2 sign stands in front of the Brandenburg Gate with flames coming out of it. (Jörg Carstensen via Getty Images)

    There is a deep psychological, political and almost civilizational answer to that question: He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants it to be free. He is willing to risk tremendous loss of life and treasure to get it. There are serious limits to how much the U.S. and Europe are willing to do militarily. And Putin knows it.

    Missing from that explanation, though, is a story about material reality and basic economics—two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe. 

    Putin knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. Putin knows that Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic meters. He knows that Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces half that.

    The former KGB agent knows Russia produces 11 million barrels of oil per day but only uses 3.4 million. He knows Russia now produces over 700 billion cubic meters of gas a year but only uses around 400 billion. Russia mines 800 million tons of coal each year but uses 300.

    That’s how Russia ends up supplying about 20 percent of Europe’s oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal. 

    The math is simple. A child could do it.

    The reason Europe didn’t have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian aggression—and in fact prevented the U.S. from getting allies to do more—is that it needs Putin’s oil and gas. 

    The question is why. 

    How is it possible that European countries, Germany especially, allowed themselves to become so dependent on an authoritarian country over the 30 years since the end of the Cold War? 

    Here’s how: These countries are in the grips of a delusional ideology that makes them incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production. Green ideology insists we don’t need nuclear and that we don’t need fracking. It insists that it’s just a matter of will and money to switch to all-renewables—and fast. It insists that we need “degrowth” of the economy, and that we face looming human “extinction.” (I would know. I myself was once a true believer.)

    John Kerry, the United States’ climate envoy, perfectly captured the myopia of this view when he said, in the days before the war, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine “could have a profound negative impact on the climate, obviously. You have a war, and obviously you’re going to have massive emissions consequences to the war. But equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus.”

    But it was the West’s focus on healing the planet with “soft energy” renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply. 

    As the West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves.

    While he expanded nuclear energy at home so Russia could export its precious oil and gas to Europe, Western governments spent their time and energy obsessing over “carbon footprints,” a term created by an advertising firm working for British Petroleum. They banned plastic straws because of a 9-year-old Canadian child’s science homework. They paid for hours of “climate anxiety” therapy. 

    While Putin expanded Russia’s oil production, expanded natural gas production, and then doubled nuclear energy production to allow more exports of its precious gas, Europe, led by Germany, shut down its nuclear power plants, closed gas fields, and refused to develop more through advanced methods like fracking. 

    The numbers tell the story best. In 2016, 30 percent of the natural gas consumed by the European Union came from Russia. In 2018, that figure jumped to 40 percent. By 2020, it was nearly 44 percent, and by early 2021, it was nearly 47 percent. 

    For all his fawning over Putin, Donald Trump, back in 2018, defied diplomatic protocol to call out Germany publicly for its dependence on Moscow. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump said. This prompted Germany’s then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, who had been widely praised in polite circles for being the last serious leader in the West, to say that her country “can make our own policies and make our own decisions.”

    The result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973, driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely manufactured.

    Europeans—led by figures like Greta Thunberg and European Green Party leaders, and supported by Americans like John Kerry—believed that a healthy relationship with the Earth requires making energy scarce. By turning to renewables, they would show the world how to live without harming the planet. But this was a pipe dream. You can’t power a whole grid with solar and wind, because the sun and the wind are inconstant, and currently existing batteries aren’t even cheap enough to store large quantities of electricity overnight, much less across whole seasons. 

    In service to green ideology, they made the perfect the enemy of the good—and of Ukraine. 

    *  *  *

    Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,”Green Book Award winner, and the founder and president of Environmental Progress. He is author of just launched book San Fransicko (Harper Collins) and the best-selling book, Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins June 30, 2020). Subscribe To Michael’s substack here

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 23:00

  • Are Russian Oligarchs Fleeing By Sea To Indian Ocean As Biden Aims To Seize Billions?
    Are Russian Oligarchs Fleeing By Sea To Indian Ocean As Biden Aims To Seize Billions?

    Russian oligarchs could be on the run as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues the seventh day of incursions in Ukraine. President Biden warned in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that the U.S. and Europe would “seize” the assets of Russian billionaires. Thanks to the Twitterverse, finding some Russian billionaires, if by air or by sea, has become an easy task. 

    Bloomberg data shows the four biggest Russian-owned luxury yachts are in the Maldives. The largest is Ocean Victory, a 140-meter superyacht owned by Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, a Russian billionaire who made most of his wealth in the iron and steel industry. Aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska is sailing his 72-meter yacht, called Clio, in the same area. 

    A 142-meter superyacht called Nord, owned by Alexei Mordashov, another steel billionaire, is currently transiting Seychelles. Russian banker, Andrey Kostin’s 66-meter Sea Rhapsody, is sailing between Somalia and Maldives. 

    An estimated 7% to 10% of the global superyacht fleet is owned by Russians, according to industry watcher Superyacht Group. Overall yacht counts have dipped to 10 from 19 this time last year in the Maldives, while they’ve climbed from five to 12 in the Seychelles, a former British colony known for its palm- fringed islands and sandy beaches. – Bloomberg

    By air, tracking Russian billionaires has never been easier. Jack Sweeney, 19, created a Twitter account called “Russian Oligarch Jets” that follows the flight movements of some of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen. The Twitter bot updates followers when and where the private jets take off and land. 

    The movement of Russian oligarchs worldwide after the invasion comes as western sanctions are complicating things for Russia and the elite class. The Biden administration has made it very clear that they will “seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets,” which is probably why some are fleeing to the Indian Ocean. 

    “Tonight, I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who built billions off this violent regime — no more,” Biden said last night. “We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 22:40

  • Arizona House, Senate Approve Measure Boosting Voter ID Requirements On November Ballots
    Arizona House, Senate Approve Measure Boosting Voter ID Requirements On November Ballots

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Republican-controlled Arizona House and GOP-led state Senate voted Monday to approve a measure on the November election ballot that would drastically increase the identification requirements needed for Arizonans who want to vote both in-person and by mail.

    Voters wait to cast their ballots at Marquee Theatre in Tempe, Arizona, on Nov. 3, 2020. (Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images)

    Gina Swoboda, third vice chairman of the Republican Party of Arizona, announced the measure had been approved in a video posted to Twitter on Monday.

    “We are so proud to announce that the voter ID act has passed out of the house, it will be on the ballot in November,” Swoboda said. “Thank you to everyone for making this happen. This is going to be a great election cycle, the people will be heard.”

    The SCR1012 bill (pdf) would require early voters to provide their date of birth and number along with their signature on their return ballots.

    Currently, voters in Arizona just sign their names, which county officials then compare to signatures they have on file with verified voter registration documents.

    The measure was approved after Republicans raised concerns that the state’s voter ID laws allow for fraud or illegal votes to take place, particularly in light of allegations of voter fraud in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election.

    An independent Senate-sponsored forensic audit by Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas found numerous ballot discrepancies and potential issues involving a combined total of 53,305 ballots.

    However, Democrats argue that the bill, along with a string of other election integrity bills being pushed through the Senate are aimed at voter suppression.

    The bill would also limit the type of identification that is acceptable for in-person voters, removing their ability to provide two different forms of identification without a photograph in order to receive a ballot at a polling place, such as a water bill or tax bill.

    The measure applies the voter identification requirements to elections beginning no later than the 2024 primary election.

    An election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting polling site in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2014. (Eric Gay, File/AP Photo)

    Marcelino Quiñonez, a Democrat who serves in the Arizona House of Representatives from the 27th district, said he refused to vote yes on SCR1012 and a similar bill, HCR2025, because he trusts “Arizona voters and the integrity of our elections.”

    HCR2025 would require Arizonans to provide ID, as well as the last four digits of their Social Security number, in order to vote early.

    “Democracy only works when you respect the outcome: win or lose, not when you change the laws along party lines. I voted NO on SCR1012/HCR2025 because voter ID laws in Arizona already exist, and I trust our process,” Quiñonez said on Twitter.

    Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Mitzi Epstein of Tempe said she is concerned that the similar HCR2025 measure could lead to hundreds of valid mail ballot requests being rejected.

    “Voter ID is good. Arizona has voter ID requirements. But this HCR has too many flaws and will have too many unintended consequences. Every eligible voter’s ballot should be counted. We should not create barriers to voting,” Epstein said on Twitter.

    However, Republican Rep. Walt Blackman of Snowflake praised the measure for strengthening election integrity.

    “I don’t see what’s wrong with this. I really don’t,” said Blackman. “Because all it’s doing is protecting our election and the process.”

    But Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh, a Republican, said the measures are the best way to ensure every vote is counted legally.

    “Now you don’t have to mail in your driver’s license if it’s an early ballot,” Kavanagh told Fox 10. “You would simply have to put in your driver’s license number, which you have and you can copy, and the last four digits of your Social Security number. Those two pieces of information would be hidden, so nobody could see it.”

    “It’s an easy way and a secure way to ensure that somebody who steals your ballot from the mailbox, or a family member who wants to vote on your behalf, unbeknownst to you, can’t find a piece of paper with your signature on it, trace it, and vote on your behalf,” said Kavanagh.

    Meanwhile, the Arizona Republican Party on Friday filed a lawsuit asking the state Supreme Court to kill the vote-by-mail system used by 90 percent of registered voters, arguing that it is unconstitutional.

    The lawsuit asks justices to get rid of the “no-excuse absentee balloting system” adopted by the state in 1991.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 22:20

  • Two Widely Disparate Battlefield Narratives Emerge In Ukraine's South, Where Odessa Is "Bracing"
    Two Widely Disparate Battlefield Narratives Emerge In Ukraine’s South, Where Odessa Is “Bracing”

    Since Monday a consensus narrative on Russia’s offensive in Ukraine seems to have emerged – that Putin’s war has stalled, commanders are frustrated at the slow grind of advance, and that Ukraine’s military has slowed Russia’s pace a lot quicker than expected. 

    Much of this might be true, but only a week since last Thursday’s rapid invasion from Ukraine’s north, east and south – and with the ‘fog of war’ making it hard for external observers or media correspondents to verify much of the information coming out literally minute by minute, all early narratives should be treated with healthy skepticism warranted in war-time. Add to this the obvious truth that in war, all sides are flooding the information space with propaganda.

    Image: Associated Press

    A battlefield situation report issued by Bloomberg suggests that precisely the above elements are at play, heavily affecting Western mainstream narratives of what’s at best murky and still in development. Starting on Wednesday, it became clear that the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was under direct threat. Initial reports in Reuters, Bloomberg and others focused on video evidence suggesting that a major Russian assault had been repulsed: 

    A video posted by an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister on social media on Wednesday showed a person in civilian clothes approaching a tank and then lifting Ukrainian flags from it and waving them in the air shouting “Glory to Ukraine!”.

    The advisor, Anton Gerashchenko, said the video showed civilians in the southern city of Kherson taking away flags from Russian invaders set up in the heart of the city. Moscow said on Wednesday it had seized Kherson, the biggest win yet in its week-long invasion if its neighbor.

    Reuters noted that it wasn’t able to independently verify the video. But by day’s end Bloomberg began to come close to admitting the narrative was not quite what many major outlets were saying, further with an admission that Russia’s battlefield onslaught is progressing better than is being widely reported:

    Russia’s claim to have captured the port city of Kherson in southern Ukraine makes increasingly clear that its invasion, while slowed in the north, is gaining traction in the country’s open and hard-to-defend coastal plains.

    Along with Russia’s shift to more aggressive artillery and aerial attacks on urban centers, it is leading to a tempering of optimism over Ukraine’s ability to sustain its so far effective organized resistance against a vastly superior force. 

    And now Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea port city of Odessa is said to be “bracing” amid the Russian advance in the south, which appears gaining in momentum.

    Into the late night hours, Ukraine’s government was still denying that Kherson had fallen: 

    “According to the info from our brigade the battles are going on now,” a spokesperson for the ministry said. “The city is not captured totally, some parts are under our control.”

    Simultaneously, Russian state media is within the last hours reporting that its forces have taken “full control” of the city – which would make it the most important large city to have fallen thus far. But just after 4am Kiev time, the AFP reported that Ukrainian government officials are now conceding that Kherson has fallen under Russian control.

    Further, in its prior report, Bloomberg cited a military analyst to add the following key observation:

    “We are now in for the long haul and Russia is reorganizing itself to ensure that it wins this war,” according to Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow for the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, who spoke on a webinar. “So the implications of the Russian way of war is that we need to prepare now for humanitarian catastrophe.”

    For another example of a central fact that is currently in hot dispute – Ukraine said Wednesday that Russia has lost a whopping 5,000 troops after the first week of fighting.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    This even contradicts the Pentagon’s own estimate which has been given at between 1,500 and 2,000.  As for Russia’s Defense Ministry itself (MoD), it said Wednesday that it lost 498 troops – and additionally 1,597 wounded. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Between the Ukrainian and Russian government conflicting claims lies a gap of 4,500 KIA – which again underscores that in the fog and propaganda of war, truth is the first casualty – and it’ll take time before some of these contested facts are settled. 

    As one online commenter underscored… “Repeating again: absolutely no claims of soldiers killed on either side can be believed at this stage. Claims of huge enemy losses and minimal losses of one’s own forces are a standard part of the propaganda of war. Likewise with civilian deaths.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 22:00

  • China, Russia Pose Unprecedented Strategic Threat To US: Former Trump Adviser
    China, Russia Pose Unprecedented Strategic Threat To US: Former Trump Adviser

    Authored by David Zhang and Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The United States is facing the greatest strategic threat in history with the new partnership between Russia and the Chinese regime, warned KT McFarland, former deputy national security adviser under the Trump administration.

    “The strategic threat is from China,” McFarland said.

    “The greatest strategic threat is China, Russia together; that Chinese technology, Chinese money, Chinese ruthlessness—you know, wolf-warrior diplomacy—married up with Russian natural resources and Russian military capability, that’s a really formidable adversary for the United States.”

    KT McFarland, then-deputy national security adviser designate, speaks during a conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, on Jan. 10, 2017. (Chris Kleponis/AFP via Getty Images)

    McFarland made the remarks in an interview with EpochTV’s “China Insider” program at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando on Feb. 26.

    Russia and China now boast a “no limits” partnership after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Feb. 4. The unprecedented partnership was declared in a 5,000-word joint statement, and the two bordering nations also said that there would be “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

    Also in that statement, China sided with Russia to denounce enlargement of NATO, while Russia took up China’s position on Taiwan, calling the self-governing island “an inalienable part of China.”

    Also on Feb. 4, Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom inked a 30-year deal with state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). The deal would see Russia sending China natural gas via a new pipeline linking the Russian far east with northeastern China.

    The lengthy statement, coupled with China’s recent decision to abstain from voting on a U.N. Security Council Resolution demanding that Moscow stop its attack on Ukraine, showed that Putin and Xi “are in cahoots,” according to McFarland.

    Once Xi decided to make a move against Taiwan, she said that it was absolutely certain that Putin would reciprocate by repeating China’s political stance on the self-ruled island.

    “I think that may be the mind game they’re playing,” she added.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrive to pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing, on Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Chinese regime has repeatedly refused to denounce Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine and has also objected to calling Russia’s attack an invasion.

    On Feb. 28, China sided with Russia again, when both nations voted against a decision by the U.N. Human Rights Council to hold an urgent debate on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    In October last year, Xi vowed that “reunification” of Taiwan with China would “definitely be realized.”

    Taiwan, a de facto independent entity, has announced it will impose sanctions on Russia. On March 1, Taiwanese Premier Su Tseng-chang said Taiwan will join moves by the United States and others to block certain Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

    “If China controls Taiwan, not only does it give China a strategic military position on the South China Sea, and all the trade that goes through the most important world maritime trade route in the South China Sea, it also puts China in position to control Taiwan’s microprocessing industry,” McFarland said.

    Taiwan’s microprocessing industry produces some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, which are tiny chips that power everything from smartphones, computers, fighter jets, to missile systems. The island is home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker TSMC.

    In other words, McFarland said the United States would face a supply chain crisis if China were to get hold of Taiwan’s manufacturing plants producing these chips.

    The communist regime’s ambition is not limited to taking over Taiwan.

    “China doesn’t want to just be the most important country in the world and the global world order of the post-war period,” she said. “It wants to smash that international order, and recreate an order where China, like the good old days of thousands of years ago, sat in Beijing and all the vassal nations came and offered tribute while they kowtow to the emperor.”

    “The Chinese plan is to pick us all off one at a time—pick off Taiwan, and maybe pick off Vietnam, and then work his way around, pick off Australia,” she added.

    As such, the Chinese regime’s current partnership with Russia will be short-lived, McFarland added.

    “At the end of the day, the Chinese are going to turn on the Russians, too, once they get what they want out of the Russians,” she concluded.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 21:40

  • Citi Stopped Out Of Oil Short At Double Digit Loss As TD Sees Oil Spiking To $145
    Citi Stopped Out Of Oil Short At Double Digit Loss As TD Sees Oil Spiking To $145

    While Wall Street was getting increasingly bulled up on oil prices, one bank was turning ever more bearish, and exactly one month ago when Brent traded at $82, Citigroup’s commodity head told Bloomberg he was advising clients to go short December Brent futures, predicting U.S. production would be “on the low side” at the end of the year while saying he doesn’t expect an LNG crunch in Europe if Russia invades Ukraine.

    Boy was he wrong… but at least the pain didn’t last long and earlier today Citi announced that it was closing its oil short at a substantial, 11.5% loss:

    We hit the $92/bbl stop loss on our short December 2022 (COZ2) ICE Brent futures trade established on Feb 3 for a loss of 11.5%. While our market outlook remains out-of-consensus and we continue to project significant downside for crude oil prices in a 6-9m context, the timing of this was negatively impacted from the escalating Russia/Ukraine conflict, widening supply risk premiums, and upward price momentum for the crude oil futures strip. With the potential for spot oil prices to clear $125/bbl in the short-term, we step aside. Over the next month, there will probably be a better opportunity to either tactically or thematically short the energy market again.

    Meanwhile, in a far more realistic assessment, today TD Securities head of commodity strategy Bart Malek writes that any additional sanctions or unanticipated supply interruption – which are certainly coming now that buyers have balked at buying more oil from Russia  – could “easily see prices surge still higher in the near-term, as this would augment the already significant concern of a large deficit, and there are few alternatives.” Under these conditions, TD writes that it would not be surprising to see key benchmark crudes jump to around $145/b, which was last seen back in the summer of 2008.

    While sanctions thus far are meant to leave energy trade largely untouched, the cutting off of some Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system has disrupted commodity trading activity. These shortfalls would be extremely hard to offset with product sourced elsewhere. For that reason, another $25/b move higher could easily happen if either sanctions or some sort of Russia-Ukraine war related event reduces shipments.

    Perhaps having heard what’s coming, Brent spiked as high as $118 on Wednesday evening, up $10 since the start of Biden’s SOTU address just 24 hours ago.

    The good news is that if oil indeed explodes to around $150 – a level last reached just days before Lehman filed for bankruptcy – it won’t stay there too long for the same reason it didn’t stay there long in the summer of 2008, a dynamic we described back in January in “Shades Of 2008 As Oil Decouples From Everything.” Here is Malek again:

    Longer-term however, price at the current $110/b or higher may not be sustainable as there are some avenues that could reduce the risk of shortages, and reduce the impact of the sanctions, moderating scarcity…. At the same time, there will no doubt be demand destruction due to the sky-high prices too.

    Translation: the lack of enough oil to keep the market imbalance will lead to demand destruction, lead the forced shuttering of economic output which eventually translates into a recession. And just to make sure of that, the Fed – which has zero control over the supply of global oil – is hiking to make sure that demand – along with the rest of the economy – is truly destroyed. Which brings us to another note from TD, the bank’s Global Markets recap published earlier today, in which it writes that “Perhaps the only certainty at the moment is that everyone’s forecasts are wrong. It is reasonable to ask whether the ECB and/or the Fed will be easing again this year, even if their next steps are toward tightening.“

    Yes it is: the Fed will be easing as soon as this fall when the stagflationary recession arrives, something BofA’s Michael Hartnett has spent the past few months correctly predicting.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 21:26

  • Cartel Killing Field With Bone Fragments And Incinerated Human Remains Found Near US Border
    Cartel Killing Field With Bone Fragments And Incinerated Human Remains Found Near US Border

    Another cartel “extermination site” has been revealed near the southern border in Mexico after incinerated human remains and bone fragments were found, according to AP News.

    Mexican investigators found a “ruined house” on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, a border city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas that resides on the banks of the Rio Grande, across from Loredo, Texas, littered with burnt human remains two feet deep in one area of the house and bone fragments spread across 75,000 square feet of desert land. 

    AP was given exclusive access to the site where forensic technicians have been working for six months in an attempt to identify bone fragments. AP said investigators “still don’t dare offer an estimate” of how many people were killed at this extermination site. 

    Another cartel extermination site was revealed in the same state in a town called Jimenez, about four hours south from Brownsville, Texas. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles called the area, used by cartel members, a “killing field.” 

    The north-eastern state of Tamaulipas is known for violent killings and disappearances, linked mainly to powerful drug cartels fighting for territorial expansion. 

    As many as 100,000 are missing in Mexico, and 52,000 unidentified people lay in morgues and cemeteries (excluding extermination sites). 

    Very little progress has been made to quell the violence in the country as cartels duke it out.

    Meanwhile, President Biden and the Democrats failed the American people in securing the border as cartel violence and large amounts of illegal immigrants have spilled over into the US. Chaos on the border is so extreme that Customs and Border Protection advise Texan agents to wear full kevlar (commonly known as body armor) and be equipped with long-arm guns, such as lightweight semi-automatic rifles to combat cartels. 

    It remains to be seen what the Biden administration’s plan is to restore law and order on the southern border. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 21:20

  • What If San Francisco Does Not Recover?
    What If San Francisco Does Not Recover?

    Authored by Rich Cibotti via The Epoch Times,

    San Francisco looks worse now than I’ve ever seen it. Like any major city, San Francisco had bad areas before 2020 – those rough areas you knew to avoid – but you could go anywhere else, basically unmolested. Today is something entirely different.

    The streets are dirty. Homeless encampments, trash, and excrement can be found all over. Car break-ins are so frequent that it has basically become a non-government-imposed tax for people who come here. Of course, some areas are much worse than others, but almost all areas of the city suffer from this decay, and it is appalling.

    Every year, the city seems to find new ways to dig deeper and deeper toward ruin. But what happens to San Francisco if it really does not recover? What if the financial woes, homeless encampments, rising crime, and dwindling police force are the new normal for this once great city?

    Whether or not politicians want to admit it, San Francisco is in a very precarious situation. Big Tech is gone, and it’s not coming back. Of course, some companies will keep a building here or there, but tech has realized they can work anywhere. Why would anyone want to put up with onerous San Francisco regulations and taxes? Once you pay this high cost of entry, you still must deal with squalid conditions just to get to work. Instead, why not stay in your pajamas with a nice shirt or top on and fire up the Wi-Fi at home?

    The pandemic caused many offices to transition into working from home or some form of hybrid model. Now that many companies and their workers realize working from home can be effective, why wouldn’t these companies keep it permanently? Why continue to pay a premium for San Francisco office space?

    If you go downtown during the day, you can see the difference. The office buildings are empty. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic are not half of what they used to be. But what other effect does that have on the city?

    Well, there are a lot of small businesses in the ground floors of those large buildings. These businesses survive by servicing all the workers commuting into those buildings. As they start to realize the workers aren’t coming back, they are forced to accept the new reality and close. Those businesses closing will be the start of the economic death spiral.

    Closed businesses put up boards to secure the storefronts. The closed-up shops lead to more homeless encampments taking over the area. Urban blight and homeless encampments don’t exactly inspire people to risk their savings, open a business, and try to clean up the area. This only exacerbates the problem and makes it harder and harder to get out of the abyss. The encampments will spread and cover the entire area like a virus.

    Tourism Is the City’s Lifeblood

    In addition to those issues, the pandemic wrecked tourism. San Francisco’s local economy survives on tourism. In 2019, tourists spent an estimated $10.3 billion in the city. But today, some hotels are still closed or have been converted into homeless housing. The hotels that have reopened are not near their full occupancy. Add that to the constant national stories of San Francisco’s urban decay, and why would anybody want to travel here?

    The tourists who are brave enough to come, get to experience all of the things that are not printed on postcards. Things like open drug dealing on the street, open drug use, homeless encampments, filthy streets covered in human feces, and the high cost of just about everything.

    Even if tourists get through all that, they may get to become one of the many victims of our famous auto burglaries, in which case they get to replace a rental car window and all of their luggage. Not exactly what someone would want to pay a premium to experience on a vacation.

    Who Will Pay the City’s Bills?

    San Francisco had tech and tourism. It does not have some other large industry that pays for city services. Also, San Francisco’s bloated budget is over $13 billion a year for a city of fewer than 900,000 people. What happens when the money dries up?

    It already happened last year, until the federal government bailed out the city. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle in March 2021, the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill paid off San Francisco’s deficit, allowing the city to avoid “painful cuts” to services.

    The article states that the bill “will erase the majority of San Francisco’s projected $650 million budget deficit over the next two years.”

    So instead of ushering in any sort of fiscal responsibility, the balance sheet goes to back to zero and everything is business as usual.

    “We still have a problem,” Jeff Cretan, the mayor’s spokesman, said in the article. “We just don’t have a problem right now.”

    Jeff Cretan is right. What happens when Uncle Joe and company are not there to pay our bills? Running the city like a first-year college student who maxed out their first credit card is not sustainable. Mom and Dad won’t always be there to pay off the bill. Eventually Peter Pan has to grow up.

    Hopefully the city finds a golden goose to lay golden eggs, because without that, there will need to be severe cuts in services the city prides itself on. Add that to the police staffing crisis, and a “city in decline” may be the softest way to state it.

    San Francisco is in dire straits. Whether the powers that be want to admit it or not, her best days may be behind her. People have asked me, “Do you really think it could all fall apart?”

    I’ll leave you with the same parting thought I give them:

    • When looking at San Francisco right now, does our situation look more like Detroit when the auto industry left?

    • Or is it more like when New York City cleaned it up in the late 90s?

    Hey, but at least we have good weather.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 21:00

  • China Considers Possibility Of Abandoning "Zero COVID" Policy
    China Considers Possibility Of Abandoning “Zero COVID” Policy

    After more than two years of imposing some of the world’s most restrictive lockdowns on its population, Beijing is finally preparing for a world without its strenuous “ZERO Covid” measures.

    WSJ reports that Chinese officials are looking into the use of travel bubbles modeled on what was used during the Winter Olympics.

    Collecting data on new antiviral drugs and scouting sites abroad for future production of homegrown Chinese mRNA vaccines, according to people familiar with the matter. However, on the other hand, images of patients in Hong Kong lying on open-air gurneys has intensified the sense of public panic.  They now see the former British colony as something of a cross between a science experiment and an actualy community.

    Mainland experts now see the former British colony as a “stress test scenario,” as well as a source of data on the effectiveness of various treatments and insight into fighting severe infection surges without resorting to hard lockdowns, according to a person familiar with the discussions.;

    While COVID likely won’t ease before next spring,  the two sources from within China’s government told WSJ that officials in departments covering transportation, customs and border control have been tasked since January with exploring adjustments to COVID control policies that can eventually be presented to China’s top leadership.

    Additionally, officials China’s departments covering transportation, customs and border control have been tasked since January with exploring potential changes to China’s COVID control policies. The hope is that these potential changes –  or “adjustments” – will eventually be presented to China’s top leadership, according to a person with knowledge.

    In another line of questioning, WSJ added that the approach and timeline for a relaxation of COVID controls isn’t fixed and could change depending damn whether a levee of corporate bankruptcies breaks.

    Pfizer’s unleashing of its drug Paxlovid will play a major role in protecting the help of billions as members of the public and lawmakers see the drug as critical in keeping Americans alive in theater.

    And on the positive side, the development and introduction of China’s homegrown mRNA vaccines could also give China another tool that would allow for a relaxation of controls.

    However, one critical pitfall for China is the public’s attitude as cases surge in Hong Kong.

    But word out of Hong Kong shows that residents are preferring to flee instead of risking being locked up in quarantine.

    Presently, the Chinese protocol remains  sending every positive case regardless of severity, to a medical facility for treatment, which Powell warned would inundate hospitals in the event of a larger outbreak.

    “Hospitals can treat patients,” said Liu. “But they cannot fight panic.”

    But by far the biggest obstacle for China as it seeks to raise its vaccination rate (in order to push for a lower death rate).

    News of a potential pullback out of Chinese yuan, trading both onshore and offshore, sliding to session lows. Meanwhile, shares of casino operators with exposure to Macau have climbed on the news. They include shares of Las Vegas Sands, Melco and Wynn Resorts.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 20:40

  • Former Top US Defense Officials Arrive in Taiwan Amid Russia-Ukraine War
    Former Top US Defense Officials Arrive in Taiwan Amid Russia-Ukraine War

    Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As the Ukraine crisis escalates, Taipei welcomed a high-level visit by former top U.S. defense officials, which indicates “rock-solid relations” between Taiwan and the United States, a Taiwanese official said.

    Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (4th R) stands with a U.S. delegation including retired Admiral Mike Mullen (3rd R), former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as they arrive at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taiwan on March 1, 2022. (Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP)

    The unannounced delegation arrived in Taipei at 4:13 p.m. local time on March 1, according to Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency (CNA). The group, led by retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet President Tsai Ing-wen in the following morning, and attend a banquet later that day.

    The two-day visit underscores bipartisan support from Washington and “will even more clearly highlight the rock-solid relations between Taiwan and the United States, especially at a time of the Ukraine crisis,” Taiwan’s presidential office spokesperson Chang Tun-han said a day earlier, CNA reported.

    Mullen, a former top U.S. military officer, will be accompanied by Meghan O’Sullivan, a former deputy national security adviser, Michèle Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense, and Mike Green and Evan Medeiros, both of whom were senior directors for the Asia affairs office of the National Security Council.

    A senior official of the Biden administration told Reuters that the selection of the five flagged “an important signal about the bipartisan U.S. commitment to Taiwan and its democracy.”

    The two sides are also looking to exchange views on bilateral cooperation, Taiwan-U.S. relations, and regional peace and stability, said Chang.

    Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (R) greets retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the latter arrives at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taiwan on March 1, 2022. (Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP)

    Taiwan has stepped up its alert levels since Russia attacked Ukraine, wary of China taking advantage of its distracted Western allies and moving against the self-ruled island. Nine Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the hours following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Taiwan quickly mobilized its military aircraft in response, according to its defense ministry.

    Concerns mounted as to whether Taiwan will meet the same fate as Ukraine, as Russia’s aggression is compared to that of China. Beijing has long been eyeing and harassing the democratic country, which the communist regime claims as its own.

    Yet Taiwan’s government has repeatedly said the island’s situation and Ukraine’s are fundamentally different due to the island’s geographical and geopolitical advantages, and its key role in the global high-tech supply chain.

    “In all areas, the two cannot be compared,” said cabinet spokesperson Lo Ping-cheng, in a Feb. 28 statement.

    It has been less than a year since the previous delegation, led by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), visited Taiwan last April.

    Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said last week that former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife will visit Taiwan from March 2 to 5 and meet with Tsai.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 20:20

  • Here's How Much Bitcoin Russia Has Bought In The Past Week
    Here’s How Much Bitcoin Russia Has Bought In The Past Week

    In the words of the Washington Post, the battle between Russia and Ukraine is “the world’s first crypto war” as both sides discover the advantages of a borderless, permissionless currency.

    Whether it is for enabling donations to Ukrainians (for arms or humanitarian needs) or for Russians evading Putin’s FX transfer bans or escaping western sanctions, both sides appear to see the benefits.

    Crypto interest in Russia on the rise; and Google searches do show an uptick in interest in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, from Russia and, to a lesser extent, from Ukraine.

    At this stage 11% of Russians already own crypto; so there is some familiarly with it.

    The recent decoupling of bitcoin from tech stocks shows the regime change in demand from some external factor…

    And this could get significantly higher as the potential for capital flight from Russia is large.

    In a recent note. Citi details that, net capital outflows from Russia during the 2014 crisis were 151bn (a surge of 90bn from the previous year). In the 2008 crisis, it was 133bn. Of course, that is not the same as capital flight, as it includes debt payments etc. The worst errors and omissions (capital flight proxy) in more recent memory was an outflow of around 5bn USD.

    Though this time around the capital flight could be significantly more than that as the crisis is more severe.

    Of course, it is an open question just how much crypto would be used for this purpose.

    Just for reference, daily bitcoin volume in spot is around 4.8bn according to bitcointradevolume.com, and including derivatives it is around 20-40bn, i.e. it will take meaningful capital flight to move the needle.

    But it is not just Russia, as Kaiko reports that bitcoin traded at a 6% premium on Binance’s Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH) market as demand for cryptocurrencies soared immediately following Russia’s invasion.

    Demand surged on Binance as local Ukrainian currency markets faced significant disruptions, with the Ukrainian central bank temporarily halting foreign currency withdrawals and the Ukrainian hryvnia falling to all time lows versus the U.S. Dollar.

    Both ruble and hryvnia trade volumes surged to their highest levels in months almost immediately after the Russian invasion, highlighting the complexities of the cryptocurrency industry’s role in the conflict.

    While the potential for capital flight is high, as Citi details above, Russian volumes (although impressive-looking on the chart) have been relatively small in absolute terms so far (around 210 bitcoin per day on average), suggesting that the price action is more due to investors positioning for an expected uptick in demand from Russia, rather than Russian demand itself.

    This will be important to monitor, as Bitcoin could recouple with technology stocks if the expected Russian buying should not materialize.

    Of course, the very fact that volumes of crypto activity have surged from both Russia and Ukraine since the invasion has prompted the establishment to cry ‘no fair!’ with ECB President Christine Lagarde urging regulation to prevent Russia escaping their sanction threats:

    “It’s so critically important that MiCA is pushed through as quickly as possible so we have a regulatory framework within which crypto assets can actually be caught.”

    And Jay Powell today, with a somewhat mixed message, by discussing the advantages of ‘digital currencies’ – clearly angling towards the use of CBDCs – but hedging his view by placating the regulatory-thirsting politicians by adding that “…to the extent that cryptocurrencies are a means to evade law enforcement and national security that’s not something we should tolerate.”

    Finally, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, while describing the DoJ’s new “Kleptocapture” tak force, said they will freeze the assets of ‘Putin’s cronies” with a “focus on cryptocurrencies,” and Treasury Secretary Yellen warned later that “crypto is a channel to watch for sanctions leakage.”

    For now, judging from the Citi data, crypto is not being used for sanctions avoidance on anything but a small scale.

    All of which is somewhat humorous since, according to the data above, Russians are ‘laundering’ around $10 million in bitcoin a day, while Credit Suisse helped facilitate $100 billion in laundering over the years and it seemed nobody cared…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 20:00

  • Los Angeles Unified Must Negotiate With Teachers' Union Before Dropping Mask Mandate
    Los Angeles Unified Must Negotiate With Teachers’ Union Before Dropping Mask Mandate

    Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

    Though California and Los Angeles County announced it would drop its indoor mask mandate for schools by March 12, the LA Unified School District (LAUSD) must negotiate with its local teachers union before it can lift its mandate.

    In recent months, schools across California have faced mounting pressure to lift indoor mask mandates from students and parents; however, the state’s largest school district cannot change its indoor mask requirement without first negotiating an existing contract with United Teachers of LA (UTLA).

    The agreement includes a requirement for “enforced masking” for the entire 2021–22 school year.

    According to the agreement, either party can request to meet and bargain over potential changes to the mask requirement after Dec. 1.

    An LAUSD spokesperson told The Epoch Times Feb. 28 the district “acknowledges” the state and county’s mask updates and will “remain engaged with our labor partners” as they consider an updated masking policy.

    LAUSD Board of Education President Kelly Gonez said Feb. 28 any changes to the masking policy must be discussed with UTLA.

    “Any changes in our policy on masking would be taken only in consultation with our labor partners,” Gonez told the LA Daily News.

    “We remain committed to ensuring a safe learning and working environment.”

    However, a UTLA spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the LAUSD has not reached out about mask negotiations as of March 1.

    Students walk to their classrooms at a public middle school in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 10, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

    In addition to negotiating with labor unions, Gonez said the district must review local COVID-19 case rates.

    “Los Angeles has fortunately seen a decline in COVID rates after the record-setting Omicron rates, but there is still significant spread in our communities. We need to take this local context into account,” Gonez said.

    The district had a 2.1 percent positive case rate among students, and a 1.7 percent case rate for teachers and staff, according to an LAUSD report on Feb. 11.

    UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a Feb. 28 statement that “While declining COVID rates are promising, educators agree with Governor Newsom’s statement strongly recommending that masking stay in place in schools.”

    “LAUSD schools have been the safest and most well equipped in the country because educators and families united to demand critical health and safety protocols,” Myart-Cruz said.

    “These protocols, like indoor masking, have protected tens of thousands of educators and more than half a million students, along with their families. It is premature to discuss removing these health and safety measures while there are still many unvaccinated youth in our early education programs and schools.”

    Some LAUSD parents expressed frustration that their children must remain masked despite the state and county’s updated policies.

    LAUSD parent Sarah Peterson told The Epoch Times she thought the situation revealed elected officials’ true priorities.

    “COVID laid clear the real priorities and agenda of our elected public officials and unelected bureaucrats—lobbying money and personal power above children.” Peterson said.

    “Parents will never forget—never.”

    A child wears a face mask as they attend an online class at a learning hub inside the Crenshaw Family YMCA during the Covid-19 pandemic in Los Angeles, Calif., on Feb. 17, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    Kristina Irwin, who has three children in the LAUSD, told the Epoch Times she thought the LAUSD should follow the recommendations of the state and the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC).

    “[District officials] should side with the CDC and all the other school districts if this is truly about following the science,” Irwin said. “If you rely on the science set … on implementing the mask mandates, then you need to do the same to lift them, otherwise this is just about making up the rules as you go.”

    Other parents argued masks inhibit student learning and social engagement.

    “It is the natural state of children to show their faces and see faces—smiling and giggling with friends is how many children communicate and build bonds,” said another mom of two LAUSD students, who declined to provide her name.

    “Masks have hampered socializations and learning for far longer than justifiable.”

    The mom went on to say that “vaccinations are highly effective at protecting adults as well as children that are at risk of severe symptoms, and kids are safer than congresspeople that will convene tonight unmasked.”

    The LAUSD will enforce a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students over 12 beginning in the fall.

    A spokesperson for UTLA did not respond to a request for comment by press deadline.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 19:40

  • Rich Russians Scramble To Buy Luxury Goods As Ruble Plunges; Burberry 'Pauses' All Shipments
    Rich Russians Scramble To Buy Luxury Goods As Ruble Plunges; Burberry ‘Pauses’ All Shipments

    Wealthy Russians are scrambling to buy luxury goods  to preserve their wealth, as worldwide sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine has sent the Ruble plunging in recent days.

    According to Bulgari SpA CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, sales in Russian stores has risen in the last few days after international financial sanctions sharply restricted the movement of cash, Bloomberg reports.

    “In the short term it has probably boosted the business,” he said in an interview with the outlet, describing the company’s jewelry as a “safe investment.”

    “How long it will last it is difficult to say, because indeed with the SWIFT measures, fully implemented, it might make it difficult if not impossible to export to Russia,” Babin added, referring to Russia’s ouster from the SWIFT financial-messaging system.

    And while many consumer brands ranging from Apple to Nike, and several energy giants such as BP, Shell and Exxon have announced a pullout from Russia, luxury brands have thus far attempted to continue operating in the country with the exception of Burberry – which has now ‘paused’ all shipments to Russia.

    Bulgari, owned by LVMH SE, is far from alone. Richemont’s Cartier is still selling jewelery and watches, Swatch Group’s Omega timepieces are still available, as are Rolexes. All are continuing to make sales and trying to strike an apolitical stance. -Bloomberg

    “We are there for the Russian people and not for the political world,” said Babin. “We operate in many different countries that have periods of uncertainty and tensions.”

    Burberry, on the other hand, will no longer ship to Russia ‘until further notice,’ according to Bloomberg, citing “operational challenges” amid the Ukraine situation.

    “This is a fast-moving situation and we continue to monitor developments closely,” a spokesman told the outlet, adding that the company is focused on supporting “our people and partners” in Ukraine and Russia, and has donated to the British Red Cross Ukraine appeal. “These are incredibly difficult times for many people and our thoughts are with all those impacted by the crisis.”

    Luxury watches and jewelry can hold and even appreciate in value amid economic turmoil – yet allowing wealthy Russians a financial life-raft has created a ‘potential public relations issue’ according to the report.

    “It is true that luxury brands could decide not to serve the Russian market. Rationally, this would be a cost to them, possibly outweighed by the positive communication image they get in other markets,” said Bernstein analyst Luca Solca.

    Sales in Russia and to Russians abroad account for less than 2% of overall revenue at LVMH and Swatch Group and less than 3% at Richemont, a “relatively immaterial” level, according to a report this week by Edouard Aubin and fellow analysts at Morgan Stanley.

    That’s due, in part, to Russian income and wealth disparities, with a small number of billionaire oligarchs living way beyond the means of ordinary people. The average monthly wage in Moscow is about 113,000 rubles ($1,350 at pre-invasion exchange rates), and much lower in rural regions. -Bloomberg

    Meanwhile, Europe’s financial war with wealthy Russians has escalated – as Switzerland has become the latest player to break with their historic neutrality and enforce EU sanctions in an attempt to pressure oligarchs to lean on President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion of Ukraine.

    Switzerland, home to 8.6 million people, has long been a favorite destination for wealthy Russians thanks to its discretion and ‘light-touch’ regulation, according to Bloomberg.

    The Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) shows Russian residents and companies held a combined $11 billion in Swiss banks – which is more than double the roughly $5 billion held in UK institutions. That figure does not include brokerage accounts, investments or assets held through offshore companies. Private bankers have estimated that rich Russians hold in excess of $100 billion across the country’s lenders. One person put the figure at $300 billion – equal to nearly 40% of the Swiss economy.

    Over the last two years, deposits in Swiss institutions by Russians increased significantly after falling between 2013 and 2018.

    Now, some of those assets will be subject to freezes if they’re linked to any of the hundreds of Russian officials and entities, including Putin, put under EU sanctions.

    According to the report, the Swiss government will implement the EU sanctions with ‘immediate effect,’ after spending the weekend taking flack from opposition politicians and editorials in leading Swiss papers, as well as from other governments, to join the sanctions.

    The EU sanctions include six of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs; Alexey Mordashov, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, Alisher Usmanov, Gennady Timchenko and Alexander Ponomarenko.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 19:20

  • Shipping Isn't Waiting For Sanctions. It's Already Refusing To Move Russian Cargo
    Shipping Isn’t Waiting For Sanctions. It’s Already Refusing To Move Russian Cargo

    By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

    In September 2019, the U.S. sanctioned tanker company Cosco Dalian, a division of Chinese shipping giant Cosco, for carrying Iranian crude. The sanctions only covered the 20 tankers owned by Cosco Dalian, but that didn’t matter. As a precaution, charterers shunned the entire 150-tanker fleet of the Cosco parent, causing tanker spot rates to spike.

    Shipping execs don’t just refuse vessels or cargoes based on what’s definitely sanctionable. They do so based on what they believe might possibly be sanctioned now or later. Sanctions are written in precise language, but they’re messy in practice.

    That precept is now on full display. Sanctions have yet to specifically target Russian energy exports or (non-dual-use, i.e., non-military) containerized goods, but that doesn’t matter. Many tanker owners and container liner operators are preemptively pulling out of Russia.

    On Tuesday, MSC, Maersk and CMA CGM — the top three liner companies in the world — temporarily suspended Russian bookings. Yang Ming, the ninth largest, suspended Russian bookings on Wednesday; ONE, the sixth largest, on Sunday; and Hapag-Lloyd, fifth largest, on Thursday. These six carriers control 62% of global capacity, according to Alphaliner data.

    The world’s largest container lines are dropping Russia “to manage sanctions risk but also perhaps manage reputational risk,” said Michelle Linderman, partner of law firm Crowell & Moring, during a panel presented by shipping association BIMCO on Tuesday. “Do they want to be seen as supporting Russia? Or are they going to say at this moment, while this is going on, we don’t want to go anywhere near there.”

    The tanker sector is seeing the same pattern of behavior among shipowners and operators. Many are refusing to load Russian oil cargoes even though sanctions don’t bar them from doing so.

    “Few owners are now willing to transport Russian oil, resulting in an undersupply of ships [at Russian export terminals],” said Clarksons Platou Securities.

    Why shipping companies ‘say no to Russia’

    “This is the most comprehensive and coordinated sanctions regime we have ever seen before, let alone one including a former G8 member … and it is rapidly evolving,” said Crowell & Moring partner Dj Wolff during the BIMCO event.

    He explained: “Not only do you have to make sure [a shipment] is legally permissible, you’ve got to make sure every other party to the transaction thinks so: your banks, insurer, shipper, receiver, charterer, owner, etc. Otherwise, you won’t get paid, you won’t have a completed shipment or you’ll lose your insurance.”

    Linderman added: “Even if you do all of those checks and you are comfortable at this precise moment in time that you can take a ship and go and load cargo or do a transaction with some Russian connection, and you get comfortable with all the parties — that’s just for now. Things are shifting so quickly. What happens if the counterparty that you just signed a charter party with or shipped cargo for gets sanctioned tomorrow, or in the next hour, or in the next 20 minutes?”

    Practically speaking, this is convincing shipping companies to “say no to Russia” because it’s not worth the risk, said Wolff.  

    “We have seen an enormous number of our clients ask: Should we pause or withdraw from Russia? They say: If you, the outside counsel, are telling me you haven’t been able to digest these 1,200 pages of regulations, then how the heck are we as a company supposed to ensure compliance with them? We should just press pause and wait for some sort of stable state to emerge.

    “Some companies have also decided, maybe for legal reasons, maybe for a practical reason, maybe for a reputational reason, to say: I am withdrawing from Russia. You’ve seen some really big energy companies under pressure to do that, and there are a whole lot of companies that we’ve seen who are making this decision off the radar.”

    How cargo refusals effect rates

    Companies pulling out of the Russia will impact all shipping segments, from containers and tankers to dry bulk and gas transport. There will be market consequences. 

    In container shipping, diversions of Russia-bound cargo and intensified inspections for dual-use cargo could exacerbate congestion and network inefficiencies in European trades.

    In tanker shipping, there has already been a large upward move in freight rates. As more shipowners refuse to load Russian crude exports, and more importers abstain from buying them, Urals crude trades at a $20 per barrel discount and tanker owners that do agree to carry cargoes can charge dramatically higher rates.

    Aframax tankers (with capacity of 750,000 barrels) have obtained rates of $130,000 per day on this route, up from $5,000 per day last week, said Clarksons.

    Evercore ISI transportation analyst Jon Chappell told American Shipper: “Russian producers are still making money because the [crude] price is so high, and shipping costs are irrelevant because there’s a massive discount on [Russian] Urals crude right now, so for whoever’s buying it, who cares what you’re paying for shipping? You could pay $200,000 per day, $300,000 per day, and it wouldn’t matter.”

    Six-figure-per-day rates are only being earned now by a small number of tankers loading in Northern Europe. Yet the upward rate momentum that began with shipowners’ reluctance to load Russian oil cargoes is spreading globally.

    Clarksons estimated on Tuesday that rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs; tankers that carry 2 million barrels) built in 2015 or later are $27,500 per day, up 591% week on week. It put rates for newer Suezmaxes (capacity: 1 million barrels) at $28,000 per day, up 285% week on week, and rates for newer Aframaxes at $41,800 per day, up 157% week on week. Product tanker rates are up double digits from last week.

    According to Chappell: “The midsized crude carriers that operate in these regions — the Baltic, Black Sea, the Med — will see an outsized impact, but it will be a rising tide, as we’ve seen with V’s [VLCC tankers]. The TD3 [the Middle East-to-Japan index that tracks VLCC rates] jumped last week despite the fact that there’s no change in anything out of the Middle East to the Far East.”

    Chappell believes broader pricing action shows that the tanker market “was a little bit tighter than people thought, in two regards. One, there’s probably not as much oversupply of tonnage as people thought, and two, the inventory situation we’ve been talking about for nine months is coming a bit more to the fore.

    “You can’t really have [inventory] days of demand cover this low and have a geopolitical conflict involving one of the world’s biggest producers of oil and think that it’s not going to have a meaningful impact on commodity prices and the freight market.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 19:00

  • BitConnect Founder Indicted In Alleged $2.4B Ponzi Scheme Disappears
    BitConnect Founder Indicted In Alleged $2.4B Ponzi Scheme Disappears

    The founder of BitConnect has disappeared into thin air following his indictment over an alleged $2.4 billion Ponzi scheme.

    A San Diego-based federal grand jury charged Satish Kumbhani with orchestrating the alleged scheme via BitConnect’s “Lending Program,” which promised “substantial profits and guaranteed returns” to investors.

    The DOJ says Kumbhani used funds from new investors to partially reimburse old investors after abruptly shutting down the program – and that he and his co-conspirators had faked market demand for BitConnect (BCC) via market manipulation.

    In a Monday court filing, the SEC noted that the indicted founder has most likely fled to a foreign country.

    “The Commission did not know the whereabouts of Kumbhani, an Indian citizen, at the time it filed this action, and BitConnect is an unincorporated entity the Commission must serve through its manager, Kumbhani,” reads the filing by senior trial counsel Richard G. Primoff.

    “Since November, the Commission has been consulting with that country’s financial regulatory authorities in an attempt to locate Kumbhani’s address,” Primoff added. “At present, however, Kumbhani’s location remains unknown, and the Commission remains unable to state when its efforts to locate him will be successful, if at all.”

    Kumbhani is charged with wire fraud, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and three conspiracies; wire fraud, commodity price manipulation and international money laundering, according to CoinTelegraph.

    Founded in 2016, BitConnect was one of the largest and most popular projects in the initial coin offering (ICO) space in mid-2017, managing to raise billions of dollars from investors worldwide for the promise of 10% interest via its BCC token. More benefits were available to those who “referred” other investors to the scheme.

    On Jan. 16, 2018 however, BitConnect platform administrators folded up shop amid increasing scrutiny from lawmakers and investors, causing prices to plummet below $1 from a high of almost $500.

    BitConnect (BCC) price history. Source: CoinMarketCap

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 18:40

  • The Americans Itching For War
    The Americans Itching For War

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    America’s return to “normalcy.”

    The foreign policy experts promised us that President Biden would restore our standing in the world and “stand up to tyranny.” Retired Admiral William McRaven said Biden would make America lead again. They were wrong, of course. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster. The reliance on intelligence and security from the Taliban got Americans killed.

    If they were right about anything, it was about the return to American “normalcy.” This was one of our biggest concerns with Biden. Normalcy in the U.S. is incompetence. It got us the war in Iraq and a ~20 year war in Afghanistan. It gave us Libya and the emergency of ISIS.

    This same class of experts – the ones who were wrong on Biden, wrong on Iraq and Afghanistan – are now salivating at the prospects of war with Russia. And they’re doing so by misrepresenting the purpose and risk of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the mental health of Vladimir Putin.

    Liz Cheney goes so far as to make this a moral issue, stating “Isolationism has always and will always be wrong.” If isolationism is “always” wrong, then is intervention always right? Follow her twisted worldview to its logical conclusions and you find the answer.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    There is no doubt that America would be better off not taking moral lessons from a Cheney. While she doesn’t tell us the standard of this moral judgment, but it is no doubt based on the incorrect assumption that America’s use of force to advance its own interests is morally right. To that I say: bullshit. Rightness isn’t judged by the identity of the actor.

    Our criticisms of the West must be addressed before we continue. We are principled anti-war, although we acknowledge the limited necessity of war. In short, we believe in the principles of Just War (but not the secular revisions of that theory). This means we acknowledge the necessity of wars of defense and reject wars conducted for ambiguous notions of “national interest” or “pre-emption” or conflicts to “reorder the international system.”

    This puts us in the position of condemning both Russia’s war of national interest in Ukraine and America’s war of national interest in Iraq. In contrast, while neo-conservatives like Liz Cheney condemn Russia’s war Ukraine, they agree with the principles underlying Russia’s use of force.

    Crazy Putin, Nuclear Weapons, and the Calls for Escalation.

    Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls Putin’s behavior “erratic,” his views “delusional.” James Clapper says Putin is “unhinged.” Clapper suggests the possibility that Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Fiona Hill, the Regime’s favorite “Russia expert,” believes “Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones.”

    There’s a couple goals in questioning Putin’s state of mind. First, it serves to defend America from criticisms that potential NATO expansion and continued American meddling in Ukraine helped spark this conflict. (“Blame the crazy man, not us.”)

    Second, it justifies the escalation of the West’s involvement in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Talks about the potential for nuclear war only make intervention more necessary (though that doesn’t guarantee Biden would take the bait). U.S. Senators are calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Escalation leads to dangerous questions and unknown answers, such as what happens when the U.S. and Russia are in direct conflict.   

    Missing from the media’s coverage is push-back on these statements about Putin’s state of mind or the potential use of nuclear weapons. Their skepticism isn’t missing – it’s dead. Putin the Madman is the new talking point, the elite opinion that is approved for the masses. There’s little basis for their new talking point – certainly not in Putin’s February 24, 2022 speech where he calmly outlines Russia’s grievances and concerns, and their plans for Ukraine.

    In fact, while Fiona Hill questions Putin’s mental state, she admits they assessed years ago that there was “a real, genuine risk of preemptive Russian military action” against Ukraine in response to NATO’s Open Door promise to welcome any European democracy (including Ukraine).  Such predictions don’t square with craziness.

    Hill and Clapper’s inflammatory statements about the potential for Russia to use nuclear weapons makes zero sense in context of the conflict in Ukraine and Putin’s demands. Putin is winning the war. At the time I’m writing this, Russia is surrounding major Ukrainian cities and the Russian convoy headed to Kyiv is estimated to be 40 miles long.

    The great length of the convoy reflects the fact that Russia owns the air. While there is some brave Ukrainian resistance, it won’t stop the encirclement of Kyiv or other major cities. The New York Times further explains:

    Analysts say they expect Russian forces to work to expand their hold on the pro-Russia, separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and to capture a land bridge to Crimea in the south, while pushing troops down from the north to try to encircle the main Ukrainian Army east of the Dnieper River. They are trying to surround Mariupol and take Kharkiv.

    That encirclement would cut off the bulk of Ukraine’s forces from Kyiv and from easy resupply, the experts say, limiting the sustainability of organized resistance. Russian troops are also moving steadily toward Kyiv from three axes to try to surround it.

    Then we get to the foolishness of escalation in light of Putin’s stated goals of the invasion. Assuming the latest reports are accurate, the purpose of this war isn’t to seize and occupy the whole of Ukraine into perpetuity. Putin isn’t demanding Ukraine be brought into Russia. Instead, Putin’s demands include:

    1. The disarmament of Ukraine.

    2. The neutrality of Ukraine (no NATO membership).

    3. The formal recognition of Crimea as Russian.

    If those are the terms, then how much escalation is necessary? Or justified?

    Dare I got out on a ledge and say the U.S. does not have Ukraine’s best interests in mind. (The U.S. initially opposed the settlement talks.) More Ukrainians die as the war drags on.

    But cynics in the U.S. government must be considering that a long war also puts economic pressure on Putin. How many other peoples’ lives would the U.S. government be willing to sacrifice if Putin could be unseated? We already know that the goal of some – including Adam Schiff – is to “fight Russia over there.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, they’re the ones doing the fighting. Proxy battles never end well for the proxy.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 18:20

  • "Extremely Dangerous" –  FitBit Recalls 1.7 Million Smartwatches That Can Burn User 
    “Extremely Dangerous” –  FitBit Recalls 1.7 Million Smartwatches That Can Burn User 

    Google-owned Fitbit announced a voluntary recall of 1.7 million smartwatches that may overheat due to the lithium-ion battery inside and burn the user. 

    The recall is for the discontinued Fitbit Ionic Smartwatch (introduced in 2017 and stopped producing in 2020) that according to US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), “the lithium-ion battery in the Ionic smartwatch can overheat, posing a burn hazard.” 

    Fitbit sold about a million Ionic Smartwatches in the U.S. and another 693,000 internationally. The company is offering “a refund to Fitbit Ionic customers.” 

    “The health and safety of Fitbit users is our highest priority. We are taking this action out of an abundance of caution for our users,” the company said in a statement.

    CPSC said there have been “at least 115 reports in the United States (and 59 reports internationally) of the battery in the watch overheating with 78 reports of burn injuries in the United States including two reports of third-degree burns and four reports of second-degree burns (and 40 reports of burn injuries internationally).”

    A few years ago, the Daily Mail reported a man suffered “third-degree burns” on his wrist when his Fitbit watched “burned up” while he was asleep. 

    Someone today posted an alleged FitBit fire that engulfed part of their bedroom. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    These smartwatches seem extremely dangerous. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/02/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Mar 02

Today’s News 2nd March 2022

  • Whitehead: "These Are Dangerous Times For America And The World"
    Whitehead: “These Are Dangerous Times For America And The World”

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”

     – Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

    Let me tell you about the state of our nation: things are getting worse, not better.

    Easily distracted by wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis and conveniently diverted by news cycles that change every few days, Americans remain oblivious to the many governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, and bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

    These are dangerous times for America and the world.

    Yet while you may hear plenty about the dangers posed by Russia and COVID-19 in President Biden’s State of the Union address, it’s still the U.S. government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

    Consider for yourself.

    Americans have little protection against police abuse. The police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

    Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies with their secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

    Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. Indeed, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

    Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. While the courts continue to disagree over the exact nature of the rights protected by the Second Amendment, the government itself has made its position extremely clear. When it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.

    Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

    Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the children’s constitutional rights and those of their parents, is at the heart of almost every debate over educational programming, school discipline, and the extent to which parents have any say over their children’s wellbeing in and out of school.

    Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police forces. With local police agencies acquiring military-grade weaponry, training and equipment better suited for the battlefield, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts patrolled by a standing military army.

    Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

    Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.

    Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered the age of authoritarianism, where all citizens are suspects, security trumps freedom, and so-called elected officials represent the interests of the corporate power elite. This topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

    Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

    I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

    This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past seventy-plus years regardless of their political affiliation.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    Big government has grown bigger, and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.

    We are walking a dangerous path right now.

    Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

    Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

    The pickle we find ourselves in speaks volumes about the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of “we the people.”

    Now you don’t hear a lot about sovereignty anymore. Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

    In other words, in America, “we the people”— sovereign citizens—call the shots.

    So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

    That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

    In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

    We have relinquished control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to government officials who, while they may occupy seats of authority, are neither wiser, smarter, more in tune with our needs, more knowledgeable about our problems, nor more aware of what is really in our best interests.

    The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

    Worst of all, “we the people” have become desensitized to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

    How do we reconcile the Founders’ vision of the government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police state’s insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?

    They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.

    We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what it has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).

    We are repeating the mistakes of history—namely, allowing a totalitarian state to reign over us.

    Former concentration camp inmate Hannah Arendt warned against this when she wrote:

    “No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination.”

    So where does that leave us?

    Aldous Huxley predicted that eventually the government would find a way of:

    “making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

    The answer? Get un-brainwashed. Stop allowing yourself to be distracted and diverted.

    Learn your rights. Stand up for the founding principles.

    Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

    Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

    Most of all, do these things today.

    Ultimately, I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we need to shift the center of power back to “we the people.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 23:25

  • Hollywood Studios Pause New Film Releases In Russia
    Hollywood Studios Pause New Film Releases In Russia

    Over the last seven decades, Hollywood has served as the unofficial — but massively influential — propaganda arm of the US government. If national interests are so required, film studios will create wartime propaganda and or even, like we’re witnessing today, pause theatrical releases in Russia. 

    The Walt Disney Company announced Monday that “given the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the tragic humanitarian crisis, we are pausing the release of theatrical films in Russia, including the upcoming Turning Red from Pixar.” Dinsey is the first major studio to protest Russia amid the invasion of Ukraine five days ago. 

    “We will make future business decisions based on the evolving situation. In the meantime, given the scale of the emerging refugee crisis, we are working with our NGO partners to provide urgent aid and other humanitarian assistance to refugees,” the studio continued. 

    WarnerMedia, a division of AT&T Inc., followed next by announcing it would delay the release of “The Batman.” 

    “In light of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, WarnerMedia is pausing the release of its feature film ‘The Batman’ in Russia,” the studio said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor the situation as it evolves. We hope for a swift and peaceful resolution to this tragedy.”

     And Sony is delaying all of its theatrical releases in the country, including the upcoming “Morbius.”

    The Motion Picture Association (MPA) said in a statement Monday that it “stands with the international community in upholding the rule of law and condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” 

    “On behalf of our member companies, who lead the film, TV and streaming industry, we express our strongest support for Ukraine’s vibrant creative community who, like all people, deserve to live and work peacefully,” MPA said. 

    So whatever the US government is committed too, such as collapsing the Russian economy via a series of sanctions, you can bet Hollywood wouldn’t be too far behind. And maybe as studios pause theatrical releases in the country, it’s only a matter of time before studios gears up for pro-NATO-themed propaganda. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 23:05

  • Escobar: Follow The Money – How Russia Will Bypass Western Economic Warfare
    Escobar: Follow The Money – How Russia Will Bypass Western Economic Warfare

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    The US and EU are over-reaching on Russian sanctions. The end result could be the de-dollarization of the global economy and massive commodity shortages worldwide…

    So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what? Cookies?

    What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.

    One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.

    Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya in complete violation of international law.

    While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.

    They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.

    To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

    Hudson remarked how he is “simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.” On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”

    This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”

    Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations. The ruble has plunged. There will be new exchange rates. Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”

    About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

    I’m going to de-dollarize myself

    So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”

    It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.

    A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:

    “Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”

    Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.

    From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.

    Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.

    With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.

    The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.

    Russia has its own bag of tricks

    Meanwhile, we’re not even talking yet about Russian retaliation for these sanctions. Former President Dmitry Medvedev already gave a hint: everything, from exiting all nuclear arms deals with the US to freezing the assets of western companies in Russia, is on the table.

    So what does the “Empire of Lies” want? (Putin terminology, on Monday’s meeting in Moscow to discuss the response to sanctions.)

    In an essay published this morning, deliciously titled America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE conquer NATO, Michael Hudson makes a series of crucial points, starting with how “NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.”

    He outlines the three oligarchies in control of US foreign policy:

    • First is the military-industrial complex, which Ray McGovern memorably coined as MICIMATT (military industrial Congressional intelligence media academia think tank). Hudson defines their economy base as “monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to West Asian oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus.”

    • Second is the oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM). Their aim is “to maximize the price of energy and raw materials so as to maximize natural resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major US priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany threatened to link the western European and Russian economies together.”

    • Third is the “symbiotic” Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which Hudson defines as “the counterpart to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents.”

    As he describes these three rentier sectors that completely dominate post-industrial finance capitalism at the heart of the western system, Hudson notes how “Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (namely, the Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).”

    Hudson shows how “the most pressing US strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for US companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.”

    He warns how food prices will rise “headed by wheat.” (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.) From a Global South perspective, that’s a disaster: “This will squeeze many West Asian and Global South food-deficient countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.”

    As for blocking Russian raw materials exports, “this threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum.”

    And that leads us, once again, to the heart of the matter: “The long-term dream of the US new Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in western stock markets.”

    That’s not going to happen. Hudson clearly sees how “the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.”

    Let’s confiscate some technology

    Now compare all of the above with the perspective of a central European business tycoon with vast interests, east and west, and who treasures his discretion.

    In an email exchange, the business tycoon posed serious questions about the Russian Central Bank support for its national currency, the ruble, “which according to US planning is being destroyed by the west through sanctions and currency wolf packs who are exposing themselves by selling rubles short. There is really almost no amount of money that can beat the dollar manipulators against the ruble. A 20 percent interest rate will kill the Russian economy unnecessarily.”

    The businessman argues that the chief effect of the rate hike “would be to support imports that should not be imported. The fall of the ruble is thus favorable to Russia in terms of self-sufficiency. As import prices rise, these goods should start to be produced domestically. I would just let the ruble fall to find its own level which will for a while be lower than natural forces would permit as the US will be driving it lower through sanctions and short selling manipulation in this form of economic war against Russia.”

    But that seems to tell only part of the story. Arguably, the lethal weapon in Russia’s arsenal of responses has been identified by the head of the Center for Economic Research of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Vasily Koltashov: the key is to confiscate technology – as in Russia ceasing to recognize US rights to patents.

    In what he qualifies as “liberating American intellectual property,” Koltashov calls for passing a Russian law on “friendly and unfriendly states. If a country turns out to be on the unfriendly list, then we can start copying its technologies in pharmaceuticals, industry, manufacturing, electronics, medicine. It can be anything – from simple details to chemical compositions.” This would require amendments to the Russian constitution.

    Koltashov maintains that “one of the foundations of success of American industry was copying of foreign patents for inventions.” Now, Russia could use “China’s extensive know-how with its latest technological production processes for copying western products: the release of American intellectual property will cause damage to the United States to the amount of $10 trillion, only in the first stage. It will be a disaster for them.”

    As it stands, the strategic stupidity of the EU beggars belief. China is ready to grab all Russian natural resources – with Europe left as a pitiful hostage of the oceans and of wild speculators. It looks like a total EU-Russia split is ahead – with little trade left and zero diplomacy.

    Now listen to the sound of champagne popping all across the MICIMATT.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 22:45

  • World Athletics Council Bans "All Russian & Belarusian Athletes" From International Sporting Events
    World Athletics Council Bans “All Russian & Belarusian Athletes” From International Sporting Events

    More and more international sports leagues are banning Russian athletes from competing after the country invaded Ukraine. The latest is the World Athletics Council announced: “all athletes, support personnel and officials from Russia and Belarus will be excluded from all World Athletics Series events.” 

    Upcoming events include the World Athletics Championships Oregon22, the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22, and the World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships Muscat 22, which begin on Friday in Oman (4 March).

    The Council also agreed to consider further measures, including the suspension of the Belarus Federation, at its scheduled Council meeting next week (9-10 March).

    The Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) has been suspended from World Athletics since 2015, due to doping violations, and therefore is not currently eligible to host World Athletics events or send teams to international championships.

    The Authorised Neutral Athlete (ANA) process remains in place but Russian athletes who have received ANA status for 2022 are excluded from World Athletics Series events for the foreseeable future.

    This means that all Russian ANA or Belarusian athletes currently accredited for the World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships Muscat 22 and the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22 (18-20 March) will have their accreditation withdrawn and entries denied, as will any support personnel and officials. – statement via World Athletics Council

    World Athletics Council President Sebastian Coe said in a statement, “the world horrified by what Russia has done, aided and abetted by Belarus. World leaders sought to avoid this invasion through diplomatic means but to no avail given Russia’s unswerving intention to invade Ukraine. The unprecedented sanctions that are being imposed on Russia and Belarus by countries and industries all over the world appear to be the only peaceful way to disrupt and disable Russia’s current intentions and restore peace.”

    Coe said, “imposing sanctions on athletes because of the actions of their government goes against the grain.” However, “this is different as governments, business and other international organizations have imposed sanctions and measures against Russia across all sectors.” 

    Russian athletes were also barred from competing in international ice skating and skiing events on Tuesday, one day after being banned from hockey and soccer competitions. 

    Here’s an updated list of international sporting events Russia has been banned from (courtesy of AP News): 

    ARCHERY

    Russia and Belarus flags and anthems banned at all World Archery international events.

    AUTO RACING

    Formula One canceled the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi in September.

    Intercontinental Drifting Cup in Sochi in June canceled.

    BADMINTON

    Russia and Belarus athletes and officials banned from participating in all Badminton World Federation tournaments from March 8. Also, all BWF events in Russia and Belarus canceled. However, a few Russian players at two Para events in Spain this week and next week allowed to play as already on site, but as neutrals with no flags or anthems.

    BASKETBALL

    EuroLeague suspended Russian clubs CSKA Moscow, UNICS Kazan, and Zenit St. Petersburg, with all three in top eight standings. Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar was also suspended from second-tier EuroCup.

    SPORT CLIMBING

    Boulder and Speed World Cup in Moscow in April to be relocated.

    CURLING

    European championships in Perm, Russia, in November to be relocated.

    World Curling Federation begun process to remove Russian entries from women’s world championship in Canada this month and men’s world championship in Las Vegas in April.

    EQUESTRIAN

    International Equestrian Federation canceled all remaining events this year in Russia (51) and Belarus (six), including the Eurasian Championships in Moscow in July.

    FENCING

    Alisher Usmanov, a Russian, stepped down as president of the International Fencing Federation.

    GYMNASTICS

    The International Gymnastics Federation canceled all World Cup and World Challenge Cup events in Russia and Belarus. Russia and Belarus flags and anthems banned at all FIG events. Canceled events included an acrobatics World Cup in Oktyabrskiy, Russia, in May, and a trampoline World Cup in St. Petersburg in September.

    FIELD HOCKEY

    Russia booted from Women’s Junior World Cup in South Africa in April.

    ICE HOCKEY

    Russia and Belarus banned from all International Ice Hockey Federation events. Russia men out of world championship in May. World junior championships in Russia in 2023 moved to Serbia. NHL suspended all business dealings in Russia. Finland’s Jokerit club withdrew from Kontinental Hockey League conference quarterfinals.

    JUDO

    Kazan Grand Slam, a World Judo Tour event, in May canceled. Russia President Vladimir Putin suspended as honorary president and ambassador of International Judo Federation. Sergey Soloveychik, Russian president of the European Judo Union, resigned.

    KARATE

    Karate 1-Premier League event in Moscow in October to be relocated.

    MODERN PENTATHLON

    Russia and Belarus athletes and officials banned from all International Modern Pentathlon Union events.

    ROWING

    Russia and Belarus athletes and officials banned from World Rowing events.

    RUGBY

    Russia and Belarus suspended from all internationals and cross-border club events. Russia men’s team barred from Rugby Europe Championship and qualifying for the 2023 Rugby World Cup. Russia women’s team barred from Rugby Europe Championship, sevens world series, and qualifying for the Rugby World Cup Sevens in South Africa in September. Russian Rugby Union’s membership of World Rugby suspended.

    SKATING

    Russia and Belarus banned from all International Skating Union events, including world figure skating championships in France this month.

    SKIING

    All International Ski Federation events in Russia to the end of the season canceled or relocated. The World Cup cancellations included ski cross in Sunny Valley last weekend, aerials in Yaroslavl last week and Moscow this Saturday; moguls in Kuzbass this weekend; cross-country in Tyumen this month; and women’s ski jumping in Nizhny Tagil and Chaikovsky this month. Russian athletes to compete under FIS flag and anthem.

    SOCCER

    FIFA and UEFA suspend Russia national teams and clubs from all competitions. National men’s team barred from World Cup qualifying playoffs this month and UEFA Nations League from June. National women’s team banned from Women’s European Championship in July.

    Champions League final in May relocated from St. Petersburg to Paris. Spartak Moscow barred from Europa League last 16.

    UEFA canceled sponsorship from Russian energy company Gazprom which covered Champions League, UEFA national team competitions and the 2024 European Championship.

    SQUASH

    World junior championships in St. Petersburg, Russia, in August to be relocated.

    SWIMMING

    World governing body FINA rules all Russia and Belarus athletes and officials to compete as neutrals with no country flag, colors or symbols. FINA Order awarded to Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrawn. World junior championships in Kazan, Russia, in August canceled. Diving world series in Kazan in April canceled.

    TAEKWONDO

    World Taekwondo and European Taekwondo Union will not organize or recognize any events in Russia and Belarus. Russia and Belarus flags and anthems banned at all international events. World Taekwondo withdrew honorary 9th dan black belt conferred on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    TENNIS

    International Tennis Federation canceled all of its events in Russia and postponed a minor tournament in Ukraine in April. Russia is the defending champion in the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.

    VOLLEYBALL

    Men’s world championship in Russia in August to be relocated.

    Volleyball National League games in Russia in June and July to be relocated.

    WEIGHTLIFTING

    European youth championships in Kazan, Russia, in August to be relocated.

    OTHER

    At Winter Paralympics, Russia and Belarus to compete as neutrals with no national flag, anthem or symbols in Beijing starting on Friday.

    SportAccord World Sport and Business Summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in May canceled.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 22:25

  • Biden Unveils Plan To Fight Inflation, Revives 'Build Back Better', During First State Of The Union
    Biden Unveils Plan To Fight Inflation, Revives ‘Build Back Better’, During First State Of The Union

    Update (1015ET): Coming in at just over an hour (1 hour and 20 seconds, to be exact), President Biden’s State of the Union was notably shorter than those of his immediate predecessors – both Barack Obama and President Trump, both of whom regularly delivered SOTUs that were longer than 70 minutes. It was also four minutes shorter than last year’s address to a joint session of Congress.

    He also concluded with a line that many complained was bizarre, telling his audience to “go get him”. Go get who?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Toward the end of the speech, President Biden claimed that he wanted to “hold law enforcement accountable” while also insisting that he wanted to “fund the police”. At one point, he even waxed poetic about the two NYPD officers who were recently killed by an unhinged, dangerous criminal.

    Toward the end, Biden also urged Congress to ‘protect a woman’s right to an abortion’ as the US Supreme Court is set to rule this year on whether a Mississippi ban on the procedure after 15 weeks can remain.

    Meanwhile, check out the reaction in online betting markets to Biden’s speech.

    Here are the odds of Republicans retaking the House.

    And the odds of them retaking the Senate.

    Now it’s time for the rebuttals.

    * * *

    Update (1000ET): While pushing Americans to “reset” after the divisiveness of the pandemic, President Biden also pushed for a “reset” of “Build Back Better”, the central aspect of his domestic agenda.

    Except Biden has a new name for it: instead of “Build Back Better”, he’s conjured up a proposal he’s calling “Building a Better America.”

    As BBG described it, it’s pretty much the ideas he proposed before: only messaged as more about deficit reduction and reducing inflation.

    It includes much of the old plan, including capping the cost of child care for poor families, but it also includes measures to supposedly boost manufacturing, shore up supply chains, all while “promoting renewable energy”.

    On the immigration front, Biden called for the US to “revise our laws” and back his immigration reform package to create a guest worker program.

    And earlier in his speech, he promised Americans that Pfizer’s COVID therapeutic would be available to anyone at any pharmacy.

    On the Fed, Biden exhorted the GOP to let his Fed nominees get a vote in the Senate. Biden called on Senate Republicans to stop blocking a vote on his five nominees to the Federal Reserve.

    “Confirm my nominees for the Federal Reserve, which plays a critical role in fighting inflation.”

    Moving on, Biden also proposed a four-part “unity agenda” including measures to combat the opioid epidemic, something that includes going after the traffickers. He also said proposed allocating more resources for addiction treatment and “mental health”.

    At around 2200, Biden pointed to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen as he discussed “the harms” caused by social media, before proposing we “ban targeted advertising to children” and “demand tech companies stop collecting data on our children”.

    * * *

    Update (0930ET): Not even a half-hour into his speech, President Biden has defied press reports claiming he would seek to avoid directly referencing America’s inflationary issue. During the part of his speech where Biden laid out his policy for combating inflation, Biden spoke the word aloud quite liberally.

    By the way, Biden mostly hewed to the vision laid out by his office (via official releases and press leaks), whereby he plans to miraculously cure inflation by pushing American firms to be more competitive on pricing. Biden wants companies to “lower your costs – not your wages.”

    The only problem with that logic is wages are typically one of the largest financial burdens borne by business owners.

    Still, Biden insisted that fighting inflation is his “top priority”.

    “With all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth and higher wages, too many families are struggling to keep up with the bills, Inflation is robbing them of the gains they might otherwise feel,” Biden said in remarks prepared for his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington Tuesday evening. “I get it. That’s why my top priority is getting prices under control.”

    “My top priority is getting prices under control,” Pres. Biden says. “One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poor. But I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs—not your wages.”

    Biden also proposed new minimum corporate tax rates that would affect a large swath of the Fortune 500 (the firms that produce more than half the country’s GDP?)

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Biden also laid out his plan for alleviating the impact of inflation: just upgrade to an electric vehicle.

    Electric vehicles would save Americans $80 a month at the pump, Biden insisted. He also proposed cutting the cost of child-care, a perennial Democratic priority. Biden pushed for passing the “Paycheck Fairness Act” to raise the minimum wage to $15, while also pushing to extend the child tax credit, giving poor families more direct federal stimulus for each child that they have.

    Sounds nice, but it will that help combat inflation, or exacerbate it?

    * * *

    Update (0855ET): The time has finally arrived, Americans are about to watch 79-year-old President Biden deliver his first official State of the Union Address (last year’s big speech wasn’t technically a SOTU since it followed so closely after Biden’s inauguration).

    Readers can watch live below. The speech begins at 2100ET (CBS News’ primetime coverage begins at 2000ET):

    PredictIt is already taking action on what President Biden might (or might not) say when it comes to the two big elephants in the room: inflation, and the US response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Source: PredictIt

    And for those trying to squeeze some entertainment out of what’s expected to be a very dry speech, we present the President Biden SOTU bingo card.

    There’s also been talk over the last couple of hours that President Biden is preparing to announce a major ban on Russian aircraft in US airspace.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Considering the events of the past two weeks and the corresponding moves in energy markets, Biden’s focus on climate change and green energy has stoked fears that he could send oil prices even higher.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Here’s more on the prospective ban from Reuters. Meanwhile, First Lady Jill Biden is preparing to bring a few guests to tonight’s event. They include: Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US.

    As we mentioned below, there will be not one, but two rebuttals to tonight’s speech. On top of that, we are certainly looking forward to hearing how many pinocchios all those liberal fact-checkers ascribe to the president’s speech.

    * * *

    Beginning at 2100ET on Tuesday, President Joe Biden will deliver his first State of the Union address (newly elected presidents don’t deliver a SOTU during the year in which they first take office). According to a summary of his planned remarks released by the White House Sunday night, it appears Biden appears to focus on domestic issues, while media reports have claimed that he will discuss the steps his administration has taken to sanction Russia.

    On the domestic side, Biden’s main goal will be pitching a revival of his domestic agenda, which collapsed after Sen. Joe Manchin effectively killed Biden’s “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan in the Senate.

    Some of the key issues raised in the outline include fighting inflation (or “reducing the cost of everyday expenses working families face”), the administration’s crackdown on corporate power and influence (or “promoting fair competition to lower prices, help small businesses thrive, and protect consumers”), helping revive America’s unions (“enacting the Protecting the Right to Organize Act”), raising the federal minimum wage to $15, and “a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program”.

    Citing sources from inside the White House, Bloomberg reported Monday that Biden plans to pitch his stalled climate legislation, framing it as “a way to battle inflation and save the average American family $500 per year”. Although convincing ordinary working Americans to care about climate change is certainly a tall order.

    BBG also acknowledged that Biden is making his pitch at a time when his approval ratings have “dropped precipitously”. We noted the other day that, according to one popular poll (the ABC/Washington Post poll), Biden’s approval rating has fallen to a fresh all-time low of 37%.

    Source: ABC News

    On the climate change front, Biden’s claim that his green energy initiatives will save families money is based on calculations from “the Rhodium Group”. Biden also plans to discuss how $47 billion in climate change funding from last year’s infrastructure bill is being deployed.

    The proposal comes after Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better economic package – which included tax credits for renewable power and clean energy manufacturing – stalled in Congress.

    The administration’s estimate of savings is based on an analysis by the Rhodium Group last October that said clean energy tax credits, investments in efficiency and other changes necessary to pare U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will help consumers financially. According to Rhodium’s assessment, households would save roughly $500 a year in energy costs in 2030, under a mix of federal regulations, state actions and congressional legislation.

    It represents a sop to climate activists, who have been pressuring the administration to frame the fight against climate change as something that could save American families money.

    For years, environmental advocates have urged politicians to frame the fight against climate change as something that can yield big economic dividends. Biden will embrace that narrative in his speech, linking tax credits for renewable power and electric vehicles with household savings.

    Circling back to Biden’s domestic agenda, it appears he plans to avoid using the word “inflation”, referring instead to “price increases” while he tries to revive support for his flagging domestic agenda.

    On the Russia front, NPR reports that Biden plans to discuss the steps his administration has taken to threaten the financial stability of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    He’s also expected to talk about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Jackson is the first Black woman to be nominated to the country’s highest court.

    Another aspect of his plan for fighting inflation is to make American industry “more competitive” in an effort to drive down prices (ironically, his agenda also includes plans to raise wages, which would likely have the opposite effect).

    Here’s what the administration’s summary said about “promoting fair competition to lower prices”.

    President Biden will explain that we can also lower costs by promoting fair competition in the U.S. economy. The Administration has taken decisive actions in the first year to stop the trend of corporate consolidation, increase competition, and deliver concrete benefits to America’s consumers, workers, farmers, and small businesses. He will also announce new actions the Biden-Harris Administration is taking this year to tackle some of the most pressing competition and consumer protection problems across our economy. Specifically, he will announce new steps to:

    And in addition to paycheck fairness, Biden also plans to announce more assistance for low-income students trying to go to college.

    Providing up to more than $2,000 in additional assistance to low-income students by increasing the Pell Grant award. President Biden will note that broad access to education beyond high school is increasingly important for economic growth and competitiveness in the 21st century, but also remind us that higher education has become unaffordable for too many families. Over 6 million students depend on Pell Grants to finance their education, yet the amount of money in these grants has not kept up with the rising cost of college and DREAMers still do not have access. During his State of the Union Address, President Biden will call on Congress to increase the maximum Pell Grant award by more than $2,000.

    Finally,  here’s what Deutsche Bank said about the State of the Union:

    While not everything in the document will eventually become policy, it is a useful barometer of the administration’s current thinking. In short, Biden plans to champion the historically strong economic recovery while unveiling a plan to help slow inflation, which includes making American manufacturing jobs more productive and competitive, strengthening domestic supply chains, requesting legislation that reduces costs of health care, energy, and education, reducing the deficit, promoting competition, and eliminate barriers to jobs.

    Biden is also reportedly expected to discuss his administration’s efforts to roll back COVID-inspired measures, like the CDC’s new masking guidance.

    Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa will deliver the GOP response to the SOTU, and Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan representative and member of the ultra-liberal “squad” will deliver a rebuttal from the progressive left, a new SOTU tradition of the Democratic party.

    Meanwhile, here are what Biden voters thought were his greatest accomplishments over the last year…

    “Well… he’s not a Republican.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 22:24

  • White House Says US Can Focus On Two Theaters As It Did In WWII
    White House Says US Can Focus On Two Theaters As It Did In WWII

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    With all eyes on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, President Biden’s top Asia official on the National Security Council said Monday that the US can still focus on increasing its “engagement” in the Asia Pacific to counter China.

    According to Reuters, Kurt Campbell, the Indo-Pacific coordinator on the National Security Council, pointed out that the US has been deeply engaged in two theaters simultaneously before, including during World War II and the Cold War.

    AFP via Getty Images

    “It’s difficult. It’s expensive. But it is also essential, and I believe that we’re entering a period where that is what will be demanded of the United States and this generation of Americans,” Campbell told an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund.

    “There is a deep recognition and intention here inside the government, in the White House, to sustain every element of our engagement in the Indo-Pacific,” he added.

    Reuters reported of his comments further:

    Campbell said coming months would show U.S. “determination” to sustain high-level engagement with the region President Joe Biden has declared a priority for policy and resources in pushing back against China’s expanding influence.

    In a sign of President Biden’s efforts to maintain focus on the region, his administration sent a delegation of former US military officials to visit Taiwan on Monday. In another sign, a US warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, marking the second time this year the US Navy transited the sensitive waterway.

    At the start of the Biden administration, US officials made clear that countering China would be the top foreign policy priority. This was demonstrated by an uptick in US military activity in the South China Sea during Biden’s first year in office.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    China views the US activity as a serious provocation and has grown closer to Russia as the two countries face similar pressure from the West.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 22:05

  • China Buys 700K Barrels of Iranian Oil Every Day, Violating US Sanctions
    China Buys 700K Barrels of Iranian Oil Every Day, Violating US Sanctions

    Iran has been subjected to crippling oil-export sanctions for the last several years, but that hasn’t stopped China, whose imports of Iranian oil have increased by the month (read: here), traders and ship-tracking firms told Reuters. Chinese buyers are ramping crude purchases at low prices as the international crude benchmark Brent soars and outweighs any risks of U.S. sanctions. 

    Indeed, as Reuters notes, Chinese imports of Iranian crude continued to skyrocket this year despite the sanctions that, if enforced, would allow Washington to cut off those who violate them from the U.S. economy. But when the U.S. president is unlikely to wake up from his afternoon nap or refuse to be disturbed while eating ice cream and do anything to punish China for violating the terms of the embargo, Chinese importers exceeded 700,000 bpd for January, according to estimates by three tanker trackers, which exceeded the 623,000 bpd peak recorded by Chinese customs in 2017 before former President Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018 on Iranian oil exports. 

    One tanker tracker said imports between November to December were on average 780,000 bpd. 

    Much of the buying comes from independent Chinese refiners (otherwise known as “teapots”), who, traders said embraced Iran’s cheaper crude as Brent prices soared last month from $77 to $91. Teapots paid a discount to market, transacting $5 a barrel below Brent. 

    Consulting firm Petro-Logistics, which tracks oil flows, said Iran’s total crude exports soared in December to over 1 million bpd, the highest in three years. 

    “Iran’s oil exports are mostly going to China, often through convoluted routes and transshipments, with small volumes going to Syria each month,” said CEO Daniel Gerber.

    Petro-Logistics expects total Iranian oil exports at 800,000 bpd in January and 700,000 bpd in February. Another tracker firm, OilX, said 1 million bpd could be seen for both January and February.

    Iranian imports are increasing as Iranian and U.S. officials continue negotiating to restore the 2015 nuclear deal. If such a deal is reached in Vienna, lifting most international sanctions on Tehran would mean Iranian crude exports could flood the world and divert sales away from the Chinese teapots. 

    The Ukrainian crisis likely gives Iran a stronger hand in the negotiations as Brent is driven above $100 a barrel on geopolitical concerns. Increasing political pressure on President Biden to tame inflation, more importantly, high gas prices at the pump ahead of midterms could make western politicians more receptive to a deal to squash oil prices. 

    On Friday, a senior U.S. State Department official told WSJ there were only days left to close the remaining difference between Iran and the U.S. for a deal. 

    “Final decisions have to be taken this week—either we have a deal or we do not,” an official from one of the European countries at the talks said Monday. “The context of the current international crisis means the window of opportunity is closing.”

    In the meantime, it appears the U.S. will punish countries who violate its sanctions, though it won’t dare touch China as it is too afraid of what an escalation could look like.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 21:45

  • Half Of Biden's 500 Million Free COVID-19 Tests Unclaimed: Officials
    Half Of Biden’s 500 Million Free COVID-19 Tests Unclaimed: Officials

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    About half of the 500 million free COVID-19 tests that President Joe Biden recently made available haven’t been claimed, according to the White House.

    Rapid at-home COVID-19 test kits are distributed by the GreenRoots environmental protection organization and Chelsea Community Connections in Chelsea, Mass., on Dec. 17, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

    Biden administration officials told The Associated Press that Americans have placed 68 million orders for packages of tests, which contain four COVID-19 tests each. That leaves about 46 percent of the stock still available.

    “We totally intend to sustain this market,” Dr. Tom Inglesby, testing adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, told AP about the unclaimed tests. “We know the market is volatile and will come up and down with surges in variants.”

    The shortfall in tests being claimed is likely because of a significant drop in COVID-19 cases across the United States, as well as an easing of restrictions such as vaccine or masking mandates in primarily Democrat-led states in recent weeks.

    “There is no question some people found out they were positive from taking one of these tests and were able to keep other people from getting infected,” Tim Manning, supply coordinator for the COVID-19 response team, told AP.

    On the first day that COVID-19 tests were made available in January, the COVIDtests.gov website received more than 45 million orders, officials told AP. Fewer than 100,000 orders per day are coming in now.

    About one month ago, the federal government said it would procure another 100 million COVID-19 tests via iHealth Labs.

    “This effort supports the president’s plan to deliver 500 million free at-home COVID-19 tests to the nation in response to the Omicron variant,” the Department of Defense said in a Jan. 29 statement. “The procurement was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act to supply critical medical resources to the nation.”

    Biden had announced the new testing measure after facing criticism that his administration has mainly focused on getting people vaccinated and that they haven’t done enough to encourage testing amid the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

    The White House didn’t respond to a request for additional comment by press time.

    The National Poison Control Center and other poison control centers have issued warnings about rapid tests having a toxic chemical, sodium azide, which is a colorless and odorless powder that testers dip cotton swabs into.

    “It is important to know that the extraction vial in many rapid antigen kits includes the chemical sodium azide as a preservative agent,” the center stated. “The BinaxNow, BD Veritor, Flowflex, and Celltrion DiaTrust COVID-19 rapid antigen kits all contain this chemical.”

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 21:25

  • Oil Hits $110 As Biden Begins SOTU Address; Goldman Says Emergency Oil Release Won't Do Jack
    Oil Hits $110 As Biden Begins SOTU Address; Goldman Says Emergency Oil Release Won’t Do Jack

    With Joe Biden set to begin his first State of the Union address any second, it is only appropriate that WTI oil has exploded higher, and just printed at an 8 year high of 108.63, rising more than $3 since the cash market close, and more than $10 in the past 24 hours!

    At the same time, Brent which traditionally trades at a premium, just hit $110:

    • *BRENT CRUDE OIL EXTENDS RALLY ABOVE $110 A BARREL

    One reason for that is a rather grim assessment from Goldman which echoes what we said earlier, namely that today’s IEA release of 60 million barrels of emergency oil reserves will do exactly nothing to halt oil’s tremendous surge higher.

    As Goldman’s Damien Courvalin writes, writing about the release of 60 mb of emergency oil reserves following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “we do not view this as sufficient relief, representing an only 1-month offset to a potential disruption to one-third of Russia’s 6 mb/d seaborne oil export flows, for example, consistent with the rally in prices after today’s announcement.“

    As such, Goldman reiterates its view – discussed here yesterday – that only demand destruction – through even higher prices – is now likely the only sufficient rebalancing mechanism, with supply elasticity no longer relevant in the face of such a potential large and immediate supply shock.

    This leaves risk to our one-month $115/bbl Brent price forecast still skewed to the upside, with today’s $105/bbl spot prices only at the level we believed was required to balance the oil market prior to any escalation in Ukraine.

    Furthermore, Courvalin writes that a short-term deescalation or a potentially faster ramp-up in OPEC+ production would also not derail the bank’s view for structurally higher prices, with Dec-23 Brent $24/bbl below our forecast; “Similarly, we do not expect a large price sell-off should an agreement with Iran be reached soon. Case in point, the global oil deficit in February is turning out to be twice as large as our above-consensus forecast while Iraq is experiencing 0.5 mb/d of outages, enough – if sustained and combined – to fully nullify Iran’s potential return to the global oil market.”

    All of that means that Brent $200 calls expiring this summer look quite cheap.

    The silver lining, is that at least one person is delighted by this tremendous ascent in oil prices: Jerome Powell. As we said almost a month ago, the quickest and safest way to “burn out” inflation is to send oil to $200… triggering a global recession if not depression.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 21:06

  • Cargo Ship Carrying 4,000 Luxury Cars Sinks In Heavy Seas
    Cargo Ship Carrying 4,000 Luxury Cars Sinks In Heavy Seas

    Two weeks after a roll-on-roll-off (RORO) car carrier loaded with thousands of Volkswagen AG vehicles, including VW, Porsche, Audi, Bentley, and Lamborghini- branded models, caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean, it sunk Tuesday morning, according to Bloomberg. 

    We chronicled the incident last month (read: here & here), noting that the shipment of luxury vehicles had been bound for the US market, where a shortage of supply and surging demand has led to a severe crunch of new car supply.

    Now the 656-foot long RORO, called Felicity Ace, has sunk to the bottom of the ocean, about 220 nautical miles off the coast of Portugal’s Azores Islands, around 0900 local time. 

    The RORO was severely damaged from a fire that broke out on Feb. 16 and was leaning 45 degrees to its starboard side as a fleet of tug boats and salvage craft accompanied the vessel as it was being towed back to shore. The ship sank due to rough seas:

    “The weather was pretty rough out there,” Pat Adamson, a spokesperson for MOL Ship Management (Singapore), a unit of Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd., said by phone. “And then she sank, which was a surprise.”

    Volkswagen had 4,000 vehicles on board, and vessels in the area monitored the situation. Adamson said. “There doesn’t appear to be any oil pollution yet — they’re checking on that.” 

    For any car enthusiast hoping to score a waterlogged Porsche, Bentley, and or Lamborghini, well, the ship sank in waters about 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) deep. 

    So you’ll need much more than a scuba diving suit to retrieve the exotic cars.  

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 21:05

  • Visa, Mastercard Block Certain Russian Firms Due To Sanctions
    Visa, Mastercard Block Certain Russian Firms Due To Sanctions

    The Western world continues to obsess about using financial weapons to implode Russia’s economy. The latest is payment and credit card giants Visa and Mastercard blocked certain Russian financial institutions from their payment networks to comply with international sanctions, according to Bloomberg. 

    On Monday, Mastercard said it had “blocked multiple financial institutions” from its payment network without naming names.

    “We will continue to work with regulators in the days ahead to abide fully by our compliance obligations as they evolve,” Mastercard said.

    “Visa is taking prompt action to ensure compliance with applicable sanctions, and is prepared to comply with additional sanctions that may be implemented,” the firm said in a statement Tuesday.

    The move comes after European nations and the U.S. announced a series of sanctions to cut off Russia from the global financial system. One restrictive measure removed “selected Russian banks” from the SWIFT messaging system that will harm their ability to operate globally. Also, restrictive measures were placed on the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves to support the ruble.

    The U.S., European Union, and the U.K. also targeted Russian oligarchs to find and seize their assets. The trans-Atlantic task force will “identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs,” said a senior Biden Administration official.

    “We’ll go after their yachts, their luxury apartments, their money, and their ability to send their kids to fancy colleges in the West,” the official said. 

    The wide-ranging sanctions were in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine five days ago. Russian forces are marching towards the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, though they have made little progress over the past 24 hours due to logistical difficulties. It seems Western sanctions have yet to deter Russian President Putin from backing down. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 20:35

  • "Game Over?" – Russia To Be In Technical Default Within Hours
    “Game Over?” – Russia To Be In Technical Default Within Hours

    More than two decades ago, on August 17, 1998, Russia defaulted on its debt and devalued the ruble, sparking a political crisis that culminated with Vladimir Putin replacing Boris Yeltsin and which also eventually resulted in the spectacular implosion of a then little known hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management (which was staffed to the gills with “brilliant” Nobel prize winners) which after receiving a Fed-led Wall Street bailout, ushered in the era of too big to fail.

    We bring this up because in just a few hours, Russia will be in another technical default.

    Amid the flurry of capital controls imposed by Moscow today, the Russian central bank banned coupon payments to foreign owners of ruble bonds known as OFZs in what it said was a temporary step to shore up markets in the wake of international sanctions. What it really is, is a technical default on upcoming interest and maturity payments, with a trigger due as soon as tomorrow.

    The Bank of Russia issued the instruction to depositaries and registries as part of a raft of measures announced this week that included a freeze on local security sales by foreigners. It could leave foreign investors who held almost 3 trillion rubles ($29 billion) in the debt at the start of February unable to collect income on their holdings, which are already blocked from sale by restrictions.

    “Issuers have the right to make decisions on the payment of dividends and the making of other payments on securities and transfer them to the accounting system,” the central bank said in an emailed reply to questions. “However, the payments themselves will not be made by depositories and registrars to foreign clients. This also applies to OFZ.”

    The decision by the central bank was taken to “avoid mass sales of Russian securities, the withdrawal of funds from the Russian financial market and to support financial stability,” it said.

    With as much as half of its foreign reserves frozen abroad by sanctions aimed at punishing the Kremlin for invading Ukraine, the Bank of Russia said Monday it would harden capital controls with a ban on transferring foreign currency abroad. While initially it clarified that the step wasn’t aimed at stopping the servicing of debt, some investors and economists said the phrasing of the decree could amount to a default.

    “Game over? I think they underestimated how far sanctions will go and now don’t have much left to do,” Viktor Szabo, a fund manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in London told Bloomberg. “All Russian markets have fallen apart.”

    “This will likely be a technical default, we’ll see how long it goes on for,” said Nick Eisinger, co-head of emerging-markets active fixed income at Vanguard Asset Management in London. “We also see strong likelihood of technical default on Eurobonds at the sovereign level.”

    The central bank didn’t specify how long the ban will last. On Monday, the Interfax news service reported the temporary suspension will be in effect for half a year unless the regulator lifts it ahead of time. The decision underscored how rapidly Russia’s free-market credentials have disintegrated since the Ukraine invasion.

    But it won’t matter: just a one ban day will be enough to push Russia into a technical default – the next coupon payment on OFZ bonds is due Wednesday on notes maturing in 2024, according to Bloomberg.

    The news came shortly after we learned that the world’s biggest settlement systems Euroclear and Clearsteam are no longer handling Russian assets — reversing the much-heralded opening of the local debt market to international investors nine years ago.

    Russian sovereign bonds collapsed last week, sending the yield on the 10-year benchmark up 240 basis points to 12.28%. The ruble’s drop of more than 20% so far this year is the worst slump globally, prices compiled by Bloomberg show.

    “A potentially weaker willingness on the part of the Russian government to service its debt on time and in full, raise the probability of more severe credit outcomes for foreign holders of Russian debt securities,” Moody’s Investors Service said in an statement.

    And while Russia is about to re-default – something it certainly has experience with – its economy devastated yet rich in natural resources, the question is how the US will handle the brutal, new reality where oil is now virtually assured to hit $150 if not $200 at a time when the main US output is hyperfinancialization, with the value of financial assets at last check some 6.3x times greater than GDP.

    For the answer, please reread “Shades Of 2008 As Oil Decouples From Everything.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 20:15

  • Zuckerberg Election Funds Violated Wisconsin Bribery Laws, Special Counsel Finds
    Zuckerberg Election Funds Violated Wisconsin Bribery Laws, Special Counsel Finds

    Approximately $9 million directed to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin violated the state’s prohibition on bribery, according to The Federalist‘s Margot Cleveland, citing a report submitted on Tuesday by a special counsel appointed by the state.

    Spearheaded by retired state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman who was tasked with investigating concerns over election integrity in 2020, the investigation which began last August has resulted in a 150-page report full of recommendations for the state’s legislative body which cited “numerous questionable and unlawful actions of various actors in the 2020 election.”

    According to the report, the flow of Zuckerberg grant funds to five Wisconsin counties was the first ‘unlawful action’ noted. According to Gableman, the arrangement violated Wis. Stat. § 12.11, which prohibits election bribery by providing it is illegal to offer anything of value to or for any person in order to induce any elector to go to the polls or vote.

    According to the report, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg providing financing that allowed the Center for Tech and Civic Life to offer nearly $9 million in “Zuck Bucks” to Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay counties. In exchange, the “Zuckerberg 5,” as the report called the counties, in effect, operated Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts. Those grant funds then paid for illegal drop boxes to be placed in Democratic voting strongholds.

    The illegal use of drop boxes represented a second area of concern to the special counsel’s office. The report notes state election code limits the manner in which ballots may be cast, providing that an elector must personally mail or deliver his or her ballot to the municipal clerk, except where the law authorizes an agent to act on the behalf of the voter. –The Federalist

    The report also claims that the “Zuckerberg 5” violated both federal and state constitutional guarantees of equal protection, as the grant money targeted specific voters for special voting privileges – to the disadvantage of similarly situated Wisconsin voters in other counties. What’s more, said counties allowed private groups working with the granting organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to “unlawfully administer aspects of the election.” In one case, an organization was unlawfully ’embedded’ in local government election administration.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAlso disturbing, the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) illegally told clerks to ignore the state election code governing voting in nursing homes – where 100% of registered voters allegedly cast ballots in the 2020 election, and unheard-of rate which the Federalist notes included many ineligible voters.

    Meanwhile, Wisconsin illegally maintained non-citizens and incapacitated citizens on the state’s voting rolls according to the special counsel’s report.

    Special Counsel Gableman detailed many other substantial problems with the 2020 election, but equally troubling to the widespread violations of election law established in the report were the attempts by government officials to impede the investigation. Both the Wisconsin Election Commission and the state attorney general “have refused to cooperate with the Legislature’s investigation and actively obstructed it,” according to the report, with a separate appendix detailing how the Office of Special Counsel and the state Assembly have been blocked from investigating portions of the Wisconsin government. -The Federalist

    The special counsel recommends eliminating the Wisconsin Election Commission, among other remedies.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 19:55

  • Is COVID Policy Comedy, Tragedy, Or Both?
    Is COVID Policy Comedy, Tragedy, Or Both?

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

    The Saturday Night Live skit on Covid policy is a welcome relief, a cultural sign that rationality has started to return.

    Yes, the segment is truly hilarious.

    And it reveals so much about the present moment in which even highly politicized elites are realizing that the dissidents in the Covid wars had it right all along. 

    At the same time, the skit speaks to a deeper truth about the last two years. For many in the professional Zoom class, the entire occasion tragically became an opportunity for signaling virtue, pontificating about politics, and tightening alliances with their class compatriots, even as billions around the world suffered at the hands of overlords who massively neglected the lessons of traditional public health in favor of a wild experiment in pointless compulsion. 

    They shut down the “economy” (two weeks turned into two years) but for people in a certain class and age group, it was a welcome relief from the burdens of going to the office. The value of seeming to be part of a grand political mission outweighed the cost of not going out to eat. The lack of empathy for the workers who had no such luxury, church goers locked out of their houses of worship, and kids torn from their peers, to say nothing of millions who fell into poverty – and we could go on – was truly startling. 

    No, there was nothing amusing about any of this. Not to be humorless here but this was an unprecedented catastrophe the world over. It should not be reduced to fodder for late-night amusement. It’s tragedy not comedy. Every family has a tragic story to tell. And it is far from over, for the collateral damage will be with us for a generation or two. 

    Perhaps in the future we can treat the arrival of pathogens as a time for patients and doctors to work together to promote wellness. Perhaps researchers can focus on therapeutics. Perhaps public-health agencies can work on being truthful with the public. Perhaps we can be more careful about mandating injections for vast swaths of humanity that did not want them or had already earned their natural immunity. 

    None of this will happen unless we can talk openly about it, without censorship, and do so seriously. The prevailing emotion right now as I type is the opposite: you can now laugh about how preposterously everyone behaved but don’t get serious about investigations or rethinking anything. 

    For that matter, an interview I did with a world-class pathologist in Canada was just deleted by YouTube for “medical misinformation.” The censorship is as ruthless as ever! 

    We will be fully over the political side of this mess when the following has become a political, social, and cultural consensus: 

    1) Emergency powers were never justified. They were imposed in a panic, one deliberately generated in Congressional testimony by Anthony Fauci who manipulated the US president into believing that he could on his own “shut down” the economy to make a virus go away. The whole episode was pathetic and contradictory to the whole experience of public health. 

    2) All “mitigation measures” deployed have not proven effective and certainly caused vast harm. The schools should never have been forced closed. The hospitals should have done business as usual. Doctors should have been free to treat patients. Travel should never have been stopped. Stay-at-home orders served no purpose. Hundreds of thousands of businesses were wrecked for no reason at all. Mandatory masks are not just pointless but inhumane, especially for kids. Testing the healthy, as track-and-trace theater, proved a waste. The vaccines should never have been mandated anywhere.

    3) Even if C19 mutates in a worse way, or some new pathogen comes along, there is no public-health justification for shutting down society, dividing the social classes, canceling gatherings, limiting building capacity, restricting travel, or otherwise violating the rights of conscience and bodily autonomy. Contra the CDC, people should not have to wait breathlessly for the bureaucrats to look at the “science” to discover whether and to what extent we can exercise our human rights. 

    4) All public-health interventions need to be limited to informing the public of all available information, seeking therapeutics, quarantine for the sick by choice, and otherwise allowing doctors to practice medicine. Yes, society might need to respond to new pathogens but society is fully capable of doing so without central direction from unelected bureaucrats on power trips. Everything on this page from the CDC has to go.

    5) The science behind pandemic management needs to be decentralized and include genuine discussion and debate rather than allowing a small cabal to take full power while censoring everyone else. 

    And for each of these points, there need to be iron-clad guarantees. No more discretionary power for unelected bureaucrats to impose horrible rules on anyone. The power of the CDC, and all their sister bureaucrats in the states, needs to be reined in, starting with the many documents posted on government websites that presume that in the event of a virus, this agency or that gets to become the central manager of society while ignoring all constitutional restraints on power. 

    In short, we need freedom back, and a guarantee that nothing like this can ever happen again. Some degree of levity about the comedic qualities of the last two years is merited but it needs to be complemented by a serious commitment toward radical reform. We need a new way to think about how a good society can develop freely even in the presence of infectious disease. Freedom needs to be nonnegotiable. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 19:35

  • Biden To Ban Russian Flights Over US Airspace As Boeing Suspends Support Service For Russian Airlines
    Biden To Ban Russian Flights Over US Airspace As Boeing Suspends Support Service For Russian Airlines

    Among the many things to be announced by Joe BIden in his SOTU speech tonight, one will be that the U.S. government will ban Russian aircraft from American airspace, broadening aviation restrictions as the West expands sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

    • PRESIDENT BIDEN PLANS TO ANNOUNCE ON TUESDAY THE UNITED STATES WILL BAN RUSSIAN FLIGHTS FROM U.S. AIRSPACE FOLLOWING EU AND CANADA – RTRS

    This echoes a report from the WSJ which earlier noted that an order barring Russian-owned and -operated aircraft from U.S. airspace is expected to be issued as soon as within the next 24 hours.

    The U.S. move would follow earlier prohibitions by European and Canadian authorities. The restrictions, which Russia has retaliated against by issuing a similar ban on European flights, have disrupted airline flight plans as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine escalates.

    Meanwhile, in a potentially far more ominous development, Politico reporter Lee Hudson tweeted that Boeing has suspended aircraft maintenance and support services for Russian airlines,

    “We have suspended major operations in Moscow and temporarily closed our office in Kyiv,” Hudson tweets, citing company statement.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In other words, going forward anyone flying in a Russian Boeing will do so knowing that the plane was not serviced and is a potential death trap, even more so than just flying in a 737 MAX, the airplane best known for being “designed by clowns, who in turn were supervised by monkeys.” Naturally, this means that all Russian commercial flights will be effectively grounded overnight.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 19:32

  • Apple, Ford Lead Latest Round Of US Companies Cutting Russia Ties
    Apple, Ford Lead Latest Round Of US Companies Cutting Russia Ties

    As another market day comes to an end in the US, another flurry of American companies have announced plans to cut ties with Russian business partners, or simply stop selling their products in the Russian Federation. These companies include Apple, Nike, Ford and others, all of whom have released statements on Tuesday.

    For starters, Apple has halted all product sales in Russia, while halting exports to Russia sales channels. It’s also pulling RT News and Sputnik News from App Stores outside of Russia, and is disabling traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine.

    Here’s the full Apple statement on Russia, where it announced plans to limit Apple Pay and other services, while taking other steps to protect Ukrainians and their interests.

    “We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence. We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the unfolding refugee crisis, and doing all we can to support our teams in the region. We have taken a number of actions in response to the invasion. We have paused all product sales in Russia. Last week, we stopped all exports into our sales channel in the country.”

    “Apple Pay and other services have been limited. RT News and Sputnik News are no longer available for download from the App Store outside Russia. And we have disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens. We will continue to evaluate the situation and are in communication with relevant governments on the actions we are taking. We join all those around the world who are calling for peace.”

    Apple described the decision as an attempt to protect the “safety and precautionary measure” for citizens in Ukraine. However, as one Bloomberg presenter pointed out, the move is largely symbolic.

    Moving on, like Shell and BP divesting their Russian assets, Ford also said it would “suspend” its joint venture in Russia and instead find ways to support “Ukrainian nationals”, in part by making a large ($100K) donation to “the Global Giving Ukraine Relief Fund”.

    As part of the global community, Ford is deeply concerned about the invasion of Ukraine and the resultant threats to peace and stability. The situation has compelled us to reassess our operations in Russia. In recent years, Ford has significantly wound down its Russian operations, which now focus exclusively on commercial van manufacturing and Russian sales through a minority interest in the Sollers Ford joint venture. Given the situation, we have today informed our JV partners that we are suspending our operations in Russia, effective immediately, until further notice.

    While we don’t have significant operations in Ukraine, we do have a strong contingent of Ukrainian nationals working at Ford around the world and we will continue to support them through this time.

    Ford Fund is also making a $100,000 donation to the Global Giving Ukraine Relief Fund for humanitarian aid to assist Ukrainian citizens and families who have been displaced during this crisis.

    Athletic wear juggernaut Nike has closed its online stores and said it won’t sell any new merchandise in Russia because it can no longer “guarantee” delivery.

    Nike made the announcement on its Russian website. It wasn’t immediately clear if the change was a new corporate policy or the result of supply-chain difficulties following the nation’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Nike didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, per Bloomberg.

    Also on the tech front, Snap Inc., owner of Snapchat, the popular social media app, won’t be running any more Russian advertising.

    Finally, social messaging and media app Snapchat, owned by parent company Snap Inc., said it had stopped running all advertising in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine and is halting ad sales to all Russian and Belarusian entities as part of “complying with all sanctions targeting Russian businesses and individuals.”

    The company has continued to offer the app in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus because it “remains an important communications tool for family and friends.”

    The company noted that Ukraine is the birthplace of Looksery, the company whose technology laid the foundation for Snap’s augmented reality platform, “and has been the home of more than 300 of Snap’s most creative and talented team members.” That includes both Snap employees currently based in Ukraine as well as those who are from Ukraine originally and now live elsewhere.

    Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta are facing potential blowback from the Russian government after both companies cut off RT and other allegedly state-backed broadcasters from their platforms, angering the Kremlin, which has railed about the possibility of passing laws to punish these moves.

     But the real big question is: with all the US companies rushing to cut financial ties with Russia, does all this risk backfiring?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 19:15

  • Ukraine's 2nd Largest City Pummeled Under Russian Strikes As Calls For Western Intervention Grow
    Ukraine’s 2nd Largest City Pummeled Under Russian Strikes As Calls For Western Intervention Grow

    Update(1700ET): Into the late night hours local time, there were widespread reports of a series of large explosions outside Kiev’s city limits. This as there’s said to be a convoy of infantry, tanks, and artillery that stretches “forty miles” that’s still approaching Kiev – though it’s believed the Russian assault on the Ukrainian capital has been severely hampered by logistical, supply, and fuel issues.

    Calls have grown in US Congress to give Ukraine “everything they need as rapidly as possible” – as the latest words from Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell ahead of Biden’s evening State of the Union indicated. Both in the media and in some corners of Europe calls for “confronting” Russia’s militarily have grown, as expected. 

    Ukrainian government officials, including top ministers apparently, are reportedly working to run the country from bomb shelters and metro stations under Kiev. Tuesday evening into overnight hours it appears most of the heavy Russian shelling is still focused on Ukraine’s second largest city.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Also on Tuesday European Parliament moved closer to granting Ukraine “candidate status” – ironically not long after Turkey’s Erdogan chided the body for suddenly seeking to fast-track Ukraine after Turkey has sought EU entry for years: 

    The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Tuesday calling on the European Union institutions “to work towards granting” Ukraine the status of EU candidate country, it said in a statement.

    The resolution, which also demanded the EU to impose “tougher sanctions” on Russia, was voted in favor by 637 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). It condemned “in the strongest possible terms Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and demands that the Kremlin end all military activities in the country.” 

    Meanwhile the economic war against Russia from the West has continued ratcheting up, with the latest including the UK barring any ships with Russian ties access to British ports. A UK government statement said: 

    “The ban on Russian ships from UK ports, and new economic sanctions against key Russian financial institutions including its central bank, in close coordination with our allies, will degrade Russia’s economy and help make sure Putin loses,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in the statement. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Further measures were listed as “including against the Russian Central Bank and the state’s sovereign wealth fund, also mean the majority of Russia’s financial system” – all now covered under UK sanctions.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    earlier

    Update(1349ET): Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan issued some strong words on Tuesday which are sure to be taken as provocative both by Russia and Turkey’s European allies. “Asked about Ukraine’s bid for European Union membership at a news conference in Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey, an EU candidate for decades, would support any enlargement of NATO and the EU.”

    • EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RECOMMENDS GIVING UKRAINE EU CANDIDATE STATUS

    Of course, Turkey has lobbied for entry into the EU for years, and has long stood as NATO’s second largest military, behind the United States. This fact was cause for stinging sarcasm in his words:

    Erdogan called on the bloc to show the “same sensitivity” it showed for Kyiv’s membership bid for Turkey’s application, and slammed member states for being “not sincere”.

    “Will you put Turkey on your agenda when someone attacks (us) too?” he said.

    In the overnight hours, huge blasts in Kharkiv have been reported…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Turkey has for months walked a tightrope on the Ukraine issue amid Russia’s prior military build-up. But with the Russian invasion now in full-swing, Ankara has gotten more vocal – but is still seeking to strike more of a balance compared to the firm hardline of European countries:

    “Our call to both Russia and Ukraine is: let the firing stop as soon as possible, let Russia and Ukraine make a beautiful contribution to peace,” Erdogan said Tuesday during a joint news conference with Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu, on Tuesday.

    Kharkiv’s central square, via AP

    On Monday Turkey had closed the straits under its control to all warship traffic, especially Russian vessels, in line with the Montreux Convention.

    Russian and Ukrainian delegations are set to meet for a second round of ceasefire talks, but it’s looking increasingly shaky that this will even happen:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESMAN SAYS UKRAINIAN, RUSSIAN DELEGATIONS WILL MOST LIKELY NOT MEET ON WEDNESDAY, RUSSIA HAS ‘UNREALISTIC’ DEMANDS -CNN TURK

    Currently, some wild theories are circulating in the US mainstream and even among political leaders over just what is behind Putin’s decision for an all-out invasion…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update(10:53amET): Russia’s military is urging civilians to leave areas near Ukrainian army bases and communications facilities in Kiev, warning that it is now conducting strikes against these specified targets. 

    “In order to suppress information attacks against Russia, the technological facilities of the SBU and the 72nd main PSO center in Kyiv will be hit with high-precision weapons,” the Russian MoD statement said according to TASS. “We call on Ukrainian citizens attracted by Ukrainian nationalists to carry out provocations against Russia, as well as residents of Kyiv living near relay nodes leave their homes.”

    Based on widely circulating footage, it appears the invading Russian forces have begun to take out communications towers and antennas, as well as Ukrainian military infrastructure – also amid continuing reports that residential areas are increasingly under threat amid the siege of Kiev.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A massive TV tower in Kiev has been hit, with the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs confirming of some national broadcasts:

    “The channels will not work for a while,” the ministry said in its statement. “The backup broadcasting of some channels will be enabled in the near future.”

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has meanwhile appealed to the UN Human Rights Council to “strip Russia” of its membership on the UNHRC. According to the AFP, Blinken said:

    Putin success in ousting Ukraine government would see rights, humanitarian crises ‘only get worse’, Blinken tells UN rights council

    US defense officials on Tuesday said they believe Russia’s advance on Kiev has been slowing due to fuel and supply challenges.

    There’s been confusion over the prior reported EU jets to Ukraine…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    For the past week there have also been conflicting reports as to the degree of Belarus’ active participation on the ground in Russia’s invasion:

    • MILITARY UNITS HAVE MOVED FROM BASES BUT COUNTRY COULD MOBILISE IN 2-3 DAYS IN EVENT OF DANGER – RIA CITES BELTA
    • LUKASHENKO SAYS NO BELARUS MILITARY UNITS HAVE MOVED FROM BASES BUT COUNTRY COULD MOBILISE IN 2-3 DAYS IN EVENT OF DANGER – RIA CITES BELTA

    * * *

    “Kyiv is special. If we protect Kyiv, we will protect the state. This is the heart of our country, and it must keep beating,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday. He gave a stirring video address to European parliament, the day after he signed a formal application for Ukraine seeking EU membership.

    “Our people are motivated and we are fighting for freedoms and our lives,” Zelensky said. “We are fighting for our survival,” he added while urging the body to “prove” that they stand with Ukraine. This as he’s urging both NATO and the US to impose a No-Fly Zone, an appeal which both so far have rejected. 

    Satellite imagery being widely reported on Tuesday morning suggests a massive column of Russian infantry many miles in length is now en route ready to bear down to the Ukrainian capital. Estimates as to its size have varied, but there’s consensus it’s at least many, possibly dozens of miles, long. 

    CNN describes it as “A massive 40-mile-long Russian military convoy — made up of armored vehicles, tanks, towed artillery and other logistical vehicles — has reached the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, according to satellite images from Maxar Technologies.”

    Kiev officials have said the city has erected fortifications, while much of the civilian population has sought the safety of shelters or underground bunkers ahead of what’s expected to be a large-scale final Russian assault, also after two other large cities have in the past days come under heavy rocket barrage and shelling. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, warned the people of the city as well as the world on Tuesday that “the enemy is on the outskirts of the capital,” and emphasized that national forces are “preparing to defend Kyiv.”

    “Our armed forces, Territorial Defense Forces, are fighting heroically for our land,” Klitschko said. “Fortifications and checkpoints have been built at the entrances to the city. I ask everyone to keep calm. Do not go outside unnecessarily and stay in shelters in case of alarm,” he added.

    Moscow has meanwhile reaffirmed that its military operation will not stop until it meets the objectives of “demilitarizing” Ukraine. However, talks just inside Belarus on Monday between a Ukrainian delegation and Russian delegation left agreeing to keep talking. Those talks lasted a reported five hours.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Russian side has since confirmed that this second round of potential ceasefire talks will take place Wednesday, March 2. Ukrainian and Russian media are confirming the next round:

    Another Ukrainian media outlet, Glavkom, citing sources in the Ukrainian delegation, disclosed the terms advanced by the sides during the first meeting. It said that Russia allegedly demanded Ukraine commit to paper its off-bloc status at the parliamentary level and organize a referendum on this matter. Apart from that, the Russian side demanded Ukraine recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the administrative borders of the corresponding regions and drop its demand that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine. Ukraine, according to Glavkom, demanded a ceasefire and withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory.

    At the same time, on an international level communications between Russia and the West appear to be spiraling toward non-existent. With the European airspace closure around Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov opted to address an assembly of the UN Human Rights Council remotely, instead of traveling. 

    More and more media pundits and US officials have begun to call for a West-imposed No Fly Zone:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Even the video speech prompted a mass-walkout, as Fox described:

    As soon as the U.N. president turns over the floor to Lavrov, dozens of diplomats stand and leave the meeting chamber without a word.

    Lavrov said he was “compelled” to make his address by video after the European Union restricted his “freedom of movement.”

    Currently Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov is warning that Russia has preparations underway to launch a “large-scale information and psychological operation” against Ukraine, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Tuesday. “Its goal is to break the resistance of Ukrainians and the Ukrainian army with lies,” Reznikov said in the statement.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 19:07

  • New Yorkers Lash Out At ConEdison Over Soaring Electricity Bills
    New Yorkers Lash Out At ConEdison Over Soaring Electricity Bills

    By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles of OilPrice.com

    • New Yorkers blame distributor ConEdison for quickly rising electricity bills.

    • Some customers complain that their (energy) supply bill has tripled in past months.

    • The deregulated system may lower costs somewhat, but all of the fuel volatility risk is transferred directly to the consumer.

    Sky-high electric bills on the front page. Europe? The U.K? No, just north of New York City, where local politicians criticized Consolidated Edison of NY, the local electric utility. And further, local business people noted that they had warned of this potential problem a decade ago when the last governor decided to close down the nearby nuclear power plant, Indian Point. Some customers complain that their supply bill (for their electricity usage, not the lines or wires) has tripled in past months. For the typical consumer this is a noticeable increase.

    Con Edison—which in the past has taken the stand that it just delivers the electricity (they don’t actually produce it) so go complain somewhere else—announced that it “was reviewing our practices…” and will work out programs to help customers who are struggling to pay these rapidly escalating electricity bills. Meanwhile the staffer of a local member of Congress said, “At the end of the day, it is Con Edison that bills New Yorkers, and, therefore Con Ed that bears direct consumer responsibility for this egregious price hike…” Politicians have focused on how to help consumers pay their bills this winter, both here and in Europe. They don’t focus on the possibility that the existing wholesale electricity market, set up three decades ago to make electricity competitive, may bear responsibility for the mess as well.

    Here is how it works. The local utility is a delivery mechanism. It delivers a product (electricity in this case) produced and marketed by somebody else. In theory, the delivery company should not care about the price or quality of the product. And most local delivery utilities do not. They are simple delivery vehicles (“like the milkman”, a former Con Ed executive explained)  that charge fixed costs for their regulated service. Which from a business point of view is not a great set up. High prices or poor service on the part of electricity producers encourages consumers to either go off the grid or cut back on consumption. The local distribution utility’s business and relationship with the customer depends on another company’s skills and probity. Is that a good business strategy? Doesn’t sound like a good one for Con Edison.

    Now for the second issue, a little more technical. The unregulated electricity market sets prices on the basis of marginal cost. Generally speaking, natural gas is the marginal fuel and gas-fired generators frequently set the price for our region’s electricity. Remember that in a marginal cost market, every generator gets the same price regardless of production costs. So if the price of gas goes up the price of all electricity (not just that generated by gas) goes up equally as well. (In this instance low cost electricity producers like hydroelectric facilities reap a huge financial windfall). This differs from the old electricity pricing model which added up the prices of all fuels used to generate electricity and raised or lowered prices on the basis of their aggregate cost. In theory, prices go up quickly when marginal fuel price rises and falls just as quickly when the price drops. Although, in practice the price of electricity tends to fall a lot more slowly than the price of sometimes volatile fuel. Generators manage to keep the difference when that happens. 

    The third issue is one of prudence. The market organizations that manage our electricity grid look for the lowest price electricity. They don’t require a mix of fuels to be on the safe side. They don’t pay generators to run facilities with more expensive fuels in order to maintain diversity. They go for the low price. So, there is not much extra supply to bring on line when the cheap fuel (in this case natural gas) suddenly becomes expensive. This is the literal price we pay for our partly deregulated energy system. The previously regulated system was financially incentivized to maintain redundancy and dampen overall price volatility. But—and this is key—the old regulated utility was designed to absorb the financial risk associated with volatile fuel expense and then settle up later with state regulators. A deregulated system may lower costs somewhat but all of the fuel volatility risk is transferred directly to the consumer. Some members of the public are discovering the true meaning of deregulated energy markets this winter. 

    Does this sound like a discussion of European dependence on Russian gas rather than New York State power generation?  Well, in a way, utility deregulation almost always results in the same outcome. Go for the cheapest fuel source and assume nothing will go wrong. And when it does, let the consumers pay. The only thing we find remarkable here is that consumers continue to accept this.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 18:55

  • Summers: Biden Needs To Pivot From COVID, Prepare America For 'Struggle Ahead'
    Summers: Biden Needs To Pivot From COVID, Prepare America For ‘Struggle Ahead’

    During tonight’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden needs to ditch the “usual laundry list of policy proposals,” and switch from “being the ‘protect the middle class from the pandemic’ president to being ‘prepare America for the struggle ahead’ president,” according to former Treasury Secretary and Democratic heavyweight Larry Summers, who spoke with Bloomberg TV on Friday.

    “We are looking at an event of potentially vast significance and concern,” Summers said in a follow-up interview Monday – referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s increasing alignment with Beijing.

    “Our ability to meet these challenges depends on recognizing them for what they are.”

    According to Summers, Biden will need to rally Americans to support the principles of democracy against authoritarianism.

    “The United States faces far graver challenges to its security than anyone would have thought likely even several years ago,” said Summers, who served as head of the National Economic Council during the Obama administration.”That needs to have ramifications for almost every aspect of our national life.”

    Summers, also a former director of the White House National Economic Council, likened the importance of the tightening bonds between Moscow and Beijing today to the realignment of China toward the U.S. that President Richard Nixon achieved in 1972.

    American corporate leaders are among those that may need to rethink their approaches in the new environment, he said. “Anyone who thinks that is not a challenge to their ability to flourish and profit as a business is making an enormous mistake.” -Bloomberg

    “There was a tendency for some CEOs to treat the United States as a kind of primitive loyalty, but to emphasize that they had to do what was best for their company — which could mean going anywhere and doing anything,” he said yesterday.

    When it comes to China, Summers says that too much effort has been spent by US policymakers on corporate interests in that country – while Washington remains “underinvested” in US technological competitiveness.

    President Bill Clinton (right) and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers work on forgiving debt to small countries.
    Dirck Halstead/Liaison

    “When we see the dominant emphasis in the economic policies of many countries shift from international integration to self-reliance as a dominant economic value, we know we are headed into a much more dangerous world,” Summers added – while urging Biden to put “more emphasis on our stake in what’s happening globally” – particularly when it comes to challenges such as safeguarding the US Dollar as the global reserve by moving to contain inflation, resisting global aggression, and addressing semiconductor shortages.

    Of note, in November Summers was critical of the Biden administration for being “behind the curve” on inflation ravaging the economy.

    “We are going to need to spend more on national defense and more on global security — in terms of not just military threats, but threats from climate change and threats from pandemics.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/01/2022 – 18:35

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Mar 01

Today’s News 1st March 2022

  • Victor Davis Hanson: The Crowded Road To Kyiv
    Victor Davis Hanson: The Crowded Road To Kyiv

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

    To retain our deterrence abroad, we must tighten our belts at home, pump oil and gas, start to balance our budget, junk wokeism as a nihilist indulgence, and recalibrate our military…

    One of the oddest commentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the boilerplate reaction that “borders can’t change in modern Europe” or “this does not happen in the 21st century.” 

    But why in the world should the 21st century be exempt from the pathologies of the past 20 centuries? Are we smarter than the Romans? More innovative than Florentines? Do we have more savvy leaders than Lincoln or Churchill? Are they more mellifluous than Demosthenes? Does anyone now remember that some 130,000 were slaughtered just 30 years ago in the former Yugoslavia, as NATO planes bombed Belgrade and nuclear America and Russia almost squared off? 

    Has globalization, the “rules-based order,” the Davos reset elite, the “international community” so improved the very way humans think that they have rendered obsolete the now ossified ancient idea of deterrence? Will the Kardashians and Beyoncé tweet our pathway to global peace? 

    How about transnational NGOs? NATO? WHO? The UN? Are all their recent records of service proof of our more exalted modern morality? Will some new engineered Wuhan virus alter human nature, end its innate ancient pathologies, and so eliminate war as we knew it? Are we not the League of Nations because Putin is now chair of the Security Council? 

    In truth, anything can happen to anyone, anywhere,  at any time—and has and will until the end of time. 

    So let us walk down the crowded road to Kiev. 

    The Russian Agenda

    Putin feels that Russia was once a great player (defined mostly as “feared”) in world affairs. But now it—i.e., he— is not. He thinks if he can grab back some of the old Soviet Union’s now lost 100 million people and 30 percent of its territory, then his Russia would again become a superpower—especially given the natural wealth of his former Soviet republics. 

    He knows that the longer some of these republics are Westernized and become acculturated to the passions of popular culture, the more difficult it will be to coerce them into becoming Russian subordinates. So Putin feels a sense of urgency that in the past was not always his conniving trademark—but now perhaps accentuated by his age or health. UN Security Council Chair Putin’s pique at his supposed wounds is endless given his incessant citations of NATO bombing on kindred Serbia, the 2004 orange revolution, or the 2008 Ukrainian coup. 

    He feels we are decadent, soft, pampered—to the point of not replying to his provocations. So, he presses. In his Stalinesque mind, we purportedly do not deserve the power and influence we supposedly inherited at his expense, while his Russia, he boasts, is tough, religious, and deserves far more from the modern age than its current diminished status. Like Stalin, he has developed a visceral dislike of sermonizing Western elites, none of whom he thinks can box, judo kick, fish, shoot, or ride bare-chested at his level. 

    So, to the degree Putin believes in a cost-to-benefit analysis that any envisioned invasion will prove profitable, he will invade anywhere he feels the odds favor his agenda. And when he does not—if America or NATO offers a deterrent, if oil is plentiful and cheap, and if Western leaders are sober and strong rather than loud and weak—he will not so gamble. It’s really that simple. Feed Putin a hand, and he will gobble a torso. 

    Will Ukraine Survive? 

    In theory, Ukraine should not last, given the numerical odds against it. Mysteriously it almost seems unprepared for a massive invasion. Its roads are apparently not blocked and mined. Putin has been massing troops since November, so why did not NATO flood the country with weapons in late 2021 to ensure endless supplies of anti-tank and anti-plane missiles? 

    Still, the Russians may, we hope, have a hard time of it in Ukraine—if for no other reason than the country is larger than Iraq in both size and population. It has lots of supply conduits across the borders with four NATO countries that can finally begin pouring in weaponry. An invader that cannot stop resupply from third-party neighbors can rarely subdue its target. 

    So if in a week Putin cannot shock and awe the elite or decapitate the government, he will have a hard time subduing the population. Time is not on his side. Sanctions are worthless in the short term but eventually they can bite. 

    His tripartite semi-circular attack on Ukraine is uncannily similar to Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland from East Prussia, Germany, and the dismembered Czechoslovakia. But even Hitler who was helped later by the invasion of the Soviet Union from the east, lost 50,000 dead and wounded from a poorly equipped Polish army. 

    Fossil Fuels 

    Gas and oil, and thus who tried to curtail both, explain a lot of the current mess. The nihilist Biden decision voluntarily to cancel new pipelines, federal leases, ANWAR, and leverage loss of bank financing for fracking, and to give up well over 2 million barrels of daily production will be seen not just as an economic disaster. It was a strategic catastrophe. 

    When Europe, or indeed the West, is dependent on Russian goodwill to drive and keep warm, it can never be free. Ending American energy independence is not just an AOC obsession. Russian hackers in January targeted our Colonial pipeline, shutting down in a day over 1 million barrels of transported oil. The more we discount the strategic consequences of having or lacking oil, the more our enemies fixate on it. 

    A couple of questions for Joe Biden: Before he took office, was the United States begging Russia to sell it more oil? After he took office, why was it? 

    Why did Biden blow-up energy dependence? Could not tomorrow Biden reverse course, greenlight the Keystone pipeline, reverse his mindless opposition to the EastMed pipeline that would help allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel to help other allies in southern Europe, and throw open new federal leasing to supply exports of liquid natural gas to Europe? 

    What is moral, and what amoral: alienating Bernie Sanders and the squad or keeping our allies and ourselves safe from foreign attack? What is so ethical about following the green advice of billionaires like global jet-setter John Kerry at the expense of the middling classes who cannot afford to drive their cars or warm their living rooms?

    A Deterrent Military? 

    Factor in the Afghanistan humiliation, the walk away from $80 billion in arms and equipment, a $1 billion Kabul embassy, a multimillion-dollar refit of Bagram Airbase, the woke politicization of the Pentagon, the McCarthyite hunt inside the ranks for white rage/supremacy, the inane rantings of retired admirals and generals, the revolving door of four-stars to defense contractor boards—and in just three years, the military lost a half-century of American public support. 

    All this and more have eroded the global fear of the U.S. military. We have all but destroyed American trust in our own armed forces (only 45 percent of the Americans poll great confidence in the military). The woke threat is in addition to spiraling pensions and social justice overhead that make the defense budget lean on actual defense readiness. Enemies did not erode our military’s once feared deterrence, our own top military and civilian leadership did. Time is short, enemies numerous. Can we find any brave soul who will restore the military? 

    American Goliath? 

    America may be woke. It may feel it has transcended dirty fossil fuels and can thrive on wind, solar, and batteries. It may assume it is morally superior, and like 19th-century pith-helmeted British foreign officers, can sermonize to the world, from pride flags and George Floyd murals in Kabul to no need for security in Benghazi. 

    But we also are mired in $30 trillion in debt. We print $2 trillion a year in mockery of inflation. Our major cities are crime-ridden and the streets medieval with the homeless and sidewalk sewers. Race relations are the worst in memory. 

    We have no southern border. Nearly 50 million residents were not born in our country—and this challenge at a time when we have given up on assimilation and integration. The woke virus has warped racial and ethnic relations and is destroying the idea of meritocracy. We are in the hold of a Jacobin madness, in a top-down elite race to perdition. To praise America’s past is a thought crime. The ignorant, who have no idea of the date when the Civil War began, nonetheless lecture to the nodding that 1619 not 1776 was America’s real foundational date.

    In short, the America of even 1990 no longer exists. To retain our deterrence abroad, we must tighten our belts at home, pump oil and gas, start to balance our budget, junk wokeism as a nihilist indulgence, and recalibrate our military. 

    NATO 

    NATO is now a mere construct. It was birthed and exists to do three things in Europe: keep America in, Germany down, and Russia out. Now Germany is up. America is out. And Russia is in. 

    The vast majority of the alliance’s members followed Germany’s anti-American prompt to renege on promises to spend a mere 2 percent of their budgets on military readiness. How strange that only thousands of deaths in Ukraine can soon persuade the arrogant German leadership that their own performance-art pacifism kills. 

    NATO’s richest and second largest member, Germany, polls a desire to become closer to Russia than to the United States. Does that mean they favor Putin’s invasion rather than NATO’s resistance? Sixty percent of Germans poll no desire to honor NATO’s Article Five clause of mutual assistance, and thus would not wish to aid a fellow member in extremis. 

    Germany, on its way to green Lalaland, ignored all warnings about conducting a $1-billion-dollar per-day natural gas purchase from Putin. Think of the following absurdities: Germans no longer like Americans all that much. But they do expect them to subsidize their defense and to protect them from Russians, with whom in turn they are cementing lucrative energy deals. The latter will eventually make them dependent on Putin for 50 percent of their energy needs. 

    So what is NATO? In truth, 25 or so of the 30 nation members are defenseless. They rely on the United States to protect them from enemies in their own backyard. Only the NATO nuclear monopolies of Britain and France offer a deterrent umbrella over both NATO and the EU—on the quiet assurance that a far bigger nuclear American umbrella covers all of them. 

    We should simply ask those who will meet their promised military commitments to stay, and the others to go quietly in peace and follow the Swiss model. Why are there any U.S. combat troops in Germany? Are they there to protect the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russian attack? To reward Germany for spending less than two percent on defense? 

    China 

    For five years Americans were obsessed not just with Putin, but the left-wing myth that Russians were under all our beds—the tattooed, gap-toothed cruddy villains of Hollywood movies, the supposed Satanic colluders of the Steele dossier, the nefarious bankers who stealthily communicated at night with the White House. So we voluntarily gave up the old Russian triangulation card when we once played dictatorial China off against dictatorial Russia. The Kissingerian principle dictated that neither of the two should ever become closer to one another than either is to us. We gave all that up and instead hung on every word for two years of Bob Mueller, James Comey, and the lunatics at CNN. 

    Meanwhile, China birthed, and hid the origins of, a virus that destroyed the U.S. economy and undermined our entire culture. Thousands of Chinese are here mostly to aid in expropriating U.S. technical expertise. Add in the Uighurs and the now vanquished Tibet, and China outdoes even Putin in its human rights atrocities. If Ukraine falls, Taiwan will be the third nation that the West “lost” during the Biden Administration. 

    Leftwing Mania 

    On cue, an embarrassed Left now offers some surreal takes on why Putin went into Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 and again into all of Ukraine in 2022—while mysteriously bookending the four invasion-free Trump years. We are told that hiatus was because Putin got all he wanted from Trump and rewarded him by not invading any of his neighbors. 

    Really? 

    Were Vladimir Putin and his advisors more or less delighted that their poodle Trump thankfully flooded the world with price-crashing oil? They were thankful Trump at least had killed Russian mercenaries in Syria? 

    Putin himself was content that the United States got out of his own advantageous missile deal? Was he thrilled that Trump sold once taboo U.S. offensive weapons to Ukraine? Did the Kremlin grow ecstatic when Trump upped the U.S. defense budget?  And was Russia especially thankful that Trump jawboned NATO into spending another $100 billion on defense? Did Putin clap when Trump killed Soleimani and Baghdadi, and bombed ISIS out of existence? 

    We are left being lectured to now by the ubiquitous retired Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, the political operative remonstrating America on its anemic response to saving his native Ukraine. All this from one of the key operatives of impeaching the one president who, unlike his progressive presidential predecessor, along with the Biden Burisma consortia, really did arm Ukraine and send it offensive weapons embargoed by the Left. 

    The useful Vindman may have been offered to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. But he never grasped that any country naïve enough to believe the Left’s empty promises about autonomy and freedom reified by mere liberal fiat will be sorely left all alone by its utopian patrons—once a nearby powerful thug invades. 

    Biden 

    Now we hear that midterm Biden has played the crisis wonderfully. The surreal progressive take on this crisis is that Winston Biden has corn-popped the “killer” Putin, metaphorically taken “the bully” behind the proverbial gym and given him a whomping, slammed his head on the global lunch counter, and in Biden’s deterrent fashion, called him a chump, one of the dregs, a junkie, fat, and a lying dog-faced pony soldier—and capped it all off with “You ain’t white!” 

    Joe threatened the toughest sanctions in history that on Wednesday would deter an invasion and by Saturday were never meant to at all. But Biden promises someday a “conversation” to decide whether at some time he still will issue the toughest sanctions in history. Until then, he invites Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy safe passage out of Kyiv—the quickest way to destroy the dogged Ukrainian resistance. 

    Left unsaid are the years of rapacious Biden family profiteering in Ukraine, a decade of leftist passive-aggressive love and hate of Russia, from obsequious reset to greedy Uranium One to pathetic “tell Vladimir . . .” to unhinged vetoing of sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 

    What a crowded road to Kyiv.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 23:40

  • "Looting Results In Shooting On The Spot," Two Ukrainian Mayors Warn
    “Looting Results In Shooting On The Spot,” Two Ukrainian Mayors Warn

    Depleting food stocks added to the trauma of Ukrainians stranded in the war-torn country as Russia’s invasion stretches to a fourth day. People are looting supermarkets as their food and water supplies run out, and ATMs have no cash. In the attempt to deter mass lootings, mayors in two Ukrainian towns advised local law enforcement officers to shoot looters “on the spot,” according to RT News.

    “I am warning everyone: the police, the National Guard, the territorial defense units – they all received orders not to detain, they can just shoot on the spot. There will be no looting in the city,“ Zhytomyr’s Mayor Sergey Sukhomlyn told citizens of the city in a short Facebook video on Sunday. 

    Looting incidents have spiked across Ukraine since Russia began its invasion on Feb. 24. People are growing hungry as their food supplies run out and have no other option than raid supermarkets. The head of the Okhtyrka territorial community Pavel Kuzmenko issued a similar warning. 

    “Looting results in shooting on the spot,” Kuzmenko said in a Facebook video. He also warned that store owners who price gouge would also be considered looters. 

    Numerous videos surfaced on Twitter in the last 24 hours of what appears to be mass lootings at supermarkets. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    There have yet to be reports of any looters shot though one video surfaced on TikTok then reposted on Twitter shows a man duct-taped to a light pole for the world to see. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Something perhaps worth noting for some is the fact that as the nation crumbles amid the invasion, the looting only appears to be at supermarkets – with people truly in desperate need of bread and milk – and oddly not big-screen televisions, Louis Vuitton purses, and PlayStations…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 23:20

  • 'Russian Propaganda' Is The Latest Excuse To Expand Censorship
    ‘Russian Propaganda’ Is The Latest Excuse To Expand Censorship

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    “I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday.

    Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they’ll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on the platform. Google and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta both banned Russian state media from running ads and monetizing on their platforms in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twitter announced a pause on ads in both Russia and Ukraine.

    “Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday,” Warner tweeted on Saturday. “These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.”

    For years US lawmakers have been using threats of profit-destroying consequences to pressure Silicon Valley companies into limiting online speech in a way that aligns with the interests of Washington, effectively creating a system of government censorship by proxy. It would appear that we’re seeing a new expansion of this phenomenon today.

    And the imperial media are pushing for more. Articles and news segments warning of the sinister threat posed by Russian propaganda to misinform and divide western populations using the internet are being churned out at a rate that’s only likely to increase as this latest narrative management campaign gets into full gear. The Associated Press has a new article out for example titled “War via TikTok: Russia’s new tool for propaganda machine”.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Armies of trolls and bots stir up anti-Ukrainian sentiment. State-controlled media outlets look to divide Western audiences. Clever TikTok videos serve up Russian nationalism with a side of humor,” AP warns.

    “Analysts at several different research organizations contacted by The Associated Press said they are seeing a sharp increase in online activity by groups affiliated with the Russian state,” AP writes. “That’s in keeping with Russia’s strategy of using social media and state-run outlets to galvanize domestic support while seeking to destabilize the Western alliance.”

    The “different research organizations” AP ends up citing include “Cyabra, an Israeli tech company that works to detect disinformation,” as well as the state-funded NATO narrative management firm The Atlantic Council.

    As tends to happen whenever a consensus begins to form that a certain category of speech must be purged from the internet, imperial spinmeisters are already working to expand the definition of “Russian propaganda” which must be purged from the internet to include independent anti-imperialist commentators like myself.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Imperial narrative manager Robert Potter has a thread on Twitter currently calling for me and other anti-imperialist content creators to be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” on Twitter and ideally de-platformed across all western social media, in my case solely because RT is one of the many outlets who occasionally choose to republish some of my blog posts for free.

    I am not as Potter claims “an OP Ed columnist for Russia Today.” I don’t work for RT, I don’t write for RT, I don’t submit articles to RT, and I’ve never been paid by RT or the Russian government. RT is just one of the outlets who sometimes avail themselves of my longstanding invitation for anyone who wants to to republish my work free of charge. That RT editors would find my daily rants against western imperialism agreeable is not scandalous or conspiratorial but normal and self-evident.

    Yet for agents of imperial narrative control like Potter (who ironically works directly for the US State Department but thinks my posts should be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” by Twitter), even this is enough to justify complete silencing. I will not be in the slightest bit surprised to see a great deal more of these efforts as the new cold war continues to escalate.

    The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an empire-loyal NGO ostensibly focused primarily on fighting racism and prejudice, has published a report accusing Facebook of failing to label Russian propaganda as such 91 percent of the times it occurs. The CCDH decried Mark Zuckerberg’s “failure to stop Facebook being weaponized by the Russian state”.

    This sudden narrative management thrust has also seen RT taken off the air in nations like Australia, Germany and Poland, with pressures mounting in France and the UK to follow suit.

    This despite the fact that all western powers would have to do to eliminate RT completely is simply start allowing leftist and anti-imperialist voices to be heard on mainstream media platforms. It would immediately suck up RT’s entire foreign audience as people who’d previously needed to look outside the mainstream for sane perspectives gravitate toward media made with much better funding and a higher level of talent.

    But of course we all know that’s never going to happen. The imperial media aren’t going to subvert RT by platforming voices who dispute the empire’s narratives no matter how badly they hate it, because the exact reason they hate RT is because it disputes the empire’s narratives. They’re not worried about Russian propaganda operations, they’re worried about someone else running interference on their own propaganda operations.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    RT’s audience makes up about 0.04% of TV viewing in the UK. This isn’t about RT, it’s about the the agenda to continually expand and normalize the censorship of unauthorized speech. That’s what it was about when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Covid misinformation before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight domestic US extremism before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to defend election security before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Russian propaganda the first time before that one cycled back around again.

    Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Humans are storytelling creatures, so whoever can control the stories the humans are telling themselves about what’s going on in the world has a great deal of control over the humans. Our mental chatter tends to dominate such a large percentage of our existence that if it can be controlled the controller can exert a tremendous amount of influence over the way we think, act, and vote.

    The powerful understand this, while the general public mostly does not. That’s all we’ve been seeing in these attempts to regulate ideas and information as human communication becomes more and more rapid and networked. An entire oligarchic empire is built on the ability to prevent us from realizing at mass scale that that empire does not serve us and inflicts great evil upon our world. The question of whether our species can awaken to its highest potential or not boils down to whether our dominators will succeed in locking down our minds, or if we will find some way to break free.

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 23:00

  • Elon Musk Lends Gene Wilder's Nephew $6.7 Million To Help Him Buy, Preserve, Late Actor's Home
    Elon Musk Lends Gene Wilder’s Nephew $6.7 Million To Help Him Buy, Preserve, Late Actor’s Home

    The world of Elon Musk knows no limit to bizarre stories. Pivoting from a report last week that Musk was being probed, along with his brother Kimbal, by the SEC for potential trading violations related to dumping stock in November 2021, this morning’s story about Musk concerns late actor Gene Wilder’s former home.

    Musk had owned the house for some time and, upon announcing a couple years ago that he was going to sell all of his possessions, concern started to mount about the property and whether or not it should be preserved to honor the legendary actor.

    Well for those of you ‘waiting to exhale’ about this important controversy, you can now breathe a sigh of relief: Jordan Walker-Pearlman, Wilder’s nephew, is reportedly buying the house from Musk and will prevent it from being torn down or otherwise replaced. 

    Apparently, Musk let the house go at discount prices, according to a report from Fox News. The report said that “Musk was willing to sell it to him for a significantly reduced price in order to ensure that house wasn’t demolished or majorly altered.”

    Walker-Pearlman had heard the house was for sale after Musk’s announcement that he was selling all of his physical possessions. Musk had said at the time that he would only sell the house to someone that wouldn’t tear it down or alter its “soul”. 

    Walker-Pearlman couldn’t pay the $9.5 million listing price but was able to contact Musk’s team and convince them that he wouldn’t demolish the home. Walker-Pearlman told Musk that Gene Wilder had raised him, and that he had memories of “cooking on the indoor grill, enjoying bran muffins every morning in the kitchen and teaching him to swim in the backyard pool.”

    Musk then agreed to offload the property to Walker-Pearlman for just $7 million – with Musk loaning Walker-Pearlman $6.7 million to help him consummate the deal.

    Fox News wrote that the contract “included an agreement known as a long-form deed of trust and assignment of rents, through which Musk loaned Walker-Pearlman $6.7 million.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 22:40

  • Taibbi: Putin The Apostate
    Taibbi: Putin The Apostate

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News Substack,

    We thought he would be our bastard. Then, he became his own bastard…

    The president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, made an extraordinary statement over the weekend. “Just days ago much of the world was focused on the unwanted prospect of regime change in Ukraine,” he tweeted. “Now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.” Senior Brookings Institute fellow Benjamin Wittes was even more explicit:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    For anyone expecting me to be outraged about this — I am, after all, almost daily denounced as a Putin-lover and apologist, so surely I must want the Great Leader to stay in power forever — I have to disappoint. If Vladimir Putin were captured tomorrow and fired into space, I wouldn’t bat an eye.

    I would like to point out that we already tried regime change in Russia. I remember, because I was there. And, thanks to a lot of lurid history that’s being scrubbed now with furious intensity, it ended with Vladimir Putin in power. Not as an accident, or as the face of a populist revolt against Western influence — that came later — but precisely because we made a long series of intentional decisions to help put him there.

    Once, Putin’s KGB past, far from being seen as a negative, was viewed with relief by the American diplomatic community, which had been exhausted by the organizational incompetence of our vodka-soaked first partner, Boris Yeltsin. Putin by contrast was “a man we can do business with,” a “liberal, humane, and decent European” of “alert, controlled poise” and “well-briefed acuity,” who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO. “I don’t see why not,” Putin said. “I would not rule out such a possibility.”

    The New York Times Magazine, noting that the KGB of the seventies that Putin joined was no longer really a murder factory but just another “thinking corporation,” even compared him once to Russia’s first true Western-looking leader:

    In him, Russia has found a humane version of Peter the Great, a ruler who will open the country to the influence of a world at once gentler and more dynamic than Russia has ever been.

    I’ve been bitter in commentary about Putin in recent years because I never forgot the way the West smoothed his rise, and pretends now that it didn’t. It’s infuriating also that many of us who were critical of him from the start are denounced now as Putin apologists, I think in part because we have inconvenient memories about who said what at the start of his story. The effort to wipe that history clean is reaching a fever pitch this week. Before they finish the job, it seemed worth getting it all down.

    In late 1996, Vladimir Putin was at a career crossroads. His boss, Anatoly Sobchak, the first democratically elected Mayor of St. Petersburg, had just lost an election and with Putin’s help, was gearing up to flee the country to avoid corruption charges.

    Should Putin, too, flee abroad, perhaps to Germany, where he’d enjoyed a posting in his KGB days? He had his own reputation issues, having been inveigled in scandal in his time as Sobchak’s adviser and Deputy Mayor. In 1992, while head of a Petersburg Committee to attract foreign investment, he’d been given over $120 million in export quotas for timber, oil, and rare earth metals by the federal government, to trade for desperately needed food. The deal was approved by Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and then-trade Minister (and future Alfa Bank heavy) Pyotr Aven. The raw materials were not bartered but pawned off to “various commercial structures,” as the newspaper Smena put it, and the city got back just two tankers of cooking oil.

    The Federal Accounting Chamber ended up writing a letter recommending that Mr. Putin not be considered for promotions. But the little man from the northern capital was destined for a higher calling…

    *  *  *

    To read the rest of this post, click here and subscribe (and get 7 days free, plus access to all the archives)

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 22:20

  • Toyota To Halt All Japan Plants As Supplier Hit With Cyberattack
    Toyota To Halt All Japan Plants As Supplier Hit With Cyberattack

    Nikkei reports on Monday that Toyota Motor Corp. will suspend operations at all of its Japanese factories on Tuesday after one of its top suppliers was hit by a “suspected cyberattack.” 

    Kojima Industries, which manufactures plastic parts for Toyota, has been hit by a cyberattack, an official close to Kojima Industries told Nikkei. 

    “It is true that we have been hit by some kind of cyberattack. We are still confirming the damage and we are hurrying to respond, with the top priority of resuming Toyota’s production system as soon as possible,” the unnamed official said.

    The decision to suspend output at 28 lines at 14 plants could affect around 10,000 vehicles or about 5% of Toyota’s monthly production in Japan per day. Toyota subsidiaries Hino Motors and Daihatsu Motor will also halt some output on Tuesday. Here’s a map of automaker plants in the country. 

    As for when the cyberattack is resolved, it could be as soon as Wednesday. 

    “Automakers are still determining whether they will be able to return to normal operations after Wednesday,” Nikkei said. 

    The incident will derail Toyota’s efforts to return to full production following halts in January and February due to ongoing semiconductor shortages, labor woes, and other COVID-related disruptions. 

    Perhaps, the Bank of Japan has found another excuse to keep interest rates pinned near zero. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 22:00

  • Could Russia And China Collectively Challenge The Dollar's Reserve Status?
    Could Russia And China Collectively Challenge The Dollar’s Reserve Status?

    Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

    The war being waged by Russia in Ukraine shows no signs of coming to any type of peaceful end.

    Meanwhile, it appears to me that a separate war on the U.S. dollar could be “officially” waged at any moment, by Russia and China collectively, as the situation in Ukraine grows more dire, as Russia’s options wane and its ties with China grow closer.

    While the hope is still to avoid a World War III type scenario, escalating sanctions from the West are forcing an increasingly unhinged Vladimir Putin to consider his options for pushback.

    For example, on Sunday, Putin put nuclear deterrence forces on high alert as a response to increasing pressure from NATO, in a move that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said “escalates the conflict unacceptably.”

    Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS

    In the same breath that Putin made this announcement, he continued to push back on economic sanctions being levied against Russia:

    “As you can see, not only do Western countries take unfriendly measures against our country in the economic dimension – I mean the illegal sanctions that everyone knows about very well.”

    This may be because the bigger story over the weekend was the beginning of removing Russia from the SWIFT intra-bank messaging system, along with sanctions targeting Russia’s Central Bank.

    SWIFT helps provide services related to the execution of financial transactions and payments between banks worldwide. Central Bank sanctions from the EU and the Fed instantly make Russia – and its currency, the ruble – pariahs elsewhere in the world.

    Russia’s Central Bank reserves are generally controlled by foreign central banks. If those foreign banks decide to freeze access to such reserves, Russia only has its tangible assets (such as oil, and gold reserves) to fall back on.

    The ruble is expected to collapse as a result of these sanctions.

    Said one analyst on Twitter over the weekend, the Kremlin “has no good off-ramps at this point”.

    The obvious consequences of these sanctions is a run on Russia’s banks and a crippling of the Russian economy.

    The Bank of Russia (Russia’s Central Bank) will now try to prevent a crisis of confidence among the citizens of the country to slow the economic bleeding.

    The BBC reported that Russia’s Central Bank has claimed it “has the necessary resources and tools to maintain financial stability and ensure the operational continuity of the financial sector.”

    Regardless of whether this is true (the global FX markets will be the judge), it brings up a topic that only “conspiracy theorists” have talked about for decades: the resolve of fiat currencies, and the importance of having tangible bank reserves.

    During decades of peace, it’s easy to simply ignore critical questions raised about the backing of fiat currencies while the next trillion dollars casually rolls off the Fed printer and is inequitably distributed through programs like the Paycheck Protection Program. Not unlike equity markets when they’re in a mania, few critical questions are asked while loopholes like money printing are exploited until something eventually gives out.

    Now, something is giving out. All those quotes about the “world order” changing as a result of Putin’s recent action? They’re worth paying attention to. They’re the definition of something “giving out”.

    Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off to become a subscriber in 2022:

    Get 22% off forever

    When push comes to shove and things get down to brass tacks, people want to know what backs their currency, and it’s not just Russia in this case. While they’re going to be the obvious example, I think economic tensions between Russia and the West are going to stoke a far larger global discussion about the fiat system in general.

    After all, heading into this massive conflict, we were already at the precipice of “The Great Reset”, right?

    Now, China and Russia may speed that “reset” along much quicker – and in much more volatile fashion – than Klaus Schwab would approve of.

    Sorry, Klaus.

    Photo: TIME

    The fact is that if Putin has his mind made up to “go the distance” in Ukraine, come hell or high water, he’s going to have to somehow address the crippling of his country’s currency and economy. Left with few “off-ramps”, my guess is that Putin will push back on economic sanctions by allying himself further with China, and even discussing with China the prospects of a monetary system outside of the current global monetary system.

    While the idea will likely be written off by economic experts, it’s important to remember that, even if such an idea doesn’t succeed, it could still create chaos for global economic markets and life in the West. We’re already in the midst of a supply chain crisis here in the U.S. – now, add to that the facts that:

    1. Russia has tangible reserves in the form of oil and gold. Russia is the top supplier of imported gasoline to the United States. “In 2021, Russia accounted for 21% of all U.S. gasoline imports,” Forbes writes.

    2. China is a major supplier of…basically everything…we use in the West on a daily basis. China was the United States’ largest supplier of goods imports in 2020, according to the USTR. China is currently our largest goods trading partner with $559.2 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2020, the same report notes.

    Trade deficits hit further records in 2021, the WSJ reported earlier this month.

    In other words, we get tons of stuff – for lack of a better word – from both countries.

    This prediction shouldn’t surprise anyone that has been paying attention.

    Just one year ago, the idea of Russia and China working together to de-dollarize themselves made headlines. The Washington Post reported on the steps the two countries were collectively taking in April 2021:

    China and Russia have vowed to jointly “de-dollarize,” creating alternatives to the current system with a three-step plan that began a few years ago. First, both countries began to cut back the proportion of their bilateral trade invoiced in dollars, privileging settlement in their own currencies.

    Second, they have sought to boost the renminbi’s role as an international currency for payments and reserves. To encourage wider adoption of its currency, China has given more than 30 countries renminbi access through bilateral swap agreements. China and Russia each scaled back their U.S. Treasury holdings, with Russia channeling cash into renminbi holdings. And China has ramped up the digital currency drive it began in 2014, with the goal of making it easier to hold renminbi.

    The third and last leg of these efforts, still underway, aims to create alternative payments and messaging systems allowing countries to use home and partner currencies instead of dollars or euros to settle trade and investment deals.

    Far be it for me to agree with the Washington Post, but they were spot on in early 2021 when they concluded that:

    “If China and Russia devise successful alternatives to the dollar-centered financial system, and if these alternatives gain significant international traction, we would be witnessing a cataclysmic moment in great power rivalry.”

    Meanwhile, we have been standing idly by, watching Russia dump U.S. treasuries while increasing its FX reserves over the last 5 years.

    Russia's dollar reserves likely shifted to swaps after it dumped Treasuries

    Russia has also been increasing its holdings of gold over the same period:

    De-dollarization and a financial alliance between Russia and China was being reported in 2020, as well.

    Nikkei wrote at the time:

    Dedollarization has been a priority for Russia and China since 2014, when they began expanding economic cooperation following Moscow’s estrangement from the West over its annexation of Crimea. Replacing the dollar in trade settlements became a necessity to sidestep U.S. sanctions against Russia.

    The idea of a Russia-China alliance to try and collapse the U.S. economic system isn’t new, either. Russia tried to push China create chaos for the U.S. in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

    “Russia may have tried to conspire with China in a bid to collapse the U.S. financial system. They were hoping to sell Fannie and Freddie bonds during a time when the U.S. economy was on the ropes,” Insider wrote in 2010, citing Hank Paulson’s memoir about the crisis.

    Paulson wrote in his memoir:

    “The report was deeply troubling — heavy selling could create a sudden loss of confidence in the GSEs and shake the capital markets. I waited till I was back home and in a secure environment to inform the president.”

    Stories like this flew under the radar, anyone who brought up the idea that this could be part of some larger plan was largely ignored, and the story didn’t make waves – at least, not in the way I think it’s going to now.

    Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off to become a subscriber in 2022:

    Get 22% off forever

    In a podcast I did with Danielle DiMartino Booth, formerly of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, in 2020, she claimed that a “hot war” could be the only thing that could dethrone the dollar as the world reserve currency.

    Now, we are in that situation.

    Pieces that I have written in the past, including my prediction that China is going to back its new digital currency with gold – all of a sudden look like discussions that need to take place, post-haste. I wrote last year:

    China thinks in terms of generations and centuries. They are officially playing the long game. And don’t let the lack of a hot war fool you, the gears and wheels of trying to advance their country’s interests are there, grinding away slowly behind the scenes, for those who care to peek behind the curtain.

    Backing their currency with gold could be seen by Xi as the ultimate “Trump card” of sorts, especially as the U.S. has watched its currency fall into a precarious position over the last 18 months due to unprecedented quantitative easing. It’s the type of revelation that, if done correctly by China, can immediately hoist China’s economic status to the top of the global ladder and can immediately challenge other countries to follow suit.

    Except those “other countries” won’t be nearly as prepared to “flip the switch” to a gold-backed currency, because we will not have even considered the idea.

    Now, it could be time for China and Russia to collectively “flip the switch”.

    The writing has been on the wall for a while: Russia and China “de-dollarizing”, both countries stacking their gold reserves and China quickly looking to implement a digital currency.

    Over the last five years, only overtly paranoid people like me looked at these actions and concluded they were the lead up to something much bigger.

    Now that Russia has put itself at war with the West, the potential reasons, all of a sudden, become much clearer.

    I have long argued that our arrogant treatment of the US dollar and our reliance on being able to print it whenever we want was a fool‘s errand. Austrian economists and conservatives who made these points were written off as conspiracy theorists for making suggestions that our country should shore up its balance sheet and back its currency with something tangible.

    Now, in the midst of one of the most consequential wars in decades, our people may be starting to see exactly why having your monetary policy house in order is a good idea. Because the shit, eventually, always hits the fan.

    And if the dollar is challenged – even if it holds its place as the world reserve currency – they’re still going to be a lot of uncomfortable questions we’re going to have to ask ourselves about monetary policy afterwards. So far, Tucker Carlson has been the only mainstream news anchor with either the foresight, courage or both to broach the subject, as he did a couple days ago.

    Despite his comments, it still doesn’t seem that most people understand that war could be waged not just on Ukraine, but on the dollar.

    To me, it only seems like the logical next step. I hope I’m wrong, but it looks as though the unprecedented times we are living through may still get far more unprecedented.

    Zero Hedge readers can use the coupon link to get 20% off a subscription for as long as you want to remain a subscriber: Get 20% off

    (A recent Atlantic article does a great job describing, in depth, how the above mentioned SWIFT & Central Bank-related economic sanctions work in practice, for those looking for a deeper understanding.)

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 21:40

  • Roman Abramovich Joins Ukrainian Delegation To Help Negotiate For Peace
    Roman Abramovich Joins Ukrainian Delegation To Help Negotiate For Peace

    Update (2100ET): According to The Times, Abramovich’s move to pass control of Chelsea to the club’s charitable foundation has been put on hold,with the trustees taking legal advice on whether it is even possible.

    The Times understands that at least one trustee fears that they may have to resign amid concerns around a potential conflict of interest.

    The six-strong board of trustees, which includes British Olympic Association chairman Sir Hugh Robertson and anti-discrimination campaigner Piara Powar, held talks with legal advisers on Sunday and will wait for their guidance.

    On Monday the Charity Commission confirmed that it has contacted the Chelsea Foundation with a request for more information, while the trustees have yet to agree to an arrangement that would pass the stewardship of the club to them.

    Read more here…

    *  *  *

    As we detailed earlier, while other oligarchs –  a loosely defined term to denote an individual who made their fortune during the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse – have publicly tried to distance themselves from the Russian advance in Ukraine, Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich has placed his ownership of the club in a private trust while he moves to engage in the peace talks being held between Moscow and Kyiv.

    Abramovich said he had been asked by the government in Ukraine to join the team of negotiators in Belarus, where a handful of Ukrainians are currently engaged in talks with their Russian counterparts. His role was eventually confirmed by another broker in the talks. A representative for the billionaire added that Abramovich had become involved following a request from the Jewish community in Kyiv.

    “I can confirm Roman Abramovich was contacted by the Ukrainian side for support in achieving a peaceful resolution, and that he has been trying to help ever since,” a spokeswoman for Abramovich said.

    “Considering what is at stake, we would ask for understanding as to why we have not commented on either the situation as such or his involvement.”

    The Russian-Israeli billionaire is believed to have flown to Eastern Europe in the weeks leading up to the invasion. Word of Abramovich’s involvement in talks was first reported by Jewish News, which said Kyiv had reached out through Jewish contacts to seek his help.

    Abramovich, who is Jewish and has Israeli citizenship, was one of the most powerful businessmen who earned fabulous fortunes after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. Forbes has estimated his net worth at $13.3 billion. He purportedly earned a fortune during the post-Soviet collapse during the looting and general insanity.

    A commodity trader who thrived in the post-Soviet disorder of the 1990s under then-President Boris Yeltsin, Abramovich acquired stakes in the Sibneft oil company, Rusal aluminium producer and Aeroflot airline were also among the businesses he acquired.

    He has repeatedly denied having ties to Putin or the Kremlin, although such claims have persisted in the press.

    Although under Putin he did, albeit briefly, serve as the governor of the remote Arctic region of Chukotka in Russia’s Far East.

    As for his decision to turn over control of Chelsea to its charitable trust, the board’s trustees must still hold a vote to OK the measures, although its likely to pass. Abramovich also released a terse, 24-word statement on Sunday denouncing the invasion, becoming one  of a handful of oligarchs to party with them must have likely been fighter.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 21:20

  • Poison Control Centers Warn About Toxic Chemical In At-Home COVID-19 Test Kits
    Poison Control Centers Warn About Toxic Chemical In At-Home COVID-19 Test Kits

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Some at-home rapid COVID-19 tests contain a toxic chemical that may be harmful to both children and adults, according to health officials.

    A Flowflex COVID-19 Lateral Flow (LFT) self-test kit, containing a SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Test, arranged for a photograph, in London on Feb. 20, 2022. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center reported an uptick in accidental exposures to a possibly toxic substance in at-home COVID-19 test kits, according to a blog post. Meanwhile, the National Poison Control Center issued a warning about the chemical.

    “It is important to know that the extraction vial in many rapid antigen kits includes the chemical sodium azide as a preservative agent,” the center said. “The BinaxNow, BD Veritor, Flowflex, and Celltrion DiaTrust COVID-19 rapid antigen kits all contain this chemical.”

    Sodium azide is a colorless, odorless powder that testers dip cotton swabs into. The chemical is found in herbicides, pest control agents, and airbags for cars.

    “Small doses of sodium azide can lower blood pressure, and larger doses may cause more serious health effects,” an advisory from Health Canada also said. “ProClin is also found in many kits. It contains chemicals that can cause skin and eye irritation, as well as allergic reactions.”

    Some hospitals around the United States say they have received a surge in phone calls about exposures to the chemical.

    “We started getting our first exposures to these test kits around early November,” said Sheila Goertemoeller, pharmacist and clinical toxicologist for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “It was, really, all ages.”

    “Mostly, I’ve been very worried about our young children.”

    Accidental exposure is occurring among both children and adults, said Dr. Kelly Johnson-Arbor, with the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, told WNEP over the weekend.

    “People might mistake them for eye drops. Children might drop it onto their skin. Adults will sometimes mistakenly put them into their eyes,” she said.

    “You don’t want to leave it on the skin because it could potentially cause an allergic reaction or a skin rash.

    “If someone drinks the solution, it’s really important to contact poison control right away. The solutions have different ingredients. Some have non-toxic ingredients and others have more dangerous ingredients.”

    Officials told WNEP that there’s no need to throw away the test kits, but people should be mindful when using them.

    “Use them properly, dispose of them properly, and it won’t cause an issue,” Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, with St. Luke’s University Health Network, told the outlet.

    If you suspect you or someone you know has ingested the chemical, officials recommend not to make the person vomit. For eye exposures, rinse the eyes for 15 to 20 minutes with warm water. For skin exposures, rinse the skin well with tap water. Immediately check the Poison Control Center’s online tool for guidance or call poison control at 1-800-222-1222, the website says.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 21:00

  • China To "Immediately" Replenish Pork Supplies As World Short Commodities
    China To “Immediately” Replenish Pork Supplies As World Short Commodities

    China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), announced Monday to “immediately” increase pork stockpiles around the country after prices fell last week, according to Bloomberg. 

    NDRC said the country’s staple meat stockpiles are being replenished as an index monitoring pork prices slipped below a critical threshold. The national average of pork prices against grain prices index registered 4.98 to 1 between Feb. 21 and 25, falling below the 5 to 1 ratio. The ratio signals the need for China to increase pork supplies. 

    Hog prices are back to levels not seen since before the African swine fever ravaged pig herds across the country, right before the virus pandemic. 

    NDRC will increase pork purchases to provide the hog market with stability. As much as 40,000 tons of frozen pork will be added to state reserves. 

    “The goal of stockpiling is to stop the market prices from excessive fall, to improve supply-demand balance, and boost prices (of pork) and the confidence of farmers,” Wang Zuli, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told Reuters. 

    The economic planner will work with authorities to immediately stockpile for state and local reserves. Stockpiling has already begun in the provincial level, including Beijing, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Chongqing. 

    As early as September 2020, we noted China began panic hoarding commodities. Bloomberg, at the time, called them “mammoth” purchases of crude, strategic materials, and farm goods, and Michael Every of Rabobank said, “This is being done to ensure China can ride out any repeat of this year’s supply disruptions, or deterioration in trade relations with the US, for example.”

    More than a year and a half later, China has a greater internal circulation of commodities than the rest of the world. 

    JPM’s Marko Kolanovic noted last week, “The world is short Commodities. China is not.” The Croatian quant said, “China currently holds an estimated 84% of global copper, 70% of corn, 51% of wheat, 40% of soybeans, 26% of crude oil and 22% of aluminum inventories.” 

    These massive stockpiles “serve as a hedge to inflation, geopolitical risks, and COVID reopening in what we see as a continued cycle of economic expansion. Although commodity inventories have contracted sharply, China’s share is abundant,” Kolanovic said. He added that only 48 days of consumption remain in global commodity inventories worldwide above ground.

    China’s latest move to panic hoard hogs may suggest record high global food inflation is dead ahead as the Russian invasion pushes up soft commodity prices on fears of supply disruptions. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 20:40

  • Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Scrambles Biden’s Green Agenda
    Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Scrambles Biden’s Green Agenda

    Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Politics (emphasis ours),

    In the middle of President Biden’s Thursday speech laying out sanctions and denouncing Russia for its “brutal” and unprovoked invasion into Ukraine, one line stood out. About halfway through, Biden sternly warned American oil and gas companies not to “exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.”

    The harsh words roiled many Republicans who were strongly backing Biden’s sanctions against Russia while pressing him to put a halt to Moscow’s oil exports, which funded 36% of the country’s national budget last year.

    (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)

    Larry Kudlow, who served as Trump’s top economic adviser and is now a Fox Business host, praised Biden’s sanctions announcement but said the president’s lecture to U.S. oil companies made “the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

    “Joe Biden just can’t help himself,” Kudlow added, casting the comments as an effort to pander to environmentalists in the middle of a global crisis.

    The U.S. bought 7% of its crude oil from Russia in 2021, and that’s the salient problem here, Biden’s critics say. They insist that Biden should do everything in his power to ramp up energy production at home – from re-opening the Keystone pipeline to increasing drilling permits on federal land – in an effort to rapidly expand U.S. oil and natural gas supplies. The goal, they say, should be to eliminate Americans’ need for Russian oil and natural gas, while simultaneously helping Europe shift to a U.S. supply.

    To free-market enthusiasts, the idea is simple and obvious.

    “If you carve out energy, that’s Putin’s lifeblood,” Rep. Mike McCaul, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

    Ukrainian leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, echoed the sentiments late last week.

    “We need real sanctions, not just some problems for Putin’s friends,” Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko said in a video posted to Twitter Thursday. “We need an embargo on Russian gas and oil because every barrel of Russian oil and every cubic meter of Russian gas is now full of the blood of Ukrainians.”

    In the near-term, the issue is more complicated. Immediately cutting off Russian oil supplies to Europe could do more harm to the West than to Moscow by pushing global oil prices higher than they already are, putting more money in the the coffers of Russian energy oligarchs loyal to Putin.

    The EU relies on Russia for a whopping 35% of its natural gas. Prices have been climbing amid the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, putting additional strain on a fuel-price crisis that began last year. On Thursday, the day of the invasion, national gas prices spiked 51% in Europe, and crude oil hit a seven-year high of $105 a barrel.

    Cutting off the Russian oil supply also won’t have the immediate impact many expect. Even though Europe is responsible for buying more than 70% of Russia’s natural gas sales and an EU embargo would hit Russia hard eventually, it’s unlikely to deter Putin’s designs on Ukraine. Moscow can absorb such a blow on the front end. In the last few years, Russia has built up all-time high foreign exchange reserves of $630 billion.

    For these reasons, the Biden administration and the European Union carefully crafted an energy exemption to last week’s sanctions against Russia to allow for the U.S. and Europe to continue purchasing Russian oil and gas and to avoid any “disruption” to their current flow.

    “We’ve carved out energy payments on a time-bound basis to allow for an orderly transition,” away from sanctioned Russian entities, Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh told reporters late Thursday.

    Richard Nephew, a sanctions expert with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said a global embargo against Russia “isn’t a clean win for anyone.”

    “The bigger issue is a gross market one,” he tells RealClearPolitics in an email. “The Russians put out a lot of oil. They’re in the top three oil production/exporting list every year. Even if we maxed out our production, we’re not in a position to substitute for Russia in a global market.”

    Over time, however, Nephew said the U.S. and Europe could certainly start drawing down their use of Russian energy “allowing for other producers to step up or finding alternative means of providing energy.”

    That’s one of the painful lessons Europe and the Baltics need to take from this Russian invasion, according to Stephen Yates, a senior fellow at the America First Institute who served as a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.

    “It’s very, very clear that the lecture that was delivered very bluntly to Europe by President Trump did not sink in … the fact that Europe has not invested enough in its own self-defense and did not wean itself sufficiently from dependence on Russia left it with limited options,” he told RCP in an interview last week.

    Nothing crystalizes geopolitical threats like the invasion of a neighboring country, and Europe was forced to wake up to a new reality. After pursuing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project for years, Germany abruptly froze certification of the project last week. EU officials on March 2 plan to announce a new strategy to reduce dependence on Russian energy as quickly as possible, with a target to reduce fossil fuel use by 40% by 2030.

    The U.S. also must change course to stop importing Russian energy as well. Doing so will take time and commitment, according to Michael O’Hanlon, the director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution.

    “We need a plan to go after existing oil and gas exports, upon which Russia depends for 60% of its total export earnings,” he wrote in an USA Today op-ed. “Our goal, stated or unstated, should be to drive the Russian economy into recession for the rest of Putin’s presidency if need be – unless he promptly agrees to be peaceful and take his forces home.”

    Achieving the energy decoupling won’t come overnight, O’Hanlon notes, but he’s clear about the steps.

    • Increase oil and gas production in North America and elsewhere.
    • Build more liquid natural gas terminals in western Europe.
    • Empower relevant gas authorities in Europe to pay higher prices for non-Russian gas.
    • And, where possible, accelerate transitions to greener energy sources.

    It’s no easy pivot for Biden, who shut down the Keystone Pipeline on his first day as president and committed to ending U.S. dependence on fossil fuels early in his campaign, at a presidential debate in none other than the fuel-reliant motor city of Detroit. Biden also would inevitably have to withstand an outcry from his liberal base to abandon their green agenda.

    Yates predicts that the president likely won’t make any dramatic changes to his climate policies unless he loses big in the November midterms, signaling the need for a drastic shift in priorities. “When it comes to energy independence, I fear we are stuck in that slower lane,” he said.

    Destabilizing world events, however, have a way of furiously shifting domestic priorities. Although White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that sanctioning Russia’s energy sector could “actually benefit President Putin and pad his pockets given high oil and gas prices,” she was quick to note, “it’s not off the table.”

    Later in the week, Psaki tried to put a green spin on the possibility of weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, even if the initial attempt inevitably would require more U.S. commitments to increase domestic oil and gas production to meet the shifting European demand.

    She said the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes the case for reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil “even stronger,” arguing that Biden supports “diversifying the range and means of energy production everywhere around the world.”

    Just how quickly and sharply Biden is willing to shift gears on U.S. fossil fuel production will play a crucial role in whether the West shows Russia and the world that it has learned its lesson, whether it continues to play into Putin’s hands or hits him where it really hurts – the energy sector.

    Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 20:20

  • House Abandons Mask Mandate Just In Time For Biden's State Of The Union
    House Abandons Mask Mandate Just In Time For Biden’s State Of The Union

    The House of Representatives is finally lifting its own mask mandate just in time for President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.

    Capitol Physician Brian Monahan announced the news in a letter to lawmakers returning to Washington this week: “Individuals may choose to mask at any time, but it is no longer a requirement,” he wrote.

    Monahan added that the rate of positive COVID tests at the Capitol had fallen to 2.7% during the last two weeks, below the current rate for the DC-Metropolitan area (which is 4.7%).

    According to the CDC’s new federal guidelines, Washington DC falls into the “green”  category, meaning no masking is required.

    Unfortunately for those who will be attending tonight’s event, Monahan said other “coronavirus risk reduction measures” would still be in place for the address, “with the exception that, KN95 or N95 mask wear is no longer required and mask wear is now an individual choice option.”

    So far, more than 35 states have abandoned their individual mask mandates, although some cities still have them in place. According to the new CDC guidelines, some 30% of the US falls under the “high risk” category, meaning mask wearing is still recommended. The thing is, many conservative states also passed laws banning mask requirements.

    The House had been following a mask mandate of its own making since July which was in line with guidance from the CDC. The Senate never adopted a mask mandate.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 20:00

  • Putin's Disinformation & Opportunity: Weapons Of Mass Destruction
    Putin’s Disinformation & Opportunity: Weapons Of Mass Destruction

    Authored by David Lasseter via RealClear Defense,

    Back in early 2020, when COVID-19 was spreading around the globe and public health professionals were struggling to make sense of the virus, the Russians, like the Chinese, were conducting information operations blaming America for the outbreak. The Russian Federation went so far as to suggest that the Richard Lugar National Center for Disease Control and Public Health in Tbilisi, Georgia, was producing biological weapons and could be responsible for releasing deadly agents, i.e., COVID-19, into former Soviet states. 

    RealClearDefense / Creative Commons

    At the time, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). My Office and our colleagues at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency answered these Russian lies with facts. The Georgian and U.S. governments and public health professionals pushed back on these false and dangerous stories. The truth is that these labs are part of the Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program which works with international partners to mitigate WMD-related threats to the U.S. homeland, U.S. forces abroad, and U.S. partners and allies. We do this in over 30 countries worldwide because these labs improve the respective countries’ ability to detect, diagnose, and report the spread of especially dangerous pathogens.

    But this is what President Putin does – make irresponsible accusations and conduct disinformation campaigns. For years now, Putin’s government has falsely claimed that the CTR labs, specifically the Lugar Center, manufacture biological agents for the United States military. This is not true.

    In response to the COVID-19 mistruths, officials at the Lugar Center invited the Russian government to visit the facility. Russia demanded that if they visited, no other international governments or organizations be present. That counteroffer was refused since the Georgians knew it would enable Russia to proliferate obscene amounts of disinformation after an unsupervised visit. It would be an opportunity for Putin to manipulate the Georgian government and any gullible international press.

    COVID-19 origin facts aside, Russian government officials reiterated this propaganda in May 2021, stating that “deadly microorganisms” could be released from U.S. sponsored facilities in the region. Then again, earlier this month, through state-owned media, Russia claimed Tbilisi could use the Lugar Center’s research of infectious diseases for bioterrorism in the region. 

    In a joint Russia-Chinese statement following a February 4, 2022, meeting between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia claims the U.S. supported labs in Ukraine contain deadly bioweapons saying: “The sides emphasize that domestic and foreign bioweapons activities by the United States and its allies raise serious concerns and questions for the international community regarding their compliance with the BWC [Biological Weapons Convention].”

    In a couple of months, the U.S. Department of State will release its annual WMD nonproliferation compliance report. This year’s report is unlikely to differ from the findings in recent iterations, including last year’s report. Namely, regarding chemical weapons, “the United States certifies that Russia is in non-compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)” and with respect to biological weapons, the “United States assesses that Russia maintains an offensive BW program and is in violation of its obligations under Articles I and II of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).”  What’s more, the Russian Federation’s blatant disregard for international law and associated norms concerning its nuclear program speaks for itself. While the use of nuclear weapons would have the most devastating and world-altering impact, it is an unlikely course of action at this time.

    However, it is Putin’s potential use of chemical and biological weapons that we should more fully appreciate. As we know, in 2018, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with a previously unknown chemical agent, Novichok, in Salisbury, England. Then, in 2020, yet another unlawful attack via Novichok chemical agent occurred against Putin’s political rival, Alexei Navalny. Both attacks were violations of the CWC and reprehensible acts by a government. Additionally, and possibly the most egregious actions by the Russian Federation were those promulgated by the Syrian regime and likely known and condoned by Putin that resulted in asphyxiation, disfigurement, and even death of hundreds of innocent children, women, and men. 

    We should learn from the deaths of innocent people and view these previous attacks as test cases. We do not need to query whether they would use them. They have, and they will again. In the Salisbury attack, the world reacted quickly in condemning the action once the forensics were complete; however, the formal penalties or sanctions exacted by the world’s powers were rather ineffectual. A mere two and a half years later, Putin ordered another attack on a political rival. While the world recognized the signs of yet another attack, the reaction did little to adjust Putin’s use calculus by way of sanctions and diplomatic actions. With Syria, the world has not held Assad to account and has done absolutely nothing to punish the Russian Federation for their support and complicity.

    So, with Ukraine, we have a country Putin believes should rightly exist within Russia’s sphere of influence if not absolute control. A country with western fealty and NATO ambitions, he wants control and appears willing to garner it at the cost of war. We have already seen Russian officials and state supported media implicate CTR supported labs in Ukraine in any future biological warfare incidents. Recently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken informed the world that Russia might execute a false flag chemical weapons attack in advance of a Ukraine invasion. While illegal and potentially very deadly, we shouldn’t think he would stop there.

    Throughout this Russian buildup, the Administration has chosen to selectively release intelligence through its own information operations. While many question the righteousness of doing so, it is the President’s prerogative. One nugget recently released is the existence of a Russian “kill list” of Ukrainians following military occupation. If true, these could be prime targets for WMD in the form of biological and chemical weapons.

    At this stage, all we can do is speculate based on historical knowledge, known capabilities, and the mindset of a malevolent, authoritarian leader. But the events in Salisbury and Syria, the disinformation operations related to legitimate threat reduction laboratories in former Soviet states, and the assessments provided in the State Department’s annual assessment of WMD programs tell us that Mr. Putin has means, motive, and opportunity. Let’s hope and pray he does not use these horrific weapons, but we shouldn’t be surprised when he does.

    * * *

    David F. Lasseter is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction.  He is the Founding Partner at Horizons Global Solutions as well as a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 19:40

  • Etsy To Slap Sellers With 30% Transaction Fee Hike (Again) 
    Etsy To Slap Sellers With 30% Transaction Fee Hike (Again) 

    Online marketplace Etsy appears to be screwing over its sellers (again) following a record-breaking fourth-quarter earnings report. The crafts-focused online marketplace announced raising seller transaction fees to 6.5% from 5%. 

    The 30% hike is expected to go into effect on April 11. The transaction fee is the percentage of the total order amount Etsy charges when a seller makes a sale and is the second time the company has raised seller fees. The last time was in 2018 when it went from 3.5% to 5%. 

    The added expense to sellers comes as Etsy announced fourth-quarter revenue of $717.1 million, up 16.2% year-over-year, which the company attributes to a strong Christmas shopping season. 

    “We have demonstrated our ability to make improvements that directly translate into more sales for our sellers, as evidenced by record sales per seller in 2021,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said in the earnings report. “Our new transaction fee will enable us to invest in key areas like marketing and support to further extend our strong momentum.”

    Sellers on Etsy’s community blog weren’t happy with the company’s decision to increase fees. Many sellers said Etsy’s ongoing squeeze on them could be the last straw, as one person called for a platform strike. Here’s what they had to say: 

    “Etsy has become so expensive that my shop pays more than I make and the average buyer can’t afford to shop here. I have been on this site struggling away since 2009 and it has got to the point where I will save money withdrawing my shop. I wrote a long letter explaining my issues and never even got a response. I think I am going to retire,” one seller said.

    Another seller said: “Even my little shop really should bump up prices because of the fee change. I’m afraid Etsy may be planning to keep bumping their prices up regularly now, so I’ll just have to risk some buyers deciding it’s not worth it. My work has to be worth it to me for the price.”

    Some sellers are even calling for a “platform-wide strike” to protest increased seller fees.

    Etsy is a business, and like any business today, costs are soaring because of the inflationary environment. The end result will be consumers who use the online platform will likely see prices increases come April as sellers pass them along. There’s going to be a breaking point of just how much inflation households can handle as consumer confidence slipped to 5-month lows last week as inflation bites. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 19:20

  • "Pandora's Box Of Harms": How Public Health Erred On Side Of Catastrophe
    “Pandora’s Box Of Harms”: How Public Health Erred On Side Of Catastrophe

    Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities,

    Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, proponents of lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, mask mandates and other coercive government interventions have characterized these measures as benevolently “erring on the side of caution.” Now, as the grim toll of those public health measures comes into ever-sharper focus, it’s increasingly clear those characterizations were terribly wrong.

    What’s less readily apparent, however, is how the very use of the “erring on the side of caution” framing was injurious in itself—by thwarting reasoned debate of public health policies, diverting attention from unintended consequences, and buffering the Covid regime’s architects from accountability.

    To understand how the misuse of “erring on the side of caution” performed a sort of mass hypnosis that coaxed populations into two years of submission to disastrous, overreaching policies, consider how the expression is typically used.

    In everyday life, one might err on the side of caution by:

    • Leaving for the airport an extra 30 minutes early
    • Carrying an umbrella when there’s a 25% chance of rain
    • Opting for a less-challenging ski slope
    • Going back into the house to make sure the iron is unplugged
    • Getting a second medical opinion

    Generally speaking, “erring on the side of caution” in everyday life means lowering risk with a precaution that has a negligible cost.

    When mandate proponents portrayed their edicts as “erring on the side of caution,” it had the effect of tacitly assuring the public—and themselves—that there’d be little or no harm associated with extreme measures like:

    • Shutting down businesses for months at a time
    • Knowingly forcing millions of people into unemployment
    • Halting in-person attendance at schools and colleges
    • Ordering people of all ages and risk profiles to wear masks
    • Denying people opportunities to socialize, recreate and enjoy living

    That implicit low-downside assurance not only fostered unthinking support for draconian measures among citizens and experts alike, it also cultivated an atmosphere of intolerance toward those who questioned the wisdom of these interventions and predicted the great many harms that have resulted.

    “Overconfident, unnuanced messaging conditioned us to assume that all dissenting opinions are misinformation rather than reflections of good faith disagreement or differing priorities,” write Rutgers professors Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson in their essay, The Mask Debacle. “In doing so, elites drove out scientific research that might have separated valuable interventions from the less valuable.”

    Of course, in addition to its implicit assurance that a risk-reduction measure comes at little cost, “erring on the side of caution” conveys an assumption that the precaution will actually be effective.

    That hasn’t been the case with Covid mandates. Though many continue embracing the illusion of government control over Covid, the contrary studies and real-world observations are stacking far too high to be denied any longer by the intellectually honest among us.

    Charts via Ian Miller at Unmasked

    Public Health Threw Out the Playbook and Threw Pandora’s Box Wide Open

    The masses who’ve chanted “I trust science,” as they praise each government intervention and idolize those who impose them, are likely unaware that, before Covid-19, the well-considered scientific consensus was against lockdowns, broad quarantines and masking outside of hospital settings—particular for a virus like Covid-19 that has a 99% survival rate for most age groups.

    For example, a 2006 paper published by the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—focusing on mitigation measures against another contagious respiratory illness, pandemic influenza—reads like a warning label against many of the policies inflicted on humanity in the face of Covid-19:

    • “There is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals. The problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences…are likely to be considerable.”

    • “Widespread closures [of schools, restaurants, churches, recreations centers, etc] would almost certainly have serious adverse social and economic effects.”

    • “The ordinary surgical mask does little to prevent inhalation of small droplets bearing influenza virus…There are few data available to support the efficacy of N95 or surgical masks outside a healthcare setting. N95 masks need to be fit-tested to be efficacious.”

    The point of that and other pre-2020 research into pandemic mitigation was to be prepared, in times of crisis, with policies that reflected a well-reasoned and dispassionate weighing of costs and benefits.

    However, when the pandemic arrived, panicking public health officials and academics threw out the playbook and took their policy inspiration from the government that was first to confront the virus. Sadly for the world, that was communist China.

    The breadth of the resulting harms from the ensuing plunge into public health authoritarianism is staggering. Far from erring on the side of caution…

    Public health erred on the side of a mental health crisis. Anxiety and depression have surged, particularly among adolescents and young adults, where symptoms have doubled during the pandemic.

    “I have never been as busy in my life and I’ve never seen my colleagues as busy,” New York psychiatrist Valentine Raiteri told CNBC. “I can’t refer people to other people because everybody is full.”

    Public health erred on the side of juvenile suicide attempts. In the summer of 2020, emergency room visits for potential suicides by children leapt over 22% compared to the summer of 2019.

    Public health erred on the side of drug overdoses. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, overdose deaths surged 30% in 2020 to a record-high of more than 93,000. Among the factors cited: social isolation, people using drugs alone, and decreased access to treatment.

    Public health erred on the side of auto fatalities. Traffic deaths had been on a general downtrend since the 60s, reaching a near-record low in 2019. However, even with shutdown-lightened traffic, deaths jumped 17.5% in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019, and kept rising into 2021.

    Blame increased drug and alcohol use, along with psychological fallout from people being denied life’s fundamental pleasures. University of Texas cognitive scientist Art Markman told The New York Times that anger and aggression behind the wheel in part reflects “two years of having to stop ourselves from doing things that we’d like to do.”

    Public health erred on the side of domestic violence. A review of 32 studies found an increase in domestic violence around the world, with the increases most intense during the first week of lockdowns. “The home confinement led to constant contact between perpetrators and victims, resulting in increased violence and decreased reports,” the researchers found.

    Public health erred on the side of riots, arson and looting. It’s my own conviction that 2020’s eruption of summer violence following a Minneapolis police officer’s callous homicide of George Floyd was greatly magnified by the period of forced mass confinement that preceded it.

    Floyd’s death was a match dropped into a tinderbox of humanity confined to veritable house arrest. People blocked from restaurants and bars were suddenly granted a societal waiver to venture out into enormous crowds, where they found excitement, socialization and, far too often, a senselessly destructive means of venting months of pent-up energy, anxiety and frustration. It stands as the costliest civil unrest episode in American history.

    Public health erred on the side of confining people where the virus is transmitted most. Lockdowns ordered people away from workplaces, schools, restaurants and bars and into their homes, where New York contract tracers found 74% of Covid spread was happening, compared to just 1.4% in bars and restaurants and even less in schools and workplaces.

    Public health erred on the side of obesity. According to the CDC, “the risk of severe COVID-19 illness increases sharply with higher BMI [Body Mass Index].” So what happens when public health “experts” shut down schools, workplaces and recreation options and told people to stay home to stay “safe”?

    The CDC found that, in 2020, the rate by which BMI increased among 2- to 19-year olds doubled. Another study found that 48% of adults gained weight during the pandemic, with those who were already overweight most likely to add even more. Among other factors, the study pointed to psychological distress and having schoolchildren at home.

    Public health erred against fresh air, exercise and Vitamin D. Governments raced to shut down playgrounds, basketball courts and other outdoor recreation facilities. In a move that’s profoundly emblematic of heavy-handed, counterproductive authoritarianism in the age of Covid, the city of San Clemente, California filled a skate park with 37 tons of sand.

    Public health erred on the side of impaired child development. “We find that children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic,” say the authors of a study from Paediatric Emergency Research in the UK and Ireland (PERUKI).

    “Results highlight that even in the absence of direct SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 illness, the environmental changes associated [with the] COVID-19 pandemic [are] significantly and negatively affecting infant and child development.”

    Public health erred on the side of learning loss. Children are less vulnerable to Covid-19 than they are to the flu, and rarely transmit it to teachers. Unfortunately, American public health officials and teacher unions prevailed in halting in-person instruction (and socialization) in favor of “remote learning.”

    It was a poor substitute that fell hardest on the youngest learners. For example, according to curriculum and assessment provider Amplify, the percentage of first-graders scoring at or above the goals for their grade in mid-school-year dropped from 58% before the pandemic to just 44% this year.

    Public health erred on the side of pointlessly masking schoolchildren. When schools did open, mask mandates abounded—despite children’s relative invulnerability to the virus and the documented rarity of in-school transmission. A Spanish study showed no discernible difference in transmission among 5-year-olds—who aren’t required to mask—and 6 year olds, who are.

    “Masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning. Covering the lower half of the face of both teacher and pupil reduces the ability to communicate,” wrote Neeraj Sood, director of the Covid Initiative at USC, and Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford. “Positive emotions such as laughing and smiling become less recognizable, and negative emotions get amplified. Bonding between teachers and students takes a hit.”

    “Most of the masks worn by most kids for most of the pandemic have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus,” writes University of California associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics Vinay Prasad. “The loss to children remains difficult to capture in hard data, but will likely become clear in the years to come.”

    Public health erred on the side of giving masked people a false sense of security. As I wrote in August, “Covid-19 particles are astoundingly small. Hard as it is to imagine, the imperceptible gaps in surgical masks can be 1,000 times the size of a viral particle. Gaps in cloth masks are well larger.” That’s to say nothing of the respirated air that simply goes around the mask’s edges.

    Earlier in the pandemic, questioning cloth masks triggered outrage and swift social media censorship. Now, even mandate-happy CNN medical analyst Leanna Wen has declared they’re “little more than facial decorations.” Mask skepticism is sprouting elsewhere in mainstream media; the Washington Post and Bloomberg even published an essay titled “Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference Anyway.”

    Chart via Ian Miller at Unmasked

    When public health officials exaggerated the power of masks, they did more than promote pointless discomfort and a dystopian way of life. “Naively fooled to think that masks would protect them, some older high-risk people did not socially distance properly, and some died from Covid-19 because of it,” said epidemiologist, biostatistician and former Harvard Medical School professor Martin Kulldorff.

    Public health erred on the side of killing small businesses. Thanks in large part to government’s targeting of so-called “non-essential businesses,” the first year of the pandemic brought an additional 200,000 business closures over prior levels.

    Public health erred on the side of harming women’s careers. Women comprise a greater proportion of the sectors hid hardest by lockdowns, and the closing of schools and child care centers prompted many more women than men to put their careers on hold.

    Public health erred on the side of inflation. To offset the massive economic destruction inflicted by public health shutdowns, the federal government plunged into an astounding spending spree, handing out cash to individuals, businesses and city and state governments.

    It was money the government didn’t have, so the Federal Reserve essentially created it out of thin air. Pushing all that new fiat money into circulation debases the currency, fueling today’s surging price inflation—which is a stealth tax with no maximum rate, which hits poor people hardest.

    Note: Lockdowns and other mandates weren’t the exclusive driver of many of the various harms I’ve described; general fear of the virus also contributed to some of them. However, it should also be noted that public health officials—and media that overwhelmingly emphasized negative stories—whipped up a level of fear that led people to overstate the level of danger actually posed by the virus.

    There’s one more way in which characterizing lockdowns and other mandates as “erring on the side of caution” plays a psychological trick: Since the phrase is embedded with the notion of good intentions, it conditions citizens to be forgiving of the bureaucrats and politicians who imposed them.

    Note, however, that in most everyday usage of “erring on the side of caution,” the choice to “err” is made voluntarily by individuals who bear the consequences of their own decisions—or by others, like an airplane pilot or a surgeon, to whom we’ve voluntarily and unmistakably granted control of our well-being.

    The grim impacts of lockdowns and other mandates, however, were coercively imposed on society, to say nothing of the fact that so many of the edicts represented gross usurpations of power and violations of human rights.

    On top of all that, the edicts were reinforced by Orwellian censorship and ostracism leveled at those who dared raise questions that have now proven valid.

    So make no mistake: Overreaching public health officials and politicians—and the journalists-in-name-only who served as their mindless, unquestioning megaphones—have fully earned our withering condemnation. Indeed, holding them accountable is essential to sparing ourselves and future generations from repeating this dystopian chapter of human history.

    * * *

    Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 19:00

  • Zelensky Urges Biden To Impose No-Fly Zone Over Ukraine; Turkey Shuts Straits To All Warships
    Zelensky Urges Biden To Impose No-Fly Zone Over Ukraine; Turkey Shuts Straits To All Warships

    Update(1845ET): Ukraine’s President Zelensky has urged the West to consider imposing a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft. Zelensky on Monday appealed directly to Joe Biden to consider a no-fly zone for “significant parts” of Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader issued the statement in an exclusive Axios report. He told Axios that there’s a chance for Ukraine’s armed forces to “beat the aggressor” if the Western allies are willing to “do their part.”

    He also suggested that this would result in less total bloodshed, and spare civilians: “If the West does this, Ukraine will defeat the aggressor with much less blood,” Zelensky conveyed through an advisor. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    However, not only did Biden rule out sending American troops to Ukraine in a Monday statement, but press secretary Jen Psaki also stressed that a no-fly zone is also ruled out, given that either scenario would bring Washington into direct war with Russia, and likely lead to WW3. 

    “Here’s what’s important for everybody to know about a no-fly zone: What that would require is implementation by the U.S. military. It would essentially mean the U.S. military would be shooting down Russian planes,” Psaki told MSNBC on Monday.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Zelensky had described additionally of current measures, “The sanctions are heading in the right direction. In addition to disconnecting the Russian Central Bank from SWIFT and providing more Stingers and anti-tank weapons, we need the West to impose a no-fly zone over significant parts of Ukraine.”

    An additional major development Monday is that Turkey as expected has invoked the Montreux Convention and has now closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to all Russian warship traffic. This means Russian vessels cannot enter the Black Sea from the vicinity of the Mediterranean. But this also applies to all warships at this time…

    “When Turkey is not a belligerent in the conflict, it has the authority to restrict the passage of the warring states’ warships across the straits. If the warship is returning to its base in the Black Sea, the passage is not closed. We adhere to the Montreux rules. All governments, riparian and non-riparian, were warned not to send warships across the straits.”

    Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğluhas since declared that “all countries, that have coast to Black Sea, or not, not to let warships pass through the straits” according to state-run Anadolu. It follows Turkey issuing formal recognition of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “war” – which in turn triggers the Montreux Convention.

    He said the following:

    “We warned all countries, that have a coast on the Black Sea or not, not to let warships go through the straits,” Çavuşoğlu told reporters after a Cabinet meeting in Ankara, Anadolu reported.

    “To date, there has been no request for passage through the straits [since the war started],” he clarified.

    * * *

    Update(1449ET): Already Putin has previously been on record as saying Western actions such as sanctioning a sitting head of state or targeting the central bank would be viewed as an “act of war”. But now another red line has been drawn, following more and more European governments – most notably Germany – ditching their policies of neutrality when it comes to shipping their weapons into foreign conflicts:

    RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SAYS THOSE SUPPLYING LETHAL WEAPONS TO UKRAINE WILL BEAR RESPONSIBILITY SHOULD THESE WEAPONS BE USED DURING RUSSIA’S MILITARY OPERATION – IFAX

    More than likely, US and UK-supplied weapons, particularly anti-tank missile systems as well as possibly Stingers, are already being used by Ukraine forces against Russian tanks and armored vehicles. Unverified footage circulating widely online suggests as much at this early stage.

    But it appears Russia’s military is taking steps – or at least threatening action – against any external supply lines coming from NATO countries in support of Ukrainian forces. This clearly has the potential to quickly spiral into direct military conflict with the US and West…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, President Biden has sought to ‘assure’ the US public…

    BIDEN SAYS AMERICANS SHOULD NOT BE WORRIED ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR

    * * *

    Update(1200ET): In what can be called the first positive development coming on day five of this war, the Russian and Ukrainian sides left the multiple-hour long meeting along the Belarus border agreeing to continue another round of talks in “the coming days” – Bloomberg reports citing Interfax.

    “Russian and Ukrainian sides have agreed to continue another round of talks in the coming days, Interfax reports, citing Russian official Vladimir Medinsky.”

    The next round of talks is expected to take place on the Polish-Belarus border. This after Ukraine’s government was reportedly adamant in saying it’s “not ready to surrender or capitulate” to Russia, in a separate statement made to the press, and reported by CNBC. The development also comes after Zelensky signed an application for Ukrainian membership to the European Union.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And now with Switzerland closing its airspace to Russian flight traffic, there’s a near total European blockade of airspace outside Russia…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * * 

    Update(11:15am ET): President Putin on Monday signed a decree implementing ‘countermeasures’ as retaliation for EU-wide and US severe sanctions against the Russian economy. Russian residence are effectively barred from transferring foreign currency to their accounts, also including deposits in foreign banks, according to Interfax.

    The decree entitled “On the application of special economic measures against the United States and countries that have joined them,” is now law, according to a Kremlin statement. “Exporters must sell 80 percent of foreign exchange earnings credited from 1 January 2022,” the Kremlin press service stated of the new measure.

    “For residents participating in foreign economic activity to carry out the mandatory sale of foreign currency in the amount of 80 percent of the amount of foreign currency credited starting from 1 January 2022 to their accounts in authorized banks on the basis of foreign trade contracts concluded with non-residents and providing for the transfer of goods to non-residents, the provision of services to non-residents, performance of work for non-residents, transfer to non-residents of the results of intellectual activity, including exclusive rights to them, no later than three working days from the date this decree comes into force,” the decree reads according to a Russian media translation. 

    Kremlin press photo

    Bloomberg details further:

    • The steps, which take effect March 1, also include restrictions on companies buying back their own stock, according to the text of the decree published Monday.
    • The U.S. and its allies have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia’s biggest banks, including the central bank, and limits on billionaires and top officials including Putin himself for the invasion of Ukraine.
    • The moves triggered a sharp drop in the ruble and forced the central bank to take emergency steps to stabilize the market.

    Putin said of the new measures and of the Ukraine war more broadly that “a settlement is possible only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account.”

    According to media statements: “At the same time, it was noted that the Russian side is open to negotiations with Ukraine and expects that they will lead to the desired results.” The security demands include the objectives recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea and the “demilitarization” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. And on Monday, there were these further significant developments:

    • U.S. MONITORING RUSSIAN NUCLEAR FORCES AS CLOSELY AS POSSIBLE, HAVEN’T SEEN ANY SPECIFIC MUSCLE MOVEMENTS AS RESULT OF PUTIN’S ALERT ORDER – OFFICIAL SAYS
    • U.S. SAYS “NO REASON TO CHANGE” NUCLEAR ALERT LEVELS AT THIS TIME AFTER PUTIN DIRECTIVE-WHITE HOUSE
    • ZELENSKYY HAS SIGNED AN APPLICATION FOR EU MEMBERSHIP

    * * *

    Update(9:36am ET): Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have reportedly lasted almost 3 hours, according to Pravda Ukraine. At the same time the Kremlin announced its Northern and Pacific fleets along with its strategic bombers are all in a state of ‘maximum alert’ – though it’s unclear as yet precisely what this really means. As for the ceasefire meeting in Belarus, Ukraine issuing the following to international press agencies:

    UKRAINE IS ‘NOT READY TO SURRENDER OR CAPITULATE’ TO RUSSIA, FOREIGN MINISTER SAYS – CNBC 

    “Ukraine demanded an immediate ceasefire and Russian troop withdrawal on Monday, as a delegation arrived for talks with Russia at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, per Ukrainian presidency statement,” according to a CNN foreign correspondent. The Ukrainian delegation was headed up by Defense Minister Reznikov; however President Zelensky was not present – while the Russian side reportedly included relatively low level officials at the ministerial level. Below: Latest NYT war map…

    At this early point it doesn’t look like Monday’s meeting near the Belarusian border resulted in any breakthroughs, however details are still pending. Meanwhile the below footage provides a glimpse at what the Russian occupation will look like, after Russian forces have reportedly taken two Ukrainian cities, and as fighting continues in the suburbs of Kiev.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    China has on Monday issued a strong statement urging a cessation to the conflict and for negotiations toward a ceasefire to continue. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press briefing Monday:

    “We call on all parties to return to the path of diplomatic negotiations and a political settlement as soon as possible. We also suggest undertaking a comprehensive settlement of the Ukraine problem through negotiations and consultations,” he said.

    “We call on all parties concerned to demonstrate calmness and restraint and to avoid further escalation,” he emphasized. This as Russia heightened its nuclear readiness posture once again. While calling it an unnecessary “escalation” – the UK had this to say:

    Vladimir Putin putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert is an attempt to distract people from “what’s going wrong in Ukraine”, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said.

    Mr Wallace said Mr Putin was engaged in a “battle of rhetoric” by trying to “remind the world” he had a deterrent.

    He said Russia was behind schedule on its invasion of Ukraine and Ukrainians were putting up a “very strong fight”.

    Others in Europe agreed it was a “distraction attempt” – as the BBC notes in its headline. And here’s the latest from the Swiss government:

    SWISS DEFENCE MINISTER SAYS WE HAVE CONCLUDED USE OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS RELATIVELY UNLIKELY, POPULATION SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID

    * * *

    Update(7:52am ET): “We were ready,” said a Biden administration official of the series of sanctions and punitive measures it’s now hitting Moscow with. The latest in the below breaking news includes extensions of prior US announced actions being taken against Russia:

    • U.S. BANS TRANSACTIONS WITH RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK
    • SENIOR BIDEN ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL SAYS U.S. SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK WERE MONTHS IN THE PLANNING, ‘WE WERE READY’ U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK HAS BEEN ATTEMPTING TO BRING ASSETS TO RUSSIA, OTHER SAFE HAVENS SINCE SATURDAY’S SANCTIONS ANNOUNCEMENT
    • U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS TODAY’S ACTION TO PROHIBIT TRANSACTIONS WITH RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK WILL HINDER RUSSIA’S ABILITY TO ACCESS HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
    • U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS COORDINATED ACTION WILL CAUSE WEAKENING OF RUSSIAN CURRENCY, MAKE FINANCING MORE DIFFICULT
    • U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS ALWAYS SAW RUSSIA’S $630BLN IN RESERVES AS INSURANCE POLICY, ACTION TODAY ‘REMOVES THAT INSURANCE POLICY’
    • U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS ACTIONS BY U.S., ALLIES WILL PREVENT RUSSIA FROM USING ITS DOLLARS, EUROS, POUNDS OR YEN TO DEFEND ITS CURRENCY
    • UKRAINIAN MEDIA: UKRAINIAN NEGOTIATING DELEGATION DEMANDED WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS FROM UKRAINE, INCLUDING CRIMEA AND DONBASS

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And in another major announcement regarding Russian nuclear forces posture, Interfax reveals the following, though it’s unclear precisely what the designation means:

    RUSSIAN NUCLEAR FORCES PLACED ON ENHANCED COMBAT DUTY IN LINE WITH PUTIN ORDER – INTERFAX QUOTES DEFENCE MINISTRY

    * * *

    In the fifth day since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, talks have kicked off between a Ukrainian delegation and Kremlin delegation somewhere inside Belarus at a precise location that’s being kept secret – though it’s somewhere along the border. The Russians have not sent anyone top level from the Foreign Ministry, instead its delegation is reportedly headed by an aide to President Putin and former culture minister named Vladimir Medinsky.

    Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei in welcoming the Ukrainian leadership assured the group they are “completely safe” and that it’s Belarus’ “sacred duty” to ensure it. Initial photos have come out of the meeting, which President Zelensky’s office described as having the ultimate aim of achieving an immediate ceasefire and total withdrawal of Russian troops, however unlikely that remains at this moment.

    Image source: TASS/Reuters

    “Dear friends, the President of Belarus asked me to welcome you and to provide everything for your work, as agreed with President Zelensky and President Putin. You may feel completely safe here. This is our sacred duty,” Belarusian FM Makei introduced. 

    “President Lukashenko sincerely hopes that, during today’s talks, it will be possible to find solutions to all the questions of this crisis. All Belarusians are praying for this. Any proposals, in terms of organizing today’s meeting, will be considered and absolutely fulfilled,” Makei said. “We look forward to the results.”

    Zelensky has described the talks as occurring with “no preconditions” while also noting they were unlikely to produce results. Additionally as Bloomberg describes, “The low profile of the Russian delegation, at deputy ministerial level, further weighed on expectations of any breakthrough.”

    The Ukrainian president said Sunday he “doesn’t really believe” there will be a breakthrough with the Russians, but expressed there could be “a chance, however small, to de-escalate the situation” – according to his words carried in regional media. 

    Ukraine’s delegation arriving to talks by helicopter Monday. Source: BelTA/TASS

    Heavy fighting continued Monday as the talks kicked off, particularly in neighborhoods on the outskirts of Kiev, and in the cities of Kharkiv and Chernihiv.

    “They are fighting against everyone and everything alive, against kindergartens, against residential buildings and ambulances,” Zelenskiy said of the Russians in a Sunday statement, which the Kremlin rejected, saying it is only targeting military sites and movements. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And as for weekend reports that Kiev had been surrounded, which was widely reported due to statements attributed to the mayor of the capital city, Zelensky’s office issued the following statement:  “Russians can only dream about it. Kyiv is completely controlled by the Ukrainian forces, arrivals to Kyiv are available. Yes, in some suburbs the confrontation continues, there were heavy battles. But we will not give up the capital.”

    Meanwhile on Monday the Vatican has offered “to facilitate” dialogue between Moscow and Kiev toward ending the war, with Vaitcan Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin saying “there is still and always room for negotiation. It is never too late.” 

    And in another breaking development, the United States as suspended the operations of its embassy in Minsk, Belarus – which also comes after this weekend the State Department began telling US nationals inside Russia to begin planning their departure given widespread European airspace closures around Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 18:45

  • US Expels 12 Russian "Intelligence Operatives" From UN Mission In New York
    US Expels 12 Russian “Intelligence Operatives” From UN Mission In New York

    The US has announced Monday afternoon that it is moving to expel a dozen Russians with diplomatic credentials from US soil. The State Department and US agencies have identified the twelve as “intelligence operatives” who worked out of the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York.

    A statement by the US Mission to the United Nations said “twelve intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission who have abused their privileges of residency in the United States by engaging in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security.”

    UN Headquarters in NYC, shutterstock

    The statement didn’t spell out those alleged espionage activities or name any evidence of their spying activities. 

    While the statement says “the action has been in development for several months” – it’s hard not to see this as also likely related to a crackdown on suspicious Russian diplomatic personnel connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s ambassador the UN Vassily Nebenzia responded by slamming the explanation as “not satisfactory.” 

    “I’ve just received information that the US authorities have undertaken another hostile action against the Russian Mission to the United Nations grossly violating their commitments on the host country agreement that they undertook,” Nebenzia said to the press. “They just visited the Russian Mission and gave us a note prescribing us to do what they demand.”

    The move comes after multiple months of tit-for-tat expulsions between the Russian and US sides, with dozens of Russian diplomats sent home from the embassy in Washington D.C. in January, which had first been announced last November. In the most recent incidents, the State Department has cited that it won’t renew their visas. 

    Countries across the globe, including the United States, often send intelligence officers to the foreign country in which they are embedded under cover of diplomatic credentials.

    With the United States for example, intel officers often work out of the embassy or consulates as “official” State Department personnel, while in reality working for US intelligence, in a practice which has become so normative as to be an ‘open secret’. US adversaries like Russia or China also regularly do the same.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 18:40

  • Many Viral Ukraine War Videos Flooding Social Media Are Fake
    Many Viral Ukraine War Videos Flooding Social Media Are Fake

    Authored by Eric Garris via AntiWar.com, 

    Noted YouTube “scambuster” Kitboga, who has 2.2 million subscribers, has posted the video below showing many examples of viral TikTok videos purporting to be scenes of war in Ukraine.

    These videos are mostly clips from video games or from other wars. Many of these posts are being used to raise money for fake charities. Kit explains the various scams that are being used to raise money on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms.

    There are actual videos of the war, but everyone needs to be skeptical and ask for sources.

    Here are some other articles about fake or misleading Ukraine war videos:

    A number of weekend media articles began exposing some viral videos which were fake, many racking up tens of thousands of shares on Facebook. 

    According to one such report: “In fact, Gizmodo has found at least ten viral photos and videos currently being spread on social media that are completely fake.”

    “In some cases, the videos and photos are years old. In others, the images are clearly not from Ukraine. There are even two examples of videos on Twitter today that are actually from war-themed video games…” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Nobody knows how long this invasion will last. But however long that may be, you can bet on one thing: There will be plenty more fake photos and videos passed around online before this conflict is over,” Gizmodo concludes in its own review of some of the fake videos.

    [ZH: Paul Joseph Watson exposes a few more farcical propaganda pumps in the following brief clip…]

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 18:20

  • Mayor Adams Announces End Of NYC's Controversial Vaccine Passport Rule
    Mayor Adams Announces End Of NYC’s Controversial Vaccine Passport Rule

    At long last, New Yorkers and tourists visiting the Big Apple will soon be able to enter stores, restaurants, bars and other venues without needing to show proof of vaccination status.

    That’s right: Mayor Eric Adams is finally lifting his city’s requirement for patrons to be vaccinated, one of the most restrictive such laws in the country. It was first implemented by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, last year. However, he clarified Monday that there are no plans to remove requirements that workers be vaccinated.

    Mayor Adams clarified that the requirement would be lifted on March 7 so long as COVID cases continue to trend downward.

    NYC’s indoor mask requirement for all public schools will be lifted on the same day (again, provided no unexpected spikes in infections arise).

    Adams noted that more than a million students would return to public schools Monday after their February break. According to the mayor, if students can intermix this week without creating any “unforeseen spikes” in infections, then that would essentially confirm that the mask mandates are no longer necessary.

    “New York City’s numbers continue to go down day after day, so, as long as COVID indicators show a low level of risk and we see no surprises this week, on Monday, March 7 we will also lift Key2NYC requirements,” Adams announced. “This will give business owners the time to adapt and will allow us to ensure we are making the best public health decisions for the people of New York.”

    Circling back the vaccine passport rule, which was first adopted in the late summer of 2021, it’s worth noting that it hasn’t always been enforced. But it does still technically apply to restaurants, bars, nightclubs, coffee shops, fast food eateries, indoor fitness locations, movie theaters, music and concert venues, museums, sports arenas and stadiums, theaters and billiard halls, among other places.

    Adams, who is seen as far more business-friendly than his predecessor, Mayor de Blasio, had hinted that he was eagerly awaiting the end of the vaccine passport rule during an economic development press briefing on Wednesday. Adams said at the time that he meets daily with health experts, who have provided structure and benchmarks the city should meet before it returns to pre-pandemic normalcy.

    “We can’t close down again, and I’m not going to do something at my anticipation to get back that’s going to jeopardize closing down the city again,” Adams said. “Our economy can’t handle it. We don’t have another $11 billion to put back in the economy. We must do it the smart way.”

    Adams decision follows a move by Gov. Kathy Hochul to ditch the Empire State’s mask mandate (for everywhere but schools), although Hochul said over the weekend that the statewide mandate for schools would be ending on Wednesday.

    The city fired more than 1,400 municipal workers over their refusal to abide by the vaccine mandate, which was extremely controversial in parts of the city like South Brooklyn and Staten Island.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 28

Today’s News 28th February 2022

  • Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This
    Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This

    Authored by Cailtin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Chris Hedges introduces his latest article for Scheer Post, titled “Chronicle of a War Foretold”, with the following:

    “After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.”

    Imperial narrative managers have been falling all over themselves working to dismiss and discredit the abundantly evidenced idea that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was due largely to Moscow’s fear of NATO expansion and the refusal of Washington and Kyiv to solidify a policy that Ukraine would not be added to the alliance.

    Take Michael McFaul, the mass media’s go-to pundit on all things Russia:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Or New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Or Just Security editor Ryan Goodman:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It makes sense that they would have to do this. After all, if westerners were to get it into their heads that this whole terrible war could have been avoided by simply solidifying a policy of neutrality for Ukraine and issuing a guarantee that it would never be added to NATO, they would begin asking why this did not happen. NATO powers had no interest in adding Ukraine to the alliance anyway, so it doesn’t really make sense to refuse to make such low-cost concessions if the only alternative is mass military slaughter. I mean, unless your goal was to provoke mass military slaughter to advance your own geostrategic objectives.

    So they work hard to present the narrative that the invasion has nothing to do with NATO at all, and occurred solely because Putin is an evil madman who hates freedom and wants to destroy democracy. Most western analysis goes no deeper than this:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But these herculean propaganda efforts have one pretty significant plot hole: if the attack on Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, then how come so many western experts have spent years warning that NATO expansion will lead to an attack on Ukraine?

    Check out this 2015 video clip by John Mearsheimer, for example:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Or this one by the late great Stephen F Cohen back in 2010:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Or this excerpt from a summary by The Nation of points made by Cohen in a 2017 dialogue with John Batchelor titled “Have 20 Years of NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?”:

    NATO promises that Georgia might one day become a member state was an underlying cause of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, in effect a US-Russian proxy war. The result was the near ruination of Georgia. NATO remains active in Georgia today.

    Similar NATO overtures to Ukraine also underlay the crisis in that country in 2014, which resulted in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war in Donbass, and in effect another US-Russian proxy war. Meanwhile, US-backed Kiev remains in profound economic and political crisis, and Ukraine fraught with the possibility of a direct American-Russian military conflict.

    Or this from Stephen M Walt in 2015:

    Today, those who want to arm Ukraine are demanding that Russia cease all of its activities in Ukraine, withdraw from Crimea, and let Ukraine join the EU and/or NATO if it wants and if it meets the membership requirements. In other words, they expect Moscow to abandon its own interests in Ukraine, full stop. It would be wonderful if Western diplomacy could pull off this miracle, but how likely is it? Given Russia’s history, its proximity to Ukraine, and its long-term security concerns, it is hard to imagine Putin capitulating to our demands without a long and costly struggle that will do enormous additional damage to Ukraine.

    …

    The solution to this crisis is for the United States and its allies to abandon the dangerous and unnecessary goal of endless NATO expansion and do whatever it takes to convince Russia that we want Ukraine to be a neutral buffer state in perpetuity. We should then work with Russia, the EU, and the IMF to develop an economic program that puts that unfortunate country back on its feet.

    Or this from George Kennan right after the US Senate approved NATO expansion all the way back in 1998:

    “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves… Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

    Or how about now-CIA Director William Burns’s 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

    “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

    Or what the last US ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock recently wrote about the Ukraine conflict, calling it “an avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense”:

    In 1997, when the question of adding more members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement: “I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.”

    So many people who’ve worked hard to gain an understanding of the Russian government have been warning for years that NATO expansionism would lead to a disastrous conflict, strongly emphasising Ukraine as a powderkeg where that conflict could ignite. Yet we’re being asked to believe that what we’re seeing in Ukraine has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO expansion and is due rather to Vladimir Putin simply being a mean jerk who wants to ruin everything.

    The aforementioned Michael McFaul even goes so far as to pretend this thing we were warned about for decades was never anything anyone ever mentioned until the end of last year:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Imperial spinmeisters have even gone so far as to deceitfully claim Putin makes no mention of NATO in a speech about intervening in Ukraine and citing that as evidence that he’s just a land-grabbing Hitler-like monster, hoping no one would fact check them:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    When he most certainly did:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And continues to:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    So I dunno, if experts have been warning for many years that NATO expansion would provoke an attack, and the guy launching the attack is explicitly citing NATO expansion as a driving motive for his actions, it seems like maybe it’s sorta kinda got something to do with NATO expansion.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Which would be great news, because it would mean that the US and its allies actually have a lot more power to end this war than they’ve been letting on, and no good reason not to do so immediately.

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/28/2022 – 02:00

  • Why Is The Left Ignoring Ukrainian Gun Rights?
    Why Is The Left Ignoring Ukrainian Gun Rights?

    Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

    There has been a media frenzy over Ukraine. Strangely enough, missing from the coverage of the war in Ukraine is that Ukraine recognized the importance of an armed population.

    Ukraine has recognized this importance, so much so that they recently just issued 10,000 automatic rifles to the civilian population. All anyone needs to do is receive one is show their ID.

    This is a huge development that has largely been (unsurprisingly) ignored by the corporate media. We know the reason why; the Ukrainians are about to demonstrate to the world why the founding fathers of the United States enshrined the right to keep and bear arms in the constitution, right after the right to speak freely, no less.

    On Wednesday, the Ukrainian parliament passed “Law #5708 on the Right to Civilian Firearms”. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian government was very clear about the purpose, saying: “This bill is to ensure that every citizen receives the sacred right to self-defense.”

    So why is it that this movement to expand gun rights has been largely ignored by the media?

    Well, to acknowledge the importance of an armed citizenry would be to recognize that the anti-gun movement is built on lies. The same people that have told American gun owners that their AR15s would be “useless” against a government armed with nuclear weapons and F-15 Jets would have to explain why ACTUAL “weapons of war” (not semi-automatic sporting rifles like the AR15) are being given out to citizens to fight off a tyrannical invader. According to reports from Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, as of Feb 26th, 2022, over 25,000 automatic rifles, 10 million bullets, and an unknown number of RPGs have been given to civilians.

    In a piece by the NYPost, a Ukrainian lawyer turned fighter is quoted as saying: “We always look at the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. It is not just about self-protection but the protection of freedom and independence. We Ukrainians really show this meaning of the Second Amendment.”

    It’s no surprise that Ukrainians understand the importance of the right to bear arms, considering they’ve been at war with Russia since 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

    The real irony of the situation, though, is those same liberals who are staunchly anti-gun are warming to the Ukrainians in their struggle against Russia. In these two tweets, cognitive dissonance is on full display less than 21 days apart.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    … and then there’s this. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The same hypocrisy is on display with PM of Canada Justin Trudeau, who used the Emergencies Act just a few days ago to send heavily armed police to clear Ottawa of the Canadian Truckers who were protesting vaccine mandates and freezing the bank accounts of Canadians and others who supported them.

    The Canadian Civil Liberties Association condemned Trudeau for invoking the National Emergency over a peaceful protest.

    After being condemned for abusing his power, Trudeau spoke out against Authoritarianism and in support of Ukraine.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Regardless of the hypocrisy on display, the Ukraine situation certainly demonstrates the importance of an armed population ready to defend their homeland. Anti-gun activists should note that when push comes to shove, even the government agrees; citizens should be armed.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 23:30

  • Stocks Tied To China's SWIFT Alternative Are Soaring
    Stocks Tied To China’s SWIFT Alternative Are Soaring

    As the Western world still obsesses with how Russia’s expulsion from SWIFT will impact the Russian economy, commodity prices and the global funding markets, a quick note on how forward looking markets are reacting.

    While we wait for US cash markets to open (as futures reverse a modest bounce and trade at session lows), China’s micromanaged “market” is already up and running in what so far appears a boring session where the SHCOMP is flat, but where shares tied to China’s Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS) are surging after Saturday’s decision by Western nations to exclude some Russian lenders from the SWIFT messaging system. Why? Because of what Bloomberg notes is growing speculation that China’s CIPS could become an alternative for those banks.

    What is CIPS? It is a payment system which offers clearing and settlement services for its participants in cross-border yuan trades. Indeed, it is a Chinese version of SWIFT, and one which most Russian banks will likely soon be forced to adopt.

    As a result, stocks such as Orient Group, and HyUnion Holding jump by the 10% daily limit..

    … while Infosec Technologies and Forms Syntron Information surge by the 20% daily limit.

    And since China will quickly brush off any threats of sanctions if it were to accept Russia banks into its orbit, it is now clear that instead of driving a wedge between Russia and the country that is true the biggest US challenger on the global scene, China, the West has succeeded into bringing the two powers even closer together while putting the fate of the world’s reserve currency in jeopardy, as Dylan Grice explained earlier…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 23:00

  • "The Dirty Work Of Going Through Old Positions On Bank Balance Sheets Is Being Done Around The Clock As We Speak"
    “The Dirty Work Of Going Through Old Positions On Bank Balance Sheets Is Being Done Around The Clock As We Speak”

    By Larry McDonald, publisher of the Bear Traps Report

    When was the last time a geopolitical risk event walked through the door behind a tech crash? George Soros always said “when past excesses are being corrected – it is always a period of maximum risk.”

    Going into the Ukraine-Russia tragedy, the ferocious “buy the dip” psychology was already impaired – now the matador just put forth his final sword. The wounded bull has been laid to rest. In the early 2000s, we called it “the other side of the mountain” – use vicious countertrend – short covering rallies to raise cash. We have clearly moved from a BTFD mentality to sell the rallies mode.

    A bear has arrived for lunch and unfortunately, he’s staying for dinner.

    We have been up all night working the phones. It has been a Lehman weekend – as in a 24-hour scramble to find and calculate the risk – NOT the size of the risk.

    The dirty work of going through old positions on bank balance sheets is being done around the clock as we speak. We do know the cost of default protection on French banks has diverged from UK-Asia-centric HSBC meaningfully.

    After working at Soc Gen for three years we can tell you, the books on most EU banks are a cobweb of darkness. In 2016, when Glencore was going down, every week we found more and more risk tied to Glencore assets. The truth bled out very slowly.

    Italian banks have been very close with Russia as well. The point is, it’s very tough for politicians to “target” SWIFT sanctions into this darkness, very tough. In a loud voice the client said – “Larry – details matter BIGLY – we need to urgently to know exactly what is sanctioned here. They – Olaf – Macron – Biden – will try and dance around risk with a targeted SWIFT but they’re probably not qualified to do so.

    They are messing with the plumbing of the global financial system. If they shoot from the hip, there could be large consequences.”

    Politicians are reaching in the dark to find risk. If they sanctioned the CBR (central bank of Russia) and the transfer agents for Eurobonds, then Russia will default on all foreign debt immediately. And if Russia tries to find a back door through China – will the USA fine or sanction Chinese banks?

    Over the weekend another client said “Germany can play SWIFT tough guy all they want – but Macron has to protect the vulnerable Soc Gen and Draghi is probably trying to ring-fence exposed, Moscow cozy Italian banks like Intesa and UniCredit.”

    Lost in the Ukraine tragedy – the Fed ́s favorite inflation measure – core PCE has moved from 3.7% in September to 5.2% in January, and the war-torn invasion only pours lighter fluid on this fire. *SCHOLZ: GERMANY TO SPEND MORE THAN 2% OF GDP YEARLY ON DEFENSE + massive social costs across the EU to off set energy prices as well.

    So long to the planet’s global negative yield anchor. We are heading back to a 1967 – 1979 regime. Overweight hard assets, take down financial assets and buckle up.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 22:30

  • Goldman Warns Of Stagflationary Commodity Supply Shock On Ukraine, Raises Near-Term Brent Forecast To $115
    Goldman Warns Of Stagflationary Commodity Supply Shock On Ukraine, Raises Near-Term Brent Forecast To $115

    One look at the surge in oil, gas and various other commodities like wheat, confirms what everyone by now knows: unleashing hell against Russia in the form of the nuclear SWIFT option coupled with central bank sanctions may crush the Russian economy but it will also will lead to a harrowing price shock for ordinary citizens across the globe coupled with the worst stagflationary episode  in years. 

    As Goldman writes in a late Sunday note, Western sanctions on Russia are set to tighten significantly after the announcement on February 26 to bar selected Russian banks from accessing the SWIFT international payment system as well as to target its Central Bank’s reserves. While details on the implementation of these additional sanctions have not been released, with carve-outs likely still allowing for energy and food trades, Goldman warns that “the hurdles that these sanctions will create for financial payments are likely to exacerbate the recent Russian commodity supply shock, already visible as Western and Chinese traders halting shipments.”

    But what is critical to Goldman’s view, is that commodity markets need to reflect not only these difficulties in paying for Russia’s exports but, with little left to sanction, the risk that Russian commodities eventually fall under Western restrictions, an outcome no longer being ruled out by the US administration. Barring a breakthrough in peace negotiations, Goldman warns that “this leaves commodity prices having to rally sharply as we see demand destruction as now the only significant remaining balancing mechanism, with Russia a key exporter of most commodities that were already facing exceptionally tight inventory levels and low spare production capacity.”

    What does this mean for commodities?

    Well for oil, Goldman says this represents $110/bbl to $120/bbl short-term price upside should 2 to 4 mb/d of demand destruction be required to compensate for a commensurate one-month loss of Russian exports. Behind this significant upside scenario is that the price induced shale supply response would no longer be a suitable rebalancing mechanism for such a potential large and immediate supply shock, with Russia’s crude and petroleum product exports of 7.3 mb/d, 6 mb/d of which clears through the now shut seaborne market.

    Furthermore, even a redirection of oil flows to the East as many believe will happen, would still tighten global markets, as it would require a 12-day increase in transit time, the equivalent to the loss of 90 million barrels. The pipeline nature of gas flows to Europe, limiting shippers’ liability, and the ability for European consumers to ramp-up flows from contracted volumes, suggest a greater downside risk to Russian oil than gas exports in the short-term.

    The only potential short-term supply response would need to come from OPEC, as a surge in Saudi and UAE production as well as a lift of Iran’s US secondary sanctions would likely lead to a 2 mb/d increase in supply over the next couple months, with a coordinated global SPR release helping bridge the gap. Here Goldman caveats that while such an outcome becomes increasingly likely the more Russia is ostracized from the global economy, driving core-OPEC, Iran and the West closer together, it would nonetheless come at the expense of a complete depletion of the global oil market’s spare capacity, still warranting much higher oil prices.

    Amid these considerations, the range of near-term price outcomes for commodities has become extreme, given the concern of further military escalation, energy sanctions or potential for a cease-fire.

    So, in the very short-term, Goldman now sees risks skewed to significant further upside and is raising its 1-month Brent price forecast to $115/bbl (from $95/bbl previously), with even more upside risks on further escalation or longer disruption. And even if near-term price volatility reaches unprecedented levels, the bank’s longer-term bullish under-investment thesis remains intact and reinforced by these events.

    Besides oil, Goldman also expects the price of consumed commodities that Russia is a key producer of to rally from here – this includes oil, European gas (and hence aluminum), palladium, nickel, wheat and corn. In the case of agricultural prices, this reflects the fact that Russia and Ukraine represent nearly a quarter of global wheat and corn exports in the face of already tight inventories, with diesel farming input costs set to rally and with potential for disruptions to global fertilizer exports given Russia’s significant market share.

    Shifting to gold, the bank writes that the outlook for the precious metal price is harder to call in the short-term, but still bullish medium-term. On the one hand, gold’s unique role as the currency of last resort will likely be apparent if restrictions on Russia’s Central Bank accessing its offshore reserves leave it leveraging its large domestic gold stockpiles to continue foreign trade, most likely with China. However, on the other hand, the required large sales of gold at below market prices, given the limited appetite outside of China for such trade settlement, would emphasize its potential limited scale in the future, with few other countries able to use gold as such a currency of last resort.

    Ultimately, Goldman concludes that “the recent escalation with Russia create clear stagflationary risks to the broader economy, driven by higher energy prices, which reinforce our conviction in higher gold prices in coming months and our $2,150/toz price target.”

    Away from gold, industrial metal flows out of Russia have also been reduced sharply over the past week as western buyers remain similarly hesitant in the context of sanction uncertainty and escalation. Even with trade exemptions, it is unlikely that metals export volumes will normalize quickly, with heavy logistical disruptions to metals flows through the Black Sea, both from Ukraine itself but also Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (which are important routes for copper and zinc). With materially reduced export volume out of Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, all the base metal markets will face accelerated tightening in the near-term against a backdrop of already multi-year low visible inventories. This will support a further rally in prices across physical premia, flat price and timespreads. Aluminium and nickel stand as the most exposed base metals given Russia’s significant supply role.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 22:00

  • The Last Time The Ruble Crashed Like This, LTCM Collapsed
    The Last Time The Ruble Crashed Like This, LTCM Collapsed

    Update (2130ET): The Ruble has finally started trading in a more liquid way with EURRUB utterly collapsing from 83/EUR to 132.88/EUR at its weakest this evening…

    AND, give the Euro’s weakness against the dollar, that implies a the Ruble is trading at a cross-rate of over 117/USD…(from under 83/USD on Friday)

    The last time the Ruble made such moves was amid the wreckage of the LTCM disaster and also reminds us something we noted a month ago, the return of the March 2020 dollar liquidity chaos (basis trade blowouts).

    *  *  *

    Update (1800ET): As expected – all hell breaks loose in global markets as futures open…

    US equity futures are down 3% at the open – erasing all of Friday’s melt-up…

    The Euro is plunging…

    Bitcoin was already sliding into the open…

    Nasdaq really just catching down to Crypto’s weekend weakness

    Treasuries are bid…

    Which implied 10Y Yields are down around 10bps…

    Gold is also soaring…

    As is palladium, and crude oil prices are shooting back up to last week’s highs…

    So is tomorrow ‘Lehman‘ or ‘1987‘?

    *  *  *

    As we detailed earlier, a great deal has changed for Russia (and Ukraine) since the close on Friday and traders are bracing for chaotic movers in commodity, bond, and FX markets.

    Amid ATMs drying up, Central and Commercial bank sanctions (as well as personal sanctions), and talk of SWIFT-constraints; combined with significant credit ratings downgrades, capital flow from Russian assets could accelerate fast as we suspect most traders will live by the ‘Margin Call’ maxim of “be first, be smarter, or cheat” and sell-first before asking questions (despite some potential silver lining from talk of Ukraine being willing to talk).

    As Bloomberg reports, sanctioning Russia’s central bank is likely to have a dramatic effect on the country’s economy and its banking system, Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist for the Institute of International Finance, said before the latest round of penalties was announced.

    “This would likely lead to massive bank runs and dollarization, with a sharp sell-off, drain on reserves — and, possibly, a full-on collapse of Russia’s financial system.”

    S&P Global cut Russia’s credit rating one notch to BB+ (and Moody’s said it was reviewing for a potential downgrade, which could take Russian debt into junk). Additionally Ukraine was also downgraded to CCC from B.

    The economic impact of the various sanctions are significant…

    There may be less turbulence there since bond prices in both nations have already utterly collapsed…

    As we noted earlier, there are indications that the ruble could fall sharply when trading opens.

    Exchange rates being offered by lenders (retail) are already varying widely on Sunday, from 98.08 rubles per dollar at Alfa Bank to 99.49 at Sberbank PJSC, 105 at VTB Group and 115 at Otkritie Bank in Moscow.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Let’s just hope this is an outlier…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Those are all dramatically worse than the 83/USD close on Friday…

    “Safe havens will likely remain bid in the current environment,” Geoffrey Yu, senior strategist for EMEA Markets at BNY Mellon.

    “In currencies, we note that last week the yen and Swiss franc did not materially outperform, so we would just focus on dollar demand for the time being.”

    Commodities are also heading for a manic start to the week as investors scramble to assess how the West’s latest sanctions on Russia will affect flows of energy, metals and crops.

    The gas market will become “even rockier” as while Russia is unlikely to choke off supplies to Europe for a prolonged period, it’s something that can’t be ruled out — especially if sanctions are ratcheted up. 

    Additionally, prices of grains and cooking oils have taken another powerful leap upward following the invasion of Ukraine, a country that’s been labeled the breadbasket of Europe. Russia is also a top supplier of wheat and sunflower oil.

    Investors will be waiting to see how the latest sanctions affect trade in metals like aluminum, nickel and palladium where Russia is a major producer. Just as in energy, the U.S. seemed unwilling for now to directly disrupt Russian supplies. That could be a lesson learned from 2018, when curbs on Russia’s top aluminum producer sparked months of market chaos.

    It is also worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion, investors rushed to bullion in a flight from geopolitical tumult and economic risks. The precious metal hit a 17-month high before retreating as the first batch of Western sanctions on Russia were viewed as underwhelming. As Bloomberg notes, this might make gold a good early gauge on Monday of how markets see the latest measures. 

    Finally, before US futures open, traders should consider if the ‘relief rally’ – driven by hedge unwinds on the basis that Biden didn’t pull the SWIFT trigger – may be moot since Europe seems hell-bent on some form of SWIFT-restriction for Russia, and the knock-on effects of that liquidity-suck are hard to fathom.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 21:35

  • Greenwald: War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, & Reckless
    Greenwald: War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, & Reckless

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

    In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

    WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 1: (L-R) Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice-chair of the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) listen during a committee meeting on Capitol Hill on December 1, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Less than a week into this war, that can no longer be said. One of the media’s most beloved members of Congress, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), on Friday explicitly and emphatically urged that the U.S. military be deployed to Ukraine to establish a “no-fly zone” — i.e., American soldiers would order Russia not to enter Ukrainian airspace and would directly attack any Russian jets or other military units which disobeyed. That would, by definition and design, immediately ensure that the two countries with by far the planet’s largest nuclear stockpiles would be fighting one another, all over Ukraine.

    Kinzinger’s fantasy that Russia would instantly obey U.S. orders due to rational calculations is directly at odds with all the prevailing narratives about Putin having now become an irrational madman who has taken leave of his senses — not just metaphorically but medically — and is prepared to risk everything for conquest and legacy. This was not the first time such a deranged proposal has been raised; days before Kinzinger unveiled his plan, a reporter asked Pentagon spokesman John Kirby why Biden has thus far refused this confrontational posture. The Brookings Institution’s Ben Wittes on Sunday demanded: “Regime change: Russia.” The President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, celebrated that “now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.”

    Having the U.S. risk global nuclear annihilation over Ukraine is an indescribably insane view, as one realizes upon a few seconds of sober reflection. We had a reminder of that Sunday morning when “Putin ordered his nuclear forces on high alert Sunday, reminding the world he has the power to use weapons of mass destruction, after complaining about the West’s response to his invasion of Ukraine” — but it is completely unsurprising that it is already being suggested.

    There is a reason I devoted the first fifteen minutes of my live video broadcast on Thursday about Ukraine not to the history that led us here and the substance of the conflict (I discussed that in the second half), but instead to the climate that arises whenever a new war erupts, instantly creating propaganda-driven, dissent-free consensus. There is no propaganda as potent or powerful as war propaganda. It seems that one must have lived through it at least once, as an engaged adult, to understand how it functions, how it manipulates and distorts, and how one can resist being consumed by it.

    As I examined in the first part of that video discussion, war propaganda stimulates the most powerful aspects of our psyche, our subconscious, our instinctive drives. It causes us, by design, to abandon reason. It provokes a surge in tribalism, jingoism, moral righteousness and emotionalism: all powerful drives embedded through millennia of evolution. The more unity that emerges in support of an overarching moral narrative, the more difficult it becomes for anyone to critically evaluate it. The more closed the propaganda system is — either because any dissent from it is excluded by brute censorship or so effectively demonized through accusations of treason and disloyalty — the more difficult it is for anyone, all of us, even to recognize one is in the middle of it.

    When critical faculties are deliberately turned off based on a belief that absolute moral certainty has been attained, the parts of our brain armed with the capacity of reason are disabled. That is why the leading anti-Russia hawks such as former Obama Ambassador Michael McFaul and others are demanding that no “Putin propagandists” (meaning anyone who diverges from his views of the conflict) even be permitted a platform, and why many are angry that Facebook has not gone far enough by banning many Russian media outlets from advertising or being monetized. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), using the now-standard tactic of government officials dictating to social media companies which content they should and should not allow, announced on Saturday: “I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda.” Suppressing any divergent views or at least conditioning the population to ignore them as treasonous is how propagandistic systems remain strong.

    It is genuinely hard to overstate how overwhelming the unity and consensus in U.S. political and media circles is. It is as close to a unanimous and dissent-free discourse as anything in memory, certainly since the days following 9/11. Marco Rubio sounds exactly like Bernie Sanders, and Lindsay Graham has no even minimal divergence from Nancy Pelosi. Every word broadcast on CNN or printed in The New York Times about the conflict perfectly aligns with the CIA and Pentagon’s messaging. And U.S. public opinion has consequently undergone a radical and rapid change; while recent polling had shown large majorities of Americans opposed to any major U.S. role in Ukraine, a new Gallup poll released on Friday found that “52% of Americans see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests” with almost no partisan division (56% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats), while “85% of Americans now view [Russia] unfavorably while 15% have a positive opinion of it.”

    The purpose of these points, and indeed of this article, is not to persuade anyone that they have formed moral, geopolitical and strategic views about Russia and Ukraine that are inaccurate. It is, instead, to highlight what a radically closed and homogenized information system most Americans are consuming. No matter how convinced one is of the righteousness of one’s views on any topic, there should still be a wariness about how easily that righteousness can be exploited to ensure that no dissent is considered or even heard, an awareness of how often such overwhelming societal consensus is manipulated to lead one to believe untrue claims and embrace horribly misguided responses.

    To believe that this is a conflict of pure Good versus pure Evil, that Putin bears all blame for the conflict and the U.S., the West, and Ukraine bear none, and that the only way to understand this conflict is through the prism of war criminality and aggression only takes one so far. Such beliefs have limited utility in deciding optimal U.S. behavior and sorting truth from fiction even if they are entirely correct — just as the belief that 9/11 was a moral atrocity and Saddam (or Gaddafi or Assad) was a barbaric tyrant only took one so far. Even with those moral convictions firmly in place, there are still a wide range of vital geopolitical and factual questions that must be considered and freely debated, including:

    1. The severe dangers of unintended escalation with greater U.S. involvement and confrontation toward Russia;

    2. The mammoth instability and risks that would be created by collapsing the Russian economy and/or forcing Putin from power, leaving the world’s largest or second-largest nuclear stockpile to a very uncertain fate;

    3. The ongoing validity of Obama’s long-standing view of Ukraine (echoed by Trump), which persisted even after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum, that Ukraine is of vital interest only to Russia and not the U.S., and the U.S. should never risk war with Russia over it;

    4. The bizarre way in which it has become completely taboo and laughable to suggest that NATO expansion to the Russian border and threats to offer Ukraine membership is deeply and genuinely threatening not just to Putin but all Russians, even though that warning has emanated for years from top U.S. officials such as Biden’s current CIA Director William Burns as well as scholars across the political spectrum, including the right-wing realist John Mearsheimer to the leftist Noam Chomsky.

    5. The clearly valid questions regarding the actual U.S intentions concerning Ukraine: i.e., that a noble, selfless and benevolent American desire to protect a fledgling democracy against a despotic aggressor may not be the predominant goal. Perhaps it is instead to revitalize support for American imperialism and intervention, as well as faith in and gratitude for the U.S. security and military state (the Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer suggested this week that this is the principal outcome in the West of the current conflict). Or the goal is the elevation of Russia as a vital and grave threat to the U.S. (the above polling data suggests this is already happening) that will feed weapons purchases and defense and intelligence budgets for years to come. Or one might see a desire to harm Russia as vengeance for the perception that Putin helped defeat Hillary Clinton and elected Donald Trump (that the U.S. is using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” was explicitly stated by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

      Or perhaps the goal is not to “save and protect” Ukraine at all, but to sacrifice it by turning it into a new Afghanistan, where the U.S. arms a Ukrainian insurgency to ensure that Russia remains stuck in Ukraine fighting and destroying it for years (this scenario was very compellingly laid out in one of the best analyses of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, by Niccolo Soldo, which I cannot recommend highly enough).

      Jeff Rogg, historian of U.S. intelligence and an assistant professor in the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at the Citadel, wrote in The LA Times that the CIA has already been training, funding and arming a Ukrainian insurgency, speculating that the model may be the CIA’s backing of the Mujahideen insurgency in Afghanistan that morphed into Al Qaeda, with the goal being “to weaken Russia over the course of a long insurgency that will undoubtedly cost as many Ukrainian lives as Russian lives, if not more.”

    Again, no matter how certain one is about their moral conclusions about this war, these are urgent questions that are not resolved or even necessarily informed by the moral and emotional investment in a particular narrative. Yet when one is trapped inside a system of a complete consensus upheld by a ceaseless wave of reinforcing propaganda, and when any questioning or dissent at all is tantamount to treason or “siding with the enemy,” there is no space for such discussions to occur, especially within our minds. When one is coerced — through emotional tactics and societal inventive — to adhere only to one script, nothing that is outside of that script can be entertained. And that is all by design.

    Besides 9/11 and the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Americans have been subjected to numerous spates of war propaganda, including in 2011 when then-President Obama finally agreed to order the U.S. to participate in a France/UK-led NATO regime change operation in Libya, as well as throughout the Obama and early Trump years when the CIA was fighting a clandestine and ultimately failed regime change war in Syria, on the same side as Al-Qaeda, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. In both instances, government/media disinformation and emotional manipulation were pervasive, as it is in every war. But those episodes were not even in the same universe of intensity and ubiquity as what is happening now and what happened after 9/11 — and that matters a great deal for understanding why so many are vulnerable to the machinations of war propaganda without even realizing they are affected by it.

    One realization I had for the first time during Russiagate was that history may endlessly repeat itself, but those who have not lived through any such history or paid attention to it previously will not know about it and thus remain most susceptible to revisionism or other tactics of deceit. When Russiagate was first elevated as a major 2016 campaign issue — through a Clinton campaign commercial filled with dark and sinister music and innuendo masquerading as “questions” about the relationship between Trump and the Kremlin — I had assumed when writing about it for the first time that most Americans, especially those on the left taught to believe that McCarthyism was one of the darkest moments for civil liberties, would instantly understand how aggressively the CIA and FBI disseminate disinformation, how servile corporate media outlets are to those security state agencies, how neocons are always found at the center of such manipulative tactics, and how potent this sort of propaganda is: creating a foreign villain said to be of unparalleled evil or at least evil not seen since Hitler, and then claiming that one’s political adversaries are enthralled or captive to them. We have witnessed countless identical cycles throughout U.S history.

    But I also quickly realized that millions of Americans — either due to age or previous political indifference — began paying attention to politics for the first time in 2016 due to fear of Trump, and thus knew little to nothing about anything that preceded it. Such people had no defenses against the propaganda narrative and deceitful tactics because, for them, it was all new. They had never experienced it before and thus had no concept of who they were applauding and how such official government/media disinformation campaigns are constructed. Each generation is thus easily programmed and exploited by the same propaganda systems, no matter how discredited they were previously.

    Although such episodes are common, one has to travel back to the period of 2001-03, following the 9/11 attack on U.S. soil, and through the invasion of Iraq in order to find an event that competes with the current moment in terms of emotional intensity and lockstep messaging throughout the West. Comparing that historical episode to now is striking, because the narrative themes deployed then are identical to those now; the very same people who led the construction of that narrative and accompanying rhetorical tactics are the ones playing a similar role now; and the reaction that these themes trigger are virtually indistinguishable.

    Many who lived through the enduring trauma and mass rage of 9/11 as an adult need no reminder of what it was like and what it consisted of. But millions of Americans now focused on Ukraine did not live through that. And for many who did, they have, with the passage of two decades, revised or now misremember many of the important details of what took place. It is thus worthwhile to recall the broad strokes of what we were conditioned to believe to see how closely it tracks the consensus framework now.

    Both the 9/11 attack and the invasion of Iraq were cast as clear Manichean battles: one of absolute Good fighting absolute Evil. That framework was largely justified through its companion prism: the subsequent War on Terror and specific wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) represented the forces of freedom and democracy (the U.S. and its allies) defending itself against despotism and mad, primitive barbarism. We were attacked not because of decades of intervention and aggression in their part of the world but because they hated us for our freedom. That was all one needed to know: it was a war between enlightened democrats and psychotic savages.

    As a result no nuance was permitted. How can there be room for nuance or even questioning when such clear moral lines emerge? A binary framework was thus imposed: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,” decreed President George W. Bush in his speech to the Joint Session of Congress on September 20, 2001. Anyone questioning or disputing any part of the narrative or any of the U.S. policies championed in its name stood automatically accused of treason or being on the side of The Terrorists. David Frum, fresh off his job as a White House speechwriter penning Bush’s war speeches, in which Bush proclaimed the U.S. was facing an “Axis of Evil,” published a 2003 article in National Review about right-wing opponents of the invasion of Iraq aptly titled: “Unpatriotic Conservatives.” Go look how cheaply and easily people were accused of being on the side of The Terrorists or traitors for the slightest deviation from the dominant narrative.

    Like all effective propaganda, the consensus assertions about 9/11 and Iraq had a touchstone to the truth. Indeed, some of the fundamental moral claims were true. The civilian-targeting 9/11 attack was a moral atrocity, and the Taliban and Saddam really were barbaric despots (including when the U.S. had previously supported and funded them). But those moral claims only took one so far: specifically, they did not take one very far at all. Many who enthusiastically embraced those moral propositions ended up also embracing numerous falsehoods emanating from the U.S. Government and loyal media outlets, as well as supporting countless responses that were both morally unjustified and strategically unwise. Polls at the start of the Iraq War showed large majorities in favor of and believing outright falsehoods (such as that Saddam helped personally plan the 9/11 attack), while polls years later revealed a “huge majority” views the invasion as a mistake. Similarly, it is now commonplace to hear once-unquestioned policies — from mass NSA spying, to lawless detention, to empowering the CIA to torture, to placing blind faith in claims from intelligence agencies — be declared major mistakes by those who most vocally cheerlead those positions in the early years of the War on Terror.

    In other words, correctly apprehending key moral dimensions to the conflict provided no immunity against being propagandized and misled. If anything, the contrary was true: it was precisely that moral zeal that enabled so many people to get so carried away, to be so vulnerable to having their (often-valid) emotions of rage and moral revulsion misdirected into believing falsehoods and cheering for moral atrocities in the name of vengeance or righteous justice. That moral righteousness crowded out the capacity to reason and think critically and unified huge numbers of Americans into herd behavior and group-think that led them to many conclusions which, two decades later, they recognize as wrong.

    It should not be difficult, even for those who did not live through those events but who can now look back at what happened, to see the overwhelming similarities between then and now. The role of bin Laden and Saddam — as unhinged, mentally unwell, unrepentant mass murderers and despots, the personification of pure evil — is now occupied by Putin. “Putin is evil. Every American watching what’s happening in Ukraine should know that,” instructed Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the author of the virtually identical 9/11 and Iraq morality scripts. Conversely, the U.S. and its allies are the blame-free, morally upright spreaders of freedom, defenders of democracy and faithfully adhering to a rules-based international order.

    This exact framework remains in place; only the parties have changed. Now, anyone questioning this narrative in whole or in part, or disputing any of the factual claims being made by the West, or questioning the wisdom or justice of the role the U.S. is playing, is instantly deemed not “on the side of the terrorists” but “on the side of Russia”: either for corrupt monetary reasons or long-hidden and hard-to-explain ideological sympathy for the Kremlin. “There is no excuse for praising or appeasing Putin,” announced Rep. Cheney, by which — like her father before her and McFaul now — she means anyone deviating in any way from the full panoply of U.S. assertions and responses. Wyoming’s vintage neocon also instantly applied this accusatory treason matrix to former President Trump, arguing that he “aids our enemies” and his “interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America.”

    Everyone watching this week-long mauling of dissenters understood the messaging and incentives: either get on board or stay silent lest you be similarly vilified. And that, in turn, meant there were fewer and fewer people willing to publicly question prevailing narratives, which made it in turn far more difficult for anyone else to separate themselves from unified group-think.

    One instrument of propaganda that did not exist in 2003 but most certainly does now is social media, and it is hard to overstate how much it is exacerbating all of these pathologies of propaganda. The endless flood of morally righteous messaging, the hunting down of and subsequent mass-attacks on heretics, the barrage of pleasing-but-false stories of bravery and treachery, leave one close to helpless to sort truth from fiction, emotionally manipulative fairy tales from critically scrutinized confirmation. It is hardly novel to observe that social media fosters group-think and in-group dynamics more than virtually any other prior innovation, and it is unsurprising that it has intensified all of these processes.

    Another new factor separating the aftermath of 9/11 from the current moment is Russiagate. Starting in mid-2016, the Washington political and media class was obsessed with convincing Americans to view Russia as a grave threat to them and their lives. They created a climate in Washington in which any attempts to forge better relations with the Kremlin or even to open dialogue with Russian diplomats and even just ordinary Russian nationals was depicted as inherently suspect if not criminal. All of that primed American political culture to burst with contempt and rage toward Russia, and once they invaded Ukraine, virtually no effort was needed to direct that long-brewing hostility into an uncontrolled quest for vengeance and destruction.

    That is why it is anything but surprising that incredibly dangerous proposals like the one by Rep. Kizinger for deployment of the U.S. military to Ukraine have emerged so quickly. This orgy in high dungeon of war propaganda, moral righteousness, and a constant flow of disinformation produces a form of collective hysteria and moral panic. In his 1931 novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley perfectly described what happens to humans and our reasoning process when we are subsumed by crowd sentiments and dynamics:

    Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking. Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. They become very ex­citable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. He is a victim of what I have called “herd-poisoning.” Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active, extraverted drug. The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, in­telligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.

    We have seen similar outbreaks many times over the last couple of decades, but nothing produces it more assuredly than war sentiments and the tribal loyalties that accompany them. And nothing exacerbates it like the day-long doom scrolling through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram which so much of the world is currently doing. Social media platforms, by design, enable one to block out all unpleasant information or dissident voices and only feed off content and claims that validate what they wish to believe.

    Kinzinger’s call for a US-imposed no-fly zone is far from the only unhinged assertion or claim spewing forth from the U.S. opinion-shaping class. We are also witnessing a radical increase in familiar authoritarian proposals coming from U.S. politicians. Two other members of Congress who are most beloved by the media, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), suggested that all Russians should be immediately deported from the U.S., including Russian students studying at American universities. The rationale is similar to the one that drove FDR’s notorious World War II internment of all people of Japanese descent — citizens or immigrants — in camps: namely, in times of war, all people who come from the villain or enemy country deserve punishment or should be regarded as suspect. A Washington Post columnist, Henry Olsen, proposed banning all Russia athletes from entering the U.S.: “No Russian NHL, football, or tennis players so long as the war and claims on Ukrainian territory exist.”

    Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), long a vocal advocate of requiring congressional approval for the deployment by the president of military forces to war zones, argued on Friday that Biden’s troop movements to Eastern Europe constitute war decisions that constitutionally necessitate Congressional approval. “President Biden’s unilateral deployment of our Armed Forces to the European theater, where we now know they are in imminent hostilities, triggers the War Powers Act, necessitating that the President report to Congress within 48 hours,” he said. Sen. Lee added: “The Constitution requires that Congress must vote to authorize any use of our Armed Forces in conflict.”

    For this simple and basic invocation of Constitutional principles, Lee was widely vilified as a traitor and Russian agent. “Are you running for Senator of Moscow? Because that’s where you belong,” one Democratic Congressional candidate, the self-declared socialist and leftist Joey Palimeno (D-GA), rhetorically asked. Now-perennial independent candidate Evan McMullin, formerly a CIA operative in Syria, dubbed Lee “Moscow Mike” for having raised this constitutional point, claiming he did so not out of conviction but “to distract from the fact that he traveled to Russia and brazenly appeased Vladimir Putin for his own political gain.”

    Other than calling Lee a paid Russian agent and traitor, the primary response was the invocation of Bush/Cheney’s broad Article II executive power theories to insist that the president has the unfettered right to order troop deployments except to an active war zone — as if the possibility of engaging Russian forces was not a primary motive for these deployments. Indeed, the Pentagon itself said the troop deployments were to ensure the troops “will be ready if called upon to participate in the NATO Response Force” and that “some of those U.S. personnel may also be called upon to participate in any unilateral actions the U.S. may undertake.” Even if one disagrees with Lee’s broad view of the War Powers Act and the need for Congress to approve any decisions by the president that may embroil the country in a dangerous war, that Lee is a Kremlin agent and a traitor to his country merely for advocating a role for Congress in these highly consequential decisions reflects how intolerant and dissent-prohibiting the climate has already become.

    Disinformation and utter hoaxes are now being aggressively spread as well. Both Rep. Kinzinger and Rep. Swalwell ratified and spread the story of the so-called “Ghost of Kyiv,” a Ukrainian fighter pilot said to have single-handedly shot down six Russian planes. Tales and memes commemorating his heroism viralized on social media, ultimately ratified by these members of Congress and other prominent voices. The problem? It is a complete hoax and scam, concocted through a combination of deep fake videos based on images from a popular video game. Yet to date, few who have spread this fraud have retracted it, while censorship-happy Big Tech corporations have permitted most of these fraudulent posts to remain without a disinformation label on it. We are absolutely at the point — even as demands escalate for systematic censorship by Big Tech of any so-called “pro-Russian” voices — where disinformation and fake news are considered noble provided they advance a pro-Ukrainian narrative.

    Western media outlets have also fully embraced their role as war propagandists. They affirm any story provided it advances pro-Ukrainian propaganda without having the slightest idea whether it is true. A charming and inspiring story about a small group of Ukrainian soldiers guarding an installation in a Black Sea island went wildly viral on Saturday and ultimately was affirmed as truth by multiple major Western news outlets. A Russian warship demanded they surrender and, instead, they responded by replying: “fuck you, Russian warship,” their heroic last words before dying while fighting. Ukraine said “it will posthumously honour a group of Ukrainian border guards who were killed defending a tiny island in the Black Sea during a multi-pronged Russian invasion.” Yet there is no evidence at all that they died; the Russian government claims they surrendered, and the Ukrainian military subsequently acknowledged the same possibility.

    Obviously, neither the Russian nor Ukrainian versions should be accepted as true without evidence, but the original, pleasing Ukrainian version should not either. The same is true of:

    But we are way past the point where anyone cares about what is or is not factually true, including corporate outlets. Any war propaganda — videos, photos, unverified social media posts — that is designed to tug on Western heartstrings for Ukrainians or appear to cast them as brave and noble resistance fighters, or Russians as barbaric but failing mass murderers gets mindlessly spread all over without the slightest concern for whether it is true. To be on social media or to read coverage from Western news outlets is to place yourself into a relentless vortex or single-minded, dissent-free war propaganda. Indeed, some of the above-referenced stories may turn out to be true, but spreading them before there is any evidence of them is beyond reckless, especially for media outlets whose role is supposed to be the opposite of propagandists.

    None of this means the views you may have formed about the war in Ukraine are right or wrong. It is of course possible that the Western consensus is the overwhelmingly accurate one and that the moral framework that has been embraced is the correct prism for understanding this conflict. All sides in war wield propaganda, and that certainly includes the Russians and their allies as well. This article is not intended to urge the adoption of one viewpoint or the other.

    It is, instead, intended to urge the recognition of what the effects of being immersed in one-sided, intense and highly emotionalized war propaganda are — effects on your thinking, your reasoning, your willingness to endorse claims or support policies, your comfort with having dissent either banished or inherently legitimized. Precisely because this propaganda has been cultivated over centuries to so powerfully and adeptly manipulate our most visceral reactions, it is something to be resisted even if — perhaps especially if — it is coming from the side or viewpoint you support.

    To support the independent journalism we are doing here, please subscribe, obtain a gift subscription for others and/or share the article

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 21:30

  • FEMA: In Case Of Nuclear Explosion, Maintain Social Distancing And Wear A Mask
    FEMA: In Case Of Nuclear Explosion, Maintain Social Distancing And Wear A Mask

    The US government has a long history of fun and interesting advice when it comes to imminent death…

    Now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has issued updated guidance to its “Nuclear Explosion” readiness public awareness website, which includes tips to avoid Covid!

    “A nuclear explosion may occur with or without a few minutes warning,” reads the page, which was updated on Friday. “Fallout is most dangerous in the first few hours after the detonation when it is giving off the highest levels of radiation. It takes time for fallout to arrive back to ground level, often more than 15 minutes for areas outside of the immediate blast damage zones.

    FEMA recommends the following steps to prevent ‘significant radiation exposure,’ which include “Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household,” and “If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not part of your household.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    What’s more, “If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 9-1-1 and let the operator know if you have, or think you might have, Covid-19. If you can, put on a mask before help arrives.”

    “Many people already feel fear and anxiety about the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). The threat of nuclear explosion can add additional stress.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Hazards related to nuclear explosions include:

    • Bright FLASH can cause temporary blindness for less than a minute.
    • BLAST WAVE can cause death, injury, and damage to structures several miles out from the blast.
    • RADIATION can damage cells of the body. Large exposures can cause radiation sickness.
    • FIRE AND HEAT can cause death, burn injuries, and damage to structures several miles out.
    • ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) can damage electrical power equipment and electronics several miles out from the detonation and cause temporary disruptions further out.
    • FALLOUT is radioactive, visible dirt and debris raining down from several miles up that can cause sickness to those who are outside.

    FEMA also says you have 10 minutes after the shock wave passes to find the “nearest, best shelter location” if you’re outdoors when a nuke goes off, as radiation levels are the highest immediately after the fallout arrives.

    But whatever you do, remember to wear your mask and practice social distancing while you hopefully avoid a painful cancerous death.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 21:00

  • Bloomberg Reporter: "We Seem To Be Tailspinning Into Chaos"
    Bloomberg Reporter: “We Seem To Be Tailspinning Into Chaos”

    Some scary observations from Bloomberg senior markets reporter Nikos Chrysoloras, as tweeted late on Sunday.

    1) BP decided to take a hit of as much as $25 billion, just to leave Russia immediately

    2) Russia’s bond market is collapsing

    3) Russians lined up at cash machines around the country to withdraw foreign currency

    4) Unless there’s a surprise de-escalation, Monday may turn out to be a dramatic day for the ruble, Russian stocks, and European markets

    5) The European Union closed its airspace to Russia. The blockade applies to any plane owned, chartered or otherwise controlled by a Russian person. Unprecedented

    6) The decision to exclude Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system could result in missed payments and giant overdrafts within the international banking system

    7) The EU is going after oligarchs. Essentially now the entire political and economic elite of the country is sanctioned 

    8) The U.S. Embassy in Russia said citizens in the country should consider departing *immediately* – The EU approved $500 million in lethal military aid to be used against Russia’s invading forces in 🇺🇦 and banned 🇷🇺 state media – also unprecedented

    9) The EU also banned all transactions with the Russian central bank, severely curbing its ability to use foreign currency reserves to cushion the devastating blow from the sanctions

    10) The situation on the front is unclear, but it seems Ukrainian facilities containing nuclear waste suffered damage

    11) Putin says he put his nuclear forces on “high alert“. Unclear what this means and what are his intentions. On the tactical side, things are definitely not going as well as he had hoped

    12) Could planned talks lead to some sort of resolution? Unclear what could a mutually acceptable solution be

    13) Meanwhile, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced plans for a massive boost in defense spending in the latest historic policy shift in Germany triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Or put another way…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 20:30

  • Draconian COVID Restrictions Spark Exodus From Hong Kong
    Draconian COVID Restrictions Spark Exodus From Hong Kong

    As the omicron wave of the COVID pandemic continues to wane in the US (recently convincing the CDC to finally drop its federal masking guidance), the situation in Hong Kong couldn’t be more different. As case numbers continue to soar despite the government’s suddenly draconian measures to suppress spread, thousands of Hong Kongers have decided to flee, escaping both the crushing COVID restrictions, and the city-state’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies now that Beijing has reasserted political control.

    Hong Kong’s response to the virus has gotten increasingly heavy-handed as authorities demand that it fall in line with Beijing’s “COVID zero” policy, which requires mass testing and liberal use of mass quarantines to isolate areas experiencing outbreaks. For much of the pandemic, Hong Kong’s decision to close itself off from international travelers appeared to be enough to keep COVID at bay.

    But omicron punctured its defenses, and now thousands of sick individuals are being shipped off to quarantine “camps”.

    These and other strict measures risk transforming Hong Kong’s trickle of emigres into a flood.

    WSJ caught up with one individual,  a western expat living in Hong Kong named Charles Murton. Murton first arrived in the city during his teenage years, but is now preparing to flee with his family, perhaps to Singapore, a destination that beckons for many Hong Kongers since the government there has continued to encoourage migration from Hong Kong, despite harboring increasing levels of COVID infection itself.

    Murton said the city’s decision to shutter schools next month as it seeks to test all 7.4M of its reisdents for COVID was the last straw.

    “The virus is something that you’ve got to live with, but that doesn’t seem to be the thought process here,” the 41-year-old logistics executive told WSJ.

    Making matters worse, the latest clampdown in Hong Kong contrasts sharply with decisions to deescalate restrictions by the US and Europe, making the city’s stringent restrictions seem increasingly painful by comparison.

    The latest data confirm the exodus. Immigration data cited by WSJ shows nearly 69K more Hong Kong residents have left the city than arrived so far since the start of 2022. Almost 80% of those departing have left since the start of February, a massive increase by all accounts. The data on population outflows from Hong Kong dates back to January 2020.

    But other economic factors attest to the sudden will to flee: there have been hastily canceled doctors appointments, children taking online classes while on the airport shuttle and a rush to find tenants to take over apartment leases.

    As a reminder, Hong Kong’s restrictions include the following: practically all nonresidents are barred from entering the city, and returning travelers must pay out of pocket for weekslong hotel quarantines no matter their test results or vaccination status. Hong Kong has also banned gatherings of more than two people and halted all indoor dining after 1800 local time. Gyms have been shut, bars, hair salons and even campsites have been forced to close. Beginning on Thursday,  the unvaccinated can no longer shop in supermarkets and malls, essentially making a vaccine a prerequisite for continuing to survive in the city.

    Despite all of this, cases in Hong Kong have continued to climb at a shocking rate: the city has recorded more than 126K confirmed cases between Dec. 31 and Saturday, about 10x the number of infections seen in 2020 and 2021 combined.

    On Sunday, the city reported a record 26.026K new COVID infections and 83 deaths, a new daily record for cases.

    With the National Party Congress in Beijing set for later in the year, President Xi has proclaimed that the defeat of the coronavirus is now Hong Kong’s “overriding mission”.

    But at the end of the day, it’s regular Hong Kongers, not CCP bureaucrats in Beijing, who will shoulder the burden of the crackdown.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 20:00

  • EU Provides $500 Million To Buy Arms For Ukraine; Turkey Readies Closure Of Straits To Russian Navy
    EU Provides $500 Million To Buy Arms For Ukraine; Turkey Readies Closure Of Straits To Russian Navy

    Update (1750ET): There’s now an EU-wide consensus on supplying Ukraine with arms amid reports that large columns of ground and armored forces are moving closer to Kiev, and as fighting rages across other parts of Ukraine. “European Union member states on Sunday agreed to unblock 450 millions euros ($500 million) for members states to buy arms for Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said,” the AFP reports.

    “The measure is part of a wide-ranging package of support and sanctions agreed by the 27 EU states. Borrell said they also formally approved a move to ban any transactions with the Russian Central Bank.” It comes as unconfirmed reports suggest Putin may be frustrated at the slower than expected progress of the Russian forces. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Also on Sunday for the first time Turkey signaled it is ready to block Russian naval access to the Black Sea…

    “Turkey’s foreign minister said Sunday that the situation in Ukraine had become a war, a legal distinction that paves the way for Ankara to potentially ban Russian warships from entering the Black Sea through a strategic chokepoint,” The Wall Street Journal reports. The terms of the 1936 Montreux Convention is now expected to be triggered. Speaking to CNN Turk Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said:

    “We came to the conclusion that the situation in Ukraine has transformed into a war,” and this means “We will implement all articles of Montreux transparently.”

    Last Thursday – which was the first day of the all-out Russian invasion, Ukraine’s government urged Turkey to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits for all Russian warship passage.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, things may be covertly ratcheting up in terms of Western support for a Ukrainian insurgency against the Russian advance and presence in Ukraine.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Though unconfirmed, the latest statements out of the Ukrainian presidential official include the following:

    • 11 Russian troop transport ships are inbound to Odessa
    • Each ship containing one battalion each
    • landing to be attempted

    * * *

    Update (1517ET): The State Department is now warning all US nationals inside Russia to consider leaving the country immediately as more and more European airspace around Russia is being closed by the orders of Western allied governments as part of severe sanctions measures aimed at isolating Russia and its economy.

    “US citizens should consider departing Russia immediately,” a US Embassy-Moscow statement said.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Likely there are tens of thousands of US citizens or dual nationals in Russia. 

    Meanwhile both the White House and Pentagon have called Putin putting his nuclear forces posture on “high alert” an “unnecessary” and “escalatory” major step…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And the White House statement on Sunday included the following: 

    White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to put Russia’s deterrence forces, which includes nuclear arms, on high alert are part of a wider pattern of unprovoked escalation and “manufactured threats” from the Kremlin.

    “This is really a pattern that we’ve seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict, which is manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression — and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism,” Psaki told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”

    Additionally, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday that Putin’s move was “yet another escalatory and totally unnecessary step,” a senior administration official said Sunday.

    Meanwhile, even Switzerland is now reportedly looking to jump on the EU sanctions bandwagon as the economic noose tightens…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update (1404ET): The mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko has declared that the capital city is now fully surrounded and under siege, preventing the possibility of civilians being evacuated.

    When asked by press about emergency evacuation efforts, Mayor Klitschko responded: “We can’t do that, because all ways are blocked,” according to the AP. “Right now we are encircled.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile there are new alarming reports suggesting sites in Ukraine storing radioactive waste are witnessing heavy fighting, suggesting the potential for large-scale contamination.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to the latest breaking reports:

    • EU MINISTERS APPROVE SENDING JOINT MILITARY AID TO UKRAINE
    • SATELLITE FIRM MAXAR SAYS LATEST IMAGES SHOW LARGE DEPLOYMENT OF RUSSIAN GROUND TROOPS MOVING IN DIRECTION OF KYIV, APPROXIMATELY 40 MILES/64 KM AWAY
    • SWISS PRESIDENT CASSIS TELLS TELEVISION IT “VERY PROBABLE” THAT SWITZERLAND WILL FOLLOW EUROPEAN UNION ON MONDAY IN SANCTIONING RUSSIA AND FREEZING ASSETS
    • MAXAR SAYS RUSSIAN CONVOY EXTENDS MORE THAN 3.25 MILES (5 KM) AND CONTAINS FUEL, TANKS
    • FEDEX SAYS SERVICES IN AND OUT OF RUSSIA ARE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE -WEBSITE
    • UPS SAYS INTERNATIONAL SHIPMENTS TO RUSSIA, UKRAINE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

    * * *

    Update (1200ET): Despite the relatively positive news that Ukraine has agreed to talks with Russia, the European Union has issued a notable escalation in its ‘sanctions’ against Russia.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday that the 27-nation bloc will close its airspace to Russian airlines, fund supplies of weapons to Ukraine and ban some pro-Kremlin media outlets in response to Russia’s invasion.

    “For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack.”

    Von der Leyen added that “we are shutting down the EU airspace for Russians. We are proposing a prohibition on all Russian-owned, Russian registered or Russian-controlled aircraft. These aircraft will no more be able to land in, take off or overfly the territory of the EU.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    She said also the EU will ban “the Kremlin’s media machine. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union.”

    “We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

    Hungary – for now – has said that it won’t supply arms to Ukraine.

    *  *  *

    As we detailed earlier, in a hopeful sign of de-escalation, Ukrainian officials said they will meet Russian counterparts at the Belarus border, shortly after Vladimir Putin said he is putting Russia’s nuclear forces on higher alert.

    In a Facebook post, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine has agreed to talks with Russia on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border.

    “We have agreed that the Ukrainian delegation will meet with Russian without prior conditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, in the area of the Pripyat River,” Zelenskiy said. A delegation has already left Kyiv, Fedir Venislavskyi, a member of Zelenskiy’s party, said in televised comments.

    The Ukraine foreign minister said that he will go to listen to what Russia has to say and that he will not surrender territory.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The confirmation came after Russia earlier sent a negotiation team to the southeastern Belarusian city of Gomel. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the “Russian delegation is ready for talks, and we are now waiting for the Ukrainians” in the Belarusian city of Homel, per AP.

    In response, Zelensky said in a video address that he’s open to talks, but not in Belarus which he said was not neutral territory.

    “If there had been no aggressive action from your territory, we could talk in Minsk … other cities can be used as the venue for talks,” Zelensky said. “We want peace, we want to meet, we want an end to the war,” he added.

    “Warsaw, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Baku — we proposed all that to the Russian side. Any other city would work for us, too, in a country from whose territory rockets are not being fired.”

    While an encouraging development, this won’t be the first time that the two nations have exchanged proposals for a potential ceasefire, only to see the plans collapse.

    The news helped push the weekend IG spread market for the “weekend Dow” higher by about 150 points although it remains well in the red from Friday’s close.

    Meanwhile, in the latest battlefield developments, overnight Russian forces on Sunday attacked Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city. Much of Europe has closed its airspace to Russia, and offers of military assistance continue to flow in.

    Also overnight, Western nations agreed to exclude some Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system, used for trillions of dollars worth of transactions between banks around the world, further isolating Russia’s economy and financial system.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 19:50

  • Russian Propaganda Playbook Extends To 'Dirty Bomb' Threats
    Russian Propaganda Playbook Extends To ‘Dirty Bomb’ Threats

    While we earlier highlighted an article by The Conservative Treehouse exposing Western propaganda in this fourth-generation warfare between Russia and the rest of the world; they are not the only side ‘playing this game’. As Claudia Rosett reports at PJMedia.com, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been giving the world a crash course in Kremlin techniques of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and misdirection…

    *  *  *

    AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

    Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been giving the world a crash course in Kremlin techniques of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and misdirection — for anyone not already well aware. We have heard plenty about this in recent weeks, not least from the Biden administration, which has been declassifying and releasing to the press information on what they’ve called Russia’s playbook.

    A big feature of this playbook is projection: in this case the process of displacing onto someone or something else what Russia itself is actually planning, or doing. We saw this in spades during Putin’s runup to the invasion of Ukraine, as he mustered his strike force along Ukraine’s land borders and coastline. Russia accused Ukraine and NATO of threatening its security, broadcasting a narrative that at the extreme suggested Russia was in danger of an invasion from Ukraine, or NATO. The opposite was true: It was Russia threatening and preparing to invade Ukraine, threatening NATO, and staging provocations.

    Russia’s narrative was patently ridiculous, but for Putin such things have their uses — for domestic propaganda, for muddying the waters, for distracting the debate from the realities, and for laying the groundwork for Russia’s staged provocations. In this case, Russia stirs up trouble and blames it on Ukraine, as Russia has been doing for years in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

    In that vein, there’s an item that caught my attention last Friday, near the end of a United Nations Security Council emergency meeting on Ukraine. I mention it here not because I have any further information on this score. I stress that this is solely a heads up, in light of Russia’s record of projection and staged provocations.

    The setting was the UN Security Council chamber, Friday evening, Feb. 25 — two days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Russia has the rotating presidency of the Security Council for the month of February, and Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, was presiding. He described Russia’s invasion as a justified humanitarian intervention, saying Russia was not bombing cities or targeting civilians.

    Ukraine does not currently hold one of the 10 rotating seats on the council, but Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN,  Sergiy Kyslytsya, was present to make a statement. Kyslytsya tore into Russia and Nebenzia, telling Russia’s ambassador “Your words have less value than the hole in a New York pretzel,” deploring Russia’s attack on Ukraine, citing some of the horrors, and mentioning among other things a concern about Russia’s capture of the Chernobyl nuclear plant — site of the huge nuclear accident under the USSR in 1986, and still a dangerous repository of radioactive material.

    Russia’s ambassador, Nebenzia, then dropped into his closing remarks that Russian paratroopers had taken Chernobyl because Russia “does not want Ukraine to generate a dirty bomb.”

    In view of Russia’s record of provocations and projection, that left me wondering if we should all be alert to what I hope would be an unthinkable Russian provocation. Russia right now is looking dreadful on the world stage; a brutal power ruled by a dictator with an army now killing people in a neighboring country, in service of his messianic claims. Ukraine, by contrast, is making a heroic defense. The Kremlin must be looking for ways to try to flip that picture.

    Which leads me to a dread question. Is it possible that Russia might have its own dirty bomb, with plans to use it somewhere and blame it on Ukrainians?

    I hope not. I stress that I have no further information on this score, except the patterns of Russia’s playbook, and the implication by Russia’s ambassador that we should be worried about a dirty bomb. This is not an accusation, certainly not some sensational revelation. But it is worth tucking away, as one more thing to keep in mind.

    Here’s the relevant excerpt from the UN wrapup of the meeting (the boldface is mine):

    Mr. NEBENZIA (Russian Federation), Council President for February, re-taking the floor in his national capacity, while noting that there is much on which to comment following the statement by the representative of Ukraine, said he would “leave the boorishness” on the latter’s conscience.  He also pointed out that units of a Russian paratrooper division took control of the area surrounding the Chernobyl power plant on 24 February.  The Russian Federation “does not want Ukraine to generate a dirty bomb”, he said, and personnel are monitoring the radioactive situation.  He went on to recall that the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that the level of radiation at the power plant is low and does not pose a threat to the population.

    *  *  *

    Claudia Rosett is widely recognized as a ground-breaking reporter on corruption at the United Nations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 19:30

  • Barr Trashes Trump, Says GOP Needs To Move On
    Barr Trashes Trump, Says GOP Needs To Move On

    Former Attorney General William Barr says that Donald Trump is unfit for office, and that the GOP should move on from the former President (the same president who criticized German reliance on Russian energy while a sanctioned Putin didn’t lift a finger against Ukraine for four years, but we digress).

    According to a new book, Barr says, Trump has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” and that Republicans should instead focus on rising leaders in the party (DeSantis?) who share Trump’s agenda but not his “erratic personal behavior.”

    As the Wall Street Journal notes;

    The release of the former attorney general’s 600-page book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” is coming as Mr. Trump, who remains the GOP’s dominant figure, contemplates another presidential run. Mr. Barr writes that he was convinced that Mr. Trump could have won re-election in 2020 if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”

    “The election was not ‘stolen,” writes Barr, who says “Trump lost it.”

    Barr’s barbs are unsurprising given the acrimonious relationship between he and Trump – who just last year called his former AG a “disappointment in every sense of the word.”

    Barr returned to his Bush-era role as head the DOJ in February 2019 after Trump fired former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), where critics say he sheltered the former president during the DOJ’s investigations into Russian interference by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

    Prior to the Mueller report, Barr issued his own summary which essentially chalked it up to a nothingburger – enraging Democrats. Barr also presided over the decision to drop the federal case against Trump’s former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn – a move Barr maintains was done to correct what he saw as prosecutorial overreach.

    “Predictably our motion to dismiss the charges led to an election-year media onslaught, flogging the old theme that I was doing this as a favor to Trump,” writes Barr. “But I concluded the handling of the Flynn matter by the FBI had been an abuse of power that no responsible AG could let stand.”

    Barr also details a Dec. 1, 2020 meeting in the Oval Office in which he says Trump became enraged after he said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory, contradicting Trump’s claims.

    “This is killing me—killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me,” Trump reportedly shouted, before saying “He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’”

    Barr says he reminded Trump that he sacrificed a certain level of personal credibility to “help you when I thought you were being wronged,” but that the DOJ (which spent several years plotting against or investigating Trump) simply couldn’t find evidence of election fraud.

    Trump also slammed Barr for appointing a ‘slow’ federal prosecutor to look into the origins of the Russia probe, and for not firing former FBI Director James Comey after he was rebuked by the Inspector General’s office for leaking memos to the press.

    The former AG says that after the election, Trump “lost his grip” and that his constant claims of voter fraud underpinned the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

    “The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,” wrote Barr.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 18:55

  • Morgan Stanley Warns "Tactical Rally" In Stocks Ending In March As "Ice" Narrative Kicks In
    Morgan Stanley Warns “Tactical Rally” In Stocks Ending In March As “Ice” Narrative Kicks In

    By Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley Chief US equity strategist

    Investing capital can be an exhilarating and humiliating experience. Anyone who has chosen this as a career has experienced both, sometimes in the same week, like the one just past. While the investment landscape is always filled with uncertainties, today’s backdrop seems dotted with more than normal. When faced with such an environment, it’s often helpful to lay out the big factors affecting asset prices and then try to determine what you think you know or can analyze, and what remains hard to determine so it can be properly handicapped – i.e., priced.

    For this exercise one can use the Johari window, a tool originally developed by psychologists to help people better understand how they are perceived by others relative to how they perceive themselves. If done openly, it can facilitate better interactions, and communication in particular becomes more effective. This tool was later used by military strategists and became famous after former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s famous speech about known unknowns.

    Adapting the known/unknown framework may be useful for investing in the current environment. Last September, we introduced our ‘fire and ice’ narrative to address some risks we felt were either known unknowns or unknown knowns at the time. The fire narrative was meant to highlight that inflation was unlikely to be transitory and the Fed would have to respond to it in a way that markets were not pricing. The tipoff for us was the Jackson Hole summit in August, which was then confirmed at the September FOMC. From our perspective, this was a known unknown – something we thought we knew but the consensus did not – in contrast to an unknown known, when the consensus knows something and we fail to see it. An example of this last fall was the consensus view that still strong liquidity would offset the Fed pivot. That turned out to be true, at least for the S&P 500, and therefore we were wrong.

    At this stage, we would argue the ‘fire’ (higher inflation = Fed tightening) is now a known known even if it’s not fully priced, in our view. While we do think it may be more fully priced into the bond market, we believe when the Fed actually tightens it will weigh further on equity multiples. In S&P 500 terms that’s still 7% lower for forward P/Es (18x versus the current 19.3x). However, it’s fair to say we’ve made a lot of progress from 21-22x back in mid-November when we published our 2022 outlook.

    At the end of January, we turned our attention to the next known unknown – our belief that earnings growth would decelerate more than expected – i.e., the ‘ice’ in our narrative. Based on our conversations with many investors, this greater deceleration in growth has received even more pushback than our view on the Fed and valuations last fall. Of course that doesn’t mean we are right. To the contrary, we have to ask ourselves whether this is another known unknown (we are right) or an unknown known (the consensus is right).

    Obviously, we think our view is correct or else we wouldn’t be propagating it; however, we are always looking for evidence that either supports or refutes it. In fact, we backed off the ice portion of our call last October when we saw little evidence that earnings momentum was slowing. As a result, we pushed the timing of ice out to 1Q. Evidence is now building that earnings forecasts are increasingly at risk. First, the negative-to-positive guidance ratio during 4Q earnings has spiked to 3.6x – the highest since 1Q16, when we were mired in a global manufacturing recession.

    At no time during the Covid recession did we see a ratio this high. Earnings revision breadth is also falling fast and approaching negative territory, which leads next-12-months EPS forecasts. Bottom line, we see evidence building that we are right and the consensus is wrong, but it’s fair to say we can’t yet put this in the known unknown box – which also means it’s not yet priced if we’re right.

    Finally, the Russian invasion of Ukraine fits into the unknown unknown box, along with most geopolitics. While there are many people who know quite a bit about such matters, geopolitics are very difficult to analyze and therefore very difficult to price. Instead, this invasion simply adds another risk to the mix that’s unlikely to disappear quickly. In a world where valuations remain elevated and earnings risk is rising, last week’s tactical rally in equities will likely run out of momentum in March as the Fed begins to tighten in earnest and the earnings picture deteriorates.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 18:20

  • Russia Central Bank Bans Selling Of Russian Securities By Foreigners
    Russia Central Bank Bans Selling Of Russian Securities By Foreigners

    As the west piles sanctions upon sanctions seeking to crush the Russian economy, moments ago Reuters reported that Russia has made sure that at least those foreigners who have invested in Russian capital markets will have to stay for the ride.

    According to Reuters, the Russian central bank – which the US and EU decided will be sanctioned and as a result all transactions will be banned – has ordered market players to reject foreign clients’ bids to sell Russian securities from 0400 GMT on Monday, according to a central bank document seen by Reuters.

    Expect more retaliatory steps by Russia, including the weaponization of its energy exports as the tit-for-tat escalates to an unprecedented degree. And while Russia’s actions may be limited in scope in terms of how much damage they can inflict on the west, former NY Fed staffer Zoltan Pozsar has warned that even without direct action from Russia the markets may be facing an unprecedented crisis which approaches the Lehman weekend in scope, or as Bloomberg’s Nikos Chrysoloras puts it “We seem to be tailspinning into chaos. I have covered crises before, but nothing comes even close.”

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 18:11

  • Belarus' Lukashenko Says West Is Pushing Russia Into "Third World War"
    Belarus’ Lukashenko Says West Is Pushing Russia Into “Third World War”

    Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko responded to the drastically ratcheting sanctions being slapped on Moscow as the West is increasingly unified behind the move to block Russia’s SWIFT access and taking measures against its central bank. He warned Sunday that NATO countries are pushing Russia into a “third world war”. 

    The alarming words came just as Putin placed his nuclear force posture on “high alert” Sunday over what he called “aggressive statements” by NATO top officials. A statement from the United Nations then called the possibility of nuclear conflict “inconceivable”.

    Via BELTA/Reuters

    Lukashenko said in his latest Sunday comments as quoted and translated in regional media: “Now there is a lot of talk against the banking sector. Gas, oil, SWIFT. It’s worse than war. This is pushing Russia into a third world war.”

    He specified that if the West didn’t start backing off from these extreme measures, the ending could lead to nuclear conflict. He called for “restraint” in this regard, even though in the past two months of tensions leading up to the war in Ukraine he issued an invitation for Putin to host Russian nukes on Belarusian soil.

    “We need to be restrained here so as not to get into trouble. Because nuclear war is the end of everything.”

    “We have experience. We discussed this theme with Putin more than once. We’ll survive. It is impossible to starve us to death,” Lukashenko said.

    He vowed that both Belarus and Russia were readying retaliatory measures that he described as being “very tangible” but said Minsk and Moscow would be thinking them over “very carefully”. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But he warned that should the West or NATO countries ever move nuclear weapons into bordering states with Russia, that Moscow will respond in kind – especially by moving nukes into Belarus. Currently, Ukraine and Russia are expected to begin initial talks “without preconditions” near the Belarusian border.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 17:45

  • 'The 55 Day Rule' Expires Tomorrow
    ‘The 55 Day Rule’ Expires Tomorrow

    OptionStrategist.com’s Lawrence G. McMillan makes an interesting observation…

    Most people don’t realize that the Crash of 1929 and the Crash of 1987 both occurred exactly 55 calendar days after the stock market had topped.

    All prices in this article are closing prices on the day being referenced.

    1929: the peak in the Dow was reached on September 3rd, when it closed at 381.17.

    55 calendar days after September 3rd was (Monday) October 28th. That was the exact date of the Crash of 1929, with the Dow down 40.58 points, or 13.5%.

    1987: the Dow topped out at 2722.42 on August 25th.

    55 calendar days later was (Monday) October 19th when the Dow collapsed 507.99 points, or 22.6% in one day!

    This year, the Dow topped out on January 4th, and…

    55 days later is Monday (!) February 28th.

    In both 1929 and 1987, there was a sharp market decline in the week preceding the Crash, so that is something else to watch for.

    These Crashes just didn’t appear out of thin air.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 17:10

  • UN Reports 368,000 Ukrainian Refugees Have Fled War-Torn Country
    UN Reports 368,000 Ukrainian Refugees Have Fled War-Torn Country

    The United Nations estimates 368,000 Ukrainian refugees have crossed into neighboring countries, with the bulk ending up in Poland, and others have sought safety in Hungary, Moldova, Romania due to the Russian invasion, and that number appears to be increasing by the day. 

    “The number of refugees from Ukraine who have crossed to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova and other countries is escalating and is now 368,000. The governments and people of those countries are welcoming refugees,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi tweeted on Sunday.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Since Russian forces began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday to “demilitarize” the country, a mass exodus of Ukrainians is underway to escape cities and towns, clogging up highways and railways as people moved westward towards Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. 

    The scale of the mass exodus could be the largest seen in years. The UN forecasts with cash, food, and fuel dwindling in Ukraine, as many as 5 million people could flee the country for neighboring ones. It may soon supersede Europe’s humanitarian emergency in 2015 when more than a million Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees entered the continent. 

    For now, Central Europe is welcoming Ukrainian refugees with open arms, and Poland is expected to accommodate up to a million new ones. Videos and pictures are circulating on Twitter showing the exodus at multiple border checkpoints between Ukraine and other countries. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Poland, which has seen the largest influx, pledged their support to refugees. The US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division is helping Poland with the inflow of refugees. As the conflict in Ukraine drags on, Europe’s welcome mat remains open. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 16:35

  • Former White House Physician Says Biden Is Not Cognitively Fit To Deal With Russia Crisis
    Former White House Physician Says Biden Is Not Cognitively Fit To Deal With Russia Crisis

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Former White House physician Ronny Jackson responded to Russia’s attack on Ukraine by warning that Joe Biden is not “cognitively… fit to be our president right now.”

    The current Texas Republican Congressman made the comments on Fox News after Vladimir Putin ordered the bombardment of Ukrainian military infrastructure across the country.

    “The whole country is seeing his mental cognitive issues on display for over a year now, and there’s really no question in most people’s minds that there’s something going on with him,” said Jackson.

    “He’s not cognitively the same as he used to be and, in my mind, not fit to be our president right now,” he added.

    The Congressman said that the 79-year-old representing America at a time when a message of strength needs to be sent isn’t going to end well.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Every time he gets up and talks to the American people, it’s not just the American people that are watching him speak, it’s the whole world, and that’s part of what the problem is here,” said Jackson.

    “[Biden] looks tired, he looks weak, he looks confused, he’s incoherent, and it sends a message of weakness all over the world, and they’re seizing up on that,” he added.

    A poll last week revealed that two thirds of Americans want to see Biden take the same cognitive competence test that Trump took when he was in office.

    During a press conference last month, Biden stumbled into yet another embarrassing gaffe when he suggested a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would go unpunished.

    As we highlighted earlier, Donald Trump questioned why Biden had failed to make a public appearance in the hours after the Russian attack, with the White House announcing he will only appear sometime later this afternoon.

    “I don’t think he’s monitoring, I think he is probably sleeping right now,” said Trump.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/27/2022 – 16:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 27

Today’s News 27th February 2022

  • Elite Capture
    Elite Capture

    Authored by Peter Schweizer via The Gatestone Institute,

    • [Elite capture] is a crucial tool of [China’s] success. The idea is simple enough: by tempting another country’s elite with money, access and favors, you move them to see their interests and China’s interests as intertwined or even the same.

    • [Each] of the individuals we discuss would deny their role in helping China gain access to American capital markets, American military and surveillance technology, or American policy making. Each will say they are merely pursuing business opportunities that the Chinese market has offered them, as any goods capitalist should. They may argue the companies they run are truly international…

    • Ray Dalio, who wrote in his 2017 book, which bears the title Principles, of his “personal hero,” Wang Qishan. “Every time I speak with Wang,” Dalio swooned, “I feel like I get closer to cracking the unifying code that unlocks the laws of the universe.” Wang is the second most powerful man in the Chinese Communist Party and known as Xi’s enforcer. The Economist called him “the most feared man in China.” But not to Dalio. Readers learn, on the very next page of that book that at the same time Dalio was trying to start a new hedge fund in China.

    • Nor are they all as obsequious about it as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

    • Almost everything [Apple] sells is manufactured in China, and the iPhone has more than 23 percent of the market for phones in China. Apple has repeatedly been accused of benefiting from the forced labor of Chinese Uyghurs, which the company denies.

    • As the muckraker and novelist Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    While researching how Americans having been getting rich by helping the Chinese Communist Party achieve its outspoken aim of replacing the US as the “world’s No.1 power,” I came across the phrase “elite capture” — their term to describe the actions of influential people in the US towards China.

    “Elite capture” can refer to different things, but to the Chinese Communist Party, China’s intelligence apparatus, or those involved in quasi-private business ventures, it is a crucial tool of their success. The idea is simple enough: by tempting another country’s elite with money, access and favors, you move them to see their interests and China’s interests as intertwined or even the same.

    The Chinese are not subtle about this, and they barely try to hide it. They practice it around the world, most notably in Africa in pursuit of their Belt and Road Initiative. But elites in Western democracies have proved to be a soft touch, particularly among non-governmental elites.

    “Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win,” my latest book, centers on this truth and explores how elites in academia, high-finance, sports and entertainment, and the technology sector became apologists for China’s deplorable human rights record, industrial and military espionage, and increasingly aggressive behavior.

    What separates this from ordinary diplomacy or even the time-honored business slogan that “the customer is always right” is the power wielded by those who succumb to the temptation. The book investigates the public activities and statements of some of the most powerful people in the US. From the world of Silicon Valley, we explore Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple, and Bill Gates of Microsoft. From the world of Wall Street, we looked at Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, the largest hedge-fund investment company in the world, and Larry Fink of BlackRock. From academia we explored the actions of Harvard and Yale universities. We surveyed the relationship histories of the Bush family, the Trudeau family of Canada, the Pelosi family, and of course, the Biden family.

    Yet, the news each day is full of still other examples. The way China has co-opted all these people and institutions – and others besides – is alarmingly similar, straightforward, and not hard to piece together. In 30 years of investigative reporting, I am used to having to dig through endless layers of shell corporations, intermediaries, bank records and tax filings to reveal these connections. Yet, the connections between the people and institutions we reviewed, and the Chinese government, fairly glowed on the page once we determined to look at the mechanics of corruption through the lens of Chinese capture of American elites. This is one reason I have said this is the scariest investigation I have ever done.

    Pressed to the wall, each of the individuals we discuss would deny their role in helping China gain access to American capital markets, American military and surveillance technology, or American policy making. Each will say they are merely pursuing business opportunities that the Chinese market has offered them, as any goods capitalist should. They may argue the companies they run are truly international corporations and, as such, obligated to take as neutral a stance on American foreign policy as possible.

    And they are not fully wrong about that.

    Not all of them are as brazen about it as the Sri Lanka-born Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire venture capitalist and investor who in an interview last week waved away the issue of China’s genocide against its own Uyghur citizens with the dismissive “nobody cares.”

    Nor are they all as obsequious about it as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. At a 2015 state dinner at the White House for visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping, the third-richest man in the world squired his ethnically Chinese, seven-months-pregnant wife over to be introduced to Xi and immediately made a strange request. Would Xi give their unborn child his Chinese name? The communist dictator was shocked by the request and politely declined, explaining it would be “too great a responsibility” to give to a total stranger.

    Nor are they as star-struck about it as Ray Dalio, who wrote in his 2017 book, which bears the title Principles, of his “personal hero,” Wang Qishan. “Every time I speak with Wang,” Dalio swooned, “I feel like I get closer to cracking the unifying code that unlocks the laws of the universe.” Wang is the second most powerful man in the Chinese Communist Party and known as Xi’s enforcer. The Economist called him “the most feared man in China.” But not to Dalio. Readers learn, on the very next page of that book that at the same time Dalio was trying to start a new hedge fund in China.

    Apple Computers is another great example. Almost everything the company sells is manufactured in China, and the iPhone has more than 23 percent of the market for phones in China. Apple has repeatedly been accused of benefiting from the forced labor of Chinese Uyghurs, which the company denies. But, as a tech investor told Vanity Fair recently, “If you’re Apple and you’ve spent 20 years building infrastructure in China, you can’t just press a button and move your entire infrastructure to India,” adding, “Rebuilding your supply chain takes 10 to 15 years. Right now, I just don’t think they have a choice.”

    Of course, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, was present at an exclusive meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle, where tech titans met Xi even before that 2015 state dinner. When Xi entered the room, a thunderstruck Cook turned to a colleague and said, “Did you feel the room shake?”

    For others it happens similarly with commercial opportunities. No one should have been shocked by basketball player LeBron James’s upbraiding another NBA team’s general manager for tweeting about China’s repression of democratic protests in Hong Kong. James earns millions royalties on jerseys and other items bearing his name and likeness in China, but is apparently also expert on foreign affairs, scolding the Houston Rockets’ then-GM Daryl Morey as “either misinformed or not really educated on the situation” regarding Chinese repression of dissent in the territory.

    Yet the Chinese communists are not absolutists about this. There is a common phrase in Mandarin that roughly translates: “A lot of help, with a little badmouth.” The phrase captures that the practical Chinese know their friends will have to criticize China’s actions from time to time. But so long as those friends are advancing China’s interests on the important things, they will deign to overlook that.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a harsh critic of China’s human rights abuses. In her first term in Congress, she found herself in Tiananmen Square in 1991 and bravely unfurled a banner inscribed, “To those who died for Democracy in China.” Furious Chinese police seized the banner. “I started running,” Pelosi recalled. “And my colleagues, some of them, got a little roughed up. The press got treated worse because they had cameras, and they were detained.”

    She too has recently evolved. And her husband, Paul, has since made millions of dollars in deals with China as a partner investor in Matthews International Capital Management, a pioneer in the Chinese investment market, and through his other ventures. She has, for two years now, blocked efforts by Congress to investigate the origins of the COVID virus. With much of the evidence pointing to the possibility of a lab leak of the virus in Wuhan, Pelosi ordered the Democrats in Congress not to cooperate with any efforts to investigate the matter.

    The behavior, statements and actions of these and many other people we discuss at length in the book, certainly suggest the intertwining of their interests with China’s interests. And those interests are thick enough to block out the humanitarian and national security concerns that China’s rise is built upon.

    As the muckraker and novelist Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 23:30

  • 4 Historical Maps That Explain The USSR
    4 Historical Maps That Explain The USSR

    The eyes of the world are now fixed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    The motivations of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, are now the biggest unanswered question of this geopolitical event. One prominent line of thinking is that Putin is looking to reclaim the territory lost after the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the Russian leader’s own words appear to support this claim:

    Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians.

    The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of Bolshevik and Soviet leaders […] the collapse of the historical Russia known as the USSR is on their conscience.

    For anyone born after the 1970s, memories of that era range from hazy to non-existent, so it’s worth answering the question: What was the USSR anyway?

    Below, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley uses historical maps from three specific eras to build context for how the USSR was structured, which modern countries were a part of this sprawling country, and how its history relates to Russia’s present day pushes for territorial expansion.

    Let’s dive in.

    The Early Days of the Soviet Union

    The USSR was first born in 1922, in the aftermath of the fallen Russian Empire. A civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and anti-Bolshevik forces across the region ended with the former coming out victorious. This resulted in the unification of a number of republics to form the Soviet Union.

    After a number of tumultuous years during the reign of Joseph Stalin, which include a devastating famine which killed millions of people, we arrive at our first snapshot in time: the late 1930s.

    For more detail, view the full-sized version of this map

    The USSR was set up as a federation of constituent union republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine, or federations, such as Russia.

    Below, we can see how this organizational structure was laid out.

    For more detail, view the full-sized version of this diagram

    While nominally a union of equals, in practice the Soviet Union was dominated by the Russian Republic (RSFSR). This massive republic contained most of the country’s economic and political power, as well as the largest population and landmass. As shown below, its borders weren’t vastly different from the modern day Russian Federation.

    For more detail, view the full-sized version of this map

    The geopolitical history of the USSR is inexorably bound with territorial disputes with neighboring regions. In the map above, from 1938, we can see that Soviet troops are clashing with Japan on the eastern edge of the country. On the other end, Stalin had annexed half of Poland, the three Baltic States, and portions of Romania, following the pact with Adolf Hitler.

    This sequence of events set the stage for World War II.

    The Soviet Empire

    The USSR achieved victory in WWII, but at a great cost. An estimated 14% of the prewar population perished in the conflict.

    By the end of the 1950s though, the Soviet Union was riding high on a string of impressive achievements on the world stage, from launching the first satellite into space to developing missiles that were a credible threat to American cities. As well, the country’s GDP growth was outpacing its Cold War rival.

    This map is a snapshot of the USSR just prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1962.

    For more detail, view the full-sized version of this map

    Above, in orange, we see how much territory the USSR ended up with after the war. This map is especially informative as it lists the populations of the territories at the time. Large portions of Eastern Europe—including more than 22 million people—were rolled behind the iron curtain.

    The Waning Days of the USSR

    After a prolonged period of stagnation, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reform the Soviet political and economic system with perestroika, which literally translates to “reconstruction”. This movement began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control through the late 1980s, hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    The map below is a snapshot of the USSR two years prior to its official dissolution in 1991.

    For more detail, view the full-sized version of this map

    Many of the republics, shown in various colors above, were already seeing independence movements and unrest by this time, and would eventually declare independence one by one.

    Here’s a list of the major regions that seceded from the USSR:

     

    Since these regions seceded with their borders largely intact, a current map of this part of the world doesn’t look too different from the one above.

    That said, even as borders remain static, the war in Ukraine demonstrates that power dynamics in this region are still very much in flux.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 22:55

  • New Zealand High Court: Vaccine Mandate Not "Demonstrably Justified", Breach Of Rights
    New Zealand High Court: Vaccine Mandate Not “Demonstrably Justified”, Breach Of Rights

    Authored by Katabella Robert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The New Zealand High Court has upheld a challenge to a vaccine mandate for Police and Defence Force staff, stating that it was not a “demonstrably justified” breach of the Bill of Rights.

    Police stop vehicles to heading north on state highway one at Warkworth in Auckland, New Zealand, on April 09, 2020. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

    Justice Francis Cooke was asked by a group of Police and Defence Force personnel to judicially review the vaccine mandate enacted under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act in December.

    The mandate required all Defence Force personnel and all Police constables, recruits, and authorized officers to receive two doses of the vaccine by March 1.

    But on Jan. 6, three unvaccinated staff who did not wish to receive the shots sought a judicial review of the mandate. They were supported by affidavits from 37 of their colleagues in the same position.

    The group claims that two rights of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 had been limited by the mandate: the right to refuse a medical treatment and the right to manifest religious beliefs.

    Part of the group’s religious objections to the mandate were concerns over the fact that “the Pfizer vaccine had at some point been tested on cells that had been derived from a human foetus.”

    According to UCLA Health, COVID-19 vaccines do not contain aborted fetal cells but Johnson & Johnson did use fetal cell lines when developing and producing their vaccine, and Pfizer and Moderna used them to test their vaccines to ensure they work.

    The group claimed that “requiring vaccination by such a vaccine was in conflict with the religious beliefs of some of the affected persons.”

    Cooke, in a judgment (pdf) released on Friday in New Zealand, did not accept some of the applicants’ arguments but agreed that the mandate “is not a reasonable limit on rights that can be demonstrably justified” and set the order aside.

    “I conclude that the Order does not involve a reasonable limit on the applicants’ rights that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society and that it is unlawful,” Cooke said.

    “The order limits the right to be free to refuse medical treatment recognised by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (including because of its limitation on people’s right to remain employed), and it limits the right to manifest religious beliefs for those who decline to be vaccinated because the vaccine has been tested on cells derived from a human foetus which is contrary to their religious beliefs,” Cooke said.

    Police arrest people protesting against coronavirus mandates at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on Feb. 10, 2022. (Mark Mitchell/NZ Herald via AP)

    However, he pointed out the court’s decision did not affect any other vaccine mandates or any internal vaccination policies of the police or Defence Force.

    “In essence, the order mandating vaccinations for police and NZDF staff was imposed to ensure the continuity of the public services, and to promote public confidence in those services, rather than to stop the spread of COVID-19. Indeed health advice provided to the government was that further mandates were not required to restrict the spread of COVID-19. I am not satisfied that continuity of these services is materially advanced by the order,” he said.

    Cooke also concluded that the mandate affected only a small number of personnel: just 164 unvaccinated personnel in a police workforce of nearly 15,700. For the New Zealand Defence workforce, the mandate affected 115 of its 15,480 staff.

    “Moreover there is no evidence that this number is any different from the number that would have remained unvaccinated and employed had the matter simply been dealt with by the pre-existing internal vaccine policies applied by police and NZDF. Neither is there any hard evidence that this number of personnel materially effects the continuity of NZDF and police services,” the judge wrote.

    The judge also said it was apparent, based on evidence, that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was highly transmissible and could affect a large number of New Zealanders including police or Defence temporarily but that the termination of jobs arising from the mandate was permanent.

    “Vaccination has a significant beneficial effect in limiting serious illness, hospitalization, and death, including with the Omicron variant. But it was less effective in reducing infection and transmission of Omicron than had been the case with other variants of COVID-19,” the judge wrote.

    However, Cooke stressed that his decision to set aside the order was not for “the purposes of limiting the spread of COVID-19” but for “the continuity of service of police and Defence.”

    “But the order made in the present case is nevertheless unlawful and is set aside,” he wrote.

    The applicants were awarded costs.

    Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccinologist at the University of Auckland told Stuff NZ that she was disappointed with the decision and that it legally and morally undermines the mandates.

    “It’s really disappointing. These are temporary mandates. They are for the benefit of our whole community. Communities have always depended on our people cooperating and working together – right through time since we camped outside the caves. It’s an essential component of a successful society,” Petousis-Harris said.

    “This isn’t working together. Right in the middle of a pandemic, it’s not in the spirit of trying to keep us all safe.”

    Spokespersons for both Police and NZDF told The New Zealand Herald that terminations of staff who do not get vaccinated will be suspended while the decision is considered by the government.

    The Epoch Times has contacted New Zealand Police and NZDF for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 22:20

  • Workers At Starbucks Cafe In Mesa Vote To Unionize In Latest Threat To Corporate Profits
    Workers At Starbucks Cafe In Mesa Vote To Unionize In Latest Threat To Corporate Profits

    A growing number of Starbucks’ corporate-owned stores are launching unionization efforts, emboldened by a handful of stores in upstate New York.

    The latest effort comes from Mesa, Arizona, where workers at a company-owned cafe located on Power Road and Baseline Road voted 25 to three in favor of unionizing under Workers United, a branch of the Service Employees International Union. A second store in Mesa has already filed for a union election. Ballots from the NLRB were sent out Friday afternoon and will have to be received by March 18.

    The store is the first Starbucks cafe outside of the Buffalo, New York area to unionize, and the third overall.

    To date, more than 100 Starbucks locations have filed for union elections, all within the last six months and doubling their count in the last month alone after the first victories in Buffalo. These cafes represent a small fraction of Starbucks’ footprint in the US – the company presently counts almost 9K company-owned restaurants across the US.

    The NLRB’s regional director will now have to certify the ballots from the Mesa vote, a process that could take up to a week. After hte count is confirmed, the union will face its next challenge: negotiating a contract with Starbucks. US labor laws do not require that the union and Starbucks reach a collective bargaining agreement. Workers who lose faith in the union can always petition to decertify after one year.

    Starbucks has insisted it will bargain with unions in “good faith”.

    “We are excited and hopeful to start the bargaining process with Starbucks, but we also know that Starbucks is fighting us tooth and nail,” Liz Alanna, a shift supervisor at the Mesa store, said in a statement. “We’re calling on Starbucks to stop their war against the labor movement and work with us, not against us.”

    Jefferies analyst Andy Barish wrote in a Thursday note to clients that unionizing doesn’t appear to be a major financial risk to Starbucks in terms of large hourly wage increases or benefit demands. However, the chain could suffer damage to its reputation if handled improperly, he said.

    “It is hard to imagine this issue turning into a maelstrom of negative PR for SBUX, but it does surely present near-term ‘headline risk’ for the stock, which has been weak of late,” Barish wrote.

    It certainly doesn’t bode well for the company’s operating profit margin, which came in at 18% during Q1 FY2022. Expensive orders with lots of modifications and add-ons inspired by social media platforms like TikTok have helped bolster margins over the past couple of years, but they have also made workers complain about being treated like “coffee-making robots” and fueled the push for unionization.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 21:45

  • The Clinton Campaign's Two-Pronged Plan To Create The Trump–Russia Collusion Narrative
    The Clinton Campaign’s Two-Pronged Plan To Create The Trump–Russia Collusion Narrative

    Authored by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times,

    In Oct. 2016, Wikileaks released a little-noticed email exchange involving Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri and Democratic strategist Joel Johnson. The exchange, which was dated Feb. 26, 2016, revealed the existence of a Clinton campaign Swift Boat project—a political term used for smear campaigns—aimed at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. At the time, the email was largely ignored but it has recently gained new relevance through disclosures in court filings by special counsel John Durham.

    Trump Tower on 5th Avenue is seen in New York City, U.S., April 10, 2018. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File Photo)

    It appears that the Clinton campaign’s plans revolved around two primary prongs directed at Trump. The first and better known element of that project involved Fusion GPS and Trump-dossier author and former MI6 spy Christopher Steele. The other element involves the efforts of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and his use of data exploited by technology executive Rodney Joffe and a team of IT operatives. Last year, Sussmann came to prominence when he was indicted by Durham for lying to the FBI in connection with his role in passing Joffe’s data to the FBI.

    The two-pronged strategy began to take shape in the Spring of 2016, and those parallel plans would ultimately merge together at the end of July 2016, just two days before the FBI opened its investigation into the Trump campaign.

    Trump Swift Boat Project

    On Feb. 26, 2016, Palmieri was asked in an email by former Bill Clinton adviser Joel Johnson, “Who was in charge of the Trump swift boat project?” Palmieri sarcastically replied: “Gee. Thanks, Joel. We thought we could half-ass it. Let’s discuss.”

    It is not known what steps were taken by the Clinton campaign in the two months that followed the email exchange. At the time, Trump had not yet won the Republican nomination. However, by mid-April 2016, it had become increasingly clear that Trump would be Clinton’s opponent in the general election.

    On April 19, 2016, Trump hired Paul Manafort as his convention manager. Manafort, who was known to be a former adviser to Ukraine’s deposed president Viktor Yanukovich, would become Trump’s campaign manager two months later.

    Paul Manafort exits the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, on Feb. 28, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Trump’s primary wins and the hiring of Manafort coincided with a decision in late April by the Clinton campaign to hire Fusion GPS, a firm of political operatives run by former Wall Street Journal staffer Glenn Simpson.

    Around this same time, on April 28, 2016, Amy Dacey, CEO of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), alerted Sussmann, who is also a cyber-security specialist, to the possible hack of the DNC’s computer network. In turn, Sussmann contacted Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike, an IT firm specializing in cybersecurity. It is not known why Dacey’s first point of contact was Sussmann and not an IT firm.

    On May 3, 2016, Trump won the Indiana primary and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

    That same day, Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa emailed the DNC and claimed that she intended to share sensitive info about Paul Manafort “offline” including “a big Trump component…that will hit in [sic] next few weeks.” Manafort would leave the Trump campaign a few months later after The New York Times claimed that Manafort’s name had appeared on a handwritten ledger in Ukraine in connection with secret cash payments. The ledger was later said to have been fabricated.

    Plan Set in Motion Right After Trump Became Presumptive Nominee

    According to court filings from Durham, on May 4, 2016, the day after Trump became the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, a cyber group working through Sussmann and Joffe began compiling and curating data that would later be used to create the false appearance of a link between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa Bank. That alleged link would later be used by the Clinton campaign to push the narrative that Trump had ties to the Kremlin. Notably, the data compilation was completed on July 29, 2016, the same day that Clinton operatives from both prongs of her planned attack on Trump met in Washington.

    In mid-May 2016, shortly after Sussmann’s cyber group started mining data on Trump, Fusion GPS hired Steele to write the Steele dossier. As Simpson later recounted in his book “Crime in Progress,” he “told Steele that Fusion had been investigating Trump for about eight months on behalf of an unnamed client. That work had ended, but a new client had come along that had deep pockets.” That client was the Clinton campaign.

    Clinton advisors Jake Sullivan (L), Nick Burns (2L) and John Podesta (2R) wait with Clinton Campaign Chairman, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on September 19, 2016 in New York. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

    Steele tasked his primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, to compile derogatory stories about Trump that could be used in the dossier. Danchenko was dispatched to Moscow in mid-June where he spent time gossiping with old friends over drinks. Those friends were then made into unwitting sources for the dossier. These same individuals have since come forward as part of Alfa Bank’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against Simpson and Fusion GPS to testify under oath that they did not have any information on Trump and never spoke to Danchenko about Trump.

    As Durham has disclosed in court filings, the true source for several of the dossier’s stories, including a story about Manafort, was Clinton operative Charles Dolan. Danchenko concealed this fact from the FBI, according to Durham. In Nov. 2021, Durham indicted Danchenko for lying to the FBI about his sources.

    While Dolan, according to Durham, gave Danchenko stories that appeared in the dossier and helped Danchenko obtain a visa (presumably to remain in the United States), not much is known about his wider role in Clinton’s Swift Boat project. Dolan and the Clintons go back many decades, with Dolan having served on Bill Clinton’s presidential exploratory committee, as well as Clinton’s Virginia state chairman in his 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Dolan also served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential run in 2008. Notably, Dolan was a senior consultant for the Russian government from 2006 to 2014.

    Steele’s first dossier report—which not only contained the notorious pee tape allegation, but also seeded the collusion narrative—was issued on June 20, 2016.

    After Steele had compiled his initial reports he began to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Gaeta, who was Steele’s FBI handler, had known Steele since 2010. At Steele’s request, the two men met in London on July 5, 2016. In order to make this trip, Gaeta sought permission from Victoria Nuland, then-Assistant Secretary of State. At some point in early July, either Steele or Gaeta passed Steele’s early dossier reports to Nuland. Nuland later said these documents were passed on to both the leadership of the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.

    Gaeta, who would receive additional reports from Steele in mid-July and August 2016, emailed an FBI supervisor on July 28, 2016, noting that Steele had personally informed him that Steele’s reports may already be circulating at a ‘high level’ in Washington, D.C.”

    The Clinton Campaign Invokes Russian Interference

    On July 24, 2016, Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook publicly suggested for the first time that Russia was somehow helping Trump. Mook claimed in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Russian government was behind the release of a trove of DNC emails. Those emails showed, in part, that senior DNC officials had been undermining Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.

    Mook refused to address the Sanders allegations, instead telling Tapper that “experts are now saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.” Mook claimed that “this isn’t my assertion. There are a number of experts that are asserting this. … That is what experts are telling us.” But Mook failed to address who these so-called “experts” might be. Nor did he explain the source of his supposed information.

    Robby Mook, campaign manager for Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks aboard the campaign plane while traveling to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Oct. 28, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Two days after Mook had invoked Russia, on July 26, 2016, Clinton won the Democratic presidential nomination. According to documents released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Oct. 6, 2020, on the same day as her nomination win, Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from “one of her foreign policy advisors” to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security forces”—the Trump–Russia collusion smear. That foreign policy adviser is rumored to be the current national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who at the time held the title of senior foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign.

    Immediately following the alleged approval from Clinton, Steele hastily produced his undated memo 95—written on or about July 27, 2016—which alleged “a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump associates and the Kremlin. Steele’s memo, which echoed the basis of the Clinton campaign’s plan, also claimed that an unknown Trump associate had admitted that the Kremlin was behind the release of the DNC emails.

    On July 28, 2016, CIA director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama on Clinton’s July 26th plan—including her campaign’s intention to tie Trump to Russian election interference “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” FBI Director James Comey may also have been at this meeting as Brennan’s now declassified hand-written notes state that “JC” was at this meeting.

    The Two Prongs Converge

    The day after Brennan briefed Obama, the twin prongs of the Clinton campaign’s smear campaign—Sussmann’s work with Joffe and Fusion’s work with Steele—merged. In a meeting that took place in Perkins Coie offices on July 29, 2016, Sussmann and fellow Perkins attorney Marc Elias met with Fusion GPS principals, including owner Glenn Simpson and Steele, according to the Durham indictment.

    According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann, the timing of this meeting at Perkins coincides perfectly with the completion of Sussmann’s and Joffe’s data compilation on July 29, 2016.

    John Durham speaks to reporters on the steps of U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., on April 25, 2006. (Bob Child/AP Photo)

    Steele had previously told a British court that Sussmann informed him at this meeting of the Alfa Bank allegations, stating, “I’m very clear is [sic] that the first person that ever mentioned the Trump server issue, Alfa server issue, was Mr. Sussman [sic].” Steele also testified that he was instructed by Fusion GPS co-founder Simpson to include this information in one of his own dossier reports. Steele, who repeatedly wrote tailor-made reports for Fusion GPS, mentioned Alfa Bank in a report on Sept. 14, 2016.

    Following the meeting at Perkins Coie’s offices, Steele prepared a new memo the next day for his dossier, which falsely alleged an eight-year Russian effort to cultivate Trump.

    The close timing of these events, particularly Brennan’s briefing to Obama, are significant because they came only days before the FBI officially opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

    That FBI investigation was allegedly opened on July 31, 2016, after the Australian ambassador in London, Alexander Downer, gave the U.S. embassy a tip about Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.

    According to Downer, he and Papadopolous had met in May 2016 when Papadopoulos supposedly made a suggestion of a suggestion that Russia might have derogatory information on Hillary Clinton that might help Trump. That rumor was already known at the time and had been shared by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News on May 9, 2016, the day before Downer met Papadopoulos.

    Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at Fox News Studios in New York City on March 26, 2019. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)

    Downer later confirmed in a 2019 interview on Australian TV that Papadopoulos said nothing out of the ordinary. But despite the flimsiness of Papadopoulos’s statements, the FBI used Downer’s info as a pretext to open a formal investigation into the Trump campaign.

    In the weeks that followed the FBI’s opening of their Crossfire Hurricane investigation, CIA Director Brennan would take a number of actions that appear to have been intended to actively reinforce the basic premise behind Clinton’s plan—that Russia was interfering in the election to help Trump.

    Brennan Pushes Trump–Russia Collusion Despite Knowledge of Clinton’s Plans to Smear Trump

    The twin prongs of the attack against Trump had now been merged by the heads of the intelligence community into a single, unified spear that incorporated government agencies and government action.

    One of the first actions from Brennan took place on Aug. 4, 2016, when Brennan suddenly warned Russia’s FSB head Alexander Bortnikov not to engage in U.S. election interference. Bortnikov reportedly strongly denied any Russian involvement but “said he would take Brennan’s concern to Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Brennan later claimed that he “was the first U.S. official to brace Russia on this issue.”

    According to Brennan’s May 23, 2017, congressional testimony, he then began a series of briefings to the Congressional Gang of Eight—the majority and minority leaders of each chamber of Congress as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Intelligence Committees. Brennan testified that, “in consultation with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership.” Brennan said these briefings, which were done individually, rather than in a group setting, took place between Aug. 11 and Sept. 6, 2016.

    The message that Brennan delivered to these members of Congress was remarkably similar to the details outlined in the Clinton campaign’s alleged plan to smear Trump. According to Brennan’s testimony, he told each member of the Gang of Eight that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. Democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency. And to help President Trump’s election chances.”

    At no point during Brennan’s testimony did he raise the Clinton campaign’s plan to denigrate candidate Trump and no evidence has been presented to indicate that he informed Gang of Eight members of the alleged plan.

    A Convergence of Russia-Collusion Claims

    After receiving his briefing from Brennan, then-Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter on Aug. 27, 2016, to FBI Director James Comey claiming that “the evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s campaign continues to mount,” calling for a public investigation into the matter and asking that the investigation be completed before the November presidential election.

    Three days later, on Aug. 30, House Democrats wrote to Comey asking him to investigate Trump-Russia collusion in the context of the purported DNC hacking. Their letter asked Comey to investigate if “connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these attacks in order to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.”

    Former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey, speaks via a TV monitor during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 30, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

    As Democrats moved forward with the publicization of Brennan’s claims, Hillary Clinton publicly accused Russia of interfering in the U.S. election on Sept. 5, 2016, implying that Putin “viewed a victory by Donald J. Trump as a destabilizing event that would weaken the United States and buttress Russian interests.”

    On Sept. 7, 2016, two days after Clinton’s public claims of Russian interference, Brennan’s CIA sent a memo regarding the Clinton campaign’s plan to vilify Trump to FBI Director Comey and the deputy assistant director of the counterintelligence division, Peter Strzok. At the time the CIA memo was sent the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane was well underway. Rather than open an investigation into the Clinton campaign, the FBI continued undeterred with their investigation of the Trump campaign.

    Brennan’s briefing to Obama and his memo tipping the FBI off to Clinton’s plans appear to be the only times that Brennan raised the issue of Clinton’s plan. As noted earlier, Brennan’s handwritten notes also demonstrate the possibility that Comey was present during Brennan’s July 28 briefing to Obama, but this is not known with certainty.

    Sussmann’s Alfa Bank Allegations

    One week after Brennan’s memo to the FBI, Steele prepared a sequence of three memos all dated Sept. 14, 2016. One of the three memos referenced the Russian Alfa Bank, misspelled as “Alpha” in his memo. On this same day, according to Durham’s indictment, Sussmann met personally with Joffe in the offices of Perkins Coie.

    The following day, Marc Elias exchanged emails with three Clinton advisers—communications director Palmieri, campaign manager Mook, and foreign policy adviser Sullivan—regarding the Alfa Bank allegations. According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann, this same information had also been recently shared by Sussmann with The New York Times.

    Former MI6 official Christopher Steele in this file photo. (AP Photo)

    Four days later, on Sept. 19, 2016, Sussmann held a private meeting with James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel. Sussmann provided Baker with a large amount of data, including a white paper and several USB sticks, telling Baker that he had been approached by “multiple cyber experts” concerning the Alfa Bank allegations.

    The FBI dismissed the data within a few days. According to emails among Sussmann’s group that were cited by Durham, Joffe was fully aware that anyone with the requisite technical knowledge would dismiss the data as meaningless. One of the tech staffers in Sussmann’s group privately called the secret communications channel allegation “a red herring.” Another participant added that “the only thing that drive[s] us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump].”

    While it is not known why Sussmann and Joffe proceeded with handing over such flimsy data to the FBI, their objective may not have been to start a comprehensive FBI investigation. Instead, they may have simply wanted to give the media a hook by being able to claim that the data was being looked at by the FBI. This would align with the fact that by August 2016, Sussmann and Joffe were liaising with Fusion GPS, which appears to have been the operational means for coordinating the media strategy for the Clinton campaign’s two-pronged attack.

    Sussmann is charged with having lied to the FBI about who his client actually was. He claimed to not represent any client when, in fact, Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign, a point that Durham was able to prove through billing records.

    Brennan’s ICA Becomes Cornerstone of Media’s Russia Collusion Narrative

    At the same time that Sussmann was meeting with the FBI, Steele was being directed by Fusion GPS to meet with the media—including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News, who were all verbally briefed by Steele on his dossier.

    It was during this period, at Brennan’s urging, that the Intelligence Community began its efforts to build a narrative that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election. On Oct. 7, 2016, the intelligence community issued a joint statement that claimed the Intelligence Community was confident Russia “directed the recent compromises of emails … including from US political organizations.”

    Former President Barack Obama speaks to guests at the Obama Foundation Summit on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Ill., on Oct. 29, 2019. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Brennan’s actions to firmly establish a narrative of Russian interference would become even more significant as Brennan was about to embark on his creation of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

    The ICA would become the cornerstone of the false allegation that Trump colluded with Russia.

    The assessment, which was officially commissioned by Obama after the 2016 election—but appears to have begun earlier—was completed by early January 2017. Crucially, a two-page summary of the Steele dossier was attached to the final version of the ICA.

    As soon as the ICA was published, the entire focus of the media’s attention centered on the Steele dossier, which was published by Buzzfeed on the very same day that the media started reporting about the ICA, Jan. 10, 2017.

    The fact that the dossier was included in Brennan’s ICA effectively gave the dossier the credibility it needed for the media to publish stories based on it, including the infamous pee tape story.

    The media had been in possession of the dossier or its stories since at least September 2016 when Steele began briefing reporters. However, aside from a few notable exceptions, the media did not report on Steele’s dossier because they weren’t able to corroborate any of his stories.

    By legitimizing the dossier, the intelligence community effectively ensured that Trump would be saddled with claims of Russia collusion throughout his presidency.

    Within 14 days of the ICA’s publication, on Jan. 24, 2017, Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI and disavowed many of the dossier’s stories. It was at this point that the intelligence community factually knew that the dossier had been made up by Steele and his associates. They already knew that Sussmann’s Alfa Bank claims were false. Yet, they kept this information to themselves. It is through Durham, as well as the efforts of online researchers, that the truth about the Clinton campaign’s two-pronged Swift Boat project is finally emerging.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 21:10

  • LA Is Spending Up To $837,000 Per Unit To House The Homeless
    LA Is Spending Up To $837,000 Per Unit To House The Homeless

    Are you wondering why so many people are defecting from places like California in favor of tax havens like Florida? Look no further for your answer, which likely lies in how states are spending their tax money.

    Take Los Angeles, for example. It was reported last week that the city is paying up to $837,000 per housing unit to try and house the homeless.

    It comes as part of a broader $1.2 billion effort to house the homeless, which KTLA reports is “is moving too slowly while costs are spiking”. 

    So far, about 1,200 units have been built since the spending was approved in 2016. An audit issued by city Controller Ron Galperin, however, calls this number “wholly inadequate” in the context of the homeless crisis, KTLA reported. 

    Galperin said that the effort “is still unable to meet the demands of the homelessness crisis.” In the meantime, homeless camps have spread into “virtually ever neighborhood” in LA, the report notes. 

    His audit revealed that prices for the building have, in some cases, soared to “staggering heights.”

    “While future plans have not been finalized, building tens of thousands of additional units using the same model will likely cost billions of dollars and will take far too long to match the urgency of the ongoing homeless emergency,” the audit said. 

    But Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti has defended the program, stating that it is “producing more units than promised, at a lower cost than expected.” He commented that “There are already 1,200 units online providing critical housing and services. And HHH will deliver over 10,300 units of supportive and affordable housing by 2026.”

    As if the $800,000 price tag wasn’t enough, one observer pointed out how the price has mysteriously risen over the last couple years. Must just be inflation…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 20:35

  • White House Asks Congress For $6.4 Billion For Ukraine Crisis
    White House Asks Congress For $6.4 Billion For Ukraine Crisis

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, 

    On Friday, the White House asked Congress for $6.4 billion for military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and to help US allies in Europe to bolster their security in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

    According to Bloomberg, $2.9 billion will go towards security and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and other regional countries. The remaining $3.5 billion will go to the Pentagon “to respond to the crisis.”

    Getty Images

    “In a recent conversation with lawmakers, the administration identified the need for additional US humanitarian, security, and economic assistance to Ukraine and Central European partners due to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion,” a White House Office of Management and Budget official said, according to Reuters.

    The total amount could change as the White House and Congress work it out. Some members of Congress think more money needs to be spent. Sen. Chris Coon (D-DE) said the US might need to spend around $10 billion to respond to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

    Over the past year, the US has given Ukraine over $650 million in military aid and $52 million in humanitarian assistance. The Pentagon said Friday it wants to send more weapons to Ukraine and is working out ways to do so.

    Ukraine’s defense minister is asking for Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

    “We’re continuing to look for ways to support Ukraine to defend themselves,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. “And we’re very actively engaged in those efforts to help them better defend themselves through both lethal and non-lethal assistance.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    US military aid to Ukraine used to arrive by plane, but the country’s airspace is no longer safe. “The airspace over Ukraine is contested, the Russians don’t have superiority of it, it’s contested,” Kirby said. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 20:00

  • Musk's Starlink Service Now Active In Ukraine After Russia Invasion Causes Internet Disruptions
    Musk’s Starlink Service Now Active In Ukraine After Russia Invasion Causes Internet Disruptions

    Update (1700ET): It appears Elon Musk heard the request and has responded:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    We wonder if this will get him an invitation to The White House.

    *  *  *

    Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk for Starlink stations and access to satellite internet as Russia continues its third day of incursions. 

    “@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand,” Fedorov tweeted on Saturday. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The request for next-generation satellite internet comes as Ukraine’s primary internet provider, GigaTrans, reported a widespread outrage on Friday, according to internet blockage observatory NetBlocks.

    “We currently observe national connectivity at 87% of ordinary levels, a figure that reflects service disruptions as well as population flight and the shuttering of homes and businesses since the morning of the 24th.

    “While there is no nation-scale blackout, little is being heard from the worst affected regions, and for others there’s an ever-present fear that connectivity could worsen at any moment, cutting off friends and family,” Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, told Reuters

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    What’s remarkable is to see a top Ukrainian official asking the world’s richest man for internet access on Twitter. Musk has yet to respond to the tweet but could be willing to help as he recently sent a team of SpaceX engineers to the tiny Pacific island nation of Tonga to restore internet connectivity after a nearby eruption of a massive volcano severed undersea communications cables.

    Twitter users called on the billionaire to support Ukraine and help restore the country’s internet. However, it remains to be seen if Musk would get directly involved in picking sides. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 19:30

  • "Doesn't Really Add Up": Canadian MPs Grill Public Safety Minister On Use Of Emergencies Act
    “Doesn’t Really Add Up”: Canadian MPs Grill Public Safety Minister On Use Of Emergencies Act

    Authored by Noé Chartier via The Epoch Times,

    MPs grilled Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino on Feb. 25 at a House committee hearing to examine the public order emergency declared by the government, with some focusing on whether the threshold had been met to call a national emergency, and others looking to find out why the Ottawa occupation lasted so long.

    Addressing whether the threshold was met to invoke the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, Conservative MP and public safety critic Raquel Dancho asked Mendicino if “our safety was in jeopardy with the protests in Ottawa?”

    “Well certainly the size, scope, and scale of the illegal blockades at a number of borders and ports of entry, as well as the illegal occupation in Ottawa, met the threshold under the Emergencies Act,” replied Mendicino as he testified before the House of Commons public safety committee.

    Large-scale protests in Ottawa, dubbed the “Freedom Convoy,” along with Canada-U.S. border blockades had occurred across the country in recent weeks to demand the lifting of COVID-19 mandates and restrictions. Most of the blockades were cleared before the government invoked the act, and the one in Emerson, Manitoba, dispersed on its own on Feb. 16, so Dancho focused on the Ottawa protest.

    “I walked to West Block for two weeks past these protests. If there was such a threat to public safety, how could you have allowed members of Parliament to walk by that protest every day?,” asked Dancho.

    Families join the Freedom Convoy protest in downtown Ottawa after police distributed arrest notices to truckers and their supporters occupying Wellington St. and the Parliament Hill area on Feb. 16, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

    ‘Insinuations’

    Dancho also said Mendicino had previously “insinuated” there were links between the protest organizers in Ottawa and several protesters arrested at the Coutts, Alberta, border who have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

    “So again, do you believe that there was a threat to public safety in Ottawa?” asked Dancho.

    Without directly addressing his own allegation about the links, Mendicino responded that “those aren’t just my insinuations. Hundreds of charges and arrests have been carried out by law enforcement throughout the course of the illegal blockades—not only in Ottawa, but as well as in Alberta and British Columbia.”

    Pressed again about the evidence of links, Mendicino said those comments related to “a number of public reports.”

    Mendicino said organizers and leaders of the movement have publicly made statements calling for the overthrow of the government with violence and “through the use of bullets.”

    The minister was likely referring to Pat King, who in a video posted online and supposedly dated Dec. 16, 2021, said “the only way this is going to be solved is with bullets.” It’s unclear what “this” refers to in the video.

    The main organizers of the Freedom Convoy had distanced themselves from King and said their movement is peaceful.

    King, who was active in the Ottawa protest, was arrested on Feb. 18 and charged with mischief, counselling to commit mischief, counselling to commit the offence of disobeying a court order, and counselling to obstruct police. He was denied bail on Feb. 25.

    “I just don’t understand how you could be saying, on one hand, there’s all these strong ties and this is a national emergency for public safety, and I walked every day by these protests. It just doesn’t really add up at all,” repeated Dancho.

    While King has expressed extreme views, the Ottawa protest was peaceful throughout, with multiple dance parties and a children’s area with bouncy castles. But Ottawa residents have also complained about noise due to constant honking and also of harassment.

    Crowds of protesters demonstrate against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in downtown Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Jonathan Ren/The Epoch Times)

    Existing Powers, Additional Powers

    Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed asked Mendicino why it took so long for the federal government to intervene, and Mendicino defended his government’s efforts by saying it had sent three batches of RMCP reinforcements.

    Noormohamed also asked RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki why her organization did not “go in there and clear everything out on the first day in Ottawa.”

    Lucki responded that the Ottawa Police Service is responsible for the jurisdiction and that if it needs assistance, then under Ontario’s Police Services Act the first request should go to the Ontario Provincial Police.

    NDP MP Alistair MacGregor pressed Mendicino on whether Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson or Ontario Premier Doug Ford had expressly requested that the federal government invoke the Emergencies Act, with both leaders having themselves declared emergencies a few days apart in their respective jurisdictions.

    As Mendicino continued to avoid answering directly, MacGregor told him, “With respect, Minister, I just need a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ please.”

    Mendicino never provided an answer in the end, only saying that Ottawa and Ontario had expressed challenges dealing with the existing authorities on the issue.

    Police confront demonstrators protesting against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in downtown Ottawa on Feb. 18, 2022. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

    Dancho also questioned department officials on whether the existing powers would have been sufficient to handle the issue without resorting to declaration of a public order emergency.

    Samantha Maislin Dickson, assistant deputy minister at Justice Canada, said the question is not whether existing laws are available but whether they are effective.

    “And so the determination as I understand that was made, was that the effectiveness of any statute that may have been on the books to potentially deal with it was not available at the time the declaration was issued,” said Dickson.

    Talal Dakalbab, assistant deputy minister at Public Safety Canada, said “law enforcement was very satisfied with the additional powers” granted by the act.

    These included making it illegal for people to participate in a designated assembly, being able to compel the provision of services (in this case this power was used to force reluctant towing companies to remove the trucks), as well as imposing financial measures, which were used to freeze bank accounts without a court order.

    The next steps in reviewing the use of the Emergencies Act will include forming a dedicated parliamentary committee and launching an inquiry into the act’s declaration and the events leading up to its use.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 19:00

  • 150,000 Refugees Flee Across Europe As Ukrainian Fighting Intensifies
    150,000 Refugees Flee Across Europe As Ukrainian Fighting Intensifies

    The United Nations estimates 150,000 Ukrainian refugees have crossed into neighboring countries, half of them to Poland, and many to Hungary, Moldova, Romania due to the Russian invasion, and that number could easily be in the millions if the situation worsens. 

    “More than 150,000 Ukrainian refugees have now crossed into neighboring countries, half of them to Poland, and many to Hungary, Moldova, Romania, and beyond,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi tweeted on Saturday.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Shabia Mantoo, the spokeswoman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told AP News the number of Ukrainian refugees is “changing by the hour” and remains “a very fluid” situation. 

    On Thursday, Russian forces began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine to “demilitarize” the country. A barrage of missiles, artillery, and airstrikes across the country, triggered one of the worst security crises in Europe in more than half a century, as a wave of refugees into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania is underway. 

    United Nations agencies forecast as many as four million could flee the country into neighboring countries if the invasion worsens. 

    On Thursday, hours after Russia’s invasion began, we noted that people fled the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, resulting in massive gridlock on the country’s highways. Days later, people are still trying to flee the capital as Russian forces near. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “There is a significant movement of the population, but it is also hard to say whether people are moving permanently or for the short-term,” said Irina Saghoyan, the eastern Europe director for Save the Children, which has been on the ground in Ukraine since 2014.

    For now, central Europe is welcoming Ukrainian refugees with open arms, and Poland is expected to accommodate up to a million new ones. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 18:30

  • Want To Stick It To Coastal Elites? Use Bitcoin
    Want To Stick It To Coastal Elites? Use Bitcoin

    Authored by Avik Roy via AmericanMind.com,

    The digital money revolution is happening—which side of it are you on?

    Aspiring Republican politicians and conservative opinionators love talking in darkened tones about the malevolence of elites. And yet, for all the fingers wagged and pixels rendered, conservatives have largely ignored the most economically significant way in which elites actually have rigged the game in their favor. The widening gap between elites and the rest of us comes down in large part to the highly abnormal way in which the United States has defined money for the last 50 years.

    Our story begins when Richard Nixon—self-styled tribune of the “silent majority”—tore up the Bretton Woods agreement that had linked the value of the U.S. dollar to the price of gold. In 1944, the Allies had all agreed to fix their own currencies’ exchange rates to the U.S. dollar, based on the American promise that the greenback would maintain its peg to the value of 1/35th of an ounce of gold.

    The problem for Nixon was that, by 1971, the rest of the industrialized world held $64 billion worth of claims on the $10 billion of gold that the U.S. actually held. Nixon solved this problem in banana republic fashion, abruptly prohibiting foreign countries from redeeming their dollars for gold and, eventually, abandoning the dollar-to-gold peg altogether.

    For a period of time, this tactic appeared successful. Nixon got reelected in a landslide in 1972. But within eight years, the dollar’s value in gold terms had declined by 95%, and the greenback’s purchasing power, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, had been cut in half.

    WTF Happened?

    Many of the economic trends that conservatives now decry stem directly from Nixon’s abandonment of the Bretton Woods agreement. A colorful website, wtfhappenedin1971.com, compiles a long list of them: most notably, that while the benefits of economic growth were widely shared among all Americans between 1945 and 1971, after the Nixon Shock, they accrued far more to the wealthy.

    James Grant, the eminent financial commentator, describes interest rates as “the most consequential prices in capitalism.” Low interest rates make it cheaper to borrow money. Cheaper borrowing—“easy money” in financial parlance—may seem like it benefits everyone, but it doesn’t. Instead, it particularly benefits the most creditworthy individuals and institutions, those who already have the ability to borrow in large amounts: banks, investment funds, corporations, and the wealthy.

    And so, contrary to conventional wisdom on the Left and some outliers on the Right, the spectacular growth of wealth inequality is not due to “market fundamentalism.” It’s instead due to unprecedented federal interference in the interest rate market, a form of dirigisme that directly follows from the Nixon Shock.

    In a truly free market, interest rates are determined by billions of independent decisions by lenders and borrowers. Interest rates go up when lenders fear that they won’t get their money back, and interest rates go down when lenders worry less about that problem.

    In contemporary America, interest rates are not determined by the market. They are dictated by the Federal Reserve. And the effects on our economy are profound. When the Fed lends money to banks at near-zero interest, those banks then put the money in investable assets, like bonds, stocks, and real estate. Artificially juicing the demand for such assets benefits those who already have them; that is, those with the biggest homes and the largest investment portfolios. It used to be that every middle-class American could afford to own a home. Not anymore, thanks to the run-up in home prices driven by Fed-fueled real estate inflation.

    The primary method by which the Fed controls interest rates is by manipulating the market for Treasury bonds. These bonds are essentially slices of the federal debt; when you purchase a $100 Treasury bond, you are effectively lending the U.S. $100. The lower the bond price, the higher the interest rate, and vice versa.

    Hence, the Fed artificially lowers interest rates by going into the bond market and buying trillions of dollars’ worth of U.S. debt, making it seem like there is great demand to lend money to America, when in fact that demand is declining among outside investors.

    This artificial manipulation of supply and demand by the Fed leads to a critical question: how does the Fed get the money it needs to buy up all the debt issued by the Treasury department? By printing it out of thin air.

    Cheap Debt

    In case I’ve made your head hurt, I will try to summarize in plainer English.

    The U.S. has incurred $30 trillion of debt. The U.S. borrows money by issuing Treasury bonds. Not enough investors believe that lending money to the U.S. yields an attractive return, and therefore, not enough investors are buying Treasury bonds. In a truly free market, that set of circumstances would lead interest rates to rise.

    But if interest rates rise, the government would face higher borrowing costs to finance its debt. And every economically elite American would also face higher borrowing costs, leading to a contraction of markets where financial institutions and wealthy individuals park their excess borrowed cash: the stock market, the venture capital market, the private equity market, the bond market, and the housing market.

    How does this relate back to Nixon and 1971? Because none of this borrowing would be possible if the U.S. dollar were still pegged to gold. Under a gold peg, the Fed wouldn’t be able to artificially increase the quantity of U.S. dollars in circulation without also increasing the quantity of gold it held in reserve.

    For most of the past 50 years, there was little that the average American could do to protect himself from this vicious cycle. If you did the “responsible” thing, living within your means, but didn’t have enough to invest in the stock market, your savings declined in value. Even if you made enough to put money in a 401(k), rules promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission restrict the best investment opportunities to “accredited investors”: those with annual incomes over $200,000 or net worths over $1 million.

    The increasing concentration of capital has enabled an important manifestation of cancel culture, in which coastal elites and the government have increasingly gained the capability to deplatform those whose attributes or views do not comport with those of coastal elites. The most recent example of this phenomenon has occurred in Canada, where citizens have been told that their bank accounts will be frozen if they express support for truckers protesting their government’s vaccine mandates.

    Digital Gold

    Bitcoin, analogous in some important ways to gold, has emerged as a forceful challenger to all of these trends.

    To take one point of comparison: like gold, the amount of Bitcoin is finite and fixed. Unlike the U.S. dollar, whose quantity increases every time the Fed snaps its fingers, Bitcoin’s software architecture prevents its circulating supply from ever exceeding 21 million. Hence, over the long term, Bitcoin is inflation-resistant: its purchasing power is actually increasing relative to the dollar. Since Bitcoin came online in 2009, its Sharpe ratio—a measure of volatility-adjusted returns widely used by investors—exceeds that of every other asset class in the world.

    Much as the dollar is divisible into 100 cents, each Bitcoin—worth approximately $38,000 at the time of writing—is divisible into 100 million “satoshis,” making an investment in Bitcoin accessible to anyone with even a few dollars in savings to spare. And because the federal government has classified Bitcoin as “property,” not a “security” under the jurisdiction of the SEC, anyone in any income bracket can own Bitcoin.

    These two features enable ordinary Americans to protect themselves from the trends that make everyday life more expensive for everyone other than the wealthiest. As the U.S. debt skyrockets, and the Fed prints ever-greater amounts of money to fund it, Bitcoin helps people protect their savings from a government-driven erosion of their purchasing power.

    And it’s not just Americans who benefit from Bitcoin. Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Forum calculates that over 1.4 billion people around the world are living in countries where inflation exceeds 10% per annum, including citizens of Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina.

    Satoshi vs. the Fed

    Bitcoin skeptics commonly complain that if Bitcoin can do all of these things, then surely the government will ban it. This gets us to one of Bitcoin’s most important qualities.

    Bitcoin is uncensorable, meaning that any person with an internet connection can send it to someone else, irrespective of whether or not the government wants them to. Elizabeth Warren and Janet Yellen have complained vigorously about this “problem,” arguing that only criminals would want to trade in a currency that the government doesn’t control.

    But precisely because governments cannot cancel it, Bitcoin enables regular people and political dissidents alike to protect themselves from governments’ economic mismanagement. That is not to say that governments can’t make it hard to use Bitcoin. The U.S. could tax Bitcoin-driven capital gains at a punitive rate, like 80%, driving many investors away from the asset. The government could make it difficult for Americans to exchange their U.S. dollars for Bitcoin, through restrictive banking regulations.

    Most dangerously, some senior officials in the Biden administration and at the Federal Reserve are considering developing a crypto version of the U.S. dollar, called a “central bank digital currency,” that is exactly the opposite of Bitcoin. A CBDC would enable the federal government to wipe out the private banking sector, because every savings and checking account could reside at the Fed. The federal government would gain the direct authority to add or subtract deposits in those accounts, or even shut them down.

    Some people still send handwritten notes and read the print copy of their local newspaper. But in a CBDC world, there won’t be an option to use plain old paper cash. China is rolling out their own CBDC for the Winter Olympics, with the aim of eventually abolishing paper money.

    In other words, the digital monetary revolution unleashed by Nakamoto is here to stay. The only question is whether or not the money of the future will serve the interests of governments and elites, or of ordinary people. Bitcoin is resolutely on the side of the latter.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 18:00

  • Russia's Military Announces Bigger "Advance In All Sectors" As Zelensky Vows Ukrainians Will Fight
    Russia’s Military Announces Bigger “Advance In All Sectors” As Zelensky Vows Ukrainians Will Fight

    Update (12:35 ET): There are breaking reports that in the mid-evening hours Kiev time, Russia’s military has received orders to “advance in all sectors,” according to a fresh statement by Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

    • GERMANY WORKING ON WAY TO EXCLUDE RUSSIA FROM SWIFT
    • ADVISER TO UKRAINE’S INTERIOR MINISTER SAYS RUSSIAN TROOPS ARE APPROACHING ZAPORIZHZHIYA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
    • UKRAINE’S ZELENSKIY SAYS AZERBAIJAN AND TURKEY PRESIDENTS PROPSED TO ORGANISE TALKS WITH RUSSIA
    • GERMANY TO SEND UKRAINE STINGER MISSILES, ANTI-TANK WEAPONS

    Western correspondents on the ground have also observed the additional mustering of tank and armored units now continuing to pour across the border into Ukraine. So far a major aerial and ground assault on Kiev appears to have been paused as there was some level of back-and-forth and confusion over possible ceasefire or “surrender” negotiations. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Of the contradictory signals coming out of the earlier possible ‘opening’ of negotiations which never happened, it was stated…

    “[On Friday], after the Kyiv regime declared its readiness for negotiations, active hostilities in the main directions of the operation were suspended,” Ministry of Defence spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement on Saturday. “After the Ukrainian side abandoned the negotiation process, today all units were ordered to continue their offensive in all directions in accordance with the operation plan.”

    “A Ukrainian presidential adviser denied in the early hours Saturday that Ukraine had refused to negotiate,” CNN noted. Meanwhile more Western allies of Ukraine have stepped up with further pledges to arm Kiev.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Bloomberg describes of the latest European countries to make pledges… “Promises of aid for Ukraine poured in. U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the State Department to provide $600 million in immediate aid to Ukraine, including $350 million in military funding.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The report continues, “The Netherlands will send 200 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles as soon as possible, in addition to other military aid approved earlier this month. The Czech Republic will send machine guns, sniper rifles, handguns and ammunition on top of 4,000 artillery shells already agreed. Belgium is dispatching fuel and 2,000 small arms, while Slovakia — which shares a border with Ukraine — is sending shells and fuel.”

    * * *

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has remained defiant as his forces still control Kiev over past multiple hours of explosions and fighting on the outskirts of the capital city. “The fate of Ukraine is being decided now,” he had said in a prior social media address. “Special attention is on Kyiv — we should not lose the capital. The enemy will use all the possible forces they have to break our resistance. They will be mean and hard. Tonight they will begin a full scale storm.”

    “I’m here,” he later said in a Saturday morning post standing near the presidential office in Kiev. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko also on Saturday said that while the “night was difficult” it remains “there are no Russian troops in the capital” – though many parts are now looking like a war zone. Zelensky followed up by saying that Ukraine has “derailed” Russia’s attack plan.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “The enemy is trying to break into the city,” Klitschko said, after local officials confirmed at least 35 injured as of 6am local time. And Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba referenced “horrific Russian rocket strikes” while explaining in a social media statement that the “Last time our capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany. Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one. Stop Putin. Isolate Russia. Severe all ties. Kick Russia out of everywhere.”

    The Pentagon has said that Russia now has mechanized forces which were sent via Belarus within 20 miles of Kiev, according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who earlier briefed lawmakers. The US has continued vowing to send more weapons in support of Ukraine national forces. 

    Russia’s Defense Ministry is currently disputing that it targeted a residential building in Kiev. The attack on the apartment building has been widely reported within the last hours also as shocking video and photographs emerge showing a chunk of multiple floors having been blown out.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Here’s another view of the residential building hit with what appears to be a missile. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to Fox News:

    The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied reports that one of its missiles struck a residential building in Kyiv, claiming the damage was caused by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft projectile, Russian state news agencies reported on Saturday, citing a source at the ministry.

    “The information disseminated on social networks about a Russian missile attack on a residential building on Lobanovsky Avenue in Kyiv is not true,” the defense ministry source said, according to TASS and RIA Novosti. “The nature of the damage to the house indicates that an anti-aircraft missile hit it. This is clearly visible on the video.”

    On Friday there was a showdown in the United Nations Security Council. Russia of course vetoed a formal denunciation of the invasion of Ukraine. The real surprise, however, came when the countries of China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained from the vote, with the remaining 11 council members voting in favor. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Though details or confirmation have remained unclear in the ongoing ‘fog of war’ which makes verification difficult, on Friday Ukrainian forces said they downed a Russian transport plane carrying paratroopers…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    China, India, and UAE represent an outsized chunk of the global economy and their abstention strongly suggests that it won’t be so easy to gain global adherence to a strong Washington and EU-led sanctions regimen. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, the Friday assault on Kiev may have been even more severe, but it’s since emerged that Putin ordered a pause on the Russian military advance pending negotiations. Moscow then said it resumed the assault as “Kiev refused the talks” – a narrative which is being disputed by Kiev. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Kremlin spokesman Peskov said, “Yesterday, in the light of pending talks with the Ukrainian leadership, the commander-in-chief, the president of Russia, ordered a suspension of the advance of the main group of Russian armed forces in Ukraine.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 17:40

  • Masks Still Required For Air Travel Despite CDC's New Guidance
    Masks Still Required For Air Travel Despite CDC’s New Guidance

    Despite Friday’s announcement from the CDC that federal masking guidance was finally being eliminated for the majority of the US (there are still some areas that qualify as “high risk” for COVID, but 35 states have already abandoned their own masking guidance), air travelers will still need to don masks for the duration of their flights – at least for the next three weeks.

    A TSA order enforcing mask mandates on commercial airplanes doesn’t expire until March 18, and there’s even a possibility that it could be extended.

    Rules imposed in the early days of the Biden Administration require mask-wearing across all forms of public transportation, including trains, buses and airplanes. But the TSA order applies only to air travel.

    “The mask requirement remains in place and we will continue to assess the duration of the requirement in consultation with CDC,” said TSA spokeswoman Alexa Lopez on Friday.

    In fact, pretty soon, public transportation could be one of the few remaining settings where people are required to mask up. Thanks to the CDC’s decision yesterday, masking mandates will even be dropped in schools.

    Flight attendants and pilots alike will likely be relieved to see the masking mandates dropped, as enforcing them has led to an unprecedented rash of conflict on commercial airplanes as (often intoxicated) passengers pick fights with other passengers, and staff. Incidents where passengers have been restrained in-flight, and even incidents where planes have been rerouted, have skyrocketed.

    The FAA has said the vast majority of these complaints have been mask-related. More than $1 million in fines have been issued by the FAA, and another $400K have been issued by the TSA.

    The guidance the CDC issued Friday is based around a new approach to measuring viral risk, this one based more on hospitalization numbers than overall case numbers, which are becoming increasingly harder to measure as more Americans rely on at-home testing to confirm COVID infection.

    Under these new guidelines, only about 28% of the population lives in areas where the agency currently recommends universal masking.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 17:30

  • EU, US Agree To Expel "Selected Russian Banks" From SWIFT, Sanction Russian Central Bank
    EU, US Agree To Expel “Selected Russian Banks” From SWIFT, Sanction Russian Central Bank

    (Update 5:10pm ET): In the latest major escalation, late on Saturday European nations together with the US have issued a joint statement in which they announce the following restrictive economic measuresthings:

    1. Commit to ensuring that “selected Russian banks” are removed from the SWIFT messaging system: “This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.”
    2. Commit to imposing “restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions.”
    3. Commit to “acting against the people and entities who facilitate the war in Ukraine” by taking measures to limit the sale of citizenship, so called golden passports, that let wealthy Russians connected to the Russian government become citizens
    4. Commit to launching “a transatlantic task force that will ensure the effective implementation of our financial sanctions by identifying and freezing the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies that exist within our jurisdictions.”
    5. Stepping up or coordination against disinformation and other forms of hybrid warfare.

    EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen broke these down further as follows:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The full statement can be found here. It wasn’t immediately clear which are the “selected Russian banks” or what “restrictive measures” will be taken against the central bank. It also does not detail whether oil and gas payments will stop (according to Bloomberg’s in house energy expect Javier Blas, the answer is no).

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Furthermore, as Blas also notes, the German government has said that the ban only affects the Russian banks that were *already sanctioned* a few days ago, in other words, it is toothless as it merely hits banks that have already been sanctioned by other measures. It also means that the SWIFT measure is being taken merely to placate populist anger at no SWIFT measures.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It also means that the only impactful measure is the sanctioning of the Russian central bank, which however has likely anticipated this eventuality and has built up a sufficient war chest to withstand even the harshest sanctions, either on its own or with the help of Beijing. Of course, this may come as a surprise which is the hope of the White House, which has stated that “having lost the support of the Russian Central Bank due to the sanctions imposed on it, the ruble will fall into free fall.“

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Sanctions against the central bank are the last step,” Oleg Vyugin, a veteran Russian banker and formerly a first deputy chairman at the central bank, told Bloomberg. “It’s a formula tried in Iran, which initially results in the deepest decline in the economy, production, household incomes. And then a country begins to adapt, create its own settlements with those that agree to cooperate.”

    As Bloomberg further notes, full blocking sanctions against some Russian banks should already choke off their ability to conduct dollar payments with U.S. counterparts even if they retain access to the global messaging service.

    Banks can also resort to alternative systems and even communicate via email to send payment instructions, said Julia Friedlander, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

    Still, “it’s like a kick in the shins,” she said. “Transactions with Russia would be slower and more expensive. A sudden cut-off will also hold a lot of current assets in limbo, for corporations and banks.”

    As for specific individuals being targeted, the Biden administration has reportedly announced a Transatlantic task force to “hunt down and freeze the assets” of Russian companies and oligarchs — including “yachts, mansions, and any other ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze.”

    In response to these measures, Russia will need to address the population to ensure financial stability and lack of bank runs on Monday as the alternative could have devastating consequences for the Russian economy. Also, expect money-alternatives such as gold and bitcoin, to move higher as Russians scramble to reallocate their savings.

    * * *

    (Update 4:15pm ET): EU ministers together with the US will meet at 6pm on Sunday to draft potentially drastic new sanctions on Russia that could cripple its economy and financial system after initial penalties failed to deter President Vladimir Putin from stepping up the invasion of Ukraine. As Josep Fontelles, the EU’s chief for Security Policy tweeted, a virtual meeting of EU foreign minister will I discuss a package of emergency assistance for the Ukrainian armed forces, to support them in their heroic fight.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    As Bloomberg adds, a meeting of European Union foreign affairs ministers on Sunday will mandate that work begin to cut Russia off from the SWIFT messaging system, after Germany’s government, initially wary of expelling Russia from the network, said it’s looking into ways to achieve a “targeted and functional restriction” of Russia (see below).

    Germany is “working flat out on how to limit the collateral damage of decoupling from SWIFT in such a way that it affects the right people,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in a statement. The U.S. is considering a similar move. And French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to increase economic sanctions, including action on SWIFT, against Russia in coordination with EU allies and the U.S., a senior Elysee official said.

    Separately, the U.S. is also weighing sanctions on Russia’s central bank, a move which could have devastating consequences for Russia.

    “Sanctioning Russia’s central bank is likely to have a dramatic effect on the Russian economy and its banking system, similar to what we saw in 1991,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist for the Institute of International Finance. “This would likely lead to massive bank runs and dollarization, with a sharp sell-off, drain on reserves — and, possibly, a full-on collapse of Russia’s financial system.”

    It would likely mean a run on gold and/or cryptos which could soar as billions in savings are converted into a currency that can not be suspended with the flick of a switch.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Earlier:

    Following a full-court press by western nations, the handful of European holdouts – those most reliant on Russian energy supplies and continued Russian capital flows, such as Germany, Hungary, Italy and Cyprus – who have been adverse to expelling Russia from the SWIFT electronic payment-messaging system, are one by one folding on their objections.

    Overnight, Italy joined the growing consensus seeking to kick Russia out of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication global banking system to punish it for the invasion of Ukraine as the European Union weighs up the impact of such an action. Also on Saturday, Poland’s prime minister said he had spoken again with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, who had assured him of Budapest’s support for far-reaching sanctions against Russia.

    “I talked today again with Prime Minister of Hungary V. (Victor – PAP) Orban. Once again he assured me of support for far-reaching sanctions directed towards Russia. Also including blocking the SWIFT system,” Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jabłoński also said on Saturday he had spoken to Hungarian Ambassador Orsolya Zsuzsanna Kovacs and that “Hungary will not block any sanctions against Russia, also including concerning the SWIFT system.”

    Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Saturday that Cyprus, which it was thought may have held out against the move, had confirmed it would not block the decision to withdraw Russia from SWIFT.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Finally, Bloomberg reports that Germany has “upended years of policy” and agreed to supply weapons to Kyiv and “look into ways” to shut out Russia from the SWIFT financial messaging system, which however is still a long way away from agreeing to expel Russia.

    The German government said in a statement Saturday that it has agreed to the supply of 400 German-made rocket propelled grenades to Ukraine via the Netherlands, along with 14 armored personnel carriers, as well as 1000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles. It will also supply 10,000 tonnes of fuel via Poland. Further supplies to Ukraine are currently being considered, it said.

    “After the shameless attack by Russia, Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Vice Chancellor Robert Habecksaid in the emailed statement. “It has an inalienable right to self-defense.”

    At the same time, the government “is working flat out on how to limit the collateral damage of decoupling from SWIFT in such a way that it affects the right people,” they said. “What we need is a targeted and functional restriction of SWIFT.”

    The German statement indicates that Europe’s most important nation, and top importer of Russian gas…

    … is still not on the same page as most of its other European peers realizing that an overnight cutoff of Russian gas (something which a SWIFT expulsion would spark) would lead to a crippling hit to the German economy, and instead is seeking a targeted SWIFT cutoff, which course is impossible for the “all or nothing” system. As for the well-known reasons behind Germany’s opposition Erik Meyersson, an economist at Svenska Handelsbanken, put it best: “The EU isn’t on board with removing Russia from SWIFT for one thing because the EU isn’t on board with letting go of Russian energy.”

    In effect, the latest German statement is hardly surprising in light of what Germany’s finance minister said on Friday afternoon when he shocked more than a few marketwatchers by saying that ‘we are open to cutting Russia off SWIFT’ with a German government advisor telling RND that “banning Russia from SWIFT is manageable.”

    And yet, despite the jawboning Germany is still unwilling (and unable) to pull the plug.

    As a reminder, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is the financial-messaging infrastructure that links the world’s banks. The Belgium-based system is run by its member banks and handles millions of daily payment instructions across more than 200 countries and territories and 11,000 financial institutions. Iran and North Korea are already cut off from it, although that has not stopped China from buying millions of barrels of Iranian oil despite US sanctions.

    Jumping the shark a but early, Ukraine president Zelensky said he was “grateful to everyone for the decision to cut off Russia from SWIFT”, even though such a decision has not been made (at least not yet).

    Others followed suit, such as hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who said in a tweet on Saturday that any SWIFT action would likely result in a quick bank run in Russia:

    “I wouldn’t want to keep money in a bank that can’t access the SWIFT system. Once a bank can’t transfer or receive funds from other banks, its solvency can be at risk. If I were Russian, I would take my money out now. Bank runs could begin in Russia on Monday.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    As we reported on Friday, Goldman Sachs’ Allison Nathan asked the question on everyone’s lips: “The removal of Russia from SWIFT – the global electronic payment-messaging system – has been referred to as the “nuclear option” for sanctions. Do you agree with that characterization?”

    Eddie Fishman – the former Russia and Europe Lead in the US State Department’s Office of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation – responded in a fascinating way:

    “No – it’s not even close to being the nuclear option… SWIFT is just a messaging service. If the US and Europe decided to cut Russians banks off from SWIFT without imposing full-blocking sanctions on them, they could still transact with US and European financial institutions – they just couldn’t use SWIFT to do so.”

    Fishman went on to point out a potentially even bigger blowback consequence for the West’s actions:

    “…and in a perverse way, that may actually increase the demand for SWIFT alternatives, such as Russia’s own System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS).”

    And while a decision on SWIFT appears to still be pending, Ackman is certainly correct that is a bank run were to take place it would lead to a deep financial crisis overnight, and may be the reason why – in lieu of a SWIFT expulsion – the U.S. is reportedly weighing sanctions on Russia’s central bank, as Bloomberg reported citing “people familiar with the matter”, a move that would target much of the $643 billion in reserves that Russian President Vladimir Putin had amassed ahead of his invasion of Ukraine.

    A final decision hasn’t been made but the Biden administration is urgently considering all options in an attempt to deter Putin from further devastation in Ukraine, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The U.S. aims to make each move in conjunction with allies across Europe for maximum impact, they said.

    While Russia has been steadily dedollarizing for the past 4 years, and reducing reliance on western foreign currency (while adding to its holdings of yuan and gold), the central bank still held 16.4% of its holdings in dollars at the end of June 2021, according to the latest official data, down from 22.2% a year earlier. The euro’s share was up at 32.2%.

    A sanction on the central bank would be “devastating” for Russia, according to Tim Ash, a strategist at Bluebay Asset Management in London. “We would see the ruble crash.”

    As Bloomberg notes, although the decision would be without precedent for an economy the size of Russia’s, the U.S. has previously sanctioned the central banks of adversaries. In 2019, the Treasury Department blacklisted the monetary authorities of Iran and Venezuela for funneling money that supported destabilizing activities in the respective regions. North Korea’s central bank is also blacklisted.

    Losing access to funds abroad could handcuff Russia’s central bank as it tries to shore up the ruble in the foreign-exchange market by selling hard currency. The direct interventions, announced earlier this week after Putin ordered his military to attack Ukraine, mark the first time the Bank of Russia waded into the market since 2014.

    Russia also kept 22% of its hoard in gold, most of which is held domestically and would be out of reach of western sanctions, while about 13% of the central bank’s holdings were in yuan.

    Meanwhile, the Biden administration is also debating whether to push for a directive from the European Union needed to ban Russia from SWIFT, though a U.S. and EU decision isn’t imminent especially with Germany still unable to fully make up its mind.

    “It appears the Biden administration is gradually coming around to adopting the real hard-hitting sanctions that it should have imposed days ago,” said Marshall Billingslea, who served in the Treasury’s sanctions unit during the Trump administration.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 17:26

  • Russia, China "Plotting Behind The Scenes" Ahead Of Ukraine Invasion: Congressman
    Russia, China “Plotting Behind The Scenes” Ahead Of Ukraine Invasion: Congressman

    Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Moscow and Beijing have been keeping each other abreast of their plans in the leadup to the Ukraine attack, according to two lawmakers.

    “I think they have coordinated and I think that China is in a better position letting Russia go first, to evaluate,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) told EpochTV’s “China Insider” program at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 25.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk as they attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of State in Bishkek on June 14, 2019. (Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP via Getty Images)

    By watching the world’s reaction on Ukraine, China is trying to gauge its next steps on Taiwan, the self-ruled island that the Chinese Communist Party claims as its own territory and long planned to bring under its control, by force if necessary.

    “China has designs on Taiwan,” said the lawmaker during an interview in Orlando, Florida. “And they want to see if the world imposes real sanctions on Russia, and how much it hurts Russian, and what really the willpower is to stop an aggressive nation from gaining further territory.”

    Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) held a similar view.

    He made a particular note of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping at the Beijing Olympics’ opening day three weeks ago, which ended with the two countries forming a “no limits” partnership.

    “They’ve been plotting behind the scenes,” he told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times, at the CPAC event.

    Ukraine was one subject discussed during “in-depth discussions” between the two nations’ foreign ministers, which took place a day prior to the Xi-Putin meeting. From the Kremlin readout, Moscow also “reaffirms its support” for Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is part of China.

    Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese foreign ministry has been peppered with questions about whether Xi had prior knowledge about the plan and even gave Putin “his blessing,” but its officials had avoided making a direct answer.

    “Russia is an independent major country,” spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters on Thursday.

    She accused the reporter of having “rich” imagination when asked if the timing of the assault, only days after the Beijing Olympics concluded, was coincidental.

    ‘Distraction’

    The intensifying Ukraine crisis is a boon for Beijing, Buck said. A military conflict would shift the U.S. attention away from its rivalry with China, handing Beijing an opportunity to exploit.

    “If the United States starts pouring troops into Europe to defend Europe and do our part as a NATO partner, we are not going to be able to do what we want to do or need to do in the Pacific,” said Buck.

    “It serves as a distraction,” he added.

    “In China’s view, it serves as a way of siphoning off resources that can be used in other areas,” the congressman said. “China is most interested in making sure that this is prolonged, and that Russia continues to maintain a threat to the Baltics, Poland, to Hungary, to other countries in Europe.”

    A group of Slavic people living in Taiwan display placards to protest against Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, in Taipei on Feb. 25, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

    Beijing has so far refrained from directly labeling Russia’s attack on Ukraine as an invasion, but at the same time has maintained that it respects “all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity,” an oblique reference to its insistence that Taiwan is part of China.

    While the United States is not ready to engage in a ground war with Russia over Ukraine, the stakes are different when it comes to Taiwan, said Buck.

    “The will to defend Taiwan is greater than the will to defend Ukraine,” he said.

    “The idea that China and the way they have cheated trade relationships, the way they have stolen intellectual property, the way they have made themselves a military power in recent years, and have tried to affect shipping lanes that are necessary for trade, is different,” he said.

    “Taiwan sits in a position that could impact our ability to trade with Japan, with Korea and other neighbors,” he added. “And to really embolden China to interfere with strategic trading partners … I don’t think the United States wants that to happen.”

    According to a January poll by the Trafalgar Group, an overwhelming majority of Americans are against sending troops or military equipment to Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion. Only 15 percent of those polled believed that the United States should provide troops, while 30 percent believed it should provide weapons and other supplies only.

    Taiwan soldiers stand next to the domestically produced corvette class vessel Tuo Chiang (R) during a drill at the northern city of Keelung, Taiwan on Jan. 7, 2022. (SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

    By contrast, 58 percent of those polled believed that U.S. military assets should be used to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion by mainland China.

    To deter China from following Russia’s steps requires stronger action by the United States, both lawmakers said.

    “It’s absolutely critical that they [Beijing] realize if they attack [Taiwan] that will end up in serious military confrontation with the United States,” Chabot said, in calling Washington to change its long standing policy of strategic ambiguity, in which the United States remains deliberate vague on whether it’d come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese invasion.

    “China is not being at all helpful,” Chabot added. “But that’s not unexpected because the two chief rivals on the globe right now … the worst of the bad actors are Putin and Xi—Russia and China.”

    David Zhang contributed to this report. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 17:00

  • Gundlach Is Moving DoubleLine's $134 Billion Money Management Arm To Florida, From California
    Gundlach Is Moving DoubleLine’s $134 Billion Money Management Arm To Florida, From California

    Jeff Gundlach is the latest in a long line of asset managers that are moving operations to Florida.

    Gundlach’s DoubleLine Capital LP has moved its principal office, according to a report from Bloomberg this week. Formerly located in Glendale, California, the move tp Tampa comes after Gundlach has publicly complained about quality of life and taxes in California. 

    Gundlach isn’t moving to Tampa, however. Regulatory filings this past week noted that “Key decisions impacting the policies and strategy of DoubleLine Capital” and board meetings will now all be made in Florida.

    Taxes and quality of life in California have been gripes of the fund manager’s for a while. Florida has served as a popular destination for many asset managers looking to leave major U.S. cities (mostly New York) to escape taxes and lack of law and order. Florida, famously, has no state income tax.

    The company’s employees have mostly been working remotely since Covid and have “flexibility” with regard to use of office space, the report says. 

    The company’s L.A. location will supplement the Florida office with “personnel and resources necessary to support DoubleLine’s routine day-to-day business”. 

    Geoffrey Weinstein, an attorney at law firm Cole Schotz, talked about how easy it is to move a primary resident to Florida to reap the same tax benefits. He told Bloomberg: “The only income tax the partner would have to pay is anything related to California activity. There are probably going to be some major players that move to Tampa.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 16:30

  • Watch: Ukrainian 'Tank Man' Trying To Block Russian Military Convoy
    Watch: Ukrainian ‘Tank Man’ Trying To Block Russian Military Convoy

    Authored by Lorenz Duschamps via The Epoch Times,

    A Ukrainian man apparently tried to block a Russian convoy of armored vehicles by stepping in front of the trucks, according to footage of the incident that has since gone viral.

    The 28-second video, shared by Ukraine news agency HB, shows an unarmed man running in front of several armed vehicles advancing down a road. The encounter has drawn comparisons to the iconic “tank man” of Tiananmen Square.

    “Ukrainian rushes under enemy equipment so that the occupiers do not pass,” the outlet wrote on Twitter along with the video of an unidentified man attempting to obstruct the convoy.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Tank man” refers to the man who was pictured standing in front of a line of tanks near Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989—a day after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ordered their troops to roll in tanks and open fire on civilians following weeks of protests centered in Tiananmen Square.

    Photographer Jeff Widener’s iconic Tank Man shot, in Tiananmen Square, China, on June 5, 1989. (Jeff Weidner)

    The CCP has never released a full account of the violence. Days after June 4, 1989, the CCP announced a death toll of about 300, most of them soldiers. However, rights groups and witnesses say thousands of people died. Unnamed sources within the CCP say at least 10,000 people were killed, according to a declassified British diplomatic cable and declassified White House documents.

    It’s unclear when and where the Ukrainian man tried to block the convoy. The footage went viral on Friday with many people commenting on the man’s bravery, comparing him to the iconic image of an unidentified Chinese man standing in front of multiple tanks in Beijing.

    “Ukraine just got its very own Tank Man,” one person said on Twitter.

    Russian forces advanced an assault on Ukraine early on Thursday, with reports of missile strikes and explosions in major Ukrainian cities. Russian tanks and troops appear to have already entered parts of Kyiv, the country’s capital, on Friday, amid heavy fighting with Ukraine’s military forces.

    Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense claimed on Friday that about 2,800 Russian soldiers had been killed in the first 36 hours of Russia’s invasion. Russia has not released any casualty figures.

    Viktor Liashko, Ukraine’s minister of health, said on Saturday that 198 people were killed and 1115 wounded so far amid Russia’s military operation, including children.

    “Unfortunately, according to operational data, we have 198 dead at the hands of the gunpowder, including 3 children, 1115 injured, 33 of which were children,” Liashko said in a statement on Facebook.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 16:00

  • 62% Of Voters Say Putin Wouldn't Have Invaded If Trump Were President; Poll
    62% Of Voters Say Putin Wouldn’t Have Invaded If Trump Were President; Poll

    A new Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)-Harris Poll survey (conducted between Feb. 23 and Feb. 24 with 2,026 registered voters) released exclusively to The Hill on Friday found that 62% of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president.

    The partisan breakdown is even more striking:

    85% of Republicans think Putin wouldn’t have invaded if Trump had been president and 38% of Democrats also believed it.

    A majority of Americans polled – 59% – also said they believed that the Russian president moved on Ukraine because Putin saw weakness in President Biden.

    Of course, the blame for this crisis is already being pitched at the previous administration as, after four years of constant gaslighting over US-Trump collusion the narrative needs to be kept alive. However, as the polls above show, and the following ‘objective’ facts prove, that is entirely false:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And this two minute rant over dinner by Trump, blasting NATO leaders (and specifically Germany), should clarify a lot for you – Trump was right… again!

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Finally, it appears the ‘rally around the flag’ bump in Biden’s approval rating is already starting to fade already…

    Perhaps the imminent $4 gas price is why?

    “On the eve of his State of the Union, the president has hit a new low as inflation and economic anxiety hit new highs. The president is now underwater on every top domestic and foreign policy issue,” said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey.

    The same poll found that 64 percent of registered voters said Biden is “too lenient” with Russia, while 31 percent said he handles Russia “just right.” Five percent said he’s “too tough.”

    However, as Rick Moran write at PJMedia.com, the news is even worse in the left-leaning Marist poll which found that most Americans see Biden’s first year as a “failure.”

    Majorities of Americans think Biden’s first year in office has been a failure (56%), he is not fulfilling campaign promises (54%), and he is doing more to divide the nation (52%) than to unite it. Americans are more than four times as likely to consider Biden’s first year to be a major failure (36%) than a major success (8%).

    We cannot wait to see how the president spins all this in his State of The Union address next Tuesday (which we note will be followed not just by the usual GOP rebuttal, but Democratic “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib will be making a speech to push the progressive agenda on behalf of the Working Families Party following Biden’s speech).

    Not exactly ‘unifying’.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 15:30

  • Shellenberger: Western Elites Are Putin's 'Useful Idiots'
    Shellenberger: Western Elites Are Putin’s ‘Useful Idiots’

    “People think nothing could have been done to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine, but that’s absurd,” bravely writes outspoken realist Michael Shellenberger in a Twitter thread that is bound to get him accused of being ‘treasonous’ or promoting ‘Russian propaganda’, instead of merely opening the forum for discussion of other opinions than the one driven into the West’s citizens by an every-ready establishment media.

    As Shellenberger points out (obviously to many), “if Putin thought the costs of invasion outweighed the benefits, he wouldn’t have done it. He’s a rational actor not a madman. And today it’s clear Putin calculated correctly.“

    Via Threadreaderapp.com,

    After Russia invaded, a few people demanded that Europe stop buying its natural gas, but European utilities snatched up long-term Russian contracts…

    …and the White House said, “Our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the flow of energy from Russia to the world.”

    People who believe that nothing could have been done to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine thus imply that Russia’s chokehold over European energy supplies was inevitable, but it wasn’t. Europe could have easily increased, rather than closed, nuclear plants and natural gas.

    Britain could have increased fracking for nat gas but didn’t. Why?

    Because Russia pumped $95M into anti-fracking advocacy.

    Noted the head of NATO, Russia “engaged actively with environmental organisations… to maintain Europe’s dependence on Russian gas”

    Source: The Critic

    Europe could have kept operating and expanded its nuclear power plants but instead, under pressure from climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, shut them down…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Climate activists even forced nuclear-heavy France to throttle its nuclear plants so order to use more industrial wind energy. The result was significant outages over the last few weeks at a time when French nuclear plants were needed most.

    Source: Michael Shellenberg’s Substack

    Efforts to make Europe less energy independent, and thus more dependent on Russian gas imports, were led by powerful banking interests in coordination with climate activists and center-Left parties around the world.

    Source: Michael Shellenbergers’ Substack

    Not satisfied with their successful efforts to make Europe dependent on Russia, global elites have sought to deny poor African nations abundant energy.

    All of this happened in plain sight at Davos, the European Commission, and U.N. conferences

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The ideological justification for energy scarcity long predates climate change. In the 1960s, radical Left activists abusing their authority as scientists claimed that the world was running out of energy, despite the fact that nuclear proved that energy supplies are infinite.

    The reason pro-scarcity “greens” attacked nuclear was because it debunked the idea that we faced resource scarcity and environmental degradation from overpopulation.

    Infinite nuclear energy meant infinite fertilizer, freshwater, and food.

    Source: Forbes

    Pro-energy scarcity greens hid their motivations.

    When asked if he had been worried about nuclear accidents, a Sierra Club anti-nuclear activist said, “No, I really didn’t care because there are too many people anyway … I think that playing dirty if you have a noble end is fine” 

    Bankers & renewables companies promote energy scarcity. Three of the largest donors to climate causes are billionaire financial titans Michael Bloomberg, George Soros & Tom Steyer, all of whom have big investments in renewables and fossil fuels.

    Shadow bank BlackRock has long promoted renewables. Its senior climate official @BrianDeeseNEC heads the White House National Economic Council

    Biden’s “Build Back Better” talking points echoed BlackRock’s pitch for “climate resilient” infrastructure

    Source: Forbes.com

    Biden and Democrats would like to see the whole of the US follow the California model

    California saw electricity prices rise 7x more than the rest of the US over the last decade, is experiencing blackouts, and intends to shut down its last nuclear plant

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The goal of Western elites is energy scarcity

    The cost of that scarcity is to empower tyrants like Putin who can invade nations like Ukraine with little cost

    Western elites are thus Putin’s useful idiots

    They are the ones now saying nothing could have prevented invasion

    What the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and other Western allies must do is obvious and urgent: we must massively expand nuclear energy and oil and gas production. This will lower energy prices and reduce exposure to Russian use of energy as a weapon of war.

    The public needs to understand that Russia could not have taken Ukraine had the West expanded energy production rather than throttled it by closing nuclear plants and reducing oil and gas production.

    Source Michael Shellenberger Substack

    We need @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi @GOPLeader @SenSchumer @LeaderMcConnell take immediate bipartisan action to keep nuclear plants operating and expand oil & gas production for domestic use and export to our allies in Europe & Asia.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/26/2022 – 15:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 26

Today’s News 26th February 2022

  • Will Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Embolden China?
    Will Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Embolden China?

    Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics.com,

    With a reconnaissance plane in tow Thursday, a small fleet of eight fighters deliberately probed disputed airspace before scrambled jets scared them away, an air-to-air episode that may be part of the larger international epoch which President Biden frequently describes as one of “democracy versus autocracy.” But these weren’t Russian fighters. They were Chinese.

    The incursion is not unusual; China frequently tests the air defenses of Taiwan. But this minor aggression occurred against a bleak global backdrop: Russian tanks are rolling across Ukraine, and while the United States rallies world opinion against Moscow, China won’t even call it an invasion.

    For the moment, however, the White House would rather look past a deepening China-Russia partnership and not connect any dots.

    “Are you urging China to help isolate Russia?” a reporter from Reuters asked the president.

    In the East Room of the White House, Biden replied, “I’m not prepared to comment on that at the moment.”

    Neither was his press secretary.

    At least not in any detail.

    It was National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who, unprompted earlier this month, warned Russia that invading Ukraine would lead to U.S. sanctions, necessarily making Moscow more beholden to Beijing for economic relief. So was the Biden administration working with their Chinese counterparts to keep them from lessening the blow of their newly announced financial sanctions?

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted China was not capable of countering the sum of allied sanctions. All the same, she said Biden was “certainly open” to a conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Then, for the second time this week, the White House spokeswoman appealed to the better nature of the Chinese communist regime: “This is really a moment for China, for any country, to think about what side of history they want to stand on.”

    Across town just hours earlier, Biden’s senior China advisor Laura Rosenberg was publicly criticizing China for its “egregious human rights abuses” against ethnic minorities, a condemnation more in line with how the White House normally views Beijing’s morality.

    Thus, it was no surprise when Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying blamed the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (she objected to the word “invasion”) by “sending weapons to Ukraine” and generally “creating fear and panic.” During the recently concluded Winter Olympics, Vladimir Putin was the rare head of state who traveled to Beijing to watch the games in person amidst widespread diplomatic boycotts over Chinese treatment of Uyghur Muslims. He met with Xi. They released a joint statement saying they “strongly support each other.”

    This week marks the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s visit to China, a dramatic presidential trip that normalized relations with the country as part of a larger effort to neutralize Soviet influence in China. Today, though, the Beijing-Moscow axis is tighter than it was during Nixon’s historic visit. “Their relationship seems to be about as close as it’s ever been, going back to Stalin and Mao Zedong,” said Elbridge Colby, a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department during the Trump administration. “It’s a very worrisome situation.”

    “It can’t be good for Russian interests for Moscow to have no choice but to look to Beijing,” Colby added, in echoing sentiments Sullivan expressed. “But Moscow seems prepared to countenance that, at least for now.”

    If China comes to Russia’s economic rescue, would the United States consider inflicting some financial pain on Beijing?

    “One of the things we will have to watch is the question of whether the U.S. will impose secondary sanctions on China,” said Jacob Stokes, a fellow at the Indo-Pacific Security Program of the Center for a New American Security.

    The Trump administration sanctioned the Chinese military in 2018 for purchasing military hardware from Russia, a violation of sweeping American sanctions levied as punishment for the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Similar sanctions, or the threat of them, could potentially scare off the Chinese from coming to Russia’s aid. A former adviser to then Vice President Joe Biden on Asia policy, Stokes said “The play might be: Can you get China to act in a relatively constructive manner, in exchange for some restraint from the U.S. in terms of secondary sanctions?”

    Although White House aides would not comment on that possibility, Biden may have subtly hinted at some kind of collateral repercussions for China. “Putin will be a pariah on the international stage,” the president said. “Any nation that countenances Russia’s naked aggression against Ukraine will be stained by association.”

    The two spheres are seen as connected, even if tangentially. China may be watching how the West responds to Russian aggression in Ukraine as something of a dress rehearsal for how they might react to a Chinese invasion of neighboring Taiwan.

    Biden insists America will remain resolute in its support of Ukraine, and he warned Russia Thursday that “the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”

    Not everyone believes this is the right emphasis.

    “He’s got his priorities reversed,” said Colby.

    “We have strong interests in Europe, and we need to have a clear and credible strategy for building up NATO’s defenses, but Asia must be our clear first priority because it’s the world’s decisive theater.”

    Balancing U.S. interest around the globe is certainly complex. It is also a simple question of resources. “The problem is that we don’t have enough of the key military assets for both a big fight with the Russians and a big fight with the Chinese in even roughly concurrent timeframes,” Colby said. “We thus have to prioritize, and China in Asia has to be the priority. We have to make sure we can.”

    But when asked about twin threats from China and Russia, Defense Department spokesman John Kirby replied that the military can handle both theaters concurrently. “I think the gist of your question is, why can’t we walk and chew gum at the same time,” he told reporters in January. “We can, and we are.”

    The White House, for the moment, does not want to publicly discuss potential diplomatic moves with China, other than to ask that regime to ponder what side of history they’d like to come down on.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 23:40

  • Printing Money: How Celebrity Book Deals Measure Up
    Printing Money: How Celebrity Book Deals Measure Up

    Three months after Britney Spears’ 13-year conservatorship was terminated by a Los Angeles County Superior Court in November, the 40-year-old singer has signed a lucrative book deal with publishing house Simon & Schuster.

    The deal for a tell-all memoir, first reported by Page Six, is said to be worth at least $15 million, making it one of the largest celebrity book deals ever. In the past, Spears has repeatedly hinted at the explosive stories she could share about her family, with which she has fallen out over the infamous conservatorship.

    As the following chart by Statista’s Felix Richter shows, Britney’s deal pales in comparison to the $65 million deal the Obamas signed in 2017, but it matches Bill Clinton’s $15 million advance for “My Life”, while narrowly beating Hillary Clinton, who netted $14 million for “Hard Choices” in 2014.

    Infographic: Printing Money: How Celebrity Book Deals Measure Up | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Spot the odd one out!

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 23:20

  • Anti-War Protests Break Out In Russian Cities As Many Shocked At Scale Of Ukraine Invasion
    Anti-War Protests Break Out In Russian Cities As Many Shocked At Scale Of Ukraine Invasion

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    As Russian missiles rained down on Ukraine, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in cities across Russia to protest their government’s offensive on Thursday, and many were detained by police.

    According to the Russian rights monitoring group OVD-Info, at least 1,758 people were detained at antiwar protests in 55 Russian cities. Of that number, 967 were arrested in Moscow, and 431 were detained in Saint Petersburg.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In Moscow, protesters gathered at Pushkinskaya Square, in the center of the city. Demonstrators carried signs with antiwar slogans that read: “Stop the war”, “Ukraine is not our enemy,”, “No one needs this war.”

    According to RT, the Moscow police said they “temporarily detained” 600 people. OVD-Info published a list on its website of the names of the people that have been arrested in each city.

    Infographic: Where Russian Anti-War Protesters Have Been Detained | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    And according to Fox News, individuals in some prominent political families have spoken out, as the large-scale scope of the war has become unpopular among some segments of society: 

    Even the daughter of oligarch and Chelsea F.C. owner Roman Abramovich has spoken out, posting on Instagram that “The biggest and most successful lie of Kremlin’s propaganda is that most Russians stand with Putin.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s daughter also posted “No to war” on Instagram.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Some prominent Russians have spoken out against President Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine, including journalists and other public figures. Yelena Kovalskaya, the director of a state-funded theater in Moscow, quit her job and wrote on Facebook that it’s “impossible to work for a killer and get paid by him.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 23:00

  • Meta Dissolves Team Of "Hundreds" Of Employees Working On An In-House AR/VR Operating System
    Meta Dissolves Team Of “Hundreds” Of Employees Working On An In-House AR/VR Operating System

    We’re not quite sure Meta understands the whole point of pivoting into the “metaverse” business means.

    That’s because the artist formerly known as Facebook has officially dissolved its team developing a new augmented reality and virtual reality operating system, according to a report from The Information on Friday. 

    There were more than 300 employees formerly working on the project, three people with knowledge of the situation said. Its intentions were to vertically integrate all of the necessities Meta would use to forge forward in the world of AR/VR. 

    The company had been working on an operating system that it was developing from scratch, called XROS, that would have been used in its VR headsets and the company’s forthcoming AR glasses, the report said. 

    The Information had previously reported that the project “had been underway for several years” and that the project’s disbanding “marked a setback for the company’s attempt to own the underlying software behind its Oculus VR headset and future augmented or mixed reality devices”.

    Meta claimed back in January that it did not plan on stopping work on developing operating systems internally. But if there was any remaining doubt, the disbanding of the team working on XROS seems to formally mark the end of Meta’s internal efforts – at least for the time being.  

    Currently, Meta uses an open-source version of Android to help power its Oculus Quest VR devices. And it looks like, for now, the company may still be reliant on Google’s operating system. 

    Going forward, Meta plans to continue to modify an open source version of Android that Google originally developed for smartphones. This modified OS is referred to internally at Meta as VROS.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 22:40

  • Russia And China Aren't The Natural Allies Many Assume Them To Be
    Russia And China Aren’t The Natural Allies Many Assume Them To Be

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    In the wake of mounting tensions between the US and Russia over Ukraine, one now finds countless media stories on the “China-Russia axis” and the “bond between Russia and China.” The ideological benefit of connecting Russia to China is undoubtedly clear to anti-Russia hawks. Russia is a relatively weak state with a small economy. China, on the other hand, tends to look more formidable. By connecting Russia to China in a new version of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” it becomes easier to downplay calmer voices noting the many limitations Russia faces in terms of its geopolitical ambitions. 

    But just how secure is this supposed Sino-Russian friendship? While the two states may broadly agree on the need to limit US hegemonic power, the two are likely to also find many reasons to view each other as more immediate sources of conflict. 

    In his book Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower, China scholar Michael Beckley notes there are many issues mitigating China-Russia “unity”:

    Russia and China currently maintain a strategic partnership, but this relationship is unlikely to become a genuine alliance. … In parts of the world that matter most to them, Russia and China are more rivals than allies. … For every example of Sino-Russian cooperation, there is a counterexample of competition. For instance, Russia sells weapons to China, but it recently reduced sales to China while increasing sales to China’s rivals, most notably India and Vietnam. Russia and China conduct joint military exercises, but they also train with each other’s enemies and conduct unilateral exercises simulating a Sino-Russian war. The two countries share an interest in developing Central Asia, but Russia wants to tether the region to Moscow via the Eurasian Economic Union whereas China wants to reconstitute the Silk Road and link China to the Middle East and Europe while bypassing Russia.

    The potential for an ongoing border dispute between Russia and China remains, as well. For its part, China has as many as 18 border disputes going on right now, and Russia continues to deal with several border issues with both Ukraine and Georgia. In Siberia, however, both states face a low-intensity conflict over the Russia-China border that is an ongoing source of division between the two states.  While unlikely to lead to violent conflict in the near future, this border situation does provide an informative example of one of many ways that the Russia-China “partnership” faces many pitfalls. 

    What Is Russia’s Far East Problem? 

    As Russia’s population has declined, the Chinese side of the border looks increasingly like a source of political instability and ethnic incursion into Russian territory. Beyond the near term, this is likely to lead to more conflict over the exact location of the border and who dominates the region. 

    Many have noted this. In 2008 for example, the Hudson Institute’s Laurent Murawiec published “The Great Siberian War of 2030” which explored the possibility for rising tensions along the Russia-China border. Murawiec notes that as Russia’s population continues to decline and withdraw from Siberia—a term used in this context to mean everything east of the Ural Mountains—relative Chinese geopolitical strength in the region will continue to decline:

    A hollowed out Siberia will be similar to a vacuum hole sucking in outside forces to make up for the vanishing Russian presence. Conflict is neither inexorable nor prescribed by some mechanical inevitability, but the likelihood that disequilibrium may lead to turmoil must be taken into account as a realistic possibility .

    A similar thesis appeared in The New York Times in 2015 with an article titled “Why China Will Reclaim Siberia.” The author, Frank Jacobs, lays out the basic dynamics: 

    The border, all 2,738 miles of it, is the legacy of the Convention of Peking of 1860 and other unequal pacts between a strong, expanding Russia and a weakened China after the Second Opium War. (Other European powers similarly encroached upon China, but from the south. Hence the former British foothold in Hong Kong, for example.)

    The 1.35 billion Chinese people south of the border outnumber Russia’s 144 million almost 10 to 1. The discrepancy is even starker for Siberia on its own, home to barely 38 million people, and especially the border area, where only 6 million Russians face over 90 million Chinese. With intermarriage, trade and investment across that border, Siberians have realized that, for better or for worse, Beijing is a lot closer than Moscow.

    There are two main points here:

    • First, as outlined also by Murawiec, the population imbalance on the two sides of the border is very destabilizing. Eventually, this could even lead to China using a strategy similar to that now employed by Russia in eastern Ukraine: if the Russian borderlands end up with a sizable number of ethnic Chinese with ties to China, the Chinese regime could hand out Chinese passports on the Russian side of the border and then pursue de facto annexation in the name of protecting the ethnic minority from “encroachments” by Moscow. 

    • Secondly, it’s significant that the actual location of the border was not formed in the mists of ancient history, but is rather a result of nineteenth-century politics. The fact the border was set by the “unequal treaties” of 1858 and 1860 ties the current Russia-China border to China’s “Century of Humiliation.” It was during this period (approximately 1840-1950) when China was on the losing side of numerous wars and treaties inflicted on China by the world’s great powers.

    This continues to be highly relevant in the minds of some Chinese nationalists who base assessment of current policies in Beijing on the grounds of ensuring that another century of humiliation never occurs again. 

    Indeed, as recently as 1969, Russian and Chinese troops harassed each other across the border in northeast China. This eventually “escalated into a shooting match on March 2 and 15, resulting in heavy casualties.” Although a shooting war over such matters presently appears remote, complaints over Chinese immigration in Siberia continue today. Those who are interested can even view on Amazon a 2018 documentary titled “When Siberia Will be Chinese.” 

    In 2020, China state media was sure to remind the Russian regime that Vladivostock was Chinese “before Russia annexed it via unequal Treaty of Beijing.”

    None of this means that China and Russia are necessarily going to come to blows in the near term. But it serves as an example of one way the two states face real potential conflict in the future. It is also reason to doubt that Russia and China are solid allies united in opposition to the West.

    Two Populations in Decline

    Perhaps Russia’s best hope for retaining a solid hold over Siberia is the fact China’s demographic bomb is even more extreme than Russia’s. 

    In the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s population has never returned to its Soviet-era peak. Moreover, Russia’s population is expected to decline even further, perhaps even dropping from 146 million today to under 100 million by 2100. 

    That by itself would almost assure a Chinese takeover of Siberia were it not for the fact that China may be facing an even more dramatic drop in population. As the Asia Times noted last year, 

    The Chinese Academy of Science predicts that if fertility continues to drop from its current rate of 1.6 children per woman to a projected 1.3, China’s population would be reduced by about 50% by the end of this century.

    But a fertility rate of 1.3 is likely a high estimate. China’s official records tend to stretch the truth, and the real fertility rate may be closer to 1.1.  If true, the population decline could be dramatic indeed. Or, as the South China Morning Post put it, 

    If China can stabilise its total fertility rate at 1.2, the total population will fall to around 1.07 billion by 2050 and 480 million by 2100. This decline will be accompanied by an ageing population structure. The proportion of the population aged 65 and over will rise from 10 per cent in 2015 to 32.6 per cent by 2050.

    A population that is elderly and shrinking fast is less likely to have the sources necessary to apply serious pressure to Siberia. 

    So, ultimately, at least on that front, demographic decline may pacify both parties. The Siberia situation is an important reminder, however, that Russian and Chinese interests do not necessarily coincide, and Russia is not the geopolitically secure juggernaut many Russophobes apparently believe it to be. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 22:20

  • Border Patrol Agents On High Alert For Potential Cartel Assassination Attempts
    Border Patrol Agents On High Alert For Potential Cartel Assassination Attempts

    While the Pentagon is more concerned about deploying National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. to help deal with upcoming trucker convoy protests, the situation at the southern border continues to spiral out of control as Border Patrol agents have been placed on high alert that Mexican drug cartels may be plotting to assassinate them.

    The Washington Examiner reports Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents stationed near Fronton, Texas, between Miguel Aleman and Los Guerra, Tamaulipas, Mexico, should wear full kevlar (commonly known as body armor) and be equipped with long-arm guns, such as lightweight semi-automatic rifles, due to new information drug cartels are “discussing killing U.S. law enforcement personnel” in the area. 

    “Information stated that cartel groups were discussing killing U.S. law enforcement personnel along the border near Fronton, Texas, between Miguel Aleman and Los Guerra, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

    “Agents are reminded to be cognizant of their surroundings while performing Border Patrol operations. It is recommended that all agents wear their ballistic armor, utilize long arms, and if possible, work in groups when responding to illicit activity along the immediate border,” the alert states.

    In mid-October, a Fox News reporter tweeted a shocking video of suspected cartel members firing machine guns over a National Guard observation. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Washington Examiner explains cartel members are now dressed in military fatigues and armed with AK-47 rifles. 

    “What’s been happening actually this past week is we see a group of individuals that are coming across — they’re smuggling people — but what they’re doing is they come across the river into the U.S. and smuggle people, they go back into Mexico, and they get their weapons,” Texas DPS spokesman Lt. Christopher Olivarez said.

    Russ Vought, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump administration, recently warned that the situation at the southern border is rapidly deteriorating and can’t wait another three years for a new administration. 

    “We have a real crisis along our border: record apprehensions; the drug cartels are basically in operational control of our border; massive amounts of drugs are coming across the southern border,” Vought said in an interview with NTD’s “Capitol Report” program on Feb. 12.

    “And so from the standpoint of where we are, as a country, we’re no longer in a position where the country can just wait three years to have a potential for a new administration to come in into power.”

    President Biden’s failure to control the border crisis has dented his poll numbers ahead of the midterms. As shown below, as news stories about the “border crisis” increase, Biden’s polling numbers fall. Now, of course, other factors are pushing the president’s numbers down, such as some of the highest inflation numbers in four decades wreaking havoc on households. 

    Meanwhile, some cartels are diversifying their operations from drug and human smuggling with their eyes on the multi-billion dollar avocado industry. Like drugs, Americans can’t get enough of the creamy green fruit. These gangs have been making inroads in their attempt to control the avocado trade as military patrols are increased in the state of Michoacan, the central hub of Mexican avocado production, to fend off cartels.

    Chaos is spreading all across Mexico, and it’s not just the southern border or avocado farms. Widespread violence is also occurring across the country’s most popular beach resort areas.  

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 22:00

  • Bitcoin, Recovery, & An Addiction To Debt
    Bitcoin, Recovery, & An Addiction To Debt

    Authored by Herman Vivier via Bitcoin Magazine,

    The debt addicted nations of today must hit rock bottom before they can see the incorruptible recovery guidelines of Bitcoin…

    The life of an addict is characterized by three stages: active addiction, rock bottom and recovery. These stages can overlap, reverse, repeat and do not necessarily occur sequentially. Generally speaking, however, every recovering addict walks this path.

    It is this author’s opinion that, first of all, addiction is a problem of pandemic proportions. Second, the addiction pandemic is manifest within our systems of money creation and debt. Third, we’re heading for rock bottom. And, finally, this will bring about the opportunity for recovery, with Bitcoin being a crucial part of that effort.

    A PANDEMIC OF EPIC PROPORTIONS

    Most people’s understanding of addiction is based on the image of a junkie with needles stuck in their feet. Of course (and unfortunately) that happens. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The vast majority of addicts are functional addicts. These are people who are able to maintain a semblance of normality while hiding the downward spiral of addiction behind a facade of societal acceptability.

    In fact, one of the world’s foremost experts on the stigmatized topic of addiction, Dr. Gabor Maté, openly admits to being a shopping addict who couldn’t stop buying classical music records. To the extent that he had no space left in his house to keep them. In this video, he talks about his experience treating the most extreme cases of opioid drug addiction and how this experience led to the observation that his own behavior (despite the appearance of normality) was fundamentally indistinguishable from the behavior of the addicts he was treating.

    Many people’s lives are characterized by similar obsessive-compulsive behaviors. People can be addicted to work, sex, food, power, wealth, possessions and so on. Any external source of stimulation that can cause a change in the chemistry of the brain can (potentially) constitute the basis for the development of an addiction. If we define addiction in terms of its behavioral patterns, rather than societal perception, it is clear that the pandemic of addiction is far more pervasive than commonly understood. In fact, some addictive behaviors, like shopping, are not only acceptable within society but even encouraged. Despite the fact that it can just as easily become as compulsive as using drugs.

    ADDICTION TO DEBT AND MONEY CREATION

    Total global debt stood at the completely unsustainable level of 355% of global GDP at the end of 2020, with household debt-to-income ratios in the Eurozone, U.S. and China all equal to or exceeding 100%. While all of the world’s largest governments across America, Europe and Asia are struggling with debt-related problems. The U.S. continues piling onto its gargantuan debt of almost $30 trillion while not having had a budget surplus since 2001, only recording five surplus years since 1969. Japan holds the dubious honor of being ranked number one, in terms of its national debt-to-GDP ratio, at 266%. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is seeing its highest levels of inflation since EU harmonization in 1997, coinciding with its highest government debt levels in over25 years. While governments in many other major developed countries like Canada, France, U.K., Italy and the Netherlands are all near (or far above) debt levels equal to 100% of GDP, with no sign of reversing trends. China, on the other hand, has become the world’s largest creditor with outstanding claims exceeding 5% of global GDP, while simultaneously witnessing its largest property developer teetering on the edge of default. This is no small matter considering that real estate accounts for 25% of Chinese GDP.

    Throughout this time, central banks around the world have expanded their balance sheets by record numbers. The U.S. Federal Reserve alone added more than $4 trillion dollars to its balance sheet in 2020, equal to 40% of everything it has ever printed and the greatest one-year increase in its history. This is to be expected as it is well documented that debt issuance and the creation of money is inextricably linked in our modern financial systems.

    Seen through the lens of addiction, it should come as no surprise that the world finds itself caught in a downward spiral of endless borrowing and spending. It is easier to borrow from the future to pay for what we want now, rather than save for the future until we can afford what we want. Given the right (or wrong) circumstances — excessive stress, trauma or violence — the instant gratification brought about by spending or any other behavior that causes chemical changes in the brain can easily develop into a compulsive behavior in a subconscious attempt to alleviate the circumstances. And so, both governments and their citizens are addicted to short-term relief, with little to no thought for the long-term ramifications. This is classic addict behavior and the compulsion to use is never stronger than moments before the final collapse.

    ROCK BOTTOM

    This is what separates functioning addicts, who remain functional but addicted, from those that are pushed into recovery. It can be sought out as was the case for Dr. Maté but this is the exception rather than the norm. In most cases, if the addictive behavior isn’t extreme enough, it is unlikely that the individual will recognize the dysfunction caused by addiction.

    Those who enter recovery do not do so by choice. They are typically pushed as a matter of last resort. A matter of survival. Those addictions are the ones where the compulsion is so strong, and the behavior so destructive, that the intensifying obsession eventually results in a complete collapse, bringing the problem into such stark contrast that it becomes undeniably obvious. While it is very hard to draw concrete lines, the differentiating factor is often the rate of progression. Enter history’s largest borrower, the U.S. government. With a projected debt level of $50 trillion by 2030, almost double what it is now, the accelerating trajectory of the underwriter for the global financial system seems undeniable.

    RECOVERY

    And yet denial is precisely what keeps the addict going until there’s no other choice left. Until their world comes crashing down. Until they are left with nothing and no one. Until complete annihilation threatens their survival. Most addicts have to hit that rock bottom. It takes nothing less than that level of naked reverence for the magnitude of the problem. And that’s when recovery becomes possible.

    But there’s a catch.

    Because the mind of the addict is the source of the problem, it is also incapable of finding its own solution. Recovery must, therefore, begin with the recognition that the addict cannot solve their own problem. The solution begins with surrender. Surrender to a source of wisdom and power that is not under the addict’s direct control. A source of wisdom, the words of which cannot be manipulated by the addicted mind so as to lead the addict straight back to finding an excuse for using. Recovery demands guidance from an incorruptible source. A source that can be internalized but which cannot be contained internally in its entirety.

    What is Bitcoin if not a system of monetary rules that lies beyond the will of any one single individual, group or government to change as they see fit? And yet, Bitcoin is a system which has its fate held in the hands of both anyone and everyone at the same time.

    Recovering addicts refer to this as a higher power, a reference which is often misinterpreted by non-addicts as being religious, but nothing could be further from the truth. Religion implies dogma while recovery is decidedly nondogmatic. Any framework will do, even a nonreligious atheistic one, provided that the addict submits themselves to a system of guidance not of their own individual making alone. Whether that be the guidance of an existing religion, a human mentor or the promise of technology-enabled decentralization of power, it matters not.

    What does matter is that, if the endless money printing and debt issuance leads to a rock-bottom collapse — and the world does not take the opportunity to adopt a system where the levers to change the rules are beyond the control of any individual or group of people — then, in typical addict-like fashion, we will eventually end up right back where we are now: drowning in debt, needing more and more to achieve a diminishing effect.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 21:40

  • India Exploring Rupee Payment Mechanism For Trade With Russia
    India Exploring Rupee Payment Mechanism For Trade With Russia

    While China is still trying not to fully alienate the US while effectively siding with Putin in Ukraine (see “China Calls US ‘Culprit’ For Ukraine Tensions” yet “China State Banks Restrict Purchases Of Russian Commodities, Pause Buying Russian Seaborne Crude“), Asia’s other superpower, India, has no such qualms and according to Nikkei Asia, India is exploring ways to set up a rupee payment mechanism for trade with Russia to soften the blow on New Delhi of Western sanctions imposed on Russia – including a potential expulsion from SWIFT – after its invasion of Ukraine, government and banking sources said.

    Putting its own national interest first, Indian officials are concerned that vital supplies of fertilizer from Russia could be disrupted as sanctions intensify, threatening India’s vast farm sector.  Russia and Belarus usually account for nearly a third of India’s total potash imports. It would not be feasible to replace them amid a rally in fertilizer prices to a record high, a senior industry official told Reuters.

    Russia’s President Vladimir Putin with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Dec. 6, 2021

    Officials said the plan was to get Russian banks and companies to open accounts with a few state-run banks in India for trade settlement, a banking source involved in the discussions said.

    “This is a proactive move assuming that the conflict escalates and there could be a slew of sanctions in place,” the Nikkei  source said. “In this case we would not be able to settle the transaction in dollars and so an arrangement has been proposed to set up a rupee account, which is being considered.”

    Funds in such accounts act as a guarantee of payment for trade exchanged between two countries, while the parties barter commodities from each other to offset the sum, the source said.

    A similar arrangement, in which part of the settlement with Russia is in foreign currency and rest is through local rupee accounts, was also being explored, said the banking and the government source.

    Such mechanisms are often used by countries to shield themselves from the blow of sanctions and India also used it with Iran after it came under Western sanctions for its nuclear weapons program, the source said. The program was introduced in 2012 and worked well for several years.

    The discussions on Russia were still at an early stage and formal talks had not yet begun between the two sides, an Indian government official said.

    EU leaders agreed on Thursday to impose new economic sanctions on Russia, joining the United States and Britain in trying to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies for the attack. The sanctions impede Russia’s ability to do business in major currencies and target individual banks and state-owned enterprises. A further financial blockade of Russia, in the form of a SWIFT expulsion, is currently being discussed.

    * * *

    Russian exports to India stood at $6.9 billion in 2021, mainly mineral oils, fertilizers and rough diamonds, while India exported $3.33 billion worth of goods to Russia in 2021, mainly pharmaceutical products, tea and coffee.

    New Delhi is also holding a meeting with fertilizer industry officials on Friday to explore ways to secure supplies from Russia and Belarus, said a senior fertilizer industry official, who declined to be identified.

    Similar to China, India has called for an end to violence in Ukraine but refrained from outright condemnation of Russia, with which it has long-standing political and security ties.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 21:20

  • Oil Prices And Sanctions Strategy: The Apparent Contradiction
    Oil Prices And Sanctions Strategy: The Apparent Contradiction

    By John Kemp, senior market analyst at Reuters

    Apparent contradictions are the most fascinating phenomena in commodity and other financial markets, pointing to an unresolved tension for policymakers and potential mispricing. Even before the Ukraine crisis intensified this week, oil price indicators pointed to a market that was exceptionally tight, with production persistently falling short of consumption, inventories low and expected to fall further.

    Russia’s invasion and the imposition of sanctions by the United States and the European Union in response have caused traders to anticipate the market will become even tighter as production and exports are disrupted.

    Brent’s six-month backwardation has climbed to more than $11 per barrel, the highest since September–October 1990 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, up from $6 at the start of this month and $3 at the beginning of January.

    The combination of rapidly escalating spot prices and a steep backwardation is consistent with a market expected to be severely under-supplied with a further depletion of inventories.

    But senior U.S. policymakers have gone out of their way to emphasize their response will not increase oil and gas prices, which would add to inflation and the squeeze on household incomes.

    The White House has briefed journalists that sanctions “will not target oil and gas flows.” The U.S. Treasury Department has specifically exempted financial transactions “related to energy” from sanctions.

    So either the market is over-estimating the fallout from the crisis on the actual availability of oil and gas; the U.S. government is under-estimating the impact sanctions will have on oil and gas supplies; or a bit of both.

    If the U.S. government’s view is correct, spot prices and the backwardation should both fall as oil and gas continues to flow, easing some of the fear about a recessionary spike in prices.

    If traders are correct, the disruption of oil and gas supplies (actual or threatened), possibly as a result of a miscalculation about the escalation ladder, will worsen inflation and increase the risk of a recession.

    But given the contradiction between where prices are trading and the U.S. government’s strategy, someone must be wrong.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 21:00

  • "I Have Other Assets" – Texas Politician Poses Topless On Oil Well
    “I Have Other Assets” – Texas Politician Poses Topless On Oil Well

    An aspiring 37yo West Texas woman running for the Lone Star state’s new railroad commissioner has launched one of the wildest campaign videos ever, according to Houston Chronicle. 

    GOP lawyer Sarah Stogner published a five-second campaign video on TikTik on Super Bowl Sunday, featuring her semi-nude atop an oil pumpjack. 

    “They said I needed money. I have other assets,” Stogner, a mother of one, tweeted. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “How am I supposed to get my platform in front of people without cash money?” Stogner asked a Twitter user who questioned her methods to gain attention.

    Stogner has over 15 years of experience as an oil and gas attorney. She is trailing incumbent Wayne Christian, who has a $766,000 war chest. Even though she has limited funds, the video has gained her national attention. 

    However, her critics came out of the woodwork:

    One critic tweeted: “I’m confused. Are you running for political office, or auditioning to be a stripper?”

    Another said: “Sad. Some people like to display their qualifications, but if this is all you have …”

    After her video went viral, the San Antonio Express-News retracted its endorsement, calling her campaign ad video “disgraceful.” 

    “We review social media, and Stogner would never had been our pick had the video appeared before we made our recommendation,” read an editorial. “It’s painful to rescind a recommendation. But this is an opportunity to reaffirm our principles and expectations.” 

    Still, not everyone had been upset over the candidate: “Whatever you think of this ad, it’s probably the most effective ad in politics. There are probably a few million people who never heard of her that have now heard of her. Publicity is the most important thing in elections.”

    Stogner said: “It feels very much like slut-shaming. We were just goofing off. We had the footage from last year, and I said ‘I’m going to make my own Super Bowl commercial’. If I had gone off and shot machine guns and screamed about the border, they wouldn’t have a problem with it.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 20:40

  • China-Russia Alliance An "Alarm Bell For The World": Australian Defence Minister
    China-Russia Alliance An “Alarm Bell For The World”: Australian Defence Minister

    Authored by Caden Pearsen via The Epoch Times,

    Australia’s Defence Minister Peter Dutton has called out Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping who he said wields the power to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine but has “chosen not to do that.”

    “The world stands as one to condemn the actions of President Putin—except for the Chinese government, tragically,” Dutton told Sky News Australia on Feb. 25.

    “This alliance that Russia and China have entered into should be deeply disturbing to the rest of the world.”

    Xi’s silence has made him stand out from world leaders who have publicly condemned Putin’s actions, Dutton said, despite the Chinese communist regime leader having the “power and the relationship” to exert pressure on Putin to “pull back and to reconsider” his military operations in Ukraine.

    “The world should observe that very closely,” Dutton said in similar comments to Nine’s Today program.

    “This alliance between China and Russia really should be an alarm bell for the world. We need to stand united and the west needs to be as strong as we have been since at least the Cold War,” he said.

    Both Dutton and Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie said there would many “innocent victims” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie addresses media as Defence Minister Peter Dutton looks on in front of the Subiaco War Memorial in Perth, Australia, on April 19, 2021. (AAP Image/Richard Wainwright)

    “Vladimir Putin is blowing the filthy clouds of war across Europe,” Hastie told Sky News Australia on Feb. 24.

    “Innocent people will die at his foul hands and we condemn in the strongest possible terms today.”

    Hastie said Prime Minister Scott Morrison had issued a warning against the rise of authoritarian powers back in 2020, in his Defence Strategic Update, “and we’re seeing that come to bear today.”

    “It’s a very dark day indeed,” he said.

    Australia will not send troops to Ukraine and should its regime of sanctions fail to change Russia’s course, Hastie said Australia was “just getting warmed up” and could deploy offensive cyber capabilities.

    “But most importantly, we condemn this corrupt and evil invasion of the Ukraine. And we affirm Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he added.

    Meanwhile, in interviews Dutton said what was happening in Ukraine was a “human tragedy” and posed the question: “The question is what more can the world do?”

    “There can be forces sent in and then you would be saying, ‘why have we entered into a nuclear war?’” he said.

    He warned there would be “economic consequences for the rest of the world.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 20:20

  • "A Slow Motion Disaster": Network Sunset Of 3G Will Wreak Havoc For Millions Of Vehicles On The Road
    “A Slow Motion Disaster”: Network Sunset Of 3G Will Wreak Havoc For Millions Of Vehicles On The Road

    While the world is looking forward to the future of 5G – as soon as we can figure out how to implement it without screwing up our entire air travel infrastructure – the demise of 3G is quietly wreaking havoc with some automakers, according to a new report from CNBC. 

    “Millions of car owners” are affected by 3G dropping off the map, the report notes. Many vehicles use 3G networks for updates and remote communication, including models manufactured by Tesla, Audi, Honda and Nissan. 

    The affectionately titled “network sunset” of 3G renders some features on these models, and many other products including home security systems, obsolete. While some vehicles will still function normally, CNBC notes that “others could lose automatic emergency response services in the event of a crash and certain infotainment and convenience features such as real-time navigation and smartphone app features such as pre-cabin conditioning”. 

    Kenny Hawk, CEO of Mojio, commented: “This is crazy times, when you think about it. 3G did not come out that long ago and the first sunset is already happening. You’ve got a lot of vehicles out there … that had 3G embedded telematics control units, modems and antennas that will only work on 3G networks.”

    AT&T is leading the charge in winding down 3G, and will be followed by T-Mobile and Verizon. AT&T told CNBC: “Since February of 2019, we have worked with automotive manufacturers to help them transition their connected cars to newer technology before 3G services end February 22. Customers have received, and will receive additional, communications as we work with them on this transition, including direct mail, bill messages, emails and text messages.”

    William Wallace, Consumer Reports’ manager of safety policy, called the situation a “slow motion disaster”. “Congress needs to get on this and make sure that this total disaster doesn’t happen again with 4G,” Wallace said.

    He continued: “We’re talking about millions of vehicles that will lose features that were promised to owners, and that no longer will be delivered. In some cases, those features are safety features, things that can help them from dying or getting seriously injured after a crash.”

    Guidehouse Insights principal analyst Sam Abuelsamid added: “Manufacturers, on a case-by-case, are taking a look at how many people are actually impacted by this shutdown of 3G and as they inevitably do with anything, they’re making a decision about are there enough people that are going to be impacted by this to justify developing some sort of upgrade?” 

    “Although these circumstances were created by factors beyond our control, we sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause,” Toyota told its owners. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 20:00

  • Buchanan: Did We Provoke Putin's War In Ukraine?
    Buchanan: Did We Provoke Putin’s War In Ukraine?

    Authored by Pat Buchanan,

    When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that.

    In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all.

    Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin invaded and settled the issue. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia will become members of NATO. To prevent that, Russia will go to war, as Russia did last night.

    Putin did exactly what he had warned us he would do.

    Whatever the character of the Russian president, now being hotly debated here in the USA, he has established his credibility.

    When Putin warns that he will do something, he does it.

    Thirty-six hours into this Russia-Ukraine war, potentially the worst in Europe since 1945, two questions need to be answered:

    How did we get here? And where do we go from here?

    How did we get to where Russia — believing its back is against a wall and the United States, by moving NATO ever closer, put it there — reached a point where it chose war with Ukraine rather than accepting the fate and future it believes the West has in store for Mother Russia?

    Consider. Between 1989 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev let the Berlin Wall be pulled down, Germany be reunited and all the “captive nations” of Eastern Europe go free.

    Having collapsed the Soviet empire, Gorbachev allowed the Soviet Union to dissolve itself into 15 independent nations. Communism was allowed to expire as the ruling ideology of Russia, the land where Leninism and Bolshevism first took root in 1917.

    Gorbachev called off the Cold War in Europe by removing all of the causes on Moscow’s side of the historic divide.

    Putin, a former KGB colonel, came to power in 1999 after the disastrous decadelong rule of Boris Yeltsin, who ran Russia into the ground.

    In that year, 1999, Putin watched as America conducted a 78-day bombing campaign on Serbia, the Balkan nation that had historically been a protectorate of Mother Russia.

    That year, also, three former Warsaw Pact nations, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, were brought into NATO.

    Against whom were these countries to be protected by U.S. arms and the NATO alliance, the question was fairly asked.

    The question seemed to be answered fully in 2004, when Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into NATO, a grouping that included three former republics of the USSR itself, as well as three more former Warsaw Pact nations.

    Then, in 2008, came the Bucharest declaration that put Georgia and Ukraine, both bordering on Russia, on a path to NATO membership.

    Georgia, the same year, attacked its seceded province of South Ossetia, where Russian troops were acting as peacekeepers, killing some.

    This triggered a Putin counterattack through the Roki Tunnel in North Ossetia that liberated South Ossetia and moved into Georgia all the way to Gori, the birthplace of Stalin. George W. Bush, who had pledged “to end tyranny in our world,” did nothing. After briefly occupying part of Georgia, the Russians departed but stayed as protectors of the South Ossetians.

    The U.S. establishment has declared this to have been a Russian war of aggression, but an EU investigation blamed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for starting the war.

    In 2014, a democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown in Kyiv and replaced by a pro-Western regime. Rather than lose Sevastopol, Russia’s historic naval base in Crimea, Putin seized the peninsula and declared it Russian territory.

    Teddy Roosevelt stole Panama with similar remorse.

    Which brings us to today.

    Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago.

    Nor is he “irrational,” as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.

    Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.

    But it cannot be that if NATO expansion does not stop or if its sister state of Ukraine becomes part of a military alliance whose proudest boast is that it won the Cold War against the nation Putin has served all his life.

    President Joe Biden almost hourly promises, “We are not going to war in Ukraine.” Why would he then not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do: go to war with Russia?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 19:40

  • Russian Space Chief Warns ISS Will Plunge From Orbit And Strike US If Biden Sanctions Implemented
    Russian Space Chief Warns ISS Will Plunge From Orbit And Strike US If Biden Sanctions Implemented

    The head of the Russian space agency has just threatened the US and NASA with some serious repercussions if the Biden Administration follows through with sanctions that would impact the cooperation between the two countries in space.

    Should the US cut off Russia’s access to certain space technologies needed to keep the International Space Station operational, then the end result might involve the Russians allowing the International Space Station to simply tumble out of orbit and come rocketing back toward Earth.

    Russia is a key player in the 15-nation partnership that has kept the ISS orbiting Earth for 23 years, but bilateral ties between the US and Russia have deteriorated substantially over the past year.

    On Thursday, President Joe Biden laid out new sanctions that he said would “degrade” Russia’s “aerospace industry, including their space program”, among other things.

    Source: The Sun

    In response to Biden’s sanctions announcement, the chief of Russia’s space program took to Twitter, asking whether the US wanted to “destroy our cooperation on the ISS.” Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin warned that Russian engines control the station’s orbit and location. Without them, the ISS would be in serious trouble.

    One potentially disastrous result of the sanctions would be the “uncontrolled de-orbit” of the 500-ton space station structure, likely sending it tumbling out of the sky and falling toward the US or potentially even Europe.

    “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station (ISS) from an uncontrolled de-orbit and fall into the United States or…Europe?” he said.

    “There is also the possibility of a 500-ton structure falling on India and China…do you want that?”

    Back in North America, the message about cooperation in space couldn’t have been more different: NASA insisted that the new sanctions on Russia wouldn’t have any impact on the agency’s ability to manage the ISS, along with other collaborative space projects.

    In a media statement on Friday, a NASA representative said the agency “continues working with all our international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station.”

    “The new export control measures will continue to allow US-Russia civil space cooperation. No changes are planned to the agency’s support for ongoing in orbit and ground station operations,” they said.

    The ISS is a collaboration between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. Presently, there are two Russian cosmonauts, four NASA astronauts, and one European astronaut living and working on board the space station.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 19:20

  • Growing Number Of Experts Call On US Govt To Recognize Natural Immunity
    Growing Number Of Experts Call On US Govt To Recognize Natural Immunity

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    A growing number of experts are urging the U.S. government to formally recognize natural immunity, or the protection given by recovering from COVID-19.

    More experts are arguing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccination schedule should feature fewer doses—or none at all—for people who have contracted COVID-19 and survived.

    “Natural infection should count as two doses,” Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration on vaccines, told The Epoch Times.

    Offit and two former FDA officials stated in a recent op-ed that “requiring people who have been infected to get three shots is overkill at best—a waste of valuable doses—and an unnecessary risk at worst (given that vaccines have side effects, albeit rare ones).”

    Under current CDC guidance, all Americans 12 and older are advised to get three doses of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC defines fully vaccinated as people who get two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson jab.

    The CDC’s guidance isn’t binding but is cited by companies and jurisdictions when imposing vaccine mandates. Many mandates force workers or residents to get fully vaccinated; others require a booster on top of the primary series because of waning protection. Few have exemptions for natural immunity.

    Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote in a separate op-ed that the increasing number of studies showing how strong and long-lasting natural immunity is should prompt the CDC to redefine fully vaccinated in two ways: People who have gotten a primary series and not been infected should need a third dose, while those with prior infection should only need one shot.

    Recent research on the matter includes a study funded by Johnson & Johnson and the U.S. government that found that previous infection alone provided 90 percent protection against moderate to severe COVID-19—the vaccine only provided 56 percent protection—and a paper backed by the CDC that found natural immunity was more protective than vaccination against the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.

    Some experts, such as Offit, push for what’s known as hybrid immunity. They point to papers that suggest that people who have been infected and go on to get a single vaccine dose are better protected than those with prior infection who remain unvaccinated, including a Cleveland Clinic study published earlier in February.

    Dr. David Boulware, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, agrees.

    A transmission electron micrograph shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles isolated from a patient. (NIAID)

    Boulware said he worries that not everybody who contracts COVID-19 will generate an immune response. He helped with a study published in 2021 that had participants self-collect serologic samples. The findings indicate that people with more COVID-19 symptoms were more likely to show evidence of prior infection.

    “For persons with prior documented COVID-19, they should receive at least one follow-up vaccine at three to six months after initial infection. For those with prior infection, two sequential vaccines in rapid sequence of 0, 21, or 28 days do virtually nothing immunologically, other than generate side effects. At present (based on current rules), I would recommend all those with prior infection to have a vaccine at three months after initial infection and then again after six months from initial infection,” Boulware told The Epoch Times in an email.

    Top U.S. health officials such as CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky have acknowledged that natural immunity occurs but have repeatedly urged people to get vaccinated, even if they recover from COVID-19, with a full vaccination schedule.

    Offit says he was among four people who were asked to share their views on natural immunity in 2021 with Walensky and other officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. The virtual meeting, which took place after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy was confirmed by the Senate and before Dr. Francis Collins stepped down as head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), didn’t lead to a shift in government guidance.

    “I think it’s because the opinions were sort of generally diverse, so there wasn’t a clear, unified message that came out of that,” Offit told The Epoch Times.

    One possible issue is how people could prove they’ve been infected and recovered, with suggestions including serologic tests.

    The CDC, the NIH, NIAID, Murthy, Walensky, Fauci, and Collins didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Epoch Times has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for details on the meeting.

    Other experts say the protection people with natural immunity enjoy is so strong that they may not or definitely don’t need any vaccine doses.

    Dr. Robert Malone, who helped create the messenger RNA technology that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on, pointed to research that suggests that people with natural immunity have a greater risk of suffering adverse events after getting vaccinated as well as a collection of studies on protection from natural immunity.

    “Over 140 papers demonstrate that—superiority of natural immunity,” Malone told The Epoch Times. “And furthermore, if you jab somebody after they have natural immunity, their risk of adverse events goes up.”

    One recent study from Italian researchers found that people who recovered from COVID-19 had a low risk of reinfection and a very low risk of severe or deadly COVID-19. They said the risk-benefit of vaccine doses for the population should be “carefully evaluated.”

    “From the point of view of the individual who recovered from a previous infection, vaccination will provide a very limited benefit, as his/her risk of a severe or lethal disease is extremely low, especially if she/he is young,” Dr. Lamberto Manzoli, one of the authors, told The Epoch Times in an email.

    On the other hand, vaccinating the naturally immune “may still provide some benefit, because approximately 1 percent of these subjects may have a reinfection and therefore transmit the disease,” he said. “Clearly, their impact on the overall pandemic is difficult to quantify, and it is likely to be very scarce, but if we want to take a very conservative approach, vaccination may still provide some benefit. Importantly, we have to use the word ‘may’ because, as I mentioned in the manuscript, an in-depth evaluation of the risk-benefit should be made for these subjects.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 19:00

  • Red Dawn Juan? Russian Solders Trying To Hook Up With Ukrainian Girls On Tinder
    Red Dawn Juan? Russian Solders Trying To Hook Up With Ukrainian Girls On Tinder

    Russian troops are reportedly bombarding Ukrainian women with Tinder requests, according to the Sun.

    Hunky Russian troops called Andrei, Alexander, Gregory, Michail and a bearded Chechen fighter nicknamed “Black” were among dozens whose profiles popped up.

    …

    Dasha Synelnikova’s phone lit up with snaps of dozens of randy Russians when she set her location to Kharkiv on Tinder yesterday. -Sun

    According to the report, the soldiers likely came into Tinder range of Kharkiv after a huge influx of Russian tanks and troops were positioned within striking distance of the city.

    “I actually live in Kyiv but changed my location settings to Kharkiv after a friend told me there were Russian troops all over Tinder,” said video producer Dasha, 33.

    “And I couldn’t believe my eyes when they popped up trying to look tough and cool … One muscular guy posed up trying to look sexy in bed posing with his pistol.”

    “Another was in full Russian combat gear and others just showed off in tight stripy vests.

    “I didn’t find any of them attractive and would never consider sleeping with the enemy.

    “I automatically swiped left to reject them, but there were so many I got curious and got into a message exchange.

    “It was funny but scary at the same time, knowing that they were so close.”

    Dasha exchanged messages with the guy holding the pistol, which the Sun published: 

    Dasha: “Where are you? Are you in Kharkiv?

    Andrei: “Of course I am not in Kharkiv but I am close — 80km.”

    Dasha: “Do you have any plans to visit us?”

    Andrei: “I would come with pleasure but Russian guys have not been welcome in Ukraine since 2014 [when pro Russian forces seized Donbas and annexed Crimea].

    Dasha: “What do you do?”

    Andrei: “I was born in Belgorod and was an engineer before 2014 and visited Kharkiv quite a lot and loved it there so much I wanted to buy a flat. I love travel to Asia, particularly Thailand. But now it’s a difficult time. I wanted to travel to Europe but getting a visa is difficult because no one likes Russia right now.”

    Then, Dasha asked Andrei if he was a Russian soldier – to which he replied with a cheeky “gif” video of Jim Carey – as if to say “Oops!”

    Dasha then received a constant stream of Russian suitors – including “Black,” a 33-year-old Chechen fighter with terrible trigger discipline, and 29-year-old Alexander, whose profile pictures shows him posing in a striped vest and a beret.

    Another Russian soldier, 25-year-old Gregory – showed off his giant military watch in another picture.

    No word on the Russians’ success rate.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 18:40

  • Democrats Demand Biden 'Do Something' As Pump-Prices Set To Top $4 "In The Next Few Weeks"
    Democrats Demand Biden ‘Do Something’ As Pump-Prices Set To Top $4 “In The Next Few Weeks”

    As Charles Kennedy writes at OilPrice.com, U.S. gasoline prices are rising after the Russian invasion in Ukraine and could hit $4 per gallon, according to data from the AAA.

    The average price per gallon of gasoline reached $3.57 as of Friday, according to GasBuddy data, after starting the week at $3.51. A year ago, the average price for gasoline was $2.65 per gallon.

    “Russia is one of the leading oil producers globally, behind only the United States and Saudi Arabia and if they choose to withhold their oil from the global market, such a move would eventually be reflected in higher gas prices for American drivers,” AAA spokesman Andrew Gross said, as quoted by the Epoch Times.

    The gas price increase to $4 could happen in the next few weeks, according to analysts, if the conflict continues that long.

    President Joe Biden this week tried to quench worries about the security of energy supply, saying, “We’re closely monitoring energy supply for any disruption, and we’re executing a plan … toward a collective investment to secure stability in global energy supplies.”

    The president also assured the public the White House will take steps to control prices at the pump, with Biden saying, “I want to limit the pain to the American people fueling at the gas pump … This is critical to me.” No concrete measures for reining in prices were mentioned.

    Fighting the surge in gasoline prices will be even tougher today than it was last year when Biden released crude from the strategic petroleum reserve.

    • First, there is the tight global supply of crude, which has been fueling the price rally even before Russia moved on Ukraine.

    • Second, there is the fact that the U.S. is a major importer of crude oil and has a limited source of it because of its sanctions against Venezuela. As a result, Russia has become a major supplier of the heavy crude U.S. refineries need to produce fuels. Sanction action on Russia’s energy industry could interfere with Biden’s plans for reining in fuel prices at home.

    [ZH: All of this has prompted Democratic leaders to panic (as we are sure their constituencies are also every time they have to fill their tanks), with U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) on Friday called for President Biden to release oil from the national stockpile and support legislation to suspend the federal gas tax in 2022 as he pushes to relive gas prices that rose after Russia invaded Ukraine.

    “As Russia continues its unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the average price of crude oil could remain above $100 per barrel and push the price of regular unleaded even higher than it is now,” Kelly wrote in his letter.

    “Hardworking families cannot continue to bear the economic hardship of high gas prices while paying for more expensive groceries and medicine. Even before the crisis in Ukraine, Arizona families struggled with costs at the pump,” he continued.

    So, this isn’t all Putin’s fault!!??

    Perhaps Senator Kelly and his central-planning pals should have glanced at the following chart before suggesting more Einsteinian madness…

    The strategic petroleum reserve has released over 75 million barrels in the last year and gas prices at the pump are up 70%.

    But Kelly said in his letter “another release, especially if done in coordination with our allies and other nations, could help blunt rising oil prices and the corresponding prices that Americans pay at the pump.”

    Because doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is… well, you know.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 18:20

  • US Treasury Imposes Sanctions On President Putin As Ground Firefights Break Out In Kiev
    US Treasury Imposes Sanctions On President Putin As Ground Firefights Break Out In Kiev

    (Update 18:17 ET): It’s official, the US Treasury has pulled the trigger on personal sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top ministers:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The US Treasury text reads in part:

    Today, the United States, in coordination with allies and partners, continued to forcefully respond to Russia’s unjustified, unprovoked, and premediated invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, as well as other members of Russia’s Security Council. This builds on other sweeping actions that the United States and partners took earlier this week targeting the core infrastructure of the Russian financial system, including sanctions against Russia’s largest financial institutions, restricting the ability of the Government of the Russian Federation to raise capital, and cutting it off from access to critical technologies. Cumulatively, these actions impose unprecedented diplomatic and economic costs on Russia and further isolate it from the global financial system and international community.

    Russian leaders including Putin himself have in past statements warned that sanctions against the sitting head of state would be seen as tantamount to an act of war.

    * * *

    (Update 18:00 ET): In his latest late night video address to Ukrainians, President Zelensky has warned his fellow citizens that “This night will be difficult, very difficult” – in words that also broadly referenced the totality of the war itself. Specifically it served as a rallying speech to prepare forces to defend the capital as there’s widespread reports that Russian forces are to move in imminently.

    “This night they will launch an assault. The enemy will use all of their power on all fronts to break our defense. This night we have to stand ground. The fate of Ukraine is being decided now.”

    Zelensky said: “This night will be difficult, very difficult. But the morning will come.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Additionally, even private citizens are said to be arming themselves, also at the urging of the country’s defense ministry. 

    Circulating social media videos that street battles have begun around midnight local time:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Sen. Rubio dropping some hints of US weapons into battle zone, perhaps revealing too much:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to a report from a CBS News correspondent on the ground: 

    …people streamed into a makeshift recruitment center in Kyiv on Friday morning, saying they were ready to die to defend their city. One commander said thousands had reported for duty — very few of them with military experience. Guns were being distributed to those who showed up, and the commander said they were quickly running out.

    Ukraine’s president said at least 137 people were killed in the first day of Russia’s assault, and with fighting reportedly reaching downtown Kyiv, that was likely to rise quickly.

    Meanwhile, there are strong rumors circulating that Russian ICBMs could be on the move from Russian bases, possibly in response to NATO on Friday announcing a larger mobilization that will concentrate troops in nearby Baltic and Eastern European states…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Via the BBC:

    * * *

    (Update 16:40pm ET): Ukraine and Russia are reportedly in discussions over a time and place for cease-fire and peace talks. According to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s spokesman, “The sides are holding consultations.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *

    (Update 15:10pm ET): NATO Chief Stoltenberg announced oN Friday that elements of the 40,000 troop-strong NATO Response Force (NRF) would be activated for the first time.

    As Axios notes:

    Stoltenberg has called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the most serious security crisis we have faced in Europe for decades.” The NRF will deploy “on land, at sea, and in the air” in eastern Europe for the purposes of collective defense.

    Details: The secretary general said that the size of the NRF has tripled since 2014, but that not all forces would be deployed. He also said that NATO countries would be providing additional weapons and air-defense systems to Ukraine at the request of its government.

    What he’s saying: “We are deploying [the NRF] to … prevent any miscalculations, any misunderstandings that we are not ready to protect and defend all our allies,” Stoltenberg said. “This is something that all allies have agreed to do.”

    • He added that eastern-flank allies “are extremely concerned. They are close to the fighting in Ukraine, and they also border Russia, and they’ve seen not only the military buildup and the ongoing war in Ukraine, but also seen the very threatening rhetoric because this goes far beyond Ukraine.”
    • “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is more than an attack on Ukraine. It’s a devastating horrendous attack on innocent people in Ukraine, but it’s also an attack on the whole European security order. And that’s the reason why we take it so extremely seriously,” Stoltenberg said.

    *  *  *

    (Update 13:02pm ET): NATO Chief Stoltenberg said on Friday that NATO members would provide more weapons and air defense systems to Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Anthony DeRosa.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    After some confusion, BILD journalist Julian Röpcke clarifies that Stoltenberg did not say NATO would be providing the weapons – rather, individual NATO members would do so on their own accord.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, Stoltenberg also said that cyberattacks on NATO members might be enough to trigger “Article 5,” which considers an attack against one ally as an attack against all allies.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *

    (Update 12:45pm ET): Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday threatened Sweden and Finland with “military consequences” if they were to join NATO.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, German Defense Minister Lambrecht said on Friday that he fears Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t hesitate to attack NATO partners.

    “We still have some hope that he won’t cross any othee borders. But I have to honestly say: That’s not a certainty!“

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, meanwhile, said on Friday that NATO would be deploying ‘response force units’ to Eastern Europe in order to bolster defenses.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * *

    (Update 11:50am ET): While it seemed like a long shot from the beginning, the prospect of talks between Russia and Ukraine was cast into doubt as the Kremlin said Ukraine had stopped responding after rejecting Moscow’s initial offer of a meeting in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

    Instead, Ukraine sought a meeting in the Polish capital, Warsaw, the Kremlin said, adding it had heard nothing further. There was no immediate word from Ukraine on the Russian comments. The diplomatic to and fro comes as fighting continues on the ground with Russian forces having entered the capital Kiyv.

    Of course, as Bloomberg adds, any talks would likely struggle to find common ground on the question of “neutrality” for Ukraine, which has sought to join NATO and draw closer to Europe.

    * * *

    (Update 10:20am ET): Following news that Russia is ready to send a delegation to Minsk for Ukraine talks, moments ago the Kremlin announced that Putin has agreed to organize negotiations after Zelensky said he was ready to discuss Ukraine’s “neutral status” (i.e., not joining NATO). Here are the latest headlines from Reuters:

    • KREMLIN SAYS PUTIN HAS AGREED TO ORGANISE NEGOTIATIONS AFTER ZELENSKIY SAID HE WAS READY TO DISCUSS UKRAINIAN NEUTRALITY
    • KREMLIN SAYS WE HAVE NOTIFIED THE UKRAINIANS OF PROPOSAL TO HOLD TALKS IN MINSK
    • KREMLIN SAYS PUTIN HAS CALLED BELARUS’S LUKASHENKO TO ORGANISE MINSK TALKS WITH UKRAINE
    • KREMLIN SAYS PUTIN HAS AGREED TO ORGANISE NEGOTIATIONS AFTER ZELENSKIY SAID HE WAS READY TO DISCUSS UKRAINIAN NEUTRALITY

    The ruble and Russian stocks, as well as US and European stocks, extended gains after Putin aide Dmitry Peskov conveyed the offer of talks in Minsk, the capital of Russian ally Belarus. The Kremlin also notes that while the Ukraine initially proposed talks in Warsaw instead, it then broke off contact.

    Separately, the Kremlin said that Ukrainian nationalists have deployed missile systems in residential areas in big cities, a move which  the Kremlin dubbed as “very dangerous.”

    Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow will only talk if Ukraine’s army surrenders. “We’re ready for negotiations at any time, as soon as the Ukrainian armed forces respond to our president’s call, stop resistance and lay down their weapons,” Lavrov said in the Russian capital.

    While Zelenskiy also called for negotiations with Putin, there was no indication of Ukraine acceding to Russian demands to surrender. Nor was there any sign of a halt to the fighting. Sirens warned Kyiv residents to take shelter from early morning as Ukraine’s armed forces said their units were engaging Russian armor to the north.

    Zelenskiy said that Russian aircraft were attacking residential areas of the capital. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said it had “entered the defense phase,” with shots and explosions heard across the city. “The enemy is already in Kyiv,” he said.

    As noted earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Putin in a call earlier on Friday that he supported negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, according to China Central Television. It cited Putin as saying that he was ready to conduct high-level talks.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed Zelenskiy and his government as “puppets.” Putin has said that he wants to replace Ukraine’s leadership, calling it a “junta.” Despite the talks offer, the assault on Ukraine is ongoing to secure the “de-militarization” of the country, Zakharova said.

    In an address, Zelenskiy said that Ukraine was not afraid “to talk about neutral status,” but went on to demand security guarantees and say that the country’s fate depended on its army. Earlier, he said that his intelligence services had identified him as Russia’s top target, but that he is staying in Kyiv and his family will remain in the country. “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state,” he said.  In a video call last night, the Ukraine president told EU leaders that “This might be the last time you see me alive” Axios reported adding that “they are coming for me, but I am staying” (of course, the former leader of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani also told everyone he was staying right up until he disappeared).

    The Ukraine president appeared rather irritated at Italy’s Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, slamming the fact the the former ECB head fact apparently undermined or criticized the fact that Zelensky did not show up at the call they agreed to have this morning. According to reports, Draghi had successfully secured a carve out for Italian luxury goods from the EU’s package of economic sanctions against Nato, which an EU diplomat reportedly said ‘Apparently selling Gucci loafers to oligarchs is more of a priority than hitting back at Putin.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    As a reminder, Italy was one of the nations (along with Germany, Hungary and Cyrpus) that refused to agree to kick Russia out of SWIFT.

    * * *

    Earlier:

    Russia said it was willing to hold talks with Kyiv even as its forces pressed their military advantage to close in on Ukraine’s capital and its embattled leadership.

    With the war in its second day, the Kremlin said that President Vladimir Putinwas ready to authorize negotiations with Ukraine on possible “neutral status” for the country. The ruble and Russian stocks extended gains after Putin aide Dmitry Peskov conveyed the offer of talks in Minsk, the capital of Russian ally Belarus.

    US equity futures are spiking on reports from Interfax that Russia is ready to send a delegation to Minsk for Ukraine talks.

    “As you know, today the President of Ukraine Zelensky announced his readiness to discuss the neutral status of Ukraine”: Interfax reports Dmitry Peskov, Russian press secretary, said earlier today.

    “Initially, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the purpose of the operation was to help the LNR and the DNR, including through the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. And this, in fact, is an integral component of the neutral status”

    “In this context, in response to Zelensky’s proposal, Vladimir Putin is ready to send a Russian delegation to Minsk at the level of representatives of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the presidential administration for negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation”

    US equity futures reacted instantly…

    This move has erased all of the week’s (post-Putin) losses for the Nasdaq…

    The Ruble is rallying, almost erasing all of the losses from the last two days…

    Reactions in other markets (crude, gold, bonds) are all muted for now.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 18:02

  • Multiple Los Angeles USPS Workers Plead Guilty To EDD Fraud
    Multiple Los Angeles USPS Workers Plead Guilty To EDD Fraud

    Authored by John Fredricks via The Epoch Times,

    A former United States Postal Service (USPS) clerk, who was charged with committing unemployment benefits fraud, was sentenced Feb. 24 to three years of probation, one year of home detention, and ordered to pay over $160,000 in restitution.

    Armand C. Legardy, 33, of Inglewood, California, obtained nine state Employment Development Department (EDD) debits cards from unidentified people that were issued for unemployment insurance benefits between August 2020 and February 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

    A discarded envelope containing EDD information sits in Irvine, Calif., on April 21, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The former USPS clerk, who worked out of the La Tijera Post Office on Crenshaw Boulevard, pled guilty to a federal count of use of unauthorized access devices, and acknowledged illegally using the nine EDD cards to purchase tens of thousands of dollars worth of postal money orders that were fraudulently obtained with false claims of COVID-related job losses.

    “[He] saw that EDD checks were being returned as undelivered,” Defense Attorney Meghan Blanco said, according to City News Service.

    “Mr. Legardy understood that the checks were likely fraudulent and that they were returned after being delivered to fake or nonexistent addresses”.

    “Regrettably, he and others took a number of these checks from the returned mail pile …” Blanco stated.

    “… and as the government described in its papers, had others cash the checks for them.’’

    Less than three miles down the road at the Culver City Main Post Office, another USPS employee pleaded guilty to a similar charge.

    Christian J. James, 32, was charged last year with using at least eight EDD debit cards in other people’s names, causing a loss of more than $142,000, according to the California District Attorney’s Office.

    Sentenced to probation, he was also ordered to pay $142,000 in restitution.

    A joint effort was made investigating the incidents by the USPS Office of the Inspector General, the United States Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the California Employment Development Department.

    EDD’s website states that the department actively investigates cases of fraud, with the most recent recording listed in August of 2021 to the sentencing of an inmate in San Diego, who was ordered to pay over $23,000 back to the state after applying and collecting public aid while serving a prison sentence, claiming he was unemployed as a result of COVID.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 25

Today’s News 25th February 2022

  • How Ukraine Fits Into The Global Jigsaw
    How Ukraine Fits Into The Global Jigsaw

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    • Ukraine is part of a far bigger geopolitical picture. Russia and China want US hegemonic influence in the Eurasian continent marginalised. Following defeats for US foreign policy in Syria and Afghanistan and following Brexit, Putin is driving a wedge between America and the non-Anglo-Saxon EU.

    • Due to global monetary expansion, rising energy prices are benefiting Russia, which can afford to squeeze Germany and other EU states dependent on Russian natural gas. The squeeze will only stop when America backs off.

    • Being keenly aware that its dominant role in NATO is under threat, America has been trying to escalate the Ukraine crisis to suck Russia into an untenable occupation. Putin won’t fall for it.

    • The danger for us all is not a boots-on-the-ground war — that’s likely to only involve the pre-emptive attacks on military installations Putin initiated last night — but a financial war for which Russia is fully prepared.

    • Both sides probably do not know how fragile the Eurozone banking system is, with both the ECB and its national central bank shareholders already having liabilities greater than their assets. In other words, rising interest rates have broken the euro system and an economic and financial catastrophe on its eastern flank will probably trigger its collapse.

    The bigger picture is Mackinder’s World Island

    The developing tension over Ukraine is part of a bigger picture — a struggle between America and the two Eurasian hegemons, Russia and China. The prize is ultimate control over Mackinder’s World Island.

    Halford Mackinder is acknowledged as the founder of geopolitics: the study of factors such as geography, geology, economics, demography, politics, and foreign policy and their interaction. His original paper was entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History”, presented at the Royal Geographical Society in 1905 in which he first formulated his Heartland Theory, which extended geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe.

    In this and a subsequent paper (Democratic Ideals and Reality: A study in the Politics of Reconstruction, 1919) he built on his Heartland Theory, and from which his famous quote has been passed down to us: “Who rules East Europe commands the World Island [Eurasia]; Who rules the World Island rules the World”. Stalin was said to have been interested in this theory, and while it is not generally admitted, the leaders and administrations of Russia, China and America are almost certainly aware of Mackinder’s theory and its implications.

    We cannot know if the Russian and Chinese leaders and administrations are avid Mackinder fans, but their partnership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is consistent with his World Island Theory. Since commencing as a post-Soviet, post-Mao security agreement between Russia and China founded in 2001 to suppress Islamic fundamentalism, the SCO has evolved into a political and economic intergovernmental organisation, which with its members, observer states, and dialog partners accounts for over 3.5 billion people, half the world’s population.

    The symbiotic relationship between resource rich Russia and the industrial Chinese ties the whole SCO together. China’s development of the Asian land mass holds the promise of dramatic improvements in everyone’s living conditions. And consistent with the World Island Theory, Chinese money now dominates the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asian nations, particularly those controlled and influenced by the Chinese diaspora. China’s influence also spreads to South America through organisations such as BRICS (B is for Brazil) and Chile for copper and other metals.

    While the Sino-Russian partnership dominates the World Island economically, America has only gradually been expelled from Asian affairs. Its post 9/11 campaigns in the Middle East destabilised that region, creating fuel for America’s enemies and appalling refugee calamities for her European allies to this day. Her withdrawal from resource-rich Afghanistan was merely the last domino to fall. She retains political influence in Western Europe and South-East Asia only, though her military and intelligence presence is still widespread.

    Today, America’s actions are those of a hegemon whose time is passing. By the UK opting for Brexit, American influence over the European Union through its security and political partnership with the UK has been diminished. Its grip on European affairs through NATO is being undermined by both Turkey’s determination to shift its interests into the Turkic regions of Central Asia, and the EU’s determination to establish its own defence arrangements. The irrelevance of NATO for the future defence of Western Europe is now becoming apparent to the Russians, and it must be hard for them to resist speeding its decline.

    The cold war in the Pacific is all about containing China. While Taiwan’s future and China’s attempts to establish naval bases in the South China Seas hog the headlines, China’s trade influence in the region continues to increase. After President Trump withdrew America from the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TTP was replaced by the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership which came into force in December 2018, whose eleven signatories have combined economies representing 13.4% of world GDP. This makes it one of the largest free trade areas by GDP and includes Australia and New Zealand. Even the UK has formally applied to join (it qualifies as a Pacific nation through its dependencies in the region), so that three of the US security “five eyes” members will be part of the CPTPP.

    China also applied to join the CPTPP last September. For now, China’s membership of the CPTPP is in doubt. US allies in the partnership, including Japan, are insisting on various obstructive provisions. But in that well-worn hackneyed metaphor, China is the elephant in the room, and it is hard to see the CPTPP holding out against her membership for ever. For now, China can chip away at it by separate free trade agreements with selected CPTPP members, with whom it is already in bilateral trade.

    Whatever America’s desire to retain political and military control over the Pacific may be, the economics of trade will eventually diminish that influence. And while sabres are being rattled over Taiwan and Pacific atolls, Russia is putting pressure on Europe to put an end to American dominated defence arrangements at the other end of the World Island.

    Observers of the greatest of the great games would be right to look at current developments over Ukraine in the context of Mackinder’s heartland theory. Understand that, and you have a grasp of Putin’s reasoning. Driving American influence out of the Eurasian continent has been his objective ever since America reneged on her agreement not to advance NATO any closer to Russia following the ending of the old USSR.

    Ukraine is caught in the middle

    Both Russia and the Anglo-Saxons are ramping up the rhetoric over Ukraine. Until recently, Ukraine itself had seen little evidence of any truth in Western propaganda, asking for it to be toned down because all this war talk is increasing its likelihood and ruining the economy. Meanwhile the EU mainstream just wants peace and natural gas.

    Concern is being expressed in some quarters that all this talk of war might become self-fulfilling — like the first World War. In this case, it is generally agreed by military strategists that Putin would be mad to take over Ukraine. He certainly has the fire power, and Ukraine is cast like a Belgium on the Steppes, with two ethnic groups and whose main purpose seems to be to allow foreign occupation and passage for foreign troops. But holding on to Ukraine against the peoples’ will, when there is an immensely long border over which dissidents can be provided with arms and anti-Russian propaganda is another matter.

    Russian occupation is likely to be limited to defending Donbas and Luhansk now that Russia has formally recognised their right to self-determination. Without firing a shot, the Russian military has moved the border a hundred miles into formally Ukrainian territory. But that is where an occupying invasion is likely to stop and is not to be confused with the pre-emptive strikes against military bases and airfields today.

    These moves are there to apply increasing pressure for a diplomatic settlement. So, what is it that Putin wants? Basically, he wants America to get out of Eastern Europe. And following Brexit, as America’s poodle he sees no reason why Britain should be there either. And having his thumb over various gas pipes into Europe, he is squeezing Germany and the other EU NATO members into his way of thinking.

    Ukraine comes in the wake of America’s disastrous evacuation of Afghanistan, which followed the failure of her attempt to remove Syria’s Assad. It is rumoured that US intelligence services organised the failed coup in Kazakhstan, which was quickly subdued by Russian troops. So, from Putin’s point of view, American policy with respect to the Eurasian land mass has failed, he has America on the run, and he will want to capitalise on its retreat.

    Meanwhile America, which has ruled western Europe through NATO following WW2, finds it hard to come to terms with its setbacks and needs to get back on the front foot. Presumably, by ramping up fears of a Russian invasion, the Biden administration hoped that either Putin would back down or be tricked into attacking Ukraine. If he had backed down, that would be a diplomatic victory and allow America to rebuild its presence in Kiev. If Putin invades and occupies Ukraine, America can help make life extremely difficult for an occupying force. Either way, it would mark the end of American policy failures on the Eurasian continent. Britain, as always, merely toes the American line.

    But Putin is no fool. He is destroying Ukraine’s economy. He has his thumb on Nord Stream 1 and 2. And Germany has too many commercial and financial interests in both Russia and Eastern Europe for this not to hurt. Germany also hosts the main railhead for China’s silk road. If Germany kowtows to America, will America then put pressure on her to cut ties with China?

    This is the geopolitical reality Germany and all mainland Europeans must now face. The new German Chancellor must decide: does he back America, sacrifice Germany’s economic potential and see energy costs soar, or does he recognise the economic realities of the Russia—China partnership and the enormous opportunities it provides for the long run?

    Russia, America, and Germany are the principal actors whose decisions will decide the outcome of the Ukrainian situation. An escalation into a non-nuclear conflict and Russian occupation of Ukraine will only suit the Americans, confirming that their presence is the guarantee of national security.

    Ukraine has become a virtual battleground.

    Ukraine’s geographical position, between the liberated central European states and Russia ensured that it would become central to the continuing rivalry between Russia and America. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been determined to forge its path independent of Russia as a sovereign nation. But its starting point was difficult, with its eastern provinces predominantly Russian, while the western regions were more central European.

    The Orange and Maidan Revolutions in 2004 and 2014 respectively were proxy struggles between America and Russia. While America allegedly chucked billions into its Ukrainian interests, in 2014 Russia responded by taking over Crimea and fomented rebellions in Luhansk and Donetsk. By capturing Crimea and fostering two breakaway provinces, Putin had won this territorial battle in an ongoing war.

    Other than these eastern provinces, most Ukrainians have desperately tried to avoid their country becoming a Russian colony. They wanted to apply for EU membership, which was rejected by Russian-backed President Yanukovych in 2013, leading to the Maidan Revolution and Yanukovych fleeing the country to Russia. Ukraine has also sought the protection of NATO, which has provoked Putin to put a stop to American influences marching eastwards.

    While Ukraine never left the headlines, the US moved its focus to Syria later in 2014.The eventual failure to oust Assad, who drew on Russian help, was followed by Afghanistan. Ukraine is now back in the headlines, this time at the behest of Russia. Putin is now proactively leading this conflict instead of quietly letting America make all the mistakes and rolling with the punches, representing a major change in Russian strategy. It implies that Putin perceives America to be off balance, and he sees it as the time for a winning move.

    Putin has prepared his defences carefully. US politicians called for Russia to be cut out of SWIFT after the Crimean invasion. Since then, Russia has developed Mir, a payment system for electronic fund transfers, and a SWIFT equivalent known as SPFS — System for transfer of Financial Messages, with agreements linking SPFS to other payment systems in China, India, Iran, and member nations of the Eurasian Economic Union. The Central Bank of Russia has strengthened the commercial banking network. And it has also reduced its dollar exposure as much as possible by investing in gold and euros instead, which means less reserves are held as deposits in the US banking system and invested in US bonds.

    From these actions, Putin has signalled that he is aware that the danger to Russia is more likely to be a financial war, rather than a physical one. As President Biden said, to have American troops on the ground fighting the Russians is a world war and will not happen. In that sense the Ukraine, over which Russia retains an energy stranglehold, is a virtual battleground for a proxy war.

    Financial considerations

    In examining the strengths and weakness of the principal parties, we must first confirm who they are: Russia, America, and the EU. And in the EU, principally it is Germany, but all member states will be affected.

    As argued above, Russia’s real objective is to get America out of Europe, and Putin’s strategy is to drive a wedge between America and the EU, and in particular its industrial powerhouse, Germany. Plans to split America from Europe go back to Putin’s earlier days, with the construction of Nord Stream to bypass Ukraine with which Russia’s Gazprom was in dispute. Delivering 55bn billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, the first Nord Stream was completed in 2012. A second pipeline. Nord Stream 2, which is ready to go online, doubles this capacity.

    American pressure on Germany to delay the operation of Nord Stream 2 follows the dollar’s debasement from March 2020 in particular, when the Fed reduced interest rates to zero and instituted QE of $120bn every month. The effect has been to undermine the dollar’s purchasing power for nearly all commodities, including energy. Consequently, a combination of dollar debasement, winter demand and the absence of extra supply from Russia has created an energy crisis not just for Germany, but all EU members.

    Germany is particularly hard hit, with its producer prices index up 25% year-on-year at the end of January. Germany cannot go along with an escalation of financial sanctions against Russia at a time when its industry is struggling with other rising production costs. Not only is her trade with Russia substantial, but she has banking and financial interests in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Russia, which could be destabilised by American-led attempts to restrict payments.

    Despite Chancellor Scholz’s initial support for EU sanctions Germany is likely to be indecisive, torn between competing demands from a collapsing economy and pressure from NATO. By withholding regulatory permission for Nord Stream 2 he has demonstrated that instead of regarding his electors’ interests as paramount, he has given in to NATO pressure. This weakness on Olaf Scholz’s part is consistent with the indecisive socialism of his Social Democratic Party and Germany’s continuing guilt trip following two world wars.

    Recognising the importance of Germany and its likely indecision, President Macron of France seized the political opportunity to mediate between Russia and the EU, which suits the Russian cause. Macron simply provided another channel for Putin’s message about NATO: get the US out of Europe and the EU should be responsible for its own defence. And given Macron’s ambitions for France in Europe he is likely to see it as an opportunity to enable France to take the lead in the EU’s future defence arrangements after the Ukraine situation has blown over. That will be down the road, but for now the EU is standing firm behind US and UK sanction proposals.

    Sanctions rarely work. They merely encourage the sanctioned to dig deeper into their own intellectual and entrepreneurial resources and work hard to find ways round them. Russia will merely sell its gas elsewhere: at these high prices harm is minimal, and they can afford to restrict supplies through Ukraine, the Yamal-Europe and Turk-stream pipeline supplies. It might be sensible for Russia to allow flows through Nord Stream 1 to continue for now, holding its restriction as a backup threat. European gas prices will likely rise even further, providing a price windfall for Russia. The tweet below, from Russian President Medvedev implies European gas prices will double from here.

    The apparent lack of understanding of economic and financial consequences for the EU by the EU leadership is a wild card danger. The economic and financial exposure of Germany to its eastern neighbours has already been mentioned, but other EU members are similarly exposed. Furthermore, the reckless inflationary policies of the ECB have undermined the financial health of the entire euro system to the point where even on the current rise in bond yields, the ECB and all the national central banks (with only three minor exceptions) have liabilities greater than their assets. The whole eurozone is a mountain of financial disasters balanced on an apex over which it is set to topple.

    We cannot say for sure that Ukraine will be the last straw for the euro system, but we can point to political ignorance of this instability. Any dissenting central banker (and there could be some, particularly at the Bundesbank) has no influence at the political level. We must assume that none of the major political players in this tragedy are aware of the financial and economic crisis in Europe waiting to be triggered. And if the Russians have made a mistake, it will be in their accumulation of euro reserves, which will turn out to be worthless when the euro system collapses.

    Financial sanctions against individual oligarchs have probably already been anticipated and avoiding action been taken by them: oligarchs are not dumb. Sanctions against Russian banks will have also been anticipated and will probably inflict less damage on them than on their counterparties in the EU banking system, particularly if SWIFT comes under pressure to suspend Russian banking access.

    Not only Ukraine, but the whole of the EU, for which Russia supplies over 40% of its natural gas, is being squeezed. We can be reasonably sure that the Russian government has war-gamed this situation in advance.

    Inflation, gold, and unintended consequences

    The situation today is very different from that of 2014 at the time of the Maidan revolution, with the world massively increasing government debt and currency in circulation since then. At the time of the Crimean take-over, commodity prices were declining from their peak in 2011, and following Crimea, they fell sharply with negative consequences for the Russian economy. The expansion of world currencies is now driving commodity and energy prices higher due to their purchasing power is declining.

    Figure 2 shows how a basket of commodities has increased in price since the Fed reduced its funds rate to the zero bound and instituted QE at $120bn per month. In those 22 months commodity prices have risen by 127% by this measure.

    When all commodity prices rise at the same time it is due to currency debasement, which is what has happened here. Within the broader commodity context, energy price increases have been particularly acute, with Russia being a major beneficiary, leading to a substantial surplus on its balance of trade.

    It has been a long-term ambition of the Sino-Russian partnership not just to expel America from the World Island but to reduce dependency on dollars as well. While trade between Russia and China is increasingly settled in their own currencies, so long as the dollar has credibility for settling international transactions it will still dominate trade for the other nations in the Eurasian landmass.

    The fiat alternative for Russia has been the euro, which partly explains why Russia has accumulated them in her foreign currency reserves. But since 2014, the stability of the euro system has deteriorated to the point where the currency is no longer a credible alternative to the US dollar. We cannot be sure if this is understood in the Kremlin. But there has always been a Plan B, which is the accumulation of physical gold.

    There is evidence that official reserves in China and Russia understate the true position. Following the enactment of regulations in 1983 whereby the Peoples Bank was appointed sole responsibility for the acquisition of China’s gold and silver reserves, I have estimated that the State accumulated as much as 20,000 tonnes of gold before permitting the public to own gold, for which purpose the Shanghai Gold Exchange was established in 2002. Since then, the SGE has delivered a further 20,000 tonnes from its vaults into public hands, though some of this will have been returned as scrap.

    The Chinese state has retained the exclusive right to mine and refine gold, even importing doré from abroad. China is now the largest gold mine producer in the world by far, continuing to add over tonnes annually to total above ground stocks (last year’s dip to 350 tonnes was due to covid), which are all ringfenced in China. These policies, as well as anecdotal evidence suggests that my earlier estimate of state-owned gold of 20,000 tonnes was realistic.

    Russia has been relatively late in adding to her gold reserves, having officially accumulated 2,298 tonnes. But being only second to China as a gold mine producer at 330 tonnes, it is likely that following earlier financial sanctions that Russia has accumulated undeclared gold reserves as well. Additionally, we can see that all the SCO members and their associates have increased their declared gold reserves by 75% since 2014. Plan B therefore appears to be to back fiat roubles and renminbi with gold in the event of a Western fiat currency meltdown.

    The West has no such plan. America’s fifty-one-year denial of and attempted demotion of gold as the ultimate money appears to have left it short: otherwise it could have returned Germany’s gold on demand instead of trying to spin it out over a number of years. Furthermore, Western central banks routinely lease and swap their gold, leading to double counting of reserves and lack of clarity over ownership. We can be sure that neither Russia nor China indulge in these practices.

    The consequence of these disparities is to weaponize gold’s monetary status, turning it into a nuclear weapon in a financial war. If, say, during NATO-led attempts to destabilise the rouble Russia was to declare another 6,000 tonnes to match America’s unaudited figure and for China to revise its reserves to stabilise the renminbi, it would probably result in a run against the dollar. It would be a sure-fire way for the Asian hegemons to destroy US economic and military power.

    Therefore, ultimately, the US and its five-eyes allies cannot win a financial war. When China and Russia planned their financial defences, this golden umbrella made sense, and the security services in America would have been aware of it, if not the full implications. But things have changed, particularly the debasement of all major currencies, including the renminbi. China has an old-fashioned cyclical property crisis on her hands and can only think to print her way out of trouble. Together with the Fed, the ECB, and the Bank of Japan, the Peoples Bank has expanded its balance sheet recklessly, and all together they have increased from $5 trillion equivalent in 2007 to over $31 trillion today, with their rate of expansion being particularly high from March 2020.

    The consequences for their currencies’ purchasing power are becoming obvious now, turbocharging Russia’s strategy with respect to European energy supply. What few politicians appear to be aware of, and we should include Putin in this, is the fragile state of the major central banks. Having loaded their balance sheets up with fixed-interest government debt, falling market values for these bonds are eliminating central banks’ margin of assets over liabilities. While the Fed, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England can turn to their governments for recapitalisation, embarrassing though that may be, the ECB has no such recourse.

    The ECB’s shareholders are the national central banks in the euro system. And they in turn, except for Ireland’s, Malta’s, and Slovenia’s central banks, all have liabilities easily exceeding their assets. The euro system is already insolvent, and Russian action on energy supplies could tip the whole currency system over the edge.

    Given the Russian Central Bank’s reserve holding of euros, we can call that an unintended consequence.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/25/2022 – 02:00

  • Perpetual Tyranny: Endless Wars Are The Enemy Of Freedom
    Perpetual Tyranny: Endless Wars Are The Enemy Of Freedom

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

    – James Madison

    War is the enemy of freedom.

    As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.

    It’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

    This latest crisis—America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine—has conveniently followed on the heels of a long line of other crises, manufactured or otherwise, which have occurred like clockwork in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms.

    And so it continues in its Orwellian fashion.

    Two years after COVID-19 shifted the world into a state of global authoritarianism, just as the people’s tolerance for heavy-handed mandates seems to have finally worn thin, we are being prepped for the next distraction and the next drain on our economy.

    Yet policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad isn’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, it’s certainly not making America great again, and it’s undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

    Indeed, even if we were to put an end to all of the government’s military meddling and bring all of the troops home today, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs.

    War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

    What most Americans—brainwashed into believing that patriotism means supporting the war machine—fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military industrial complex that continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.

    Consider: We are a military culture engaged in continuous warfare. We have been a nation at war for most of our existence. We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.

    We are also being fed a steady diet of violence through our entertainment, news and politics.

    All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots.

    Back when I was a boy growing up in the 1950s, almost every classic sci fi movie ended with the heroic American military saving the day, whether it was battle tanks in Invaders from Mars (1953) or military roadblocks in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

    What I didn’t know then as a schoolboy was the extent to which the Pentagon was paying to be cast as America’s savior. By the time my own kids were growing up, it was Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbuster film Top Gun—created with Pentagon assistance and equipment—that boosted civic pride in the military.

    Now it’s my grandkids’ turn to be awed and overwhelmed by child-focused military propaganda. Don’t even get me started on the war propaganda churned out by the toymakers. Even reality TV shows have gotten in on the gig, with the Pentagon’s entertainment office helping to sell war to the American public.

    It’s estimated that U.S. military intelligence agencies (including the NSA) have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows.

    And then there are the growing number of video games, a number of which are engineered by or created for the military, which have accustomed players to interactive war play through military simulations and first-person shooter scenarios.

    This is how you acclimate a population to war.

    This is how you cultivate loyalty to a war machine.

    This is how, to borrow from the subtitle to the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, you teach a nation to “stop worrying and love the bomb.”

    As journalist David Sirota writes for Salon, “[C]ollusion between the military and Hollywood – including allowing Pentagon officials to line edit scripts—is once again on the rise, with new television programs and movies slated to celebrate the Navy SEALs….major Hollywood directors remain more than happy to ideologically slant their films in precisely the pro-war, pro-militarist direction that the Pentagon demands in exchange for taxpayer-subsidized access to military hardware.”

    Why is the Pentagon (and the CIA and the government at large) so focused on using Hollywood as a propaganda machine?

    To those who profit from war, it is—as Sirota recognizes—“a ‘product’ to be sold via pop culture products that sanitize war and, in the process, boost recruitment numbers….At a time when more and more Americans are questioning the fundamental tenets of militarism (i.e., budget-busting defense expenditures, never-ending wars/occupations, etc.), military officials are desperate to turn the public opinion tide back in a pro-militarist direction — and they know pop culture is the most effective tool to achieve that goal.”

    The media, eager to score higher ratings, has been equally complicit in making (real) war more palatable to the public by packaging it as TV friendly.

    This is what professor Roger Stahl refers to as the representation of a “clean war”: a war “without victims, without bodies, and without suffering”:

    “‘Dehumanize destruction’ by extracting all human imagery from target areas … The language used to describe the clean war is as antiseptic as the pictures. Bombings are ‘air strikes.’ A future bombsite is a ‘target of opportunity.’ Unarmed areas are ‘soft targets.’ Civilians are ‘collateral damage.’ Destruction is always ‘surgical.’ By and large, the clean war wiped the humanity of civilians from the screen … Create conditions by which war appears short, abstract, sanitized and even aesthetically beautiful. Minimize any sense of death: of soldiers or civilians.”

    This is how you sell war to a populace that may have grown weary of endless wars: sanitize the war coverage of anything graphic or discomfiting (present a clean war), gloss over the actual numbers of soldiers and civilians killed (human cost), cast the business of killing humans in a more abstract, palatable fashion (such as a hunt), demonize one’s opponents, and make the weapons of war a source of wonder and delight.

    “This obsession with weapons of war has a name: technofetishism,” explains Stahl. “Weapons appear to take on a magical aura. They become centerpieces in a cult of worship.”

    “Apart from gazing at the majesty of these bombs, we were also invited to step inside these high-tech machines and take them for a spin,” said Stahl. “Or if we have the means, we can purchase one of the military vehicles on the consumer market. Not only are we invited to fantasize about being in the driver’s seat, we are routinely invited to peer through the crosshairs too. These repeated modes of imaging war cultivate new modes of perception, new relationships to the tools of state violence. In other words, we become accustomed to ‘seeing’ through the machines of war.”

    In order to sell war, you have to feed the public’s appetite for entertainment.

    Not satisfied with peddling its war propaganda through Hollywood, reality TV shows and embedded journalists whose reports came across as glorified promotional ads for the military, the Pentagon has also turned to sports to further advance its agenda, “tying the symbols of sports with the symbols of war.”

    The military has been firmly entrenched in the nation’s sports spectacles ever since, having co-opted football, basketball, even NASCAR.

    This is how you sustain the nation’s appetite for war.

    No wonder entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office. As professor Henry Giroux points out, “Popular culture not only trades in violence as entertainment, but also it delivers violence to a society addicted to a pleasure principle steeped in graphic and extreme images of human suffering, mayhem and torture.”

    No wonder the government continues to whet the nation’s appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters and video games)—what Stahl refers to as “militainment“—that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America’s expanding military empire.

    No wonder Americans from a very young age are being groomed to enlist as foot soldiers—even virtual ones—in America’s Army (coincidentally, that’s also the name of a first person shooter video game produced by the military). Explorer Scouts, for example, are one of the most popular recruiting tools for the military and its civilian counterparts (law enforcement, Border Patrol, and the FBI).

    No wonder the United States is the number one consumer, exporter and perpetrator of violence and violent weapons in the world. Seriously, America spends more money on war than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil. America polices the globe, with 800 military bases and troops stationed in 160 countries. Moreover, the war hawks have turned the American homeland into a quasi-battlefield with military gear, weapons and tactics. In turn, domestic police forces have become roving extensions of the military—a standing army.

    We are dealing with a sophisticated, far-reaching war machine that has woven itself into the very fabric of this nation.

    Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhaul.

    Eventually, all military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.

    It happened in Rome: at the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise.

    It’s happening again.

    The American Empire—with its endless wars waged by U.S. military servicepeople who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire: outsourced, stretched too thin, and deployed to far-flung places to police the globe—is approaching a breaking point.

    The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

    This is exactly the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

    Yet as Eisenhower recognized, the consequences of allowing the military-industrial complex to wage war, exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities are beyond grave:

    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

    We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.

    The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.

    What we have is a confluence of factors and influences that go beyond mere comparisons to Rome. It is a union of Orwell’s 1984 with its shadowy, totalitarian government—i.e., fascism, the union of government and corporate powers—and a total surveillance state with a military empire extended throughout the world.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

    The growth of and reliance on militarism as the solution for our problems both domestically and abroad bodes ill for the constitutional principles which form the basis of the American experiment in freedom.

    As author Aldous Huxley warned: “Liberty cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 23:40

  • US Vaccination Rates Collapse As Omicron Subsides
    US Vaccination Rates Collapse As Omicron Subsides

    As cases of the already-more-mild Omicron strain of Covid-19 subside, vaccination rates in the United States are collapsing, according to AP, which reports that the vaccination drive in the US is ‘grinding to a halt,’ and ‘demand has all but collapsed’ – particularly in rural areas.

    At present, the average number of Americans getting their first dose is down to around 90,000 per day – the lowest point since the first few days of the vaccination campaign in December 2020 – while the outlook for any sort of substantial increase has largely evaporated.

    AP of course acts like this is a national tragedy led by toothless rednecks in ‘deeply conservative’ parts of the country, suggesting a ‘losing battle to get people vaccinated’ in rural Alabama – but of course the reality goes unmentioned… that the vaccine largely evades Omicron – which is far less deadly than previous strains, and is only marginally effective in keeping medically at-risk people from dying.

    Even the Washington Post noted on Wednesday: “Coronavirus vaccine protection was much weaker against omicron, data shows.”

    While coronavirus shots still provided protection during the omicron wave, the shield of coverage they offered was weaker than during other surges, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The change resulted in much higher rates of infection, hospitalization and death for fully vaccinated adults and even for people who had received boosters. -WaPo

    Meanwhile, government vaccination incentive programs that gave away cash, beer, sports tickets and other prizes have also disappeared – while governnment and employer vaccine mandates have suffered blows in court.

    “People are just over it. They’re tired of it,” said Judy Smith, administrator for a 12-county public health district in northwestern Alabama.

    The bottoming-out of demand for the first round of vaccinations is especially evident in conservative areas around the country.

    On most days in Idaho, the number of people statewide getting their first shot rarely surpasses 500.

    In Wyoming, a total of about 280 people statewide got their first shot in the past week, and the waiting area at the Cheyenne-Laramie County Health Department stood empty Tuesday morning. The head of the department fondly recalled just a few months ago, when the lobby was bustling on Friday afternoons after school with children getting their doses. But they aren’t showing up anymore either. -AP

    “People heard more stories about, well, the omicron’s not that bad,” said Executive Director Kathy Emmons. “I think a lot of people just kind of rolled the dice and decided, ‘Well, if it’s not that bad, I’m just going to kind of wait it out and see what happens.’“

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 23:20

  • Amazon's Woke 'Lord Of The Rings' Is The Death Rattle Of Social Justice Content
    Amazon’s Woke ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Is The Death Rattle Of Social Justice Content

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    Modern social justice in all of its forms is communism. The political left doesn’t want to admit it openly, but there is no way around it and there is no debate. Some would call it “cultural Marxism,” but the bottom line is that there is no such thing as a legitimate social justice movement in the west because by law all people regardless of their ethnic circumstances are equally protected. You could say that SJWs are rebels without a cause, but I would point out that “social justice” is not their real cause. They aren’t really interested in equality, they are interested in control.

    There is a classic playbook for communist sabotage of a target society, and one of the first tactics is always the destruction of that society’s history and symbols. When Mao Zedong announced the birth of the “Cultural Revolution” in China in 1966, his goal was to disrupt growing discontent among the Chinese people with the broken promises of the communist regime. Only 8 years earlier in 1958 Mao had initiated the “Great Leap Forward,” which was a purge of his political opponents as well as a massive population reduction program that used food as a weapon. After the deaths of over 65 million Chinese citizens, Mao sought to redirect public anger by scapegoating a supposed conspiracy of “capitalists and imperialists.”

    The Cultural Revolution was essentially a nationwide witch hunt spearheaded by rabid and ignorant children; people easy for the government to manipulate and exploit. They scoured their own towns and cities as spies and enforcers for the CCP, looking for any signs that their neighbors were part of the conspiracy to disrupt the communist collective. They held tribunals and struggle sessions where anyone who said the wrong thing or who angered the wrong person was publicly humiliated or even murdered as “insurrectionists” by a mob of communist zealots.

    Most importantly, the Cultural Revolution was used as a means to utterly destroy any remnants of Chinese history before the commies arrived on the scene. Museums and universities were raided and ancient artworks, documents, books and historical parchments were burned in pyres. Historians and people with knowledge of the Chinese heritage were marched up and down the streets and chastised as enemies of the people. Statues were torn down and entire buildings razed to the ground. The communist system cannot gain dominance without two things – Rule at the barrel of a gun, and complete control over cultural products and information.

    The people cannot have a religion, they cannot have an unfiltered history, they cannot have a moral framework outside of communist law, and they cannot have any cultural expression that does not include communist propaganda. If they have these things, then the communists will always be battling for psychological supremacy over the masses. Competing ideas and interests are a danger to the collective. The existence of choice is like kryptonite to authoritarians.

    And this is one of the great crimes of communism in general: Yes, they are the biggest mass murderers in history surpassing the Nazis many times over, but killing people is one thing; deliberately killing their memories, histories and their mythologies is another. It is akin to murdering the soul of an entire nation and poisoning the future.

    It is important to remember this distinction when we talk about the current communist cultural revolution now happening in North America and parts of Europe under social justice. I often hear the argument that people are “overreacting” when social justice propaganda is implanted into a reboot or remake of a previous film or television work. It’s “just a movie,” they say. But some of these franchises represent the mythologies of our time. And, when SJW communists and their corporate partners implant their insane ideologies into these franchises their goal is not just to propagandize the public, it is also to destroy something the public loves, to erase our history and our heroes piece by piece and take a little bit of our national soul away each time.

    It’s also vital to point out that the mass movement to stop social justice in media, also known as the “Culture War,” is often accused of being anti-equality and anti-representation whenever we criticize a woke production. We’re called racists and bigots by leftists, but we don’t have a problem with race or “representation,” we have a problem with the politicization of race and representation. We’re fine with black and brown and even gay people in movies and television as long as their presence makes sense historically and canonically. What we don’t like in our entertainment is COMMUNIST AGITPROP. This is what the conflict is really about. We want their communism out of our culture, forever.

    The current social justice playbook in Hollywood has become so prevalent and mechanical since 2016 that it can be predicted down to specific plot points and character arcs. Almost everything these people make is the same.

    One might note that SJWs rarely produce any original stories, and there is a good reason for this – They have no creativity or imagination. Leftist activists and corporate elites in the industry have openly admitted in the past that they prefer to reboot classic properties because they can exploit existing public love for an older movie or character. When they make something original with new characters the project always fails horribly and no one shows up to watch. When they reboot classic movies, they can use nostalgia to trick people into watching without thinking and implant their leftist brainwashing into the production.

    Beyond trickery, though, I suspect that these activists are not even as interested in making money as they are interested in murdering our beloved characters and mythologies right in front of us. I think they take perverse joy in it. Why else would they continue spending billions of dollars on these productions and then lose billions more when their movies and TV shows inevitably tank? It makes no sense from a business standpoint, but it makes perfect sense from a militant communist standpoint. Again, the goal is to destroy the existing culture until there is nothing left.

    And this brings us to one of the last major story properties that the elitists have yet to touch: The Lord Of The Rings.

    I would not consider myself a “superfan” steeped in every aspect of the lore of Middle Earth. I have read all the primary books and The Hobbit, and I have of course watched the Peter Jackson films dozens of times. I do find Tolkien’s works, much like the fictional works of C.S. Lewis, to go far beyond the fantasy worlds they are established in and reveal some innate truths about human nature and our eternal and internal struggles with the inborn archetypes of good and evil. They clarify what the fight is really about, what evil really is, and what sacrifices good people must be willing to make in order to defeat evil when the times demand it.

    I often use the Lord Of The Rings as a metaphor to describe core problems we face in the real world. For example, I can’t think of a better metaphor for government power than the One Ring. Everyone thinks that they are pure hearted or righteous enough to wield the ring, but the vast majority of them are not and would only sink into corruption as they tried to exploit it. The only people that can hold the ring at all are the people who don’t want it, the people who have no desire for power and the people that only want to subdue or destroy it. Like the One Ring, so too must we have the same wariness of government control.

    Tolkien’s tale was also intended to act as a kind of early mythological history of ancient Britain. Because much of Britain’s ancient history was lost to wars and the destruction of documentation over centuries, Tolkien wanted to create an alternative mythology to represent the spirit of the region, borrowing elements of ancient stories while adding in his personal experiences. The Hobbits were based on the happy natured culture of rural English villages that he experienced in his youth. The horrors he witnessed during his service in WWI and the Battle of Somme are obvious to see in the conflict between Sauron and the heroes of Middle Earth.

    Interestingly, ever since Amazon purchased the partial rights to portions of the Lord Of The Rings in 2017, there has been an army of revisionist bloggers and media puppets trying to assert that Tolkien never intended his stories to be British or English in origin or relation. Clearly, the narrative is being adjusted so that Amazon can rationalize its diversity agenda within a story that was always meant to be set in a historically white country. Imagine if I went to Marvel and told them I want to reboot Black Panther but I think Wakanda needs less Africans and more whites and Asians? How well would that idea be received?

    The bottom line is it makes no sense when we take the setting and the lore into account. But hey, it’s okay to do it with Lord Of The Rings with Middle Earth as a proxy for ancient England because…well, no explanation for this hypocrisy is ever provided.

    The idea that a trillion dollar monstrosity like Amazon with aspirations of cultural domination could ever successfully reboot or revise Tolkien’s books is laughable at best. The team of writers involved have very little previous work worth noting but they do have a predictable roster of social justice virtue signals and hot takes. They are pampered bubble babies; people that don’t have the life experiences needed to grasp the deeper concepts that an older wiser man like Tolkien was trying to address. Of course, if you do enough shoe licking (or other things) in Hollywood and have the right politics you can be a dumb kid with a BA in social sciences and still get a job writing on a billion dollar project.

    It would appear that most of the LOTR fandom is in agreement as the trailer released this past week is being decimated by a flood of critical responses and the video has been ratioed into oblivion on YouTube. This was the exact reason why YouTube decided to remove the visibility of dislikes which can now only be seen with a special app; they want to protect the agenda by silencing dissent.

    It’s not working.

    As a long time enthusiast of film and popular media, I have to say that objectively and technically the trailer is terrible. It has to be one of the most boring trailers I have ever seen for an adventure based series, telling us absolutely nothing and building no emotional suspense. I have seen great trailers for very bad movies (the latest Matrix movie comes to mind), but Amazon’s only interest it seems was to showcase the diversity hires within their new show, and that was it.

    That said, one cannot overlook the communistic cancer wrapped around the arteries of this production. Every person involved and all the media coverage involved is steeped in social justice babble and made-up terminology. Usually leftists in Hollywood use a specific formula for marketing films that hides the propaganda until the content is released. They post a trailer which obscures their intentions, and perhaps even makes it seem as though the show will be close to the source material. Once they have you hooked and get your money, they stab your heroes through the heart and replace them with narcissistic facsimiles that any sane person would hate.

    This time Amazon has chosen to go full bore woke out of the gate and it’s not going well for them.

    All of us already know exactly what will happen in the new series, we don’t even need to watch it to predict the outcome. Timelines are being compacted down to nothing so this gives Amazon leeway to sabotage popular characters by retconning the lore. The plot points will be oddly close to those in the Jackson films, but with a completely different set of characters and messages. All the male heroes will be replaced with the now tiresome trope of ‘Stronk Wahmen’ and Mary Sues that are good at everything despite having no backstory to justify their awesome-ness.

    Expect Galadriel to be the new Aragorn. Expect the female hobbit in the trailer to be the next Frodo but better than Frodo. Expect to see 90 pound women tossing around 200 pound men in poorly choreographed fight scenes. Expect the female characters to act and talk like men while abandoning all femininity (feminists hate femininity more than they hate masculinity). Expect modern SJW language and millennial language to be insinuated into dialogue in the most awkward places. Expect sexual innuendo or sexual scenarios that are out of place in a fantasy story. Expect meaningless LGBT representation that adds nothing to the plot. Expect weak and ineffectual male characters that make stupid decisions. Expect modern race baiting to be prevalent when it comes to black characters. Expect a perfect pie chart of ethnicities in almost every crowd scene. And, as always, expect the villains to be painted as “misunderstood” and only destructive because “society” caused them to turn to the dark side. In other words, it’s all society’s fault that Sauron becomes a bad guy.

    It’s an old gameplan for deconstructing beloved properties and marginalizing the values and realities they represent. The thing is, we’ve seen this so many times now that it’s no longer catching us off guard.

    Race swapping elves and dwarves and ignoring the species lore and history of the books is really the least of the problems, it’s just a big flashing alarm that tells us what is to come in terms of political messaging. Anyone who needs to “see themselves” portrayed exactly in every film or show they watch in order to relate to the story is undoubtedly a narcissist. Relating to characters is about relating to the ideas and archetypes they symbolize; and if the lore of a story requires that those character be white, then this should not stop any normal black or brown person from embracing the ideals as long as those ideals are honest.

    Peter Jackson is noted as saying that he had no interest in implanting his own issues into Tolkien’s stories. He was not interested in using them for his benefit, only in honoring Tolkien’s legacy. The stories are universal, which is why they have appealed to billions of people around the world for the past several decades. SJWs cannot fathom this. They demand that every single new media product contain their political message and represent today’s world of “inclusivity.”

    One of the biggest mistakes conservative movements ever made was to ignore the culture war and dismiss entertainment media as not worthy of our attention. It’s just “nerd stuff,” right? This was idiocy on our part and it’s a failure we must now deal with. Today, the extreme left has invaded every facet of media and almost EVERYTHING we see and hear is designed to spread their cultism. Our entertainment is now a communist wasteland.

    Luckily, the massive and aggressive backlash against Amazon among the Tolkien fandom gives me hope. It would seem Amazon messed with the wrong nerds. Never before have I witnessed such a unified response to an attempt by a major corporation to pervert a loved property. What this tells me is that the majority of people are starting to become wise to the agenda in media and they are finally responding by letting these companies know they are not going to play the game. Neither politics nor culture are downstream from each other, they are parallel and equally vital. The fight for one must be taken as seriously as the fight for the other.

    Amazon’s hubris has led to an epic mistake which has set fire to the Beacons of Gondor. Everyone knows and everyone is watching them. This may very well mean the death rattle of social justice in popular entertainment as even the normies begin to abandon these shows and movies that represent nothing more than public sacrifices to the social justice gods.  Soon, no one will be watching.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 23:00

  • White House Says Russian Forces 20 Miles Outside Ukraine's Capital
    White House Says Russian Forces 20 Miles Outside Ukraine’s Capital

    Update(10:50pmET): Possible cruise or ballistic missiles have reportedly hit targets in or around the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. It’s unclear the degree to which the strikes are sustained at this point. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The White House has informed lawmakers in Congress that it believes Russian forces are now a mere 20 miles from Kiev.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Large blasts are being reported by Western correspondents in the early morning hours local time. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    CNN is reporting: 

    The Ukrainian capital Kyiv was targeted with missile fire early Friday local time, according to an adviser to the country’s government.

    “Strikes on Kyiv with cruise or ballistic missiles continued,” Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to the Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine told reporters via text message.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    President Zelensky in an earlier appeal to the world, said a new “iron curtain” is descending over Europe. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update(6:42pmET): Shortly before 1am Kiev time Ukraine’s President Zelensky announced: “The enemy’s sabotage forces have entered the capital. Me and my family are remaining.” 

    “We need to talk about a ceasefire with Russia,” he added in the video message. Then what followed suggests the brutal reality is finally sinking in that despite years of ‘promises’ from Washington and the West of a “path to NATO membership” – none of his backers or Ukraine’s allies are coming to help: 

    “We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to talk about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. But what security guarantees will we have? But which countries will give them?” Zelensky says in response to a prior Russian offer to begin to negotiation “terms of surrender”. 

    “We are left alone in defense of our state. Who is ready to fight with us? I don’t see it. Who is ready to guarantee Ukraine’s accession to Nato? Everyone is afraid,” added Zelensky.

    “I asked the 27 leaders of Europe whether Ukraine should be in Nato. I asked directly. They are all afraid. And we are not afraid,” he said.

    The world is now witnessing in real time what prominent geopolitical analyst John Mearsheimer predicted over a half-decade ago against the backdrop of the initial West-backed Ukraine coup…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked,” Mearsheimer said in a clip that’s lately resurfaced and widely circulating. 

    Zelensky’s latest comments showing deep frustration and desperation came hours after President Biden in an address on the crisis confirmed that “US forces are not going to fight in Ukraine” while also rolling out fresh sanctions which stop far short of what Congressional hawks are demanding. On the energy front, he had said while crucially sparing key Russian energy exports from sanctions:

    “In our sanctions package, we specifically designed energy payments to continue. We are closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption,” Biden said from the East Room of the White House. “We have been coordinating with major oil-producing and consuming countries…”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    After the first full day of fighting, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine says that in total 30 Russian tanks, 130 armored fighting vehicles, 5 aircraft and 6 helicopters were taken out by Ukraine’s military. However, without doubt the Ukrainian losses are much, much more severe. 

    Meanwhile fresh reports say Russia is preparing to begin a “large-scale bombardment of Ukrainian capital Kiev around 03:00am Ukraine time,” based on a CNN correspondent citing US intelligence sources. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is vowing to continue defending the country, also as Zelensky belatedly issued a ‘full mobilization order’ – which also bars all military eligible males from fleeing the country ranging in age from 16 to 60. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Below: a round-up of confirmed footage via NY Times…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update(4:28pmET): The US and NATO are apparently doubling down: despite Ukraine seeing overwhelming Russian forced used to subdue the country (along with Belarussian troops), Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister has announced Kiev will receive “new defensive weapons” from Washington.

    Simultaneously, Ukraine’s defense minister says Russia is “preparing a new wave of attacks, including air strikes.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    However, it appears the debate inside the administration may be continuing on the extent it wants to go on provoking Russia further, after Biden earlier in the day made clear the US won’t send troops to Ukraine to engage Russia.

    This also as Ukraine’s government is touting that its arming a local resistance made up of civilians and military veterans…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Some evidence has emerged in the last half-day of fighting that in some places the Russians may not be encountering much resistance as they approach Ukrainian forces and bases. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    However, one major reported reversal happened in the last hours at the major Hostomel airfield near Kiev, which is reportedly back in Ukrainian military control after fierce fighting. Russia took it early in the day after a major aerial assault. 

    * * *

    Update(1:49pmET): Ukraine’s government has confirmed that the Chernobyl power plant site has been seized by Russian forces. “The Prime Minister made the announcement in a televised briefing, saying Russian troops had taken control of the zone and the nuclear power plant,” Bloomberg confirms. 

    “The facility is located about 80 miles (129km) north of Kyiv, several miles south of the Belarus border. Holding Chernobyl would provide Russian troops a staging point that couldn’t be shelled,” the report adds, in reference to the potential for dangerous radioactive fallout given the permanent presence of nuclear waste there. Speculation remains that should the site come under direct shelling, there could be nuclear contamination released into the air, potentially impacting other areas in Europe. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Russian state media is in the evening Thursday (local time) citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to say that Moscow is offering Kiev “terms of surrender”. Meanwhile…

    WESTERN ALLIES SEE KYIV FALLING TO RUSSIAN FORCES WITHIN HOURS

    Peskov said: The president formulated his vision of what we would expect from Ukraine in order for the so-called ‘red-line’ problems to be resolved. This is neutral status, and this is a refusal to deploy weapons.

    And further: 

    The operation has its goals – they must be achieved. The president said that all decisions have been made, and the goals will be achieved,” Peskov continued, suggesting that, if Kiev were to agree to meet the demands, the current military attack on Ukraine could be called off.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update(10:11amET): The potential is rising for greater fallout from the war across Europe, as intense fighting is being reported centered in the Chernobyl area. Ukrainian authorities are sounding the alarm over potentially disastrous scenarios which could ensue in areas of the Chernobyl containment zone, which includes an expansive region surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant where radioactive contamination is highest, since the April 1986 disaster. Russian troops are reportedly entering the area from Belarus, according to Interfax:

    Advisor to Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko said that Russian troops from the territory of Belarus entered the zone of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP).

    Gerashchenko stressed that “if a nuclear waste storage facility is destroyed as a result of enemy artillery strikes, then radioactive dust can cover the territories of Ukraine, Belarus and the EU countries!”

    Ukraine’s President Zelensky has also reportedly sounded the alarm over combat in the containment area:

    UKRAINE PRESIDENT SAYS RUSSIAN OCCUPATION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CAPTURE THE CHERNOBYL PLANT

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It goes without saying that given the ferocity of Russia’s ongoing air and ground campaign, any major incident there could spark broader panic for Europe, and a possible long term negative health impact in parts of Europe.

    Meanwhile Russia’s air war continues to intensify…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Now many hours into Russia’s attack that started around 5am Kiev time, it’s become clear that a full-scale ‘shock and awe’ type invasion is clearly on – which is not just limited to Donbas in the east. Stunning videos from on the ground show what can be described as an ongoing air war on Kiev and several other cities across the country. Tanks have also been seen speeding across Ukraine’s border from Belarus, with widespread reports that Belarusian soldiers are mounting the attack alongside Russian troops.

    Russia’s military had announced within just a couple hours into the offensive that all of Ukraine’s air defense systems have been taken out. A massive Russian aerial presence, including fighter jets and helicopters, has been confirmed over much of the country. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Soon after the initial attack which also included cruise missile launches, which likely came from Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Kiev authorities cited “hundreds” of Ukrainians killed, including civilians. 

    It’s believed that much of Ukraine’s command and control military infrastructure was targeted and hit in the first wave, also as Ukraine border guards were attack, with some reports of soldiers fleeing the Russian advance. Moscow has declared safe passage for any Ukrainian soldier laying down their arms. 

    Ukraine’s state emergency service has also said a Ukrainian military plane was downed, which killed five people. This as surreal battlefield footage continues to evidence the ferocity of an air war in progress.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday issued comment on the scope and goal of the military objections, citing Putin’s aim of the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine. 

    “Ideally, Ukraine should be liberated, cleansed of Nazis, of pro-Nazi people and ideology,” Peskov said, saying that operations would end only once these objectives have been reached. It remains unclear whether this will mean regime change in Kiev, though at this point that scenario is looking more than likely. There were early reports that President Zelensky has been offered safe passage if he leaves Ukraine.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Ukraine national police and emergency services have said there’s been fighting throughout the entire country, with Russia conducting over 200 attacks, with severe clashes ongoing in various parts of Ukraine.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    President Biden has vowed severe and far-reaching new sanctions, which he said will be announced in an address on Thursday. German chancellor Olaf Scholz and other Western leaders condemned what Scholz called a “reckless act by President Putin,” and “terrible day for Ukraine and a dark day for Europe.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “There is no justification for any of this — this is Putin’s war,” Scholz said at a news conference in Berlin. 

    The large in scope Russian campaign is now being widely described as Putin’s “shock and awe” war – to borrow from America’s Iraq War – in the heart of eastern Europe. Bloomberg and others are calling it Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 22:50

  • Starlink "Reconnects Tonga To World" Following Devastating Tsunami  
    Starlink “Reconnects Tonga To World” Following Devastating Tsunami  

    A team of SpaceX engineers restored high-speed internet service to remote villages on the tiny Pacific island nation of Tonga that had undersea communication lines severed with nearby Fiji after the eruption of a massive volcano last month, according to Reuters. 

    “A SpaceX team is now in Fiji establishing a Starlink gateway station to reconnect Tonga to the world,” Fiji’s attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum tweeted Monday. 

    By Wednesday, Tonga’s prime minister, Siaosi Sovaleni, said 50 Starlink terminals would be distributed to the most remote parts of Tonga hit hard by the tsunami, which was triggered by the volcano. 

    “It is rather paradoxical for a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami to bring to our shores the latest in satellite and communications technology,” Sovaleni said in a speech broadcast by Tonga Broadcasting Commission.

    “Elon Musk probably didn’t know much about Tonga until January 15, but gave generously.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tonga lies about 500 miles east of Fiji, and reconnecting the undersea communication cables is costly and time-consuming. The fastest means of reconnecting the tiny island has been installing a Starlink gateway ground station in Fiji that beams internet to satellites and repeats it to the terminals. Here’s an example of how the technology works. 

    Elon Musk offered to restore Tonga’s internet services on an emergency basis. He noted the connection would be “hard” to establish because there weren’t enough geostationary satellites that would connect the island. It appears SpaceX engineers overcame some challenges will begin free service immediately until the undersea cable is reconnected. 

    Sayed-Khaiyum recently told Fijian Broadcasting Corporation that SpaceX engineers would operate the ground station in Fiji for six months. Musk’s space internet company has more than 1,800 Starlink satellites in orbit and 145,000 users globally (as of January). 

    Tonga Cable chief executive James Panuve said Musk’s internet service would greatly help “isolated villages in desperate need of connectivity. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 22:40

  • The War On Cash Entering Bold New Phase
    The War On Cash Entering Bold New Phase

    Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

    With so much news about Ukraine, inflation, massive government spending and exploding deficits, it’s easy to overlook the ongoing war on cash. That’s a mistake because it has serious implications not only for your money, but for your privacy and personal freedom, as you’ll see today.

    The war on cash is a global effort being waged on many fronts. My view is that the war on cash is dangerous in terms of lost privacy and the risk of government confiscation of wealth.

    Governments always use money laundering, drug dealing and terrorism as excuses to keep tabs on honest citizens and deprive them of the ability to use money alternatives such as physical cash, gold and, these days, cryptocurrencies.

    The real burden of the war on cash falls on honest citizens who are made vulnerable to wealth confiscation through negative interest rates, loss of privacy, account freezes and limits on cash withdrawals or transfers.

    The enemies of cash promote the ease and convenience of digital payments. Of course, there’s no denying that digital payments are certainly convenient. I use them myself in the forms of credit and debit cards, wire transfers, automatic deposits and bill payments. I’m sure you do too.

    But the surest way to lull someone into complacency is to offer a “convenience” that quickly becomes habit and impossible to do without. The convenience factor is becoming more prevalent, and consumers are moving from cash to digital payments just as they moved from gold and silver coins to paper money a hundred years ago.

    One survey revealed that more than a third of Americans and Europeans would have no problem at all giving up cash and going completely digital. Specifically, the study showed 34% of Europeans and 38% of Americans surveyed would prefer going cashless.

    But in reality, the so-called “cashless society” is just a Trojan horse for a system in which all financial wealth is electronic and represented digitally in the records of a small number of megabanks and asset managers.

    Once that is achieved, it will be easy for state power to seize and freeze the wealth, or subject it to constant surveillance, taxation and other forms of digital confiscation like negative interest rates.

    They can’t do that as long as you can go to your bank and withdraw your cash. That’s the key. In other words, it’s much easier for them to control your money if they first herd you into a digital cattle pen. That’s their true objective and all the other reasons are just a smoke screen.

    That’s what they won’t tell you.

    Elites know that they can’t ram their unpopular agendas through in normal times. The global elites and deep state actors always have a laundry list of programs and regulations they can’t wait to put into practice. They know that most of these are deeply unpopular and they could never get away with putting them into practice during ordinary times.

    Yet when a crisis hits, citizens are desperate for fast action and quick solutions. The elites bring forward their rescue packages but then use these as Trojan horses to sneak their wish lists inside. That’s what we’re seeing.

    The USA Patriot Act passed after 9/11 is a good example. Some counterterrorist measures were needed, of course. But the Treasury had a long-standing wish list involving reporting cash transactions and limiting citizens’ ability to get cash.

    They plugged that wish list into the Patriot Act and we’ve been living with the results ever since, even though 9/11 is long in the past.

    Cash prevents central banks from imposing negative interest rates because if they did, people would withdraw their cash from the banking system.

    If they stuff their cash in a mattress, they don’t earn anything on it; that’s true. But at least they’re not losing anything on it. Once all money is digital, you won’t have the option of withdrawing your cash and avoiding negative rates. You will be trapped in a digital pen with no way out.

    What about moving your money into cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?

    Let’s first understand that governments enjoy a monopoly on money creation, and they’re not about to surrender that monopoly to digital currencies like Bitcoin. Libertarian supporters of cryptos celebrate their decentralized nature and lack of government control. Yet their belief in the sustainability of powerful systems outside government control is naïve.

    Blockchain does not exist in the ether (despite the name of one cryptocurrency), and it does not reside on Mars. Blockchain depends on critical infrastructure including servers, telecommunications networks, the banking system and the power grid, all of which are subject to government control.

    You need to understand that reality.

    The good news is that cash is still a dominant form of payment in many countries including the U.S. The problem is that as digital payments grow and the use of cash diminishes, a “tipping point” is reached where suddenly it makes no sense to continue using cash because of the expense and logistics involved.

    Once cash usage shrinks to a certain point, economies of scale are lost and usage can go to zero almost overnight. Remember how music CDs disappeared suddenly once MP3 and streaming formats became popular?

    That’s how fast cash can disappear.

    Once the war on cash gains that kind of momentum, it will be practically impossible to stop.

    Besides the loss of privacy, other dangers from the cashless society arise from the fact that digital money, transferred by credit or debit cards or other electronic payments systems, is completely dependent on the power grid. If the power grid goes out due to storms, accidents, sabotage or cyberattacks, our digital economy will grind to a complete halt.

    The time to protect yourself is now. The best way is to keep a portion of your wealth outside of the banking system.

    That’s why it’s a good idea to keep some of your liquidity in paper cash (while you can) and gold or silver coins. The gold and silver coins in particular will be money good in every state of the world.

    That’s why I’m always saying that savers and those with a long-term view should get physical gold now while prices are still attractive and while they still can.

    I strongly recommend that you own physical gold (and silver). I recommend you allocate 10% of your investable assets to gold. If you really want to be aggressive, maybe 20%. But no more.

    Just make sure you don’t store it in a bank, because it would be subject to confiscation. That defeats the whole purpose of having this sort of protection in the first place.

    I hold a significant portion of my wealth in nondigital form, including real estate, fine art and precious metals in safe, nonbank storage. That’s not because I’m paranoid or a fanatic prepper. I just think it’s prudent in these times.

    I strongly suggest you do the same. The cashless society could be here quicker than you think.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 22:20

  • Map Explainer: Key Facts About Ukraine
    Map Explainer: Key Facts About Ukraine

    The modern state of Ukraine was formed nearly 30 years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then the country has often made headlines due to political instability.

    In the map graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti and Nick Routley examine Ukraine from a structural point of view. What’s the country’s population composition? What drives the country’s economy? And most importantly, why is the country important within a global context?

    Where Do People Live in Ukraine?

    With a population of nearly 44 million people, Ukraine is the eighth-most populous country in Europe. For perspective, that is slightly smaller than Spain, and four times larger than Greece.

    As the cartogram below demonstrates, a large portion of the country’s population is located in and around the capital Kyiv, along with the Donetsk region—which is front and center in the current conflict with Russia.

    Not surprisingly, many of the country’s Russian speaking citizens live on the eastern side of the country, near the Russian border.

    Key Facts About Ukraine’s Demographics

    Ukrainians make up almost 78% of the total population, while Russians represent around 17% of the population, making it the single-largest Russian diaspora in the world.

    Other minorities include:

    • Belarusians: 0.6%

    • Bulgarians: 0.4%

    • Hungarians: 0.3%

    • Crimean Tatars: 0.5%

    • Romanians: 0.3%

    • Poles: 0.3%

    • Jews: 0.2%

    The country’s population has been declining since the 1990s because of a high emigration rate, and high death rates coupled with a low birth rate.

    Source: Population Pyramid

    The majority of the population is Christian (80%), with 60% declaring adherence to one or another strand of the Orthodox Church.

    Ukraine’s Economy: An Overview

    When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine turned over thousands of atomic weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and other countries. However, the defense industry continues to be a strategically important sector and a large employer in Ukraine. The country exports weapons to countries like India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

    Furthermore, Ukraine is rich in natural resources, particularly in mineral deposits. It possesses the world’s largest reserves of commercial-grade iron ore—30 billion tonnes of ore or around one-fifth of the global total. It’s also worth noting that Ukraine ranks second in terms of known natural gas reserves in Europe, which today remain largely untapped.

    Ukraine’s mostly flat geography and high-quality soil composition make the country a big regional agricultural player. The country is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of wheat and the world’s largest exporter of seed oils like sunflower and rapeseed.

    Coal mining, chemicals, mechanical products (aircraft, turbines, locomotives and tractors) and shipbuilding are also important sectors of the Ukrainian economy.

    The Bear in the Room

    Given the country’s location and history, it’s nearly impossible to talk about Ukraine without mentioning nearby Russia.

    The country shares borders with Russia both to the east and northeast. For context, a car trip from Moscow to one of the Ukrainian border cities, Shostka, takes around 8 hours. To the Northwest, Ukraine also shares borders with Belarus—a country that is closely aligned with the Kremlin.

    To the southeast is Crimea, a peninsula entirely surrounded by both the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. In 2014, Russia annexed the peninsula and established two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol. The annexation was widely condemned around the world, and the territories are recognized by most of the international community as being part of Ukraine.

    The region was of particular interest to Russia since Moscow depends on the Black Sea for access to the Mediterranean. The Port of Sevastopol, on the southwest edge of Crimea, is one of the few ice-free deepwater ports available to Russia in the region.

    Due to ongoing tensions between the two countries, Ukraine has been seeking to reduce Russia’s leverage over its economy. As a result, China and Poland have surpassed Russia as Ukraine’s largest country trading partners in recent years.

    However, Ukraine still remains an important route for Russian gas that heats millions of homes, generates electricity, and powers factories in Europe. The continent gets nearly 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil from Russia.

    Furthermore, Ukraine is connected to the same power grid as Russia, so it remains dependent on Moscow in the event of a shortfall. Even as conflict heats up, the two countries still share economic links, which will influence how the situation unfolds.

    Conflict in the Donbas Region

    Ukraine stands at the center of a geopolitical rivalry between western powers and Russia, and that rivalry is flaring up once again.

    Two regions along the Russian border—Donetsk and Luhansk—have been a conflict zone since 2014, when pro-Russian separatists began clashing with government forces. The map below shows the relative contact zone between the two opposing forces.

    ZomBear, Marktaff, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    Currently Russia has troops and military equipment amassed at various points along the border between the two countries, as well as in neighboring Belarus.

    In recent days, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, recognizing them as independent states. This recognition serves as a definitive end point to the seven-year peace deal known as the Minsk agreement.

    As of February 23rd, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military operation into Ukraine. The situation is still evolving rapidly.

    As this conflict heats up, it remains to be seen what will happen to the roughly 5 million people who live in the Donbas region.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 22:00

  • Is This The Next Big Gun Control Fight?
    Is This The Next Big Gun Control Fight?

    Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

    The next battleground for gun rights will likely be fought at the local level, and it’s going to be a tough fight.

    Since the Gun Control lobby can’t seem to pass any gun control through Congress, they’ve taken two different but distinct pathways. The first is the Biden administration ruling by executive fiat and using the DOJ & ATF to push “regulations” that affect gun owners using existing laws on the books.

    The second is something we have mentioned before, but now we are starting to see a pattern from anti-gun groups. There’s a heightened push for gun control at the local level, specifically about State Preemption.

    Giffords, one of the largest anti-gun organizations, has been making a serious push for states to overturn their preemption statutes concerning gun laws. In 2021 they scored a significant victory when the Colorado General Assembly repealed the majority of its firearms preemption statute, making them the first state in the country to do so. According to Allison Alderman, senior counsel at Giffords, other states are looking to follow in Colorado’s footsteps.

    Let’s back up a second and get everyone caught up. If you’re unaware of what State Preemption is, it’s a law that says that no law at the local level can supersede state law. Forty-two states have preemption laws that specifically relate to firearms. Look no further than Montgomery County, Maryland, for an example of why state preemption laws are essential. 

    Montgomery County is constantly trying to make their own gun laws, with at one point making it illegal to have ammunition shipped to anywhere in the county. Because Maryland has State Preemption, Maryland Courts overturned this law. Even still, to this day, Montgomery County continues to attempt to pass its own gun control laws, with its most recent being a de facto ban on firearms throughout the entire county, which is currently being litigated.  

    Steph from TMGN Breaks Down State Preemption Laws and How They Affect You:

    State Preemption laws are a huge reason that many anti-gun jurisdictions in pro-gun states have consistent laws. Many may not remember, but in 1981, a suburb of Chicago, Morton Grove, passed a ban on handguns. They were able to do so because, at the time, there were no state preemption laws related to firearms. If you lived in Morton Grove, you could not possess a handgun. This ban on weapons was considered legal for 27 years until the Supreme Court decided District of Colombia v. Heller, affirming the 2nd Amendment as an individual right.

    Now we’re seeing a revisit of this 80s era Morton Grove mentality. In the aftermath of Colorado repealing its state preemption statute, Boulder, Colorado, is considering reviving its Assault Weapon Ban. The proposed ban would make possession of any rifle with a pistol grip or any pistol loaded outside the pistol grip illegal and punishable by a $1000 fine and 90 days in jail.

    This same ban (which officials from Boulder have previously admitted would be hard to enforce) was deemed invalid by Boulder District Court in 2021, 10 days before a mass shooting in Boulder, CO. This event led to the overturning of the state’s preemption statute.

    Gun owners know that firearms bans do not work. Many studies have been done by non-biased parties that show how gun bans are ineffective. In their own study, even the DOJ admitted that there’s no evidence to support that an “assault weapons ban” had any effect on gun violence whatsoever.

    Regardless of the evidence and data, the Boulder, CO city council seems determined to pass this ban into law, with Councilmember Mark Wallach saying, “This is not very controversial to me, let’s get this done.” About the proposed ban.

    This is precisely why Giffords will be pushing to overturn State Preemption laws across the country. The reality of the situation is that since gun control groups cannot get legislation passed at the federal level, they’ve resorted to where it’s relatively easy to get laws passed: Local government.

    The overturning of state preemption laws sets a dangerous precedent for gun owners. It’s impossible for individuals to know the laws of every county or city. If you were to have a concealed carry permit in your home county but then enter another county that has made carrying a firearm illegal, you’d be committing a crime unknowingly. State preemption goes a long way to ensuring that States don’t become a balkanized patchwork of conflicting gun laws.

    If gun owners don’t oppose the overturn of State Preemption laws, we may see a return to the time of Morton Grove. Remember that Morton Grove’s ban on handguns lasted from 1981 to 2008, 27 years. It was only overturned when the Supreme Court decided on Heller. Even though a few cases regarding so-called “assault weapon” bans are up for the Supreme Court’s consideration, this route of gun control seems to be compelling enough for Allison Anderman of Giffords to say, “It’s a really big deal.”

    The decentralized nature of this attack on our 2A rights will be a tough challenge, but this is exactly why it’s essential for gun owners to make their voices heard and participate in local politics.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 21:40

  • Housing Market Insanity Hits The Suburbs As Million-Dollar Listings Disappear
    Housing Market Insanity Hits The Suburbs As Million-Dollar Listings Disappear

    As investors like BlackRock help drive America’s ‘Housing Bubble 2.0’  to increasingly absurd proportions, Americans are growing surprisingly accustomed to the fact that homes costing $1 million or less are growing increasingly hard to find in a growing number of urban locales. As we reported earlier this month, the number of cities where the price of an average home has topped $1 million has more than doubled over the last five years.

    The dynamic is easy enough to understand: families seeking more space and cheaper prices flee from primary cities to secondary cities – or find a home in a comfortable nearby suburb.

    And because of it, more in-demand suburbs surrounding cities like Boston, New York City, Philadelpha or – on the West Coast – Seattle and Spokane, Washington, are seeing the sub-$1 million homes disappear at a disturbing pace.

    In a recent piece on the out-of-control American housing market, which of course will ultimately leave families holding the bag along with perhaps some investors, Bloomberg offered Wellesley, Mass., which once played host to Hillary Clinton during her college days. The McMansions and other sought-after million-dollar-plus offerings have almost disappeared from the market. Recently, in Wellesley, there were fewer than 10 even on offer.

    Wealthy young urbanites are in a race to the U.S. suburbs. But they’re already late: The starter mansions are almost gone.

    Take Wellesley, a leafy Massachusetts town of 30,000 people getting an influx of buyers from Boston who have outgrown apartments. Couples with dual incomes are coming out of the pandemic with more money, hungry for kids’ rooms and “his” and “her” home offices.

    In the first week of February, there were just eight homes available for sale, a fifth of the level two years earlier. The cheapest one: $1.1 million.

    “You have to act fast,” said Lara O’Rourke, an agent with Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty who helped a buyer beat out 15 others for a house listed for $1.4 million last month. “Inventory is not hanging around.”

    Leave it to Bloomberg to care so much about the interests of the most moneyed Americans. Clearly, they know their audience. We have also reported how the present state of the housing market leaves first time buyers and poorer buyers at a growing disadvantage.

    Of course, the disadvantages of the wealthy have a “spillover effect” that could also hurt the poor.

    Across the country, the upscale homes that were once a symbol of affluence and aspiration for well-to-do suburbanites are in short supply. Buyers are rushing to lock in purchases as mortgage rates rise, intensifying demand. That’s driving up prices from elite commuter towns such as Wellesley and Newton outside of Boston and Rye north of Manhattan, to booming Sun Belt areas like Austin, Texas.

    In a heated U.S. housing market that has locked out many entry-level buyers, people with million-dollar budgets are better positioned than most. But their difficulty finding homes has a spillover effect: They push into surrounding towns, and cheaper segments, squeezing affordability more with each bid.

    “The entry price for these towns has already gone sky high,” said Chris Herbert, managing director for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It ends up pushing prices up across the board.”

    High-end inventory in areas outside Boston has fallen by more than 40% over the last year. And across the country, wealthy suburbs are increasingly seeing $1 million-plus homes as “the norm”.

    After years of seeing homebuyers shun its megamansions for high-rise apartments in Manhattan, even Greenwich, Conn., has seen inventory dry up.

    As we mentioned earlier, the biggest problem with such hot demand is that it feeds on itself, before eventually becoming a deterrent for families; rising loan costs are another factor as buyers are reluctant to give up a preferential rate.

    With demand so hot, the supply shortage is building upon itself. Older people who might have considered downsizing are staying put instead, avoiding fighting it out with younger buyers for smaller homes. As interest rates rise, homeowners also are less likely to want to move and give up their lower-cost loan. The average rate for a 30-year mortgage reached 3.92% last week, the highest since 2019, according to Freddie Mac.

    In Texas, sales of single-family homes of more than $1 million almost doubled last year, according to an analysis by the Texas Realtors trade group for the 12 months through October. More than a quarter of that activity was in Austin, where an influx of tech workers with Facebook, Google or Tesla Inc. salaries are hunting for space.

    And the result is that working people with budgets in between $1 million and $2 million can’t even get a showing.

    They’re beating out buyers like Jeremy Knight, who has lost four bidding wars. Knight, a local real estate agent who is looking to move to a different school district, says he’s seeking homes with asking prices below $1.8 million but expects to pay more. Houses at the lower end of luxury go well over asking, he said.

    “I was looking at a home for $1.75 million,” Knight said. “Just to get a showing, I had to wiggle in a 15-minute time frame at the end of the day. It was booked from beginning to end.”

    So, if you’re looking to buy a home in the immediate future, you better be ready to compromise: or if they’re willing to wait another six months or so, they might have better luck if the Fed truly does act on the course proposed by Zoltan Pozsar, the oracle of the repo market.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 21:20

  • Order Out Of Chaos: How The Ukraine Conflict Is Designed To Benefit Globalists
    Order Out Of Chaos: How The Ukraine Conflict Is Designed To Benefit Globalists

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    Within the next couple of months it is likely that there will be direct US military involvement in Ukraine, with Russia now openly supporting and recognizing separatist groups in the Donbass region on the eastern edge of the country and apparently moving to aid them militarily in separation. This is not the first time Russia has sent military units into Ukraine, but it is the first time since 2014 and the annexation of Crimea that the threat of military action has been overt rather than covert.

    When conflict erupts, you are going to see a swarm of media stories in western nations trying to outline the complexity of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union, while ignoring certain inconvenient truths. You will see many of these stories construct a narrative which then oversimplifies the situation and paints Russia as the monstrous aggressor. The goal will be to convince the public that our involvement in Ukraine is a moral and geopolitical necessity. There will be attempts to gain American favor and a call for US boots on the ground. Joe Biden will be at the forefront of this push.

    The surface trigger for the confrontation is obviously rooted in the 2009 decision by western powers and Ukrainian officials to consider the country for membership in NATO. Most of Russia’s actions when dealing with Ukraine can be owed to NATO involvement in the region, including the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. Strategically, it makes sense. Imagine if Mexico suddenly announced it was joining a military alliance with China and that Chinese military assets were going to be transferred near the US southern border? It probably would not end well.

    To be sure, Russia has a history of hypocritical behavior when it comes to its involvement in the affairs of its neighbors. For example, only a few months ago Kazakhstan was facing mass protests which the government claimed were caused by “foreign manipulation.” Zero proof was presented to justify this assertion. However, the claim was enough to rationalize the deployment of 2300 Russian troops over the border to shut down the protests.

    In reality, citizens of Kazakhstan were angry over a spike in inflation and high gas prices which continue to grind down the middle class and those in poverty (sound familiar?). In 2019, only 4% of the population lived under the official poverty line. In 2020, that number exploded to 14% of the population. Accurate numbers are difficult to find for 2021, but it is likely that poverty levels are now closer to 16%-20%. The reasons for civil unrest were obvious and justified, but the protesting Kazakhs were accused of being pawns of foreign enemies. As I have noted in many articles lately, this is a typical strategy of corrupt governments trying to retain power when the people rise up and rebel for legitimate reasons.

    Again, imagine if the Canadian government under Trudeau asked for US military assistance in scattering the trucker protests against his draconian vaccine mandates? We need to look at these decisions in context in order to grasp how insane they really are.

    Ironically, Russia is happy to support the unrest of separatists in Ukraine while also helping to silence unrest in Kazakhstan. Keep this pattern in mind because it will help in understanding how events surrounding Russia reflect a global trend that might effect Americans in the future.

    The diplomatic mess between Ukraine and Russia can be blamed in part on both sides, and it’s this kind of historical ambiguity where globalists tend to thrive. The fog of war helps to obscure establishment activities and often it is hard for people to see who is truly benefiting from the chaos until it’s too late. It is my belief that the Ukraine problem is at least partially engineered and that it is designed as a first domino in a chain of intended crises.

    I don’t think there is anything unique to the Ukraine conflict for the globalists; they could have just as easily tried to initiate a regional war in Taiwan, North Korea, Iran, etc. There are numerous powder keg countries that they have been cultivating for a couple of decades. We should not hyperfocus on who is to blame between Ukraine or Russia, we should focus on the effects that will result from any major regional disaster and how the globalists exploit such catastrophes to further the agenda of total centralization of power.

    The Ukraine scenario could be easily defused if both sides took some basic diplomatic measures, but this is not going to happen. NATO officials could take a step back from their pursuit of adding Ukraine to the ranks. The US could stop pouring cash and weaponry into Ukraine to the tune of $5.4 billion since 2014. Over 90 tons of military equipment has been sent to the country in 2022 alone. Russia could stop sending covert special operations units into the Donbass and be more willing to come to the table to discuss diplomatic solutions. The reason these things do not happen is because they are not allowed to happen by the power brokers behind the curtain.

    We are all aware of the globalist influences behind US and NATO leaders, we present the undeniable evidence of this on a regular basis. Biden’s penchant for globalist institutions is well known. But what about Russia?

    There are some in the alternative media and the liberty movement who falsely believe that Russia is anti-globalist – Nothing could be further from the truth. As with many political leaders Putin will sometimes use anti-globalists rhetoric, but his relationships tell another story. In Putin’s first autobiography, titled ‘First Person’, he discusses with fondness his first encounter with New World Order globalist Henry Kissinger as a member of the FSB (formerly the KGB). As Putin rose through the political ranks he maintained a steady friendship with Kissinger and to this day they have regular lunches and Kissinger has been an adviser to multiple branches of the Kremlin.

    It doesn’t stop there, though. Putin and the Kremlin have also kept a steady dialogue with the World Economic Forum, the project of the now notorious globalist Klaus Schwab. In fact, only last year Russia announced it was joining the WEF’s “Fourth Industrial Revolution Network” which focuses on economic socialization, Artificial Intelligence, the “internet of things” and a host of other globalist interests which will all lead to worldwide technocracy and tyranny.

    Again, the Russian government is NOT anti-globalist. This claim is nonsense and always has been. I would attribute the fantasy of Russian opposition to a steady stream of propaganda and what I call the False East/West Paradigm – The fraudulent notion that the globalist agenda is a purely Western or American agenda and that countries like China and Russia are opposed to it. If you look at the close interactions between the east and the globalists, this idea completely falls apart.

    It’s important to understand that most conflicts between the East and the West are engineered conflicts and the leaders of BOTH SIDES are not really at odds with each other. Rather, these wars are Kabuki Theater; they are wars of convenience to achieve covert ends while mesmerizing the masses with moments of terror and calamity. For anyone who has doubts about this, I highly recommend they read the thoroughly researched and evidenced works of professional historian and economist Antony Sutton, who quite accidentally stumbled onto the facts surrounding the globalist conspiracy and went on to expose their habit of playing both sides of nearly every war over the past century from the Bolshevik Revolution to WWII and onward.

    The strategy of order out of chaos is nothing new, it’s something the globalists have been doing for a very long time. The number of open revelations post-Covid about the ‘Great Reset’ that globalists have publicly admitted to is so staggering that their plans can no longer be denied. Any skeptics at this point should be suspected of having a single digit IQ.

    So, now that we have established the reality of globalist involvement in both the west and in Russia, we need to ask ourselves how they benefit from initiating a crisis between these powers over Ukraine? What do they get out of it?

    As I have noted in recent articles, it appears to me that Ukraine is a Plan B attempt to conjure more smoke and mirrors where the covid pandemic failed to satisfy the Great Reset plan. As Klaus Schwab and the WEF has constantly asserted, they saw the pandemic as the perfect “opportunity” to force the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the world. As globalist Rahm Emanual once opined in the wake of the 2008 economic crash:

    “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

    The WEF is an old hand at this tactic. Klaus Schwab also used the same exact language right after the credit crash of 2008 as he has used after the spread of covid, always trying to sell global governance as the solution to every disaster:

    “What we are experiencing is the birth of a new era, a wake-up call to overhaul our institutions, our systems and, above all, our thinking, and to adjust our attitudes and values to the needs of a world which rightly expects a much higher degree of responsibility and accountability,” he explained. “If we recognize this crisis as being really transformational, we can lay the fundaments for a more stable, more sustainable and even more prosperous world.”

    – Klaus Schwab on the Global Redesign Initiative, 2009

    Schwab jumped the gun back then just as he jumped the gun in 2020 when he declared the Great Reset an inevitability in the face of covid. The globalists must have expected a much higher death rate from the virus because they were practically dancing in the streets, elated over the amount of power they could steal in the name of “protecting the public from a global health threat.” If you look at the WEF and Gates Foundation simulation of a covid pandemic, Event 201 which was held only two months before the REAL THING happened, they clearly expected covid to do way more damage, predicting an initial death tally of 65 million. This never happened; it isn’t even close.

    It’s hard to say why an obvious bioweapon like covid failed to do the job. Viruses tend to mutate rapidly in the wild and behave differently than they do in a lab setting. I would even consider the possibility of divine intervention. Whatever the reason, the globalists did not get what they wanted and now they need yet another crisis to oil the gears of the Reset machine. With the already tiny death rate of covid now dropping even further with the Omicron variant and half the states of the US in full defiance of the vax mandates it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world asks why they are still under medical authoritarianism?

    War in Ukraine and the mere threat of that war expanding beyond the region could accomplish a number of things covid has not. It provides an ongoing cover for the stagflationary collapse which is now in full swing in the US, the supply chain problems that continue globally as well as the destabilization of the European economy. In particular, the EU is strongly reliant on Russian natural gas in order to heat homes and maintain its economy. Russia has strangled natural gas supplies to Europe in the past and they will do it again. Russian oil exports also fill demand gaps globally, and these exports will be strangled by sanctions or by the Kremlin deliberately cutting supplies to certain nations.

    War is always a distraction from economic sabotage. Even though the seeds of financial crashes are often planted and watered well in advance by central banks, the banks never get the blame because international conflicts conveniently take center stage. By extension, economic crisis causes mass poverty, mass desperation, and mass hysteria, and globalists will say that these dangers require an international solution that they will happily provide in the form of centralization.

    In the US and in many other western nations which have a large number of people still defending individual freedom, the globalists clearly want to use tensions with Russia as a means to silence public dissent over authoritarian policies. Already I am seeing numerous instances of establishment officials and leftists on social media suggesting that liberty activists are “pawns of the Russians” and that we are being used to “divide and conquer.” This is nonsense backed by nothing, but they are trying out the narrative anyway to see if it sticks.

    I have no doubt that any rebellion in the US against the globalists will be blamed on foreign interference. As mentioned earlier, the last thing the elites want is movements of free people obstructing the Reset in the name of liberty. We witnessed this in Canada where Trudeau announced unilateral emergency powers against the trucker protests, giving himself totalitarian levels of control. Even the Russian government has intervened in such public actions to prevent any kind of activist momentum. Biden will try to do the same thing, and war, even a smaller regional war, gives him a rationale to oppress dissent in the name of public security.

    Interestingly, martial law in the US is also much easier to legally and historically justify for the government as long as it is done in response to the invasion of a foreign enemy. The Russian influence narrative may very well be in preparation for martial law within America. Whether or not this actually succeeds is another matter.

    The consequences of a shooting event in Ukraine will be far reaching well beyond a distraction for the American public; my intent here is not to suggest only Americans will be affected. My point is that there are certain places in the world that are naturally resistant to the globalist scheme, and freedom minded Americans are a primary obstacle. If there is a large scale rebellion against the Great Reset, it’s going to start here. The globalists know this as well, which is why the US will undoubtedly be centrally involved in the Ukraine quagmire.

    While the event would be disastrous for Ukrainians and probably many Russians, there are deeper and more dangerous underlying threats intended for the US and a war in Ukraine acts as an effective scapegoat for many of them.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 21:00

  • Biden Admin Freezes New Oil And Gas Drilling Leases Despite Recent Court-Ordered Injunction
    Biden Admin Freezes New Oil And Gas Drilling Leases Despite Recent Court-Ordered Injunction

    As oil prices continue to rocket, now further helped along by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is still fighting tooth and nail to freeze new oil and gas drilling leases – even after a court ruled against the administration for using a metric to estimate “the societal cost of carbon emissions” to justify their move. 

    Despite the court’s ruling, Biden’s administration has stopped new leases and permits for federal oil and gas drilling, MSN reported this week. 

    The administration was previously prevented from using the “social cost of carbon” metric in decisions regarding oil and gas thanks to an injunction issued by US District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana. 

    But government lawyers quickly appealed the injunction, arguing that it “necessitated a pause on all projects where the government was using a social-cost-of-carbon analysis in its decision-making”. This, in turn, allowed the Biden administration to freeze oil and gas projects. 

    The metric in question uses economic models to put a value on each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, MSN reported, with the intention of quantifying the economic harm of climate change. 

    Biden’s lawyers argued: “The consequences of the injunction are dramatic. Pending rulemakings in separate agencies throughout the government — none of which were actually challenged here — will now be delayed. Other agency actions may now be abandoned due to an inability to redo related environmental analyses in time to meet mandatory deadlines.”

    Interior Department spokesperson Melissa Schwartz added: “The Interior Department has assessed program components that incorporate the interim guidance on social cost of carbon analysis from the Interagency Working Group, and delays are expected in permitting and leasing for the oil and gas programs.”

    Schwartz says the Interior Department “continues to move forward with reforms to address the significant shortcomings in the nation’s onshore and offshore oil and gas programs,” the report noted. 

    The timing couldn’t be worse for the administration, as this week’s invasion of Ukraine by Russia has pushed brent well above $100/barrel. We noted earlier this week that JP Morgan has suggested oil could average at about $110/barrel for the remainder of the year – but this prediction was also before the current geopolitical conflict in Europe escalated.

    Great timing, Joe…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 20:40

  • Free Bitcoin
    Free Bitcoin

    Authored by Marty Bent via The American Mind,

    It has been a bit over thirteen years since Satoshi Nakamoto emerged to introduce the world to an idea he had been working on: Bitcoin. A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Since that announcement, the protocol has attracted a great deal of attention, capital, and scrutiny. 

    As it stands today, the market cap of Bitcoin is $1.25 Trillion. It is beginning to be accepted by many across the world as something that will not be going away any time soon. As many in power begin to come to grips with the fact that Bitcoin isn’t going away, they are beginning to ask themselves, “How do we regulate this thing?”

    I am here to politely ask those who would like to “regulate Bitcoin” to resist the urge and instead turn inward and reflect on the damage that has been wrought by compounding decades’ worth of abysmal regulatory policy decisions, which have done little to stop crime and a whole lot to erode individual privacy, civil liberties, and safety.

    What is Bitcoin?

    To set the stage for a diatribe against US banking regulations in the context of Bitcoin, it is probably advantageous to describe Bitcoin in the context of American values as put forth by the Founding Fathers. Put simply, Bitcoin is the greatest extension and written preservation of Natural Rights since the Bill of Rights was passed by Congress in 1789. The peer-to-peer cash system that Satoshi launched allows any individual with access to the internet the ability to opt in to and audit a free-market monetary system, uncontrolled by any central bank. The world has been in desperate need of this for well over a century.

    By creating a private-public key pair specific to the Bitcoin network, an individual can receive, send, and secure the world’s first digital bearer instrument all by themselves. By creating a 12- or 24-word representation of their private key, anybody who so wishes can walk around naked with the access key to their wealth memorized in their head. There is no more need to trust a bank to grant you access to your wealth, nor to lug a heavy metal like gold across borders to transport your wealth if and when you decide to seek greener pastures. Bitcoin brings these functions into the 21st century and supercharges them in a way that is going to change our markets and culture for the better.

    Since money is the base-layer protocol of economic exchange between humans the world over, it is a very important tool. I would take it a bit further and argue that money is the most important tool that humans use. Either way, it would be in our best interest to ensure that we are using the best version of that tool possible. 

    Unfortunately we have been forced to use very poor monetary goods running through very centralized systems. Most do not realize this because most do not understand money or the concept that there can be free market monies. They simply accept that government-issued monetary goods are the only monetary goods.

    Satoshi understood the inherent problems with government-approved, central-bank-controlled monetary systems. He described them succinctly in an email to the P2P Foundation mailing list a little over a month after Bitcoin was officially launched:

    The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.

    Humans are driven by incentives. Central banks create an inherently perverse incentive that drives those in control of the monetary spigots and plumbing to abuse that control to benefit a very small group of connected cronies at the expense of common citizens. This abuse comes in two dominant forms: unfettered seigniorage on a macro level, and subjective censorship on a micro level.

    Unfettered seigniorage is a stealth tax on individuals’ savings as an increase in the money supply inevitably leads to increased prices. No matter how much those in power manipulate the Consumer Price Index in an attempt to make you believe otherwise, money printing unduly affects those who find themselves on the lower rungs of the economic ladder as the purchasing power of their labor (measured in paychecks) decreases gradually, then suddenly over time. Those higher up on the ladder benefit greatly, as they are able to invest in the assets that newly printed money typically gets funneled into: stocks and real estate. 

    There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins. And so this endless, whimsical kind of seigniorage is impossible under a Bitcoin Standard. The common citizen will be able to invest his life force into a monetary good that has a capped supply.

    The payment rails that have been erected on top of the central bank monetary systems enable those in power to unilaterally decide who can and cannot receive and send money. This power is used to disempower those who exhibit wrongthink or conduct business that is deemed unacceptable by the regime.

    Making Things Worse

    Despite more than a decade of screeching from “experts” across academia, economics firms and think-tanks, and Washington, D.C., Bitcoin is still here enabling peer-to-peer digital cash transactions for anyone who can access the network. After almost 13 years of uninterrupted uptime, more and more people and governments are agreeing that Bitcoin is here to stay for the foreseeable future. This has led to a change in posturing from the expert class. They acknowledge that Bitcoin isn’t going away, so now they need to regulate it.

    They don’t even know enough to understand what they’re attempting. Bitcoin in itself cannot be regulated. Centralized companies who have built businesses that leverage the Bitcoin network can certainly be regulated, and the individuals using Bitcoin can be pressured to report their usage. However, at the end of the day it is impossible for these centralized authorities to regulate the rules of the Bitcoin protocol outside of convincing the network of globally distributed node operators to download software with their regulations included. And I can promise you that this is highly unlikely.

    Furthermore, we know that the focus of their efforts to regulate will revolve around importing existing Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/AML) laws to the Bitcoin network. These laws find their roots in the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which thrust a dragnet surveillance apparatus on top of the banking system.

    Despite their best efforts, the Bank Secrecy Act and the KYC/AML regulations that have been created in its wake have done little to stop criminals from partaking in criminal activity, while objectively putting law-abiding citizens in harm’s way and creating compliance costs that make it extremely burdensome for competition to enter the banking sector. By forcing companies to collect and store the personal information of everyone they allow to access their services, these ineffective laws and regulations have created massive data honeypots that are constantly being hacked…by criminals who use that data to impersonate people so they can engage in fraud.

    In a world transitioning to a Bitcoin Standard, the continued collection of personal information like email addresses, home addresses, and phone numbers is foolish and dangerous. Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument in the middle of its monetization phase. Creating centrally controlled databases of bitcoiners, where they live, how to contact them, how much bitcoin they’ve bought over time, and whether or not they’ve moved their bitcoin to personal storage does little more than put tens of millions of individuals at risk of harm. And how much longer will we burden companies with expensive compliance practices that do nothing but put their customers at risk?

    Getting people to ask this simple question is a great first step when it comes to saving bitcoiners from regulation. Individuals need to realize that these regulations are causing far more negative outcomes than positive outcomes.

    Another avenue that will save bitcoiners from over-regulation is the well-calibrated incentive system embedded in the social layer of the protocol, particularly the incentives around mining bitcoin. There is a very strong narrative permeating regime-controlled and allied media that bitcoin is bad for the environment because of how much energy is dedicated to securing the network.

    While it is true that the Bitcoin network uses substantial energy, as befits a culture where investments of time and energy are at the root of property and property rights, what you’ll find when you zoom in is that miners are typically using energy resources that would typically be wasted or stranded. This is because miners are looking to drive their electricity costs as low as possible, and previously wasted and/or stranded energy sources provide those low costs. In that sense Bitcoin miners are driving humanity toward peak energy efficiency. No joules left behind!

    There are many states that have stranded and wasted energy assets within their borders. It is only a matter of time before a forward-thinking state (my satoshis are on Wyoming) invests in bitcoin mining infrastructure that leverages previously wasted energy and rolls the mining profits into a permanent fund. Bitcoin mining permanent funds will enable states to keep their in-state taxes extremely low while providing them significant leverage against the federal government. This leverage provides another safeguard against burdensome regulation of bitcoin businesses. The revenues realized by mining and the services made possible by well-funded permanent funds will incentivize state governments to make sure that bitcoin businesses aren’t over-regulated.

    Judging by current events in the US and abroad, it is highly likely that the federal government will react out of fear as Bitcoin rises to prominence, enacting regulations that make it extremely hard for bitcoin businesses to operate without collecting insane amounts of data and impossible for users to use Bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion. Bitcoin is anathema to the central bank digital currency system, a mechanism of total surveillance fused in unholy union with social and financial credit, that the regime would like to herd us all into. Such a scheme enables complete control over every aspect of our lives. The only sufficiently powerful digital alternative to this system is Bitcoin.

    My hope is that enough people wake up, realize the madness of technologically establishing anti-human and anti-freedom policies, and use Bitcoin to build fresh institutions that preserve both our freedom and our humanity. 

    *  *  *

    is the founder of TFTC.io, a media company focused on Bitcoin, beauty, and freedom in the digital age.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 20:20

  • Morgan Stanley Finally Acknowledges DoJ "Block Trading" Probe
    Morgan Stanley Finally Acknowledges DoJ “Block Trading” Probe

    Given the wealth of information that has already been leaked (likely by the DoJ & SEC) about the “block trading” investigation, Morgan Stanley’s official disclosure of the investigation in its Annual Report (released Thursday) seemed almost comically brief.

    For instance, the Street already knows the name of the top Morgan Stanley banker involved: Pawan Passi, once the head of the bank’s equity syndicate desk – he has supposedly been “on leave” from the bank since November. That was reported by Bloomberg, and both BBG and WSJ have reported a the names of some of the other bankers involved, as well as some of the key buy-side clients (including one Citadel-controlled fund).

    They include: Andrew Liebeskind at Citadel’s Surveyor Capital and Jon Dorfman at Element Capital Management. Felipe Portillo, a risk executive within Credit Suisse’s equity capital markets group, Michael Daum, a partner at Goldman and Michael Lewis, the head of US equities cash trading at Barclays (and a former Morgan Stanley banker until 2018). Those are some heavy-hitters, for sure. So far, the media organizations that have reported on their alleged involvement have refused to offer any details, saying only that they are somehow “involved”.

    It was only revealed about a week ago that the Archegos block trades (trades that Zero Hedge was among the first to report) which were among the most visible such trades in recent Wall Street memory, were indeed involved in the investigation (which supposedly  began years earlier). 

    In that incident, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs avoided the worst losses by breaking a backdoor agreement among half a dozen major global megabanks to try and parcel out the Archegos holdings slowly.

    Again, from what we know so far, the probe is examining whether hedge fund clients of Morgan Stanley and others were unfairly “tipped off” in advance of the trades. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine memorably explained once how bankers routinely pitch potentially interested parties about impending deals, and how a potential “gray area” like that described in the anonymously-sourced reports on the trades might come to exist.

    In its statement in its Annual Report, Morgan Stanley admitted it had been responding to “requests” from the SEC or DoJ about “block trading” since June 2019. A subheading entitled “Block Trading Matter” was included under the section “Legal Proceedings”:

    Beginning in June of 2019, the Firm has been responding to requests for information from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an investigation of various aspects of the Firm’s block trading business.

    The bank then admitted that the requests started coming from federal prosecutors nearly two years later in August 2021.

    Beginning in August of 2021, the Firm has been responding to requests for information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the SDNY in connection with its investigation of the same subject matter. The Firm is cooperating with these investigations.

    Block trades are a growing source of business for megabanks, with revenues from US block trades rising to $727.9 million in 2021 from $508 million in 2020, according to Dealogic data. Overall last year, there were $70.8 billion worth of block trades, up from $41.4 billion a year earlier. Of this, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs take home the lion’s share of the revenue – and the profits.

    Morgan Stanley’s annual report didn’t say anything about the SEC’s concurrent probe into spoofing and other manipulation by short sellers which has ensnared major short-selling hedge funds like Carson Block’s Muddy Waters.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 20:00

  • Is Tunnel Vision Hiding How Bad Things Are?
    Is Tunnel Vision Hiding How Bad Things Are?

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    As eager as many of us are to put Covid-19 behind us we as a society simply have not turned the corner. Mainstream media has us in a stranglehold as it continues what is news and how to report it. Not seeing the bigger picture is something many people seem to suffer from. It occurred to me the other day that tunnel vision may be hiding just how bad things are.  

    I See Nothing – It Looks Alright To Me

    A lot of the problems I hear about come from those around me during conversations. These have to do with things the mainstream media is ignoring or not putting into proper perspective. Whether this is intentional or proof the media gets a big fail for keeping us informed is up for debate. The one thing that is clear is they seldom address the ramifications flowing from the events they report and how one problem also compounds another.  

    Another way to look at this is that it is becoming more difficult to reconcile all the lies and misconceptions floating around out there. Since most people are not deep thinkers, they seldom tie the consequences resulting from events together. It is necessary to do this to form a reasonable opinion as to whether something is good or bad. Simply taking the word of some babbling bias idiot from the news media has its drawbacks and adds to the dumbing down of society. 

    All this has clowns coming out of the woodwork with predictions. Call them wild, call them pure speculation, call them anything you like. The one thing I do know is that they can’t all be right and some will prove to be very very wrong. Some of these predictions are very specific, such as the one being thrown out there by Felix Zulauf. He claims we will see a 20% plus drop in the markets by summer, then a huge bull market lasting through 2024 caused by the Fed pivoting as we drop into recession.

    We even have some economy watchers putting forth the idea inflation is about to max out or will start to fall since the numbers are based on year-over-year figures. Still, it is difficult to discount other pressing issues that remain. One of these is what will happen to overall incomes with many people still not planning to return to work. Another has to do with the fact supply chains remain a mess and may get far worse if social unrest continues to spread. 

    An example of this, hidden from much of America by the media is highlighted by how the Canadian truckers, protest has brought freight shipments in Canada to a standstill. Also, we  are seeing a substantial slowing in many countries and segments of the economy. Another thing we must look at is “liquidity,” it is important to remember money is not distributed equally. If Fed tightening does occur, certain segments of the economy will suffer far more than others. 

    Headlines twisted to give a positive spin on things, such as, “U.S. industrial production jumps in January on demand for heating” tend to mask the fact this is not good for most people. This headline just came across my page, while it sounds upbeat, it is economically problematic. In short, it means consumers are paying more to heat their homes and that they will have less money to spend on other items. 

    It is somewhat amazing that in the last few days, the situation that has brewed so long in Ukraine is being used as the primary excuse for the market moving lower. More incredible is that people are accepting this, that narrative pushes away the bigger issue of the Fed tightening and raising interest rates at the same time the economy is slowing.

    The one thing I do know is that most Americans are poorly equipped to handle the  economic storm heading our way. When things are too ugly to look at, people ignore them and choose not to “handle” the truth. So many people have accepted as fact five major economic myths that allow them to brush aside reality. They are; 

    • Government is for and by the people

    • Financial planning means you only have to start saving a little money each year to guarantee an easy retirement

    • You have rights and we are not slaves

    • Your life will progress and move along pretty much as you have planned

    • Those in charge or above you care about you and will protect you 

    The ugly truth is pensions are bankrupt and so is our government, but we are not alone. In fact, in many ways America is still far better off  than many or should we say most other countries. The volatility we have seen in the market as of late has left many investors whipsawed out of their money and the worst is probably yet to come.  I see this as an indication we may be closer to the end of this euphoric bull market than many investors think.  Those that have been buying market dips should remember that markets climb a wall of worry but when they crash, it can come fast and furious.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 19:40

  • Uranium Stocks Surge After Swedish Utility Giant Suspends Deliveries Of Russian Uranium And Nuclear Fuel
    Uranium Stocks Surge After Swedish Utility Giant Suspends Deliveries Of Russian Uranium And Nuclear Fuel

    The uranium sector got an unexpected boost today when Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall announced it will cease taking any deliveries of nuclear fuel from Russia for its nuclear power plants following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company on Thursday said it has decided to stop planned deliveries and to not place any new orders from Russia until further notice. Vattenfall added the operation of its nuclear power stations will not be affected as its procurement strategy is to have multiple suppliers from different countries.

    From the press release:

    We are deeply concerned by the serious security situation in Europe and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    We have therefore decided that no planned deliveries from Russia to our nuclear power plants will take place until further notice.

    We will also not place any new orders from Russia to our nuclear power plants until further notice.

    Our procurement strategy is based on having multiple suppliers from different countries, in order to safeguard our independence and security of supply to our nuclear power plants. Based on this we also have plans to manage possible irregularities in the supply. The operation of our nuclear power plants will therefore not be affected by these decisions.

    The company, which generates electricity from a range of sources, including hydro, nuclear, fossil fuels and wind, aims to phase out fossil generation and increase the share of renewables. In 2021, nuclear accounted for 40.4 TWh of the company’s total generation of 111.3 TWh, while wind provided 11.1 TWh. According to the company’s website, in 2020, nuclear energy accounted for around 30% of Sweden’s electricity production.

    The news sent North American uranium miners soaring, with Cameco gaining as much as 12% in Toronto, on trading volume double the 20-day average so far. Energy Fuels was up nearly 11%, while other gainers include: NexGen Energy +9.8%, Uranium Energy +9.4%.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 19:20

  • Mitt Romney Blames Trump's "America First" Policy For Russian Attack On Ukraine
    Mitt Romney Blames Trump’s “America First” Policy For Russian Attack On Ukraine

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Senator Mitt Romney believes he’s identified where the real blame lies for Russia’s attack on Ukraine – former President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.

    The former presidential candidate made the comments following Moscow’s bombardment of Ukraine’s military infrastructure.

    While Romney did criticize Joe Biden for his failed attempt at a Russian “reset,” he saved most of his invective for Trump’s “America first” foreign policy approach.

    “Putin’s impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided ‘reset’ and the shortsightedness of ‘America First,’” Romney wrote.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Romney’s admonishment of “America First” is somewhat discredited by the fact that Putin made no significantly aggressive moves against neighboring countries during Trump’s term in office.

    During Barack Obama’s second term, when Biden was vice-president, Putin annexed Crimea.

    “The ’80s called’ and we didn’t answer,” said Romney, referring to when Obama dismissed the Senator’s concerns about the threat Russia posed to the world during the 2012 debates.

    As we highlighted earlier, Vladimir Putin attempted to justify the attack by saying he was fighting Nazis, a common trope now so overused it should be permanently retired.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 19:00

  • Praise Of Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Battalion Given Green Light By Facebook: Intercept
    Praise Of Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Battalion Given Green Light By Facebook: Intercept

    Facebook is now allowing its billions of users to praise a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit called the Azov Battalion, after the social media giant previously banned the group from free discussion under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle reports.

    According to Biddle, the Azov regiment – which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement – is classified as a “Tier 1” dangerous organization under FB policy, alongside the likes of ISIS and the KKK. It began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before officially joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014, and is known for its hardcore ultranationalist views and neo-Nazi ideology.

    The group was formally banned by Facebook in 2019, and designated (along with several individuals) under the company’s prohibition against hate groups – subject to their harshest “Tier 1” restrictions that ban users from “praise, support, or representation” of blacklisted groups across all company-owned platforms.

    Members of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Battalion train at their base in Urzuf, Ukraine. Brendan Hoffman for USA TODAY

    According to Biddle:

    Though it has in recent years downplayed its neo-Nazi sympathies, the group’s affinities are not subtle: Azov soldiers march and train wearing uniforms bearing icons of the Third Reich; its leadership has reportedly courted American alt-right and neo-Nazi elements; and in 2010, the battalion’s first commander and a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, Andriy Biletsky, stated that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].” With Russian forces reportedly moving rapidly against targets throughout Ukraine, Facebook’s blunt, list-based approach to moderation puts the company in a bind: What happens when a group you’ve deemed too dangerous to freely discuss is defending its country against a full-scale assault? -The Intercept

    According to Facebook’s new internal policy reviewed by The Intercept, the company will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.”

    Examples of allowed speech include: “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard,” and “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours,” and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”

    That said, the group still can’t use Facebook for recruiting purposes or publishing its own statements. The regiment’s uniforms and banners will continue to be banned as hate symbol imagery.

    Examples of speech regarding the group that’s not allowed, includes things like: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism,” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and it’s white nationalist heritage.”

    Facebook confirmed the decision, but refused to elaborate.

    Other “Tier 1” groups include the Islamic State and the Ku Klux Klan.

    Read the rest of the report here.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 18:40

  • 'Follow The Data', They Said, And Then They Hid It
    ‘Follow The Data’, They Said, And Then They Hid It

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

    Never before has the public had access to so much data on a virus and its effects. For two years, data festooned the daily papers. Dozens of websites assembled it. We were all invited to follow the data, follow the science, and observe as scientists became our new overlords, instructing us how to feel, think, and behave in order to “flatten the curve,” “drive down cases,” “preserve capacity,” “stay safe,” and otherwise deploy all the powers of human will to respond to and manipulate disease outcomes.

    We could watch it all in real time. How beautiful were the waves, the curves, the bar charts, the sheer power of the technology. We can look at all the variations and the trajectories, assemble them by country, click here and click there to compare, see new cases, total cases, unvaccinated and vaccinations, infections and hospitalizations, deaths in total or death per capita, and we could even make a game out of it: which country is doing better at the great task, which group is better at complying, which region has the best outcomes.

    It was all quite dazzling, the power of the personal computer combined with data collection techniques, universal testing, instant transmission, and the democratization of science. We were all invited to participate from our laptops to bone up on statistics, download and look, assemble and draw, manipulate and observe, and be in awe of the masters of the numbers and their capacity for responding to every trend as it was captured and chronicled in real time.

    Then one day, writing at the New York Times, reporter Apoorva Mandavilli revealed the following:

    For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public …. Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said.

    Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable.”

    Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.

    At the appearance of this story, my data science friends who have been digging through the databases for nearly two years all let a collective: argh! They knew something was very wrong and had been complaining about it for more than a year. These are sophisticated people at Rational Ground who keep their own charts and host data programs of their own. They have been curious all along about the exaggerations, the poor communication regarding the gradients of risk, the lags and holes in the demographic data on hospitalization and death, to say nothing of the strange way in which the CDC has been manipulating presentations on everything from masking to vaccination status and much more.

    It’s been a strange experience for them, especially since other countries in the world have been absolutely scrupulous about collecting and distributing data, even when the results do not comport with policy priorities. There can be little doubt, for example, that the missing data bears on the issue of vaccine effectiveness and very likely demonstrates that the claim that this was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is completely unsustainable, even from the time when it was first made.

    In the New York Times story, many top epidemiologists were quoted expressing everything from frustration to outrage.

    “We have been begging for that sort of granularity of data for two years,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist and part of the team that ran Covid Tracking Project, an independent effort that compiled data on the pandemic till March 2021. A detailed analysis, she said, “builds public trust, and it paints a much clearer picture of what’s actually going on.”

    Well, if public trust is the goal, it’s not going so well. In addition to the failings revealed here, there are many other questions concerning cases and whether and to what extent the PCR testing can really tell us what we need to know, to what degree did the misclassification problem affect death attribution, and so much more. It seems that with each month that has gone by, what seemed to be these beautiful pictures of reality have faded into a murky data quagmire in which we don’t know what is real and what is not. And ever more, the CDC itself has urged us to ignore what we do see (VAERS data, for example).

    Dr. Robert Malone makes an interesting point. If a scientist at a university or a lab is found to have deliberately buried relevant data because they contradict a preset conclusion, the results are professional ruin. The CDC, however, has legal privileges that allows it to get away with actions that would otherwise be considered fraud in academia.

    There are many analogies between economics and epidemiology, as many have noticed over the last two years. The attempt to plan the economy in the past has suffered from many of the same failures as the attempt to plan a pandemic. There are collection problems, unintended consequences, knowledge problems, issues of mission creep, uncertainties over causal inference, a presumption that all agents obey the plan when in fact they do not, and a wild pretense that planners have the necessary knowledge, skill, and coordination required to presume to replace the decentralized and dispersed knowledge base that makes society work.

    Murray Rothbard called statistics the Achilles heel of economic planning. Without the data, economists and bureaucrats couldn’t even begin to believe they could achieve their far-flung dreams, much less put them into practice. For this reason, he favored leaving all economic data collection to the private sector so that it is actually useful for enterprise rather than abused by government. In addition, there is simply no way that data alone can provide a genuine full picture of reality. There will always be holes. It will always be late. There will always be mistakes. There will always be uncertainties over causality. Moreover, all data represents a snapshot in time and can prove extremely misleading with changes over time. And these can be fatal for decision making.

    We are seeing this play itself out in epidemiological planning too. The endless streams of data over two years have created what Sunetra Gupta calls “the illusion of control” when in fact the world of pathogens and its interaction with the human experience is infinitely complex. That illusion also creates dangerous habits on the part of planners, which we’ve seen.

    There was never a reason to close schools, lock people in their homes, block travel, shut businesses, mask kids, mandate vaccines, and so on. It’s almost as if they wanted human beings to behave in ways that better fit their own modeling techniques rather than allow their knowledge base to defer to the complexity of the human experience.

    And now we know that we’ve been denied information that the CDC has kept in hiding for the better part of a year, undoubtedly to serve the purpose of forcing the appearance of reality to more closely conform to a political narrative. We only have a fraction of what has been accumulated. What we thought we knew was only a glimpse of what was actually known on the inside.

    There is no shortage of scandals associated with pandemic policy over two years. For those who are interested in finding out precisely what caused the lights to be dimmed or even turned out on modern civilization, we can add another scandal to the list.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/24/2022 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 24

Today’s News 24th February 2022

  • Global Markets Unravel As Putin Launches "Military Operation" In Ukraine
    Global Markets Unravel As Putin Launches “Military Operation” In Ukraine

    As Russian President Putin announces a “special military operation” in Ukraine and warns of “consequences” for foreign interference, global markets are turmoiling.

    US equity futures are rapidly extending losses from the day session, down around 2-3% since the close…

    This pushes Nasdaq into a bear market.

    VIX futures have spiked above 32…

    Bitcoin is getting hammered…

    Oil is soaring with WTI above $95…

    …and Brent tops $100…

    US NatGas is spiking back near $5…

    And gold topped $1930…

    Wheat futures are up over 5%…

    Bonds are also bid with 10Y yields down around 8bps from yesterday’s highs now…

    Rate-hike odds are falling significantly. The odds of a 50bps hike in March has dropped to 25% (from 40% earlier) and the odds of 7 rate-hikes by Dec 2022 is now down to 20% from 55% earlier…

    Ruble forwards are crashing to new record lows against the dollar…

    Stagflation here we come!!

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 23:11

  • How Eisenhower Predicted Fauci
    How Eisenhower Predicted Fauci

    Authored by Rafi Eis,

    If it wasn’t obvious before, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that science has become thoroughly politicized. Though normally focused on observable and verifiable causes and effects in the natural world, many scientists, especially government employed ones, have taken on a political role and have shaped scientific findings in the service of those political ends. The truth eventually came out, but at a massive cost to people’s mental health, finances and trust.

    President Dwight Eisenhower foresaw this abuse by government scientists, and he shows us the way out.

    Public health officials initially insisted on the wet-market origin story for the novel coronavirus, but the lab-leak theory has become just as plausible. Cloth masks once deemed essential are now labeled “facial decorations.” Schools have opened without becoming super spreaders. A John Hopkins University study recently concluded that lockdowns had a minuscule impact on virus morbidity.

    With all of these issues, some of the federal government’s top scientists made a concerted effort to stifle debate. Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, requested a “devastating takedown” of those who disagreed with his insistence on lockdowns, referring to dissenting scholars from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford as “fringe.” He and other public health officials selectively ignored real data. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to the president, declared that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

    Collins’ approach and Fauci’s sentiment are exactly what President Eisenhower warned the American public about in his Farewell Address.

    He advised vigilance against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

    These “task forces of scientists,” Eisenhower cautioned, would lead to the “domination of the nation’s scholars.”

    One reason that so few infectious disease scientists disagreed with Fauci is quite simple: the power of money. America offers around $5 billion per year to support infectious disease research, and almost all of it runs through the agency led by Collins and Fauci. Any infectious disease researcher would therefore be disinclined to run afoul of Dr. Fauci, as future grant funding or professional advancement may depend on the director’s approval. Grants like those from NIAID give the project a stamp of legitimacy and open the door to other supporters. This system offers Fauci monopoly-like power over infectious disease research.

    Research scientists then toe the line, or at least remain silent. This creates the appearance of unanimous agreement as, in Eisenhower’s words, “a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

    It is hard to prove intentional silence.

    But there are signs.

    When mask mandates were first introduced, for example, numerous virologists should have pointed to published RCT studies that cast doubt on masks’ effectiveness in preventing transmission of airborne viruses. One May 2020 CDC paper “did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”

    Likewise, the World Health Organization’s 2019 program for an influenza pandemic does not recommend facemask use for the non-symptomatic or uninfected, and only recommends business and school closures in the most severe circumstances, even while acknowledging that these measures lack good evidence of effectiveness. This too was missing from COVID policy discussions.

    Ike correctly assessed that “the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop” is no longer the driving force behind scientific and technological progress. Research has become more “formalized, complex and costly.” A 21st-century Benjamin Franklin can no longer purchase the expensive equipment or devote the time needed to make world-changing inventions or discoveries. Therefore, an “increasing share [of research] is conducted for, by or at the direction of the federal government.”

    But it is still possible to steer clear of the dangers of politicized bias in science by maintaining the core of scientific inquiry: “intellectual curiosity.” Intellectual curiosity is what enables us to figure out the truth of the reality that confronts us.

    A pivot towards government research grants need not remove “the solitary inventor” from the picture. Those inventors may not be able to conduct the research on their own, but they can surely analyze the data. Government funded scientific data should always be open for scrutiny, because transparency enables the curious to understand the truth for themselves. Time and again, public officials attempted to force consensus over COVID. Government funded research that encourages competition and debate, rather than uniformity of thought, can help us figure out the truth.

    But Ike proposed a second, more important principle. To avoid the “domination of the nation’s scholars” he declared that “it is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” Scientists can tell us their best understanding of reality and its consequences, like the dangers of a new virus. But multifaceted decisions that affect people in different ways, such as closing schools or businesses, are not questions of science but judgements about the best way to navigate reality. That is the role of politicians elected by the people.

    While the scientist may be able to predict the consequences of some of our decisions, it is the statesman who must create policy that balances various needs, especially the tradeoff between freedom and safety. What should the quarantine policy be for COVID-exposed children in schools? Should hospital workers be obliged to get vaccinated? This requires a deliberative process, one best suited for legislative bodies.

    Eisenhower issued two warnings in his Farewell Address: “the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex” and “that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

    The aimless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated the danger of the former, while the coronavirus pandemic has forced us to witness the latter.

    Ike was prescient.

    We cannot return to a bygone era and dismantle these systems, but we can be more aware of the forces at play and be wiser. The current pushback against American engagement in Ukraine is more forceful than the leadup to the Iraq conflict because we saw the experts mislead us and fail.

    The next time a scientific scare comes rolling around, we must passionately seek truth and demand that our elected leaders courageously represent the people.

    *  *  *

    Rafi Eis is the executive director of the Herzl Institute.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 23:00

  • "Terrific Bill": Aussie PM Backs Ban On Trans Women In Female Sports
    “Terrific Bill”: Aussie PM Backs Ban On Trans Women In Female Sports

    Authored by Nina Nguyen via The Epoch Times,

    Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backed a bill that would give women and girls the right to play single-sex sports by making it legal to ask a male competitor not to play in the female category.

    Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison discusses travel restrictions during a press conference in Canberra, Australia, on Oct. 1, 2021. (Lukas Coch/AAP Image via AP)

    Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler, an advocacy for women’s sports,  proposed the “Save Women’s Sport Bill” to parliament on Feb. 10. Chandler said it is “unacceptable” that the current Commonwealth laws threaten sports clubs and associations with legal action if they exclude males from women’s sports.

    “The Sex Discrimination and Other Legislation Amendment (save Women’s Sport) Bill 2022 I am introducing today will make clear that single-sex sport for women is lawful, encouraged and supported by the parliament of Australia,” she said.

    “What it does do is seek to restore respect for women’s rights and acknowledge the long-understood reality that categorisation by sex is important in the vast majority of sports.”

    She added that the bill “does not seek to ‘ban’ anybody from playing sport” as it also allows sporting codes to offer a range of categories and competitions to maximise participation and inclusion.

    Liberal Senator Claire Chandler makes her maiden speech in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House Canberra, Australia, on July 23, 2019. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

    On Feb. 22, Morrison said he endorsed Chandler’s proposal when asked about his thoughts on the bill at a press conference in the Tasmanian marginal seat of Lyons.

    “I support it, I think it is a terrific bill and I’ve given her great encouragement,” he told reporters.

    “Claire is a champion for women’s sports and I think she has been right to raise these issues in the way that she has.”

    National LGBTIQ+ group Equality Australia on Feb. 22 criticised the prime minister for “again making the lives of trans and gender diverse kids the subject of political and media debate.”

    “This is completely unacceptable, particularly when this group of people already experience disproportionate levels of discrimination, marginalisation and social isolation,” said Anna Brown, CEO of Equality Australia in a media release to The Epoch Times.

    Equality Australia called Chandler’s bill “cruel and divisive,” arguing “sport should be for everyone.”

    “This is completely unacceptable, particularly when this group of people already experience disproportionate levels of discrimination, marginalisation and social isolation.”

    Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, swims for the University of Pennsylvania at an Ivy League swim meet against Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 22, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images)

    The debate of transgender women’s inclusion in women’s sports has been dominating the global sports arena in the past few years, with concerns raised about unfair advantages of biological males and the censorship of female athletes speaking up in support of single-sex sports.

    In early February, 16 members of the Pennsylvania women’s swimming team wrote in a letter that if trans female swimmer Lia Thomas were to be eligible to compete against female swimmers, Thomas could break Penn, Ivy and NCAA Women’s Swimming records; “feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”

    The swimmers revealed they had been told if they spoke out against Thomas’s inclusion into women’s competitions, they “would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.”

    Katherine Deves, co-founder of Save Women’s Sports Australasia, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 23, 2021, that it is “a false premise” to assume that trans people are marginalised as evidence shows “transgender lobby groups have huge influence and power” over the government and the media.

    “There is no sort of measurements or tests to determine what someone’s gender identity is; it’s all based on a self-declaration,” Deves noted.

    The previous federal Labor government replaced the sex-based definitions of “man” and “women” in the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 with gender identity and created provisions that grant male-born athletes the right to take legal action if they are barred from the women’s category.

    In October 2020, eight peak sporting bodies implemented policies and guidelines to allow biological male athletes to participate in women’s sports.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 22:20

  • Putin Launches "Special Military Operation" In Ukraine, Kiev Calls It "Full-Scale Invasion"
    Putin Launches “Special Military Operation” In Ukraine, Kiev Calls It “Full-Scale Invasion”

    LIVE FEED of multiple cameras from across Ukraine:

    LIVE FEED from Kiev:

    Russian Ministry of Defense: “Military infrastructure, air defense facilities, military airfields and aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are being put out of action by high-precision means of destruction.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    • RUSSIA IS ATTACKING UKRAINE’S MILITARY INFRASTRUCTURE WITH HIGH-PRECISION WEAPONS – RIA CITES RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY
    • RUSSIA SAYS IT’S TARGETING UKRAINE ANTI-AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS: IFX
    • RUSSIA: USING HIGH PRECISION STRIKES ON UKRAINE MILITARY: IFX
    • ZELENSKIY: UKRAINE IS INTRODUCING MARTIAL LAW
    • UKRAINE IMPOSES MARTIAL LAW ACROSS THE COUNTRY: ZELENSKIY
    • RUSSIAN DEFMIN: NO THREAT TO UKRAINE POPULATION: TASS
    • UKRAINE PRESIDENT SAYS RUSSIA CARRIED OUT MISSILE STRIKES ON OUR INFRASTRUCTURE AND ON OUR BORDER GUARDS
    • RUSSIAN-BACKED REBELS SAY START ATTACK ON UKRAINE-CONTROLLED TOWN NEAR LUHANSK – IFAX

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Ukraine is urging the following action:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tulsi Gabbard weighs in:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Reports are coming in that the Russians have taken over an air base and/or airport near Kiev, possibly with the aim of taking out command and control centers supporting operations in Donbas.

    • RUSSIAN MILITARY CARRYING OUT AIRSTRIKES ON UKRAINIAN MILITARY COMPOUNDS AND COMMUNICATION CENTERS NEAR KYIV
    • UKRAINE TO IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW – TOP SECURITY OFFICIAL, ACCORDING TO LOCAL MEDIA
    • UKRAINE INTERIOR MINISTRY URGES CITIZENS TO HIDE IN SHELTERS
    • INTERIOR MINISTRY WARNS UKRAINE CAPITAL OF MISSILE ATTACK

    Ukraine is saying Russia’s operation is expending beyond the east, which Putin had previously proclaimed as independent territory. It’s increasingly looking like Russia is taking out all main military command and control centers across Ukraine, while focusing ground troops and manpower on Donbas. Strikes outside the east appear to be focused on neutralizing airfields so there’s no air retaliation. CNN is citing that its correspondents have heard strikes in seven cities across the country.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Update(10:30pmET): The White House is responding: “Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond…The world will hold Russia accountable,” Biden said in a late evening statement. Biden adds that he will address the crisis, vowing “further consequences” tomorrow:

    Statement by President Biden on Russia’s Unprovoked and Unjustified Attack on Ukraine

    The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.

    I will be monitoring the situation from the White House this evening and will continue to get regular updates from my national security team. Tomorrow, I will meet with my G7 counterparts in the morning and then speak to the American people to announce the further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for this needless act of aggression against Ukraine and global peace and security. We will also coordinate with our NATO Allies to ensure a strong, united response that deters any aggression against the Alliance. Tonight, Jill and I are praying for the brave and proud people of Ukraine.

    CNN is citing Ukraine’s Interior Ministry to say Russian missiles have hit locations in Kiev; however, this remains unclear. There’s conjecture that Russia could be targeting Ukraine military “command and control” centers.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Russia’s ambassador to the UN told the emergency security council meeting: “We are not calling it a war, we are calling a special military operation” in Donbas.

    Meanwhile…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Airspace is closed over Ukraine to all commercial air traffic:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update(10:00pmET): At the very moment an emergency session of the UN national security council was in session in New York, Putin gave a speech ordering “a special operation in Donbas”. Russian state media is also confirming. “I have declared a special military operation,” Putin said. Fox News is reporting that Russian forces have entered Ukraine from Crimea.

    Putin announced the Russian military action to ‘demilitarize’ Ukraine.” And further he provocatively asserted:

    “We decided to launch a special military action […] aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.”

    “The circumstances make us take decisive and immediate actions. The people’s republics of Donbas asked Russia for assistance,” Putin said. “In this regard, in accordance with Article 51, Part 7 of the UN Charter, with the sanction of the Federation Council and in pursuance of the friendship and mutual assistance treaties with the DPR and LPR, ratified by the Federal Assembly, I have decided to conduct a special military operation.” He told Ukrainians to “lay down their arms.” 

    Crucially, he said that Russia has “no intentions of occupying Ukraine.”

    The AP is further confirming “President Vladimir Putin says Russia will conduct a military operation in eastern Ukraine.” Putin warned in his televised speech, “A couple of words for those who would be tempted to intervene. Russia will respond immediately and you will have consequences that you never have had before in your history.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The following details are coming across the news wires:

    • PUTIN CALLS ON UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS TO IMMEDIATELY LAY DOWN THEIR WEAPONS AND GO HOME -TASS
    • RUSSIA’S PUTIN SAYS IN CASE OF FOREIGN INTERFERENCE, RUSSIA WILL REACT IMMEDIATELY – TASS
    • RUSSIAN FORCES ENTERING UKRAINE FROM CRIMEA IN THE SOUTH -FOX NEWS
    • PUTIN SAYS RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY BLOODSHED WILL BE ON THE CONSCIENCE “OF THE UKRAINAIN REGIME” – RIA NEWS AGENCY

    CNN and other Western correspondents are claiming to have heard blasts in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev – with their live reporter dramatically donning a helmet and flack jacket, after which everything appeared calm…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    Update(8:26pmET): Russian aviation authorities have ordered some airspace over the Rostov region closed. The region impacted is just to the east of Russia’s border with Ukraine. According to an official alert this is “in order to provide safety” for civil aviation flights.

    Further a new Reuters report indicates airlines in the West have begun to receive updated flight risk alerts for the region. “Airlines should stop flying over any part of Ukraine because of the risk of an unintended shootdown or a cyber attack targeting air traffic control amid tensions with Russia, a conflict zone monitor said on Wednesday,” the late Wednesday report reads. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to further details from the air traffic monitor:

    Safe Airspace, which was set up to provide safety and conflict zone information for airlines after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, said it had increased its risk level to “do not fly”.

    “Regardless of the actual movements of Russian forces into Ukraine, the level of tension and uncertainty in Ukraine is now extreme,” Safe Airspace said on its website. “This itself gives rise to significant risk to civil aviation.”

    International and European carriers are now being warned about the potential for conflict in Ukraine, with fresh reports they’ve been issued “do not fly” orders for much of the region.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Additionally the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had already issued an alert as of almost two weeks ago warning that a cross-border conflict could erupt at any moment, endangering the skies over the region.

    * * *

    As the ground war heats up on the frontline in Donbas, we could be hours away from seeing Russian regular forces clash with the Ukrainian Army, after late at night local time the heads of the Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway republics issued a formal request for immediate military help from Moscow. 

    The pro-Russia rebel leaders said the urgent military help is necessary to repel Ukrainian “aggression” – according to The Associated Press, after Kremlin officials confirmed the letter. “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the rebel chiefs wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin to tell him that shelling by the Ukrainian military has caused civilian deaths and forced many people to flee,” AP reports.

    Head of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin, via Reuters

    It comes less than 24 hours after Russian parliament issued formal approval for Putin to deploy military forces abroad. Latvia said earlier on Wednesday it has intelligence confirming the arrival of Russian tanks, troops, and armored vehicles in Donbas.

    The appeal from the two eastern Ukraine republics raises the specter of Russia’s military entering direct combat operations with Ukrainian forces. From there it’s easier to imagine things spinning out of control and escalating to the point of fighting going beyond the war-torn Donbas region.

    At the same time, Ukraine has now requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, according to an overnight statement by its foreign minister. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to brief details cited in Bloomberg based on breaking Interfax reports:

    • Leaders sent letters to Putin
    • Not clear what specific aggression the separatist appeal refers to
    • Ukraine has repeatedly said it have no plans for military offensive against the separatists

    Based on Putin’s lengthy and bellicose speech that accompanied independence recognition for the republics, it’s very likely the Russian leader will pull the trigger on this.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And some further worrying signs at a moment things on the ground are likely about to get more and more unpredictable…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “We officially declare that Ukraine has not planned and does not plan any sabotage actions at this facility and refute all allegations in this regard,” Ukrainian intelligence officials said in a statement. 

    All of this comes at a moment of major websites and banks in some cases being offline in Ukraine, following an earlier reported major cyberattack. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    developing…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 22:00

  • Visualizing The One-Percent's Huge Carbon Footprint
    Visualizing The One-Percent’s Huge Carbon Footprint

    The world’s richest ten percent are responsible for an estimated 47 percent share of global CO2 emissions. This is the result of a recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability, which focused on how alleviating poverty worldwide would impact carbon emissions. As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, the difference between the poorest and wealthiest people not only shows in their emission share.

    On average, a person filed under the lower 50 percent income group only produces about one ton of CO2 per year compared to about 48 tons of carbon dioxide per capita emitted by the wealthiest one percent.

    Infographic: The One Percent's Huge Carbon Footprint | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Of course, the results are different depending on the region. In Europe, for example, the bottom 50 percent had a higher estimated share of total emissions than the top ten percent, while the top one percent in Sub-Saharan Africa induced more carbon emissions than the bottom 50 percent.

    While combating poverty around the world would entail a coordinated effort and logistical challenges, its effects on global warming would be minimal according to the study. Lifting more than one billion people above the poverty line under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1 would only raise the estimated global CO2 output by roughly two percent, even though carbon emissions in low to lower-middle income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa could potentially double.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 22:00

  • Trudeau Revokes Emergency Powers Act
    Trudeau Revokes Emergency Powers Act

    Watch live:

    And here, he says he’s ‘confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe.’

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Two days after Canadian lawmakers voted to extend emergency powers allowing police to quell potential unrest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is now set to revoke them now that the Ottawa protest is over, according to the Canadian Press, citing two senior government sources.

    Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time last week, saying police required additional support to end blockades.

    We assume that bank accounts of Freedom Convoy supporters are still subject to being frozen.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 21:44

  • Putin May Swap More Dollars for Yuan Amid Tensions
    Putin May Swap More Dollars for Yuan Amid Tensions

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live commentator and analyst

    The U.S. expanded sanctions against Russia on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin moved to recognize breakaway territories in Ukraine as independent states. The standoff may further Moscow’s de-dollarization movement and see the Chinese yuan play a more-important role in Russia’s trade and finance.

    The initial global implications from the escalation of the Ukraine-Russia tensions was to add to the inflation trouble that many parts of the world are already struggling with. Inflation expectationsembedded in the U.S. two-year breakeven rate surged to a record, while the probability of a 50bp move at the Fed meeting next month inched up. Bloomberg’s commodities index hit the highest since 2014, the year when Russia annexed Crimea. The Crimea crisis didn’t have a persistent impact on global markets, but Russia’s strongerfinancial position, including larger foreign reserves and higher energy prices, means it can sustain more sanction pain.

    A byproduct of the sanctions is that they are likely to force Russia to further reduce the role of the dollar in its economy, a move that started when the West imposed restrictions following the Crimea annexation eight years ago. The dollar’s share of Russia’s foreign-currency reserves, currently at $640 billion, has declined to 16% in 2021 from 46% in 2017. In comparison, the yuan’s share rose to 13%, from less than 3%, while the euro’s gained to 32% from 22%.

    Source: UBS

     
    The U.S. currency’s dominance in Russia’s trade payments has also diminished. Its share in Russia’s export receipts has declined from 69% in 2016 to 56% in the first half of 2021, while the euro’s doubled to 28%, according to a study by UBS’s economist Anna Zadornova.

    The de-dollarization trend is more clear in Russia’s trade with China, its second largest trading partner after the EU. The dollar’s share in Russia’s export to China has declined from nearly 100% in 2013 to about 40% currently, according to UBS. Its import share also dropped from 90% to 60%.

    Source: UBS

    The current geopolitical crisis puts Beijing in a delicate situation as it seeks to support Russia against the U.S. while also portraying itself as a responsible global power. And as Natixis’s economists Alicia Garcia Herrero and Jianwei Xu noted, a closer trade relationship with China isn’t likely to fully offset the impact of increasing decoupling from EU. Still, Russia may be testing grounds for Beijing’s push to internationalize the yuan.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 21:40

  • There Are Only 21 "Full Democracies" In The World (And USA Is Not One Of Them)
    There Are Only 21 “Full Democracies” In The World (And USA Is Not One Of Them)

    The Economist Democracy Index rates countries on the state of their governing system each year. In the latest installment published, only 21 countries in the world were rated as “full democracies” (down from 23 in 2020), including all Scandinavian countries, several Western European nations as well as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Uruguay, Mauritius, Costa Rica, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

    France and Portugal went back to flawed status in 2020 after having spent just one year in the highest section, and there they remained in 2021.

    Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Haiti were also demoted in the latest index, exiting the “hybrid regime” category and becoming authoritarian.

    The EIU stated that overall, democracy around the world hit an all-time low with the average score of countries sinking to 5.28 from 5.37 the previous year – an even larger drop than that recorded between 2019 and 2020.

    Infographic: The State of Democracy | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The sharp decline in the North America average score in 2021 was driven mainly by a deterioration in Canada, whose score fell by 0.37 points to 8.87. New survey data show a worrying trend of disaffection among Canada’s citizens with traditional democratic institutions and increased levels of support for non-democratic alternatives, such as rule by experts or the military. Canada’s citizens feel that they have little control over their lives, a sentiment that has been compounded by pandemic-related restrictions on individual freedoms. Canada’s worsening score raises questions about whether it might begin to suffer from some of the same afflictions as its US neighbour, such as extremely low levels of public trust in political parties and government institutions.

    The US score declined further as its new president Joe Biden, struggled to arrest the democratic decline that has occurred over the past few decades. At the end of 2021, Mr Biden hosted the first of two Summits for Democracy, whose aim is to revive democracy globally. Given the tarnishing of America’s democratic credentials in recent years, the initiative elicited cynicism in many parts of the world.

    The US score for our “citizens control” indicator (gauging the degree to which citizens feel they have control over their lives) continued to fall in 2021, following a trend that emerged in 2020 amid the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Much of this decline reflected pandemic fatigue and growing resistance to coronavirus restrictions after previous measures were rolled back earlier in 2021. For example, a Morning Consult poll conducted in late November 2021 found that only 44% of American adults supported closing businesses and government facilities to combat the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, while more than 70% supported less restrictive measures, such as social distancing and mask wearing.

    The countries rated most poorly were Afghanistan, Myanmar and North Korea.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 21:20

  • Our Financial System Is Optimized For Sociopaths And Exploitation
    Our Financial System Is Optimized For Sociopaths And Exploitation

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Let’s call this financial system what it really is: the MetaPerverse, a conjured world of self-serving cons.

    We live in a peculiar juncture of history in which truth has been banished as a threat to the maximization of private gain, i.e. the hyper-pursuit of self-interest. Evidence that supports a causal chain has been replaced by cherry-picked data that supports a self-serving narrative: both the evidence and narrative are manufactured to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

    In this juncture of history, evidence is easily disputed because the process of manufacturing self-serving evidence has been perfected. Indeed, self-serving evidence is now a commodity which can be purchased wholesale: rig the sample size, massage the data statistically, conjure up a context that serves to frame the evidence in a slippery self-interested fashion, omit disinterested evidence and contexts, top with arcane math and voila, evidence and narrative are presented as “facts” rather than what they really are, an elaborate, well-staged con designed to maximize the private gains of the few by exploiting the many.

    Organizing the entire system to serve the pathological greed of the few is best served by devaluing truth to mere opinion and causal chains to mere narratives. In this juncture of history, truth has been revealed as a chimera; there is only opinion, and all opinions are equal. Opinions are beliefs, and all beliefs are equal. All narratives are equal. All questions boil down to values: values are all equally detached, free-floating and of the same value: zero.

    This con has reached perfection in our financial system, which is now optimized for exploitation and sociopaths. As Nassim Taleb has explained (referencing Adam Smith), markets only function if there are rules which are imposed equally on all participants. In our financial system, there are two sets of rules: one which we can summarize as anything goes for the super-wealthy and the well-connected, and another set for everyone else.

    Shear the sheep of billions, pay a modest fine–and if all your bets go bad, get bailed out because you’re too important to fail. Sneak a few thousand out of the credit union, go to prison. Sell a financial product that’s designed to go bust as low-risk, oh well, buyer beware, haha, that’s just the free market at work. Sell a nickel bag of drugs, get a tenner in the Gulag.

    Two sets of rules: one simulacrum of rules for the rich–just another con, really–and punitive rules for everyone else.

    Since evidence, causal chains and values have all been devalued, there is no longer any recognition that the desire for gain–greed–can be either exploitive or beneficial to the many. If your greed drives you to make a product that is faster, better, cheaper, more durable and efficient than what’s currently available, your gain is the result of an advance that serves the interests of the many.

    If your desire for gain leads you to misrepresent a shoddy product designed to fail (subprime mortgages, Landfill Economy products) or you raise the price because you can, your greed serves your interests at the expense of the many. This is the acme of exploitation. Kleptocrats and sociopaths, rejoice!

    This system is optimized for exploitation, as the exploiters can exploit the many without the many even recognizing they’ve been stripmined. We no longer have the means to differentiate fraud from fact or exploitation from rules-based markets.

    This landscape of wide-open exploitation and debauchery is Heaven on Earth for sociopaths who not only do not see any difference between gains skimmed at others’ expense and gains earned by providing a superior product / service, they revel in exploiting the system and every participant: employees, partners, suppliers, depositors, borrowers and customers.

    But in this desert of exploitation and the supremacy of self-interest, some things remain true and others remain false. Some truths remain self-evident. As I have shown here many times, we can look at the hourly wages and cost of essentials in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and the present and calculate how many hours of labor it took to pay for essentials such as rent, property taxes, healthcare, childcare, taxes, education, etc. These calculations reveal that the purchasing power of wages has declined for decades. This evidence cannot be made to vanish by declaring it opinion, belief or a “different set of values”–it is fact.

    If we measure prosperity by how much labor can buy, all but the top few wage earners are less prosperous today. The evidence and causal chain are self-evident. The self-interested few who have reaped the vast majority of the economy’s gains can hire shills to argue that since TVs now require fewer hours of labor to buy, we’re all better off, but these obfuscations are nothing more than distractions designed to divert our attention from the mechanisms of exploitation that are operating 24/7 beneath the ceaseless churn of “news” and “market action.”

    Let’s call this financial system what it really is: the MetaPerverse, a conjured world of self-serving cons that is optimized for exploitation, the perversion of justice, infinite inequality and the stripmining of the many to the benefit of the few, all securely protected by a cloud of confusion in which everything is equally valueless and truth no longer exists. All that remains is a babble of competing cons.

    *  *  *

    My new book is now available at a 10% discount this month: Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $8.95, print $20). If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 21:00

  • CBS Earns Blistering Ratio For Trying To Blame US Inflation On Ukraine Situation
    CBS Earns Blistering Ratio For Trying To Blame US Inflation On Ukraine Situation

    When legacy media outlets shill for an administration ahead of midterms, the propaganda is usually delivered in a semi-believable headline that doesn’t cause readers to immediately call bullshit.

    Not CBS…

    In a late Tuesday tweet, the network asserted that “The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis.“

    Wait, what?

    That’s right – forget the last 6 months of Jen Psaki and President Biden pushing lies about ‘transitory’ price increases (blaming Covid and climate change, among other things). All you need to know, dear voter, is that Vladimir Putin is now to blame for the crippling inflation.

    Nevermind the price of oil and CPI for the last 18 months.

    Oh.

    The actual article itself is just as bad – with dramatic fear mongering and predictions of worse to come – all thanks to the Ukraine situation.

    CBS’s tweet was widely mocked, and earned a blistering ‘ratio’ (when comments far outweigh ‘likes’ – suggesting a tweet is way off base).

    Recall what Biden said less than 90 days ago – that supply chain challenges due to ‘global challenges like climate change and Covid’ were ‘making it difficult’ to produce simple items.

     Poso knows…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Maybe the Ukraine crisis can also explain the sky-high murder rates, the homelessness and fentanyl epidemics, and the poo-covered streets in Democrat-run US cities?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 20:44

  • German Health Insurer Reveals 'Alarming' Underreporting Of Vaccine Side-Effects
    German Health Insurer Reveals ‘Alarming’ Underreporting Of Vaccine Side-Effects

    A large German health insurance provider revealed on Wednesday that Covid-19 vaccine side-effects are vastly underreported, according to Welt.

    After analyzing data from over 10 million individuals, BKK ProVita board member Andreas Schöfbeck, over a 7.5 month period beginning in early 2021, 216,695 policyholders out of 10.9 million were treated for vaccine side-effects. This compares to 244,576 reports out of 61.4 million reported by the Paul Ehrlich Institute – a German federal agency.

    Germany has a population of around 83 million people.

    Schöfbeck called the data an “alarm signal,” adding “The numbers determined are significant and urgently need to be checked for plausibility.”

    “The data available to our company gives us reason to believe that there is a very considerable under-recording of suspected cases of vaccination side-effects after they received the [COVID-19] vaccine.“

    “If these figures are applied to the year as a whole and to” the entire population of Germany, Schöfbeck estimated, then “probably 2.5-3 million people in Germany been under medical treatment because of vaccination side effects after [COVID-19] vaccination.”

    As Jack Phillips of The Epoch Times notes:

    Schöfbeck concluded that based on their data, “there is a significant underreporting of vaccination side-effects” in Germany.

    Another letter that was sent out by BKK (pdf) suggested that vaccination side effects reported across Germany are at least 10 times more common than what was reported by the Paul-Ehrlich Institute, reported the Nordkurier newspaper on Wednesday.

    Schöfbeck’s letters were also sent to Germany’s Standing Vaccination Commission and the German Medical Association.

    The letters did not elaborate on the severity of the side effects, nor did they provide a breakdown of the symptoms, or which vaccines caused the side effects. Germany’s drug regulator has approved COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, NovaVax, and Moderna.

    Federal health officials in the United States and Germany have stressed that COVID-19 vaccines’ benefits outweigh the potential risks.

    And the Paul Ehrlich Institute, the German federal health agency that regulates vaccines and medicines, asserts on its website that COVID-19 vaccine side effects are very rare. They list myocarditis, the inflammation of the heart muscle; and pericarditis, the inflammation of the pericardium, as rare side effects associated with COVID-19 vaccines.

    *  *  *

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 20:40

  • Russia Speaks Out Against High Oil Prices As Brent Nears $100
    Russia Speaks Out Against High Oil Prices As Brent Nears $100

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    The optimal oil price for the market is $55-$70 per barrel, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov told Energy Intelligence in an interview published on Tuesday after oil prices hit a fresh seven-year high and Brent hit $99 a barrel early in the day amid an escalation in the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

    High oil prices are good for Russia’s budget and for its hard-to-recover oil resources and projects, on the one hand, but oil so high is also hitting other sectors of the economy and slows demand growth, on the other hand, the Russian minister said.

    Asked why Russia doesn’t support more production from OPEC+ if Russia believes that $55-$70 is the optimal price, Shulginov told Energy Intelligence that the country is “increasing production within the agreed volumes.”

    Russia looks to increase production and exploration in the coming years, the minister added.

    Referring to Moscow’s plans about the Arctic Shelf, Shulginov told Energy Intelligence, “Although these are costly reserves, we still believe that Arctic resources can be utilized in future. The Arctic is a storeroom. There is not only oil, but also gas and potentially rare-earth metals.”

    Commenting on whether Russia is interested in high natural gas prices, the minister noted, “High prices are not beneficial for Gazprom and Russia at all, because then consumption decreases, purchases go down, the economy slows down. We are not in favor of high prices, we are in favor of stable supplies.”

    The latest escalation of the Russia-Ukraine crisis sent oil prices surging close to $100 a barrel early on Tuesday, with Brent Crude hitting a new seven-year high of $99 before easing to $97 per barrel. Europe’s natural gas prices also spiked, as the market fears a disruption to energy supplies from the major oil and gas exporter, Russia. The benchmark gas prices in Europe jumped by double digits after Germany said it was freezing the certification of the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 pipeline in light of the latest events.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 20:20

  • Mapping The De-'Squaw'-ing Of America's Derogatory Place Names
    Mapping The De-‘Squaw’-ing Of America’s Derogatory Place Names

    U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in November formally declared the term “squaw” – denoting an American Indian woman – as derogatory.

    Now, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the Interior Department has published a list of more than 600 official geographic site names including the term that it plans to change.

    A public comment period on potential replacement names will run until late April, according to The Guardian.

    The list includes sites in 37 states. A high concentration of sites names using the term can be found in the American West, especially in Arizona, California and Idaho.

    Infographic: Derogatory Place Names: Where Changes Are Planned | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Deb Haaland is the first Native American cabinet secretary in the history of the United States.

    She is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and has previously served as a U.S. representative for her home state of New Mexico.

    The renaming of sites in order to eliminate offense towards native populations is not unprecedented. Australia has renamed several sites, the most well-known being Uluru, formerly Ayers Rock. New Zealand has since the 1940s been in a process of re-establishing official naming in the Maori language through reforms to the geographic board and public input processes.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 20:00

  • Watch: Bill Gates Sardonically Compares Wearing A Mask To Wearing Pants
    Watch: Bill Gates Sardonically Compares Wearing A Mask To Wearing Pants

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Bill Gates has mocked people who are against mask mandates by sarcastically comparing wearing one to having to wear pants in public.

    A maskless Gates along with a maskless panel at the 2022 Munich Security Conference laughed it up as they mocked people who point out the downside of face coverings.

    CNBC ‘jounalist’ Hadley Beale asked “What about masks? I think there are a lot of people in America who are confused about whether they should be wearing a mask, and in the United Kingdom for, example, they’ve scrapped that all together.”

    Gates replied “Well that’s interesting you know what is the downside of wearing a mask?”

    Adopting a sardonic tone, he then declared “I mean it’s got to be tough, you know, you have to wear pants. I mean this is tough stuff, these societies are so cruel, why do they make you wear pants? I’m trying to figure it out.”

    Then all five of them laughed it up as Beale added “We’re very glad you have yours on.”

    Yeah, doesn’t have a mask on though does he. 

    “That will be on the web, that will be on the web,” another panelist stated.

    Yes, because yet another example of unmasked elitists laughing at everyday people who protest their governments forcing them to cover up their faces in spite of science proving it does nothing to prevent the virus spreading is newsworthy:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Of course, this little nugget was an aside from Gates’ hours long diatribe about how his vaccines are the miracle cure and how its “sad” that people have become immune to the virus because it has mutated into milder strains.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 19:40

  • USPS Shuns Biden's EV Dreams With Massive Gasoline-Powered Mail Truck Purchase
    USPS Shuns Biden’s EV Dreams With Massive Gasoline-Powered Mail Truck Purchase

    The Biden administration has been pressing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to make a massive purchase commitment of electric delivery vehicles, though such plans were derailed Wednesday when the agency announced a majority of its next-generation fleet would be powered by gasoline rather than a battery, according to Bloomberg. 

    USPS’ record decision memo states that the agency will move ahead with its purchase of 165,000 mail trucks over the next decade. At least 90% of these trucks will be gasoline-powered built by Oshkosh Corp., and 10% will be electric.

    This action steamrolls the Biden administration’s pledge to replace its federal fleet of 600,000 cars and trucks with electric power. USPS operates 230,000 vehicles, which is approximately 33% of the government fleet. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump ally, has firmly said the full electrification of the USPS fleet wouldn’t happen under his watch. Last year, he committed to converting only 10% of its new trucks to electric power.

    The decision allows USPS to purchase gasoline-powered trucks from Oshkosh under a $6 billion contract awarded last February. USPS rejected a bid from electric-vehicle manufacturer Workhorse Group Inc. to electrify its fleet. Workhorse shares slumped as much as 3.5% today on the USPS news to purchase Oshkosh mail trucks. 

    USPS wrote that given its financial condition, “the battery-electric option has a significantly higher total cost of ownership than its combustion-engine counterpart.” 

    USPS under DeJoy appears to be locking in decades of fossil fuel consumption as the president’s “Build Back Better” green plan appears to be faltering. Gasoline mail trucks are more reliable than electric ones, and ownership is cheaper. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 19:20

  • The Fed's Problem: "It's All About The Money"
    The Fed’s Problem: “It’s All About The Money”

    By Joseph Carson, former CIO of Alliance Bernstein

    The Fed has a problem. It’s in the business of creating money, but it formulates monetary policy without regard to money itself. So in times when its policy decisions produced a record surge in broad money, policymakers are not attentive or alerted to the negative (inflation) consequences.

    From February 2020 to the end of 2021, broad money increased by $6.5 trillion or over 40%. That increase over less than two years is roughly equivalent to the rise over the previous ten years. Yet, policymakers who have long argued that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” called the surge in inflation transitory, owing to supply bottlenecks. Had policymakers still recognized money as a potential source of inflation, it would not be in the pickle that they find themselves today.

    Policymakers now face the unprecedented challenge of dealing with consumer and producer inflation and elevated asset prices (possibly bubbles.) Policymakers’ record on reversing inflation cycles and recognizing asset bubbles is lousy. Policy adjustments have always been late (except for Greenspan’s 1994 preemptive strike), resulting in awful economic and financial outcomes, some much worse than others.

    As bad as policy decisions were in the past year, it is reckless that policymakers are still easing policy today. Publicly saying the monetary policy is “wrong-footed” but not doing anything until the next policy meeting, a month away, is like saying we want the fire to burn some more before being compelled to distinguish it.

    Before the preemptive strike against emerging inflation pressures in 1994, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan stated in his semi-annual monetary policy testimony, ” if the Federal Reserve waits until actual inflation worsens, they would have waited far too long.” It’s too late to use Mr. Greenspan’s playbook, but policymakers still need to act swiftly. Some policymakers have argued that only a modest adjustment in official rates is needed because of well-anchored inflation expectations. That is short-sighted and wrong. Actual or realized inflation leads to changes in inflation expectations, not the other way around. Persistent inflation will increase inflation expectations over time.

    Several decades ago, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) created the monetary and financial flow index (MFF). It consisted of the growth in broad money (adjusted for inflation), change in business and consumer credit, and liquid assets. BEA stopped publishing this series in the early 1990s, and I recreated the series with assistance from BEA, plus updating the series for new financial instruments, such as new flows into bond and equity funds.

    The MFF index was a helpful gauge to predict the peaks and troughs of economic growth cycles and pinpoint excess liquidity situations. The MFF index signaled excessive liquidity growth (i.e., well above GDP) before the dot.com and housing bubbles. The primary source was explosive private sector credit growth and robust gains in liquid assets.

    Over the past year, growth in the MMF index has been more than twice that of dot.com and housing bubbles, owing to record growth in broad money and bank credit. Too much liquidity is the fuel for inflation.

    The Fed started this inflation fire by creating too much money. Now, it has to produce less. In January 2022, broad money is up roughly 14% in the past year, down from 25% a year earlier, but still far too fast to kill the inflation dragon. Policymakers have to curtail money growth to a rate well below nominal GDP. That will require a substantial increase in official rates and a sizeable shrinkage in the balance sheet.

    Removal of liquidity will appear in asset prices, financial ones before tangible, long before it shows up in conventional measures of inflation. Mr. Market, the biggest beneficiary of Powell and company liquidity bonanza, will soon cry about too little liquidity. Investors forewarned.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 19:00

  • New Amtrak Tunnel Between NJ And NYC Gets The Federal Funding "Go Ahead"
    New Amtrak Tunnel Between NJ And NYC Gets The Federal Funding “Go Ahead”

    It looks like Amtrak is at the front of the line at the trough of President Biden’s new infrastructure spending.

    The rail giant is expecting $22 billion in government funding, with additional government funding going to complete the proposed Gateway rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, according to a new report from Bloomberg. 

    Amtrak Chief Executive Officer Stephen Gardner said this week about the tunnel: “Importantly, it’s going through all the environmental process and it’s now cued up for funding. We’re going through the process to get that remaining money necessary from the federal government so that we can start that program.”

    The tunnel is slated to cost $12.3 billion and was approved by the administration of President Joe Biden this year. It was previously held up by the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported. It’ll allow for “twice as many trains to run under the river, including those that are part of its Northeast Corridor service that connects Boston, New York and Washington,” the report says.

    Gardner says he expects an additional $22 billion in government funding by this summer. 

    “The first year of that money will coming to the company hopefully by this summer, early fall. And we’ll be putting it to work,” he concluded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 18:40

  • Saudis Warn Of Oil Shortage Shock, Blame "Net Zero" For Underinvestment
    Saudis Warn Of Oil Shortage Shock, Blame “Net Zero” For Underinvestment

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    The world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, has repeatedly said it wants to be the producer that will pump the very last barrel of oil. Until that time comes, the world and its growing economy will still need oil and gas, even as renewable energy capacity soars globally. The rebound of economies after the 2020 COVID slump has shown that global oil demand is not only not declining, but it is just months away from reaching pre-pandemic levels and exceeding them. This weekend, Saudi Arabia once again deplored the underinvestment in oil and gas and said that focusing only on renewables while campaigning against oil and gas was a mistake.    

    “Net Zero Does Not Mean Zero Oil”

    The insufficient investment in the oil and gas industry harms consumers, raises concerns about short-term supply shortages, and creates challenges for policymakers, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at the 2022 International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) in Riyadh this weekend. The campaign against oil and gas investments is shortsighted, the minister said, as carried by Arab News.

    The sole focus on renewables is a mistake, said the most influential oilman of the OPEC+ coalition.

    “The net-zero does not mean cherrypicking, net-zero does not mean zero oil,” he added.

    The sharp decline in oil and gas investments has created a danger “that the world will not be able to produce all the energy it needs to promote recovery,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at the conference, per the Saudi Press Agency. The Saudi minister also criticized the International Energy Agency (IEA) for its contradictory messages, from “no new investment ever again” last year to calls last week for more investment in oil and gas amid the current energy crisis and soaring oil prices.  

    Saudi Arabia Boosts Oil Production Capacity

    While the supermajors and U.S. shale are not racing to invest in new supply, Saudi Arabia plans to raise its crude oil production capacity by 1 million barrels per day (bpd) within five years. Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco targets to increase its oil production capacity to 13 million barrels per day by 2027 from 12 million bpd now.

    “We are targeting our production capacity to become 13.4, 13.5 million barrels a day by 2027,” Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman told TIME’s Vivienne Walt in an interview published earlier this month.

    “We believe oil consumption will continue to grow. The demand for oil will continue growing. At what level, I do not know, because the jury is out. Anyone who tells you that they have a good grasp of where and when and how much is certainly living in a fantasy land,” he said.

    So, Saudi Arabia and its state oil giant Aramco are doubling down on oil, expecting robust global demand. The world’s top oil exporter is doing its part in ensuring oil production capacity for later this decade when chronic underinvestment in oil will have impacted supply already.

    “We intend to remain the world’s top producer,” Yasir Othman Al-Rumayyan, Chairman of Saudi Aramco’s Board of Directors and the Governor of the Public Investment Fund, said at the same conference in Riyadh this weekend.

    Renewable energy sources depend on materials that can only be produced with hydrocarbons, Al-Rumayyan said, noting the steel, diesel trucks, and resin-coated blades inputs in building, transporting, and erecting a wind turbine, for example. 

    “So make no mistake, oil and gas are part of this transition. We have a vital role to play. And we intend to be in business for a very long time,” Aramco’s chairman said. “It’s often assumed that the only thing holding back a net-zero future is a lack of ambition. That’s wrong. Our industry has ambition in abundance. The truth is that there are still some very complex technology challenges that we haven’t yet solved,” Al-Rumayyan added.

     Underinvestment Could Create Next Supply Shortage Shock

    Throughout the net-zero commitments and “keep it in the ground” calls of the past few years, Saudi Arabia hasn’t changed its message to the energy industry—renewables are not enough, underinvestment in oil and gas threatens to create supply shortages, and a rushed transition will lead to increased volatility and higher energy prices.

    Over the past few months, the world saw first-hand what fossil fuel shortages could be like. Government priorities turned from actions to reduce emissions in the long term to addressing the immediate energy crunch, soaring energy bills, and catering for the near-term energy security.

    Global annual upstream spending needs to increase by as much as 54 percent to $542 billion if the oil market is to avert the next supply shortage shock, Moody’s said last year. The chief executive of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, said that the World Petroleum Congress in Texas in December:

    “Right now, the world is facing an ever more chaotic energy transition. Several highly unrealistic scenarios and assumptions about the future of energy are clouding the picture.” 

    “Energy security, economic development, and affordability imperatives are clearly not receiving enough attention. Until they are, and unless the glaring gaps in the transition strategy are fixed, the chaos will only intensify,” Saudi Aramco’s CEO noted.

    Commenting on the current commodity markets, Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, said earlier this month that “This is a molecule crisis. We’re out of everything, I don’t care if it’s oil, gas, coal, copper, aluminum, you name it we’re out of it.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 18:20

  • 122 Countries On Track To Miss COVID-19 Vaccine Goal
    122 Countries On Track To Miss COVID-19 Vaccine Goal

    In October 2021, the WHO’s Independent Allocation of Vaccines Group (IAVG) outlined its Strategy to Achieve Global COVID-19 Vaccination by Mid-2022. In it, the group called for an internationally coordinated vaccine rollout to reach the following objectives: achieve 10 percent vaccine coverage in all countries by the end of September 2021, 40 percent coverage in all countries by the end of December and, ultimately, 70 percent vaccine coverage in all countries halfway through 2022.

    By the time the strategy was made public, Statista’s Felix Richter notes that the 10 percent goal had been missed by 56 countries, while 70 countries had already surpassed the 40 percent target by the end of September.

    In late December, the IAVG rang the alarm bells once again, saying that 98 countries were about to miss the 40 percent target, citing “the severe vaccine supply constraints to COVAX, which persisted until the last quarter of 2021” as the main reason for the shortfall.

    Aside from supply constraints, which are expected to gradually ease in 2022, the IAVG identified further challenges in achieving the 70 percent coverage goal by mid-2022.

    “The increase in volumes will create challenges in absorption capacity in resource-poor settings. This includes the capacity to receive, store, distribute, administer, and to record vaccine use, including wastage,” the group warned, before adding that widespread misinformation fueling vaccine hesitancy will be another hurdle in achieving its immunization goal.

    According to latest estimates by Our World in Data, large parts of the world are likely to fall short of the WHO’s vaccination target.

    Infographic: 122 Countries on Track to Miss Covid-19 Vaccine Goal | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Looking at current coverage and the rate of new vaccinations over the past 14 days, the researchers find that 122 countries are currently on a trajectory to miss the 70 percent vaccination goal by the end of June 2022, while 34 countries are on track to meet the target.

    Meanwhile most high-income countries have already surpassed the 70 percent milestone, further illustrating the wide gulf in global vaccine distribution.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 23

Today’s News 23rd February 2022

  • Escobar: The Birth Of The 'Baby Twins' – Russia's Strategic Swing Drives NATOstan Nuts
    Escobar: The Birth Of The ‘Baby Twins’ – Russia’s Strategic Swing Drives NATOstan Nuts

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

    History will register that the birth of the baby twins – Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – only a few hours before 2/22/22, was simultaneous to the birth of the real, 21st century multipolar world.

    As my columns have stressed for a few years now, Vladimir Putin has been carefully nurturing his inner Sun Tzu. And now it’s all in the open: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

    The thunderbolt was months in the process of being meticulously polished. To paraphrase Lenin, who “created Ukraine” (copyright Putin), we did live many decades in only these past few days. It all started with the detailed demands of security guarantees sent to the Americans, which Moscow knew would be rejected. Then there was the Russia-China joint statement at the start of the Winter Olympics – which codifies not only the strategic partnership but also the key tenets of the multipolar world.

    The culmination was a stunning, nearly one hour-long address to the nation by Putin shortly after the Russian Security Council live session deliberating on the request for independence by the DPR and the LPR (here is a condensed version.)

    A few hours later, at an emergency UN Security Council meeting, Russian Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya precisely outlined why the recognition of the baby twins does not bury the Minsk agreements.

    The baby twins actually declared their independence in May 2014. In 2015 they signed the Minsk agreements as one of the interested parties. Theoretically they could even be back within Ukraine if Kiev would ever decide to respect the agreements, which will never happen because the US has vetoed it since 2015. Moreover, the people of Donbass do not want to be subjected to a regime harboring neo-Nazis.

    As Nebenzya outlined, “I would like to remind you that at the time of the conclusion of the Minsk agreements, the LPR and DPR had already declared independence. The fact that Russia today recognized it does not change the composition of the parties to the Minsk agreements, since Russia is not one (…) Another thing is that the Minsk agreements have long been openly sabotaged by Ukraine under the auspices of our Western colleagues. Now we see that many colleagues want to sign that the Minsk agreements are dead. But this is not the case (…) We are still open to diplomacy, but we do not intend to allow a new bloody massacre in the Donbass.”

    And here’s the clincher, directly addressing imperial support for the killing of ethnic Russians in Donbass: “The main task of our decision [on recognizing independence] was to preserve and protect these lives. This is more important than all your threats.”

    There you go: Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a concept invented by the Americans to launch wars, used by Russia for preventing one.

    That certified nullity, German chancellor Scholz, deriding Putin’s characterization of a genocide in Donbass as “laughable”, was a decisive factor in the birth of the baby wins. Putin, in his address to the nation, especially took time to detail the Odessa massacre: “We cannot but shudder when we remember about the situation in Odessa, when people were burned alive (…) And those criminals who did this, they are not punished (…) But we know their names, and we will do everything to punish them (…) and to bring them to justice.”

    What about China?

    Geopolitically, in Eurasian terms, two huge questions stand out: the role of the CSTO and the response from China.

    If we look at the Article 19, Chapter VI of the  CSTO charter, we learn that, “any state sharing the goals and principles of the Organization and being ready to undertake the obligations containing in this Charter and other international treaties and resolutions effective within the framework of the Organization may become a member of the Organization.”

    That would open the door for the baby twins, as soon as they have finalized all the bureaucratic endeavors pertaining to new, independent nations, to request CSTO membership. Incidentally, CSTO secretary-general Pashinian has already gone to Moscow to discuss it.

    China is a way more complex proposition. One of the key tenets of Beijing’s foreign policy is the fight against separatism – embedded in the foundation of the SCO. So Beijing cannot possibly recognize the baby twins, or what would amount to Novorossiya – yes, Putin did pronounce the magic word – before Kiev itself does or, a serious possibility, completely disintegrates.

    The Foreign Ministry so far has been extremely cautious. Wang Yi has reiterated “China’s long-standing position that the legitimate security concerns of all countries must be respected, and the purposes & principles of the UN Charter must be upheld.”

    Further on down the road, presumably after some serious exchanges between Wang Yi and Lavrov, China can always find myriad ways to unofficially help the baby twins – including advancing BRI-related connectivity and sustainable development projects.

    As for Kiev disintegration, that’s directly linked to Moscow demanding the immediate stop of the mini-blitzkrieg against Donbass, otherwise they will bear full responsibility. Yes, regime stalwarts will be hunted and punished – complete with a possible War Crimes Tribunal. No wonder all sorts of oligarchic/political rats, big and small, are scurrying away, to Lviv, Poland and the UK.

    The Munich effect

    The intervention of all 12 members at the Security Council session, combined with Putin’s address to the nation was the stuff of gripping geopolitical drama. Putin’s body language and the look in his eyes testified to the immense gravity of the moment – and it all came to the forefront when he embarked in a concise history lesson spanning a century.

    Barely containing his anger at the countless ways Russia has been vilified by the West, and taking no prisoners when referring to communism, what mostly stood out was the clear-cut rendition of the insurmountable antagonism between the Anglo-American islands and the civilizational Heartland – or the clash between maritime powers and land powers. That Eurasia classic was the bulk of his exposition: the recognition of the baby twins took less than three minutes.

    The Munich Security Conference, this past weekend, had made it all so explicit. Munich, as terrifying as it was in terms of a congregation of headless chickens posing as eagles, at least confirmed everything is in the open.

    The enemy is Russia. NATO infinite expansion – to outer space – is against Russia. And then we had a parade of add-on threats: no disarmament in Eastern Europe, cutting off the Russian economy from the EU, end of Nord Stream 2, Ukraine in NATO, world order built on “universal liberal values”.

    Munich spelled out No Compromise Whatsoever – which was exactly what Putin, Lavrov, Patrushev and co. expected, the warmongering rhetoric burying any meaningful discussion of migration, inflation, cyber wars, the European energy crisis and, of course, the only thing that matters for the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex, as defined by Ray McGovern): let’s milk this Eurotrash lot for untold billions in new contracts, let’s isolate Russia, let’s destroy Nord Stream 2 to sell them our ultra expensive LNG, let’s keep them on a leash – forever.

    So actually it’s not even war against Russia: the $30 trillion-indebted Empire with a woke military attached simply could not afford it. Not to mention the certified freak out in case they receive a phone call from Mr. Khinzal and Mr. Zircon : cue to the spectacular Russian display of “military and technical” superiority, hypersonic and otherwise – staged, irony of ironies, in synch with the circus in Munich.

    What we have here is so lame: just a lowlife offer-you-can’t-refuse racket to be inflicted on the EU.

    The Indivisible Security dance

    The rabid Munich “No Compromise” show; the imperially-ordered Ukro crypto-blitzkrieg against Donbass; and the role of the US Lack of Intelligence Community – an Andrei Martyanov-coined howler – altogether sealed the deal for the Security Council deliberations and Putin’s decision.

    Considering the ideological stupidity of the current Brussels gang – Stoltenberg, von der Leyen, Borrell –, incapable of understanding even basic economics, the fact remains that the EU without Russian energy is doomed. Martyanov stresses the algorithm: Russia can afford the break up with Europe. Europe cannot. The US just wants to collect. And we’re not even talking about the dire, incoming ramifications of the systemic crisis across NATOstan.

    Even as Moscow plays a very long, calculated game, as it stands that does not necessarily mean that Russia will be “winning” the baby twins while “losing” Europe. Russia’s strategic swing repeatedly baffles the Atlanticist combo. The US lack of intelligence community was predicting a Russian “aggression” every other day – and still is. Instead they got the baby twins as the latest independent republics of the Global South.

    Even before Munich, the Ukro crypto-blitzkrieg, and the recognition of the baby twins, Moscow had again warned it may respond with “military and technical measures” to ensure its own security after the US and NATO blatantly ignored key points from its proposal for a long-term European security architecture, and instead “cherry-picked” issues from a package deal.

    Moscow will not let the Americans run away from the by now notorious 10-page Russian response. Putin, addressing the Stavka, had already warned “we are in a situation (…) where we are forced to resolve it.” Which bring us to what John Helmer niftly qualified as Russia’s black box defense. The beauty is no one knows what’s inside the black box.

    Enter, once again, the “military-technical measures” that will be “reciprocal” (Putin) to what US and NATOstan are already deploying against Russia. They won’t necessarily be implemented in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, in the airspace above Donbass, even in cyberspace. It could be anywhere – from the Syrian theater to Latin America.

    Surprise! That’s what strategic ambivalence, ambiguity, or – let’s get down to the rhythm – swing is all about. You don’t believe in the principle of indivisible security? Fine. Now we dictate the security rhythm. You’re not gonna stop deploying nuclear weapons outside your territory? Fine. Here’s some reciprocity. You’re not gonna accept legally binding guarantees of our security? Fine. Meet our “military-technical” measures.

    Now dance, suckers.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/23/2022 – 02:00

  • Cancelling Richard Gere
    Cancelling Richard Gere

    Authored by Dinesh D’Souza via The Epoch Times,

    Remember Richard Gere? I certainly do. He was a huge star in the 1990s, playing memorable roles in such movies as “Pretty Woman,” “American Gigolo” and, last I recall, “Unfaithful.” Then, Gere largely disappeared. I noticed this, but never wondered why.

    Now I know. Gere got cancelled by Hollywood because of his criticism of Chinese regime tyranny.

    Richard Gere presents Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng with the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize, U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, 2013. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

    The story of Gere’s cancellation is told in a new book by Erich Schwartzel, titled “Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.” Schwartzel embeds Gere’s story inside a larger account of Hollywood’s larger business plan for China. The lesson of Schwartzel’s book is that when you want access to a market controlled by the Chinese communists, you have to go a long way to do their bidding.

    Gere’s hostility to the Chinese regime is certainly not due to the fact that Gere is a right-winger or that he interprets Chinese interests as opposed to those of his own country. Nothing like that. Rather, Gere is a Buddhist and, as such, he’s an admirer and supporter of the Dalai Lama, whom Chinese officials view as an enemy of the Chinese state.

    Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama (R) speaks with American actor Richard Gere (L) during a lecture about the International Campaign for Tibet at Ahoy in Rotterdam, on Sept. 16, 2018. (Robin Utrecht/AFP/Getty Images)

    In 1993, Gere deviated from his presentation of an art direction award to deplore the “horrendous human-rights situation there is in China, not only towards their own people, but to Tibet as well.” But Gere’s great sin came in 1997 when he made the movie “Red Corner,” a story of a U.S. executive who becomes trapped in and experiences the horrors of the Chinese criminal justice system.

    “Red Corner” wasn’t a box office hit; it was sidelined that year by big movies such as “Men in Black” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” So the Chinese didn’t care about it on account of it being seen by huge numbers of people. What they did care about is that Gere went beyond acting in the film. He also championed the film as a cause.

    While MGM treated the film as merely a thrilling story, Gere insisted the film could be a “catalyst for change in the world,” because it exposed the horrors of Chinese totalitarianism. Interestingly, Chinese president Jiang Zemin visited America around the same time, seeking more trade deals and closer diplomatic ties with the Clinton administration. While President Bill Clinton held a state dinner for Jiang, Gere organized a “stateless dinner” across the street on the rooftop of a posh hotel, inviting fellow celebrities Uma Thurman and Sharon Stone.

    Schwartzel documents that as Gere continued to champion the cause of Tibet, and castigate China for its human rights abuses, Hollywood became more and more uncomfortable with his public advocacy. The late 1990s and early 2000s corresponded with a period in which the American movie market was flattening out, and Hollywood studios increasingly looked to expand in China.

    China, after all, has more than a billion people. It didn’t escape the attention of studio executives in California that tens of millions of Chinese were moving from the rural areas to the cities, and they were becoming avid consumers of Western products. Hollywood salivated at the prospect of tapping this market for American movies.

    Of course, the Hollywood executives understood they were dealing with a communist regime that didn’t hesitate to censor the films that were allowed into China. They were quite willing to accommodate the Chinese on this point. Schwartzel points out that the in 2006, “Mission: Impossible 3” edited out scenes the Chinese objected to, and in 2012, the producers of the James Bond film “Skyfall” removed a scene involving the killing of a Chinese security guard, because the Chinese censors felt it made the Chinese look weak.

    In this atmosphere of Hollywood courtship of the Chinese communist regime, Schwartzel reports that “Gere was too radioactive to hire.” His mere presence in the credits might mean the film would not be approved for release in China. At this point, Gere became persona non grata, at least as far as the big studios were concerned. He would have to be content appearing in independent, modest-budget feature films such as “Arbitrage” and “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

    Susan Sarandon as the loyal wife of a troubled hedge-fund magnate played by Richard Gere (R) in the dramatic thriller “Arbitrage.” (Myles Aronowitz/Lionsgate)

    In the 1950s, Hollywood maintained a blacklist of actors who supposedly had communist associations and therefore were deemed too controversial to play in big movies. How ironic that today, once again, Hollywood maintains a blacklist, only this time it’s for apostates like Richard Gere who are apparently not sufficiently friendly and deferential to the Chinese communist regime.

    Gere has been surprisingly quiet about his blacklisting. In June 2020, however, Gere did testify before Congress (pdf) in favor of a bill to give the United States better access to the cashmere market in Mongolia. Gere argued that the bill would bolster Mongolia’s economy and make it less dependent on China, since dependency in that region quickly translates into Chinese control.

    At one point, Gere brought up the movie that seems to have gotten him off the Hollywood A-list, “Red Corner.” Gere speculated about whether Hollywood would make a movie like that today.

    “It simply would not happen,” he confessed.

    The cancellation of a star of the magnitude of Gere shows how bad the problem is, how much in bed Hollywood is today with its grim partners in the East.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 23:40

  • Breaking Down The Cost Of An EV Battery Cell
    Breaking Down The Cost Of An EV Battery Cell

    As electric vehicle (EV) battery prices keep dropping, the global supply of EVs and demand for their batteries are ramping up.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details below, since 2010, the average price of a lithium-ion (Li-ion) EV battery pack has fallen from $1,200 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to just $132/kWh in 2021.

    Inside each EV battery pack are multiple interconnected modules made up of tens to hundreds of rechargeable Li-ion cells. Collectively, these cells make up roughly 77% of the total cost of an average battery pack, or about $101/kWh.

    So, what drives the cost of these individual battery cells?

    The Cost of a Battery Cell

    According to data from BloombergNEF, the cost of each cell’s cathode adds up to more than half of the overall cell cost.

     

    Why Are Cathodes so Expensive?

    The cathode is the positively charged electrode of the battery. When a battery is discharged, both electrons and positively-charged molecules (the eponymous lithium ions) flow from the anode to the cathode, which stores both until the battery is charged again.

    That means that cathodes effectively determine the performance, range, and thermal safety of a battery, and therefore of an EV itself, making them one of the most important components.

    They are composed of various metals (in refined forms) depending on cell chemistry, typically including lithium and nickel. Common cathode compositions in modern use include:

    • Lithium iron phosphate (LFP)

    • Lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC)

    • Lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA)

    The battery metals that make up the cathode are in high demand, with automakers like Tesla rushing to secure supplies as EV sales charge ahead. In fact, the commodities in the cathode, along with those in other parts of the cell, account for roughly 40% of the overall cell cost.

    Other EV Battery Cell Components

    Components outside of the cathode make up the other 49% of a cell’s cost.

    The manufacturing process, which involves producing the electrodes, assembling the different components, and finishing the cell, makes up 24% of the total cost.

    The anode is another significant component of the battery, and it makes up 12% of the total cost—around one-fourth of the cathode’s share. The anode in a Li-ion cell is typically made of natural or synthetic graphite, which tends to be less expensive than other battery commodities.

    Although battery costs have been declining since 2010, the recent surge in prices of key battery metals like lithium has cast a shadow of doubt over their future. How will EV battery prices evolve going forward?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 23:20

  • Buchanan: Are Democrats Kicking Away Their Future?
    Buchanan: Are Democrats Kicking Away Their Future?

    Authored by Pat Buchanan,

    Not so long ago, Democrats seemed the party of the future.

    “Inevitable!” predicted some pundits, for demography is destiny.

    Moreover, in 2020, Democrats, who had won the popular vote six times in seven presidential elections, swept the popular vote again, by 6 million ballots. And they captured both houses of Congress.

    The future did seem to be theirs.

    Progressives dominated the major culture-forming institutions of society — academia, the media, Hollywood — not to mention the vast bureaucracy of America’s national administrative state.

    Their core constituencies — women, the young, Blacks, Hispanics — were growing as a share of the electorate, while the core Republican constituencies — white males, seniors — were shrinking.

    One sensed a confidence among Democrats that one or two more elections and the nation, like the California of Ronald Reagan, would turn irretrievably blue.

    What happened to the dream?

    First, President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, after 20 years of war, had about it the aspect of Saigon ’75.

    The rout of our Afghan allies and humiliation of our departure delivered an irretrievable blow to Biden’s reputation for competence.

    There followed the visible failure of the administration to defend and secure America’s southern border as 2 million migrants from all over the world poured across in Biden’s first year.

    Then came a surge in crimes of violence, shootings and murders in major cities. And people recalled that our media and political elites who had cheered on the Black Lives Matter protests and excused the riots after George Floyd’s death had echoed the BLM-antifa calls to “defund the police!”

    Also, suddenly, an inflation rate not seen in 40 years was back, driving up the price of gasoline and groceries and everything else at a rate of 7.5%.

    Then came news that the U.S. trade deficit, which helped to propel former President Donald Trump into the White House, was at an all-time record of over $1 trillion, and the national debt had crossed the $30 trillion mark, exceeding the entire U.S. GDP.

    Late in Biden’s first year, COVID-19 reached its omicron stage with infections, hospitalizations and deaths suddenly exploding again to record numbers in a pandemic deep into its second year.

    Then, there were the manifestations of cognitive decline in the president, seemingly with each new televised appearance.

    Unable to defend America’s borders, control the surge in violent crime or cope with an inflation unseen in 40 years, Biden began a steady slide in the polls to where, currently, all have him underwater and some put his approval below 40%.

    That a crisis for the party may be in the cards for this fall has not been lost on Democratic leaders. Fully 30 members of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority in the House have announced that they will be retiring and will not run again in 2022.

    The latest bad news came out of the Golden State, where three progressives on San Francisco’s school board were recalled in an election where more than 7 in 10 voters cast ballots to be rid of them.

    The problem for Democrats is that the issues for which the three were recalled are the issues dividing communities all across America:

    Are America’s elite schools whose student bodies are chosen by academic performance and test scores consistent with the progressives’ concept of racial equity? Or should student bodies of those elite schools be mandated to mirror the ethnic and racial composition of the communities they serve?

    How are issues of race, morality, sexuality and history to be taught in the public schools? Who decides what is to be taught?

    The issue was elevated in Virginia last fall when former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a favorite for reelection, blurted out during a debate with Republican Glenn Youngkin, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Virginia’s parents buried McAuliffe’s hopes.

    The San Francisco school board also plunged into the culture wars by attempting to re-name 44 high schools, while purging the names of all four presidents on Mount Rushmore — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt — as well as Paul Revere and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

    San Francisco’s Lowell High School is one of the elite high schools that selects its student body on academic performance and test scores. And that student body has been heavily Asian American, who make up a far higher share of the student population than of the city itself.

    This issue of Asians being overrepresented in elite high schools is replicated at Northern Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High, and in New York City at Stuyvesant and the Bronx School of Science.

    Who gets into these schools and who does not and who decides pits the leaders of Black communities against those of Asian American communities and divides the Democratic Party on the lines of ethnicity and race.

    Among other issues that have gone national are critical race theory, which teaches that, due to the systemic racism in American society, all whites are born oppressors, while Black Americans are from birth among the oppressed.

    Critical race theory, too, divides the Democrats.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 23:00

  • South Korean Man Sentenced To 3 Years For Swapping Patient's Hospital IV With Bathroom Cleaner
    South Korean Man Sentenced To 3 Years For Swapping Patient’s Hospital IV With Bathroom Cleaner

    If you’ve heard one “bathroom cleaner in the IV” story, you’ve heard them all – so forgive us for clogging up your daily newsfeed with yet another story about the ubiquitous phenomenon. 

    A 32 year old man in Daejeon, South Korea has been sentenced to 3 years in prison for “putting liquid bathroom cleaner into the intravenous drip line of another patient”,  Yonhap reported over the long weekend.

    His motives were “unclear”, the report says. The incident took place at a hospital about 160km south of Seoul about a year ago. The victim complained of “chest pains” after the infusion, resulting his nurse changing his IV solution. 

    However, the assailant – who was reportedly drunk at the time – changed the patient’s IV line a second time, resulting the victim suffering from “chest pain, substance poisoning and dysfunction of multiple organs”.

    The perpetrator reportedly said that “disinfectant can clean blood vessels” as part of his justification for taking the action. He has a record of crimes including breaking and entering, all while under the influence of alcohol, dating back to 2020. 

    The Daejeon District Court remarked: “The defendant should be sternly punished for committing bizarre crimes like poisoning the sleeping victim by mixing the disinfectant with the victim’s IV solution.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 22:40

  • Mike Rowe Scholarship Highlights The Lost Virtues Of Hard Work And Sweat
    Mike Rowe Scholarship Highlights The Lost Virtues Of Hard Work And Sweat

    Authored by Salena Zito via The Epoch Times,

    Tracy Wilson is sitting in the cutest little ranch house in this Calvert County town. It is her dream house—literally her dream house, she explains, as she has had the image of this very home in her mind, down to the color scheme of the exterior.

    It is 4 in the afternoon, and the single mother of two just got home from another dream—her job. She spends her days working as an instrumentation technician in the flight test program at Boeing.

    “I get to spend my days working on F-18s,” she exclaims several times during the interview. She says it with such joy that her appreciation for her craft becomes infectious.

    Life wasn’t always this balanced for the Exeter, Pennsylvania, native. In her senior year of high school, she underwent open-heart surgery for a hole in her heart after the healthy basketball athlete suffered a stroke. “The stroke temporarily took my speech and my handwriting,” she said. “So I was freaking out because I was so ready to start the next part of my life after high school.”

    She recovered but found her life directionless after high school. Wilson explains that she wanted to go to college, but without any clarity on what she should pursue and little money to attend, she bounced from career to career, trying to find her greater purpose.

    In between, she married, had two boys, divorced. She found herself still searching, still wanting to better herself, still deeply committed to the work ethic her parents had taught her, yet living on the edge of poverty, cleaning houses, exhausted and still struggling to put food on the table.

    “One day, I was sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself, watching TV, and I—this commercial came on for York Technical Institute, and something about it clicked in my brain. I went to their website, and the electrician program caught my eye,” Wilson explained.

    “I’ve always loved working with my hands,” she told me.

    “I was always in my dad’s little workshop doing whatever I could, hooking up wires. I saw it was a nine-month program and called and took a tour of the school. I ended up being more intrigued by their electronics engineering technology program, and I turned to the counselor and said, ‘Sign me up.’”

    Wilson said she still had to clean houses to bring an income in.

    “I remember I had about 10 dollars in my checking account that day,” she said.

    Several months into her education, Wilson found out about the Work Ethic Scholarship Program from the Mike Rowe WORKS Foundation. The program provides financial support to students enrolled in trade school training programs who have demonstrated a continuing commitment to personal responsibility, a positive attitude, and a strong work ethic.

    “I was like, ‘Hey, I am a huge ‘Dirty Jobs’ fan,’” she said of Rowe’s wildly popular Discovery Channel show, in which he does every trade job created that makes the clocks, trains, planes, and automobiles run on time and keeps your toilet flushing, too. Rowe made a reality show out of unglamorous yet essential jobs that make everyone’s lives safer and more comfortable. He brought to the forefront not just their existence but also the value these jobs have for the people who do them.

    Rowe said in an interview that he was inspired to create the scholarship fund in the summer of 2008.

    “‘Dirty Jobs’ was a runaway hit, the country was entering a recession, unemployment was headline news,” he said.

    “But everywhere I went on ‘Dirty Jobs,’ I saw ‘Help Wanted’ signs. It slowly dawned on me that high unemployment did not necessarily stem from a lack of opportunity. I remember being surprised to learn that 2.3 million jobs were open when the unemployment rate surpassed 10 percent.”

    When a financial reporter at the Wall Street Journal asked his take on how such a skills gap could exist during times of high unemployment, Rowe shared his theory.

    “Much of society had waged a war on work,” he said.

    “And I talked at length about the stigmas and stereotypes that surrounded many of the jobs we featured on the show, along with the myths and misperceptions that keep so many people from exploring a career in the trades.”

    The reporter printed Rowe’s thoughts, word for word, and the next day, his phone started ringing off the hook. Companies and organizations wanted to partner with him to make a more persuasive case for the jobs in their industries.

    “That’s what convinced me to do something; something to help the industries that had allowed me to get and keep ‘Dirty Jobs’ on the air,” he said. “That led me to launch an informal PR campaign for unloved jobs that required skill, and not a four-year degree. I called it mikeroweWORKS and launched it on Labor Day of 2008.”

    That led to an Online Trade Resource Center built by fans of the show—a job board of sorts for skilled trade workers.

    “Today, we’re primarily a scholarship fund with an advocacy arm—which is me,” said Rowe.

    Applicants must earn the scholarship, much like they would get a job through merit. “You have to provide a video and essay explaining why you believe you deserve the scholarship,” said Wilson. She also noted that applicants must take the S.W.E.A.T. pledge (it stands for “skill & work ethic aren’t taboo”) to keep up a hardworking mindset. “And then, you have to submit a video essay to discuss your thoughts on that topic,” Wilson said.

    When she got the scholarship, Wilson said, she did a cartwheel. The process not only prepared her for a successful mindset, but it also taught her a lot about herself.

    “Before I applied, I really underestimated myself. I came out of it more confident and realized I was smarter than I was giving myself credit for. I had more grit than I thought I had.”

    For generations, high schools have geared young people to apply to universities and colleges. They have largely ignored and dismissed trades as either beneath them or not part of achieving the American dream.

    As a result, many young people obtained expensive degrees that have few job prospects, and their debt lasts them well into their 40s. This has also created a culture that has lost its connection with the value and appreciation of skilled labor and the joy of getting your hands dirty.

    On Feb. 23, Rowe’s scholarship application process opens for 2022. Across the country, there are thousands of Tracy Wilsons out there attending community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs, eager to show their value, even when so many do not acknowledge it. Wilson encourages anyone who is even remotely considering applying to do it.

    “Not just for the money—which was nice by the way—but because you also get to experience expressing and understanding the importance of work,” she says. “It is a virtue we don’t value enough in society, but we can change that one job at a time.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 22:20

  • Kolanovic Warns Of "Non-linear Commodity Price Increases"
    Kolanovic Warns Of “Non-linear Commodity Price Increases”

    Gone is the Marko Kolanovic who, week after week after week would tell clients to buy the dip – and that’s just in 2022 – as the S&P finally entered a correction earlier today after the latest plunge in stocks, and in his place we had a brief glimpse of this strange, crticial-thinking and skeptical creature that we haven’t seen since some time in 2017 when the Croatian quant last dared to ask unpleasant questions or deliver non-goalseeked narratives that not all is well in an artificial market propped up thanks to trillions in liquidity injections.

    Unlike his most recent note, when he told clients that “small caps are already in a recession” so it’s time to buy the dip – just as stocks tumbled anew thanks to soaring rate hikes and the Ukraine crisis – in the latest JPMorgan view published this morning, Kolanovic writes that “geopolitical escalation over the last few days materially increased the risk of further aggravating the energy and commodity crisis developing over the past 2 years” a crisis which as recently as November Kolanovic said didn’t exist, because as he calculated in November, for oil to be considered expensive, it “would need to be trading at ~$115/bbl (we say this is conservative because we have excluded “expensive assets” such as central bank balance sheets and Nasdaq, which would imply a median oil price in the $300-$500/bbl range).” Apparently, three months later oil is suddenly expensive again.

    In any case, in taking a page out of the Kolanovic playbook of old where one could actually learn something instead of merely be bombarded with childish BTFD sermons that always skirted around the major risk factors and accentuated whatever the conventional wisdom bull thesis du jour war, today the JPM quant writes that “potential trade disruptions of oil, gas, grains and metals is now a significant risk for investments and the real economy” and that “portfolio managers should hedge this risk by increasing allocations to commodities, energy and materials. These allocations would serve as a hedge to inflation, geopolitical risks, and COVID reopening in what we see as a continued cycle of economic expansion. Although commodity inventories have contracted sharply, China’s share is abundant.” Some more details:

    The world is short Commodities. China is not. Global tradeable commodity inventories have contracted sharply over the past six months, declining in aggregate by 25% from 64 days of consumption at the peak in April 2020 to 48 today, a five year low. This drove the BCOM up 85% during the same period, to a multi-year high. While tradeable commodity stocks are critically low, it is important to acknowledge the abundance of available inventories in leading commodity consumer and importer China, to draw upon as required, which can influence import demand. China currently holds an estimated 84% of global copper, 70% of corn, 51% of wheat, 40% of soybeans, 26% of crude oil and 22% of aluminum inventories, according to our sources. Inclusive of China, global commodity inventories are at about 62 days of consumption, down 18% since the April 2020 peak

    Yes China’s share may be abundant, but the US is not China, where “low levels of tradable inventories have left us with few shock absorbers, which could drive nonlinear commodity price increases, particularly in light of our base case of a further rise in geopolitical tensions.” Wait… when did that become the base case?

    We don’t expect an answer, nor do we expect Kolanovic to remain bearish – especially since JPMorgan is one of the few banks left with a 5000+ S&P price target now that even Goldman has capitulated – because after regaling clients with what may be his bearish take in years, the head of global markets strategy at JPM reverts back to his permabullish self (after all he is no high enough in the JPM org chart to be a member of the policy team having left analysis behind), and writes that “if geopolitical risks fade, we see big upside potential for Russian equities given their dislocation with oil prices”, or in other words, precisely the opposite view of his nemesis, Wall Street’s biggest bear, Michael Wilson, who earlier today wrote that if geopolitical risks fade, the market may bounce but will still tumble as low as 3,800 by the end of March as the late-2018 playbook repeats.

    So how does Kolanovic gloss over the elephant in the room – the Fed’s tightening into a slowdown/recession – to give clients a carte blanche to buy just as soon as Biden somehow teaches Putin a lesson? Well, he says that, “while equities are down ytd due to rising rates” – to which we would also add a slowing economy and collapsing earnings guidance  – he notes that “historically the initial volatility around rate liftoff didn’t last and equities made new all-time highs 2-4 quarters out.” Which may be true, but the Fed has only raised rates with stocks more overvalued just one time: that was in June of 1999. Everyone remembers what happened next…

    … everyone, expect apparently Marko, who decides to keep digging and argues that “the start of policy tightening is usually a confirmation that the cycle has legs, rather than the signal of its end”, which again is incorrect, because as we showed earlier, never before has the curve been this flat before the Fed hiked rates even once!

    So how does Kolanovic address the all too real risk that the curve will invert – something his own colleague Nick Panigirtzoglou spent his last “Flows and Liquidity” discussing? Why, he doesn’t and instead like any good politician simply ignores the topic saying instead that “as we don’t see the yield curve inverting or real yields reaching problematic levels this year, it is premature to talk about end-of-cycle worries.”

    Of course, ending on with yet another BTFD chorus would make even JPM’s clients openly mock the strategist, so he had to caveat his bullish outlook somewhat, concluding that “that said, there is cause for caution as the path for optimal monetary policy is narrow in the current backdrop.”

    In other words, it only took trillions in lost market cap, a correction for the S&P500 and a bear market for the Nasdaq for Marko to admit that there actually are risks.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 22:00

  • Bill Maher Slams US-Born Eileen Gu For Representing A "Totalitarian Police State Over America" At Olympics
    Bill Maher Slams US-Born Eileen Gu For Representing A “Totalitarian Police State Over America” At Olympics

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    Olympic gold medalist Eileen Gu. Lebron James and the NBA. Hollywood stars John Cena and Tom Cruise. Google. HBO host Bill Maher slammed these names during the latest episode of his show, criticizing them for choosing to support the Chinese regime.

    In a monologue on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Maher started by leveling criticism against Gu, a San Francisco Bay Area-born freestyle skier who chose to represent China over the United States in the 2022 Winter Games.

    So far, Gu has refused to comment whether she had given up her U.S. citizenship to be on the Chinese national team.

    “Is that cool now, to choose to represent a totalitarian police state over America?” Maher asked.

    “And by choosing Team China, Eileen Gu became a living symbol of China’s triumph over the West, which wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought China had triumphed over us in the ways that really matter. But they haven’t,” he added.

    Gu has earned millions in endorsement deals from international and Chinese companies. According to Chinese media, her Chinese endorsers include at least three state-run companies—China Mobile, Bank of China, and People’s Insurance Company of China.

    Gold medallist Eileen Gu of Team China poses with her medal during the Women’s Freeski Halfpipe medal ceremony on Day 14 of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games in Zhangjiakou, China, on Feb. 18, 2022. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

    China’s hawkish state-run media Global Times has come to Gu’s defense over her decision to represent China. In one opinion article published this month, the outlet accused “U.S. media and American people” of having “adopted a zero-sum mentality” in their criticism of Gu. Another article said such criticism showed that the United States “betrays its own founding spirit.”

    Maher admitted that the United States has its own human rights issues, but noted that America is still “a democracy based on freedom,” whereas China is “an authoritarian surveillance state” that can make people “disappear for a few months” and has “basically jailed an ethnic minority,” in reference to the Uyghurs.

    More than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang are currently being detained in internment camps, where they are known to be subjected to abuses, including torture, forced labor, and forced sterilization. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have designated Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang as “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”

    “It’s a cynical dodge to pretend China’s sins should be overlooked because we all do it. No,” Maher said.

    TV Host Bill Maher speaks during the HBO portion of the 2011 Summer TCA Tour held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on July 28, 2011. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

    NBA, Google, and Hollywood

    Maher then turned his attention to the NBA and Lebron James, pointing to the 2019 incident when the Houston Rockets’ then-general manager Daryl Morey voiced support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters in a Twitter post.

    In response, the NBA issued an apologetic statement, saying that Morey’s tweet was  “regrettable” and “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China.” However, the league did not bow to Chinese pressure to discipline or fire Morey. But James criticized Morey, saying that he was “either misinformed or not really educated on the situation.”

    “In America, we’re supposed to root for democratic government, not apologize for it,” Maher said, bringing attention to the fact that the NBA has a partnership deal worth $1.5 billion with Chinese tech giant Tencent.

    He then brought up James’ response and quipped that “the situation” the NBA superstar was referring to was “I got some shoes to sell.”

    “‘Kowtow’ is a Chinese word, but boy, Americans have gotten good at it,” Maher said.

    “That’s the deal China offers American companies and celebrities, ‘We’ll give you access to our billion-plus consumers as long as you shut up about the whole police-state-genocide thing.’”

    Maher slammed Google, claiming that the U.S. search giant abandons its “don’t be evil” motto, in favor of “maybe a little evil,” by agreeing to work with China’s censors.

    Google once embarked on a secret project named “Dragonfly,” a censored search engine specifically for the Chinese market. Though the controversial project has been scrapped, the search giant has also been criticized for choosing to work with China’s Tsinghua University, a school with ties to the Chinese military.

    Maher rounded out his criticism by lashing out at Cena, who stars in the latest “Fast & Furious” movie, and Cruise, the star in the “Top Gun” franchise.

    Given’s China’s enormous box office, Maher said Cena decided he “needed to get some reeducation,” like the Uyghurs.

    “You see, John referred to Taiwan as a country as if it was a separate country from China, which it is,” Maher continued.

    The incident Maher described happened in May 2021, when Cena called Taiwan a country during an interview with Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS. He later apologized to Chinese fans in Mandarin after he was excoriated by the China’s state-run media for his remark.

    John Cena attends Paramount Pictures’ Beijing press conference for ‘Bumblebee’ in Beijing on Dec. 14, 2018. (Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees Taiwan as a part of its territory to be united with the mainland, by force if necessary. However, the self-governing island is a de facto independent state with its own military, constitution, and currency.

    “China would like to do to Taiwan what it did to Tibet and what it’s now doing to Hong Kong,” he said.

    Maher also took exception to the fact that Taiwan’s flag was missing on the jacket worn by Cruise’s character, naval aviator Peter “Maverick” Mitchell, when the “Top Gun” sequel released its trailer in 2019. The jacket’s navy patch showed a Taiwanese flag in the first installment.

    “Well, he used to be a maverick; now he does whatever China says,” Maher said.

    “Top Gun: Maverick,” scheduled to be released in May, was partly produced by Tencent Pictures, the film unit of Tencent.

    Wokeism

    “So can you really blame 18-year-old Eileen Gu, who has already made over $31 million as the face of 23 brand products in China, for following in the footsteps of other American celebrities?” Maher asked.

    The HBO host said the problem with the Chinese regime lies with modern-day wokeism.

    “The definition of ‘woke’ was supposed to be being alert to injustice in society. But because the ‘woke’ now see race first and everything else never, fear of being accused of racism has given a free pass on human rights abuses to China and any other places that are perceived as non-white,” Maher explained.

    Vivek Ramaswamy, author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” previously told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that China is using wokeism to erode U.S. democracy. He also said the current wokeism has borne resemblance to old school Chinese communist politics.

    “Sorry, Uyghurs. Someone has to tell me where we got this rule that you can’t criticize China because I suspect we got it from China. Because, after all, it’s where we get everything else,” Maher concluded. 

    Gu’s agent, Tom Yaps, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Watch the full Maher monologue here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 21:40

  • Trans "Woman" Gets Cocky About Reduced Sentence For Molesting Child
    Trans “Woman” Gets Cocky About Reduced Sentence For Molesting Child

    In another example of woke people in authority, George Soros-backed Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon let a 26yo transgender “woman” off with a slap-on-the-wrist sentence last month for sexually assaulting a 10yo in 2014, according to Fox News. 

    Hannah Tubbs, the trans child molester, who at the time was a male named James Tubbs, was just two weeks away from turning 18 when he attacked a 10yo girl in a women’s bathroom at Denny’s restaurant. Tubbs was arrested in 2019 for an unrelated crime and was only connected to the sexual assault then. Since being jailed, Tubbs has identified as a female. 

    While in jail, Tubbs became ‘cocky’ to “her” father in phone conversations that he’ll plea out (in the hope of getting a reduced sentence) and won’t have to register as a sex offender. 

    “I’m gonna plead out to it, plead guilty,” Tubbs said in one call. “They’re gonna stick me on probation, and it’s gonna be dropped, it’s gonna be done. I won’t have to register [as a sex offender], won’t have to do nothing.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    After receiving a two-year sentence last month in a juvenile facility, Tubbs’ prediction was correct because Gascon’s office refused to transfer the case to an adult court. Fox News said he might only serve as little as six months and won’t have to register as a sex offender.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tubbs’ victim spoke to Fox News about Gascon’s handling of the case, calling it an “insult” and “unfair” to her. 

    “The things he did to me and made me do that day was beyond horrible for a ten-year-old girl to have to go through,” she said. “I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.”

    She said the light sentence delivered “no true justice.” 

    “I’ve also heard that my attacker goes by she/them pronouns now,” she added. “I see it also unfair to try him as a woman as well, seeing how he clearly didn’t act like one on Jan. 1 of 2014.”

    The outcome of this case comes as no surprise, considering billionaire activist George Soros funded the campaign to help elect Gascon. 

    “We do not always get it right, as no one can, but we do believe that our fundamental beliefs are the right ones,” Gascon said.

    This is just another disturbing example of woke people in authority destroying the country. It seems innocent people will suffer as a result of woke stupidity. 

    And due to a new liberal experiment as of Jan. 1, Democrats’ “Equality Act” bill has allowed people to be treated according to their gender identity, not biological sex, which means they must be housed in a jail facility consistent with their gender identity, regardless of their anatomy.

    California is leading the way towards stupidity and will only backfire. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 21:20

  • Biden Administration Misses Big Chance To Reduce Prescription Drug Costs
    Biden Administration Misses Big Chance To Reduce Prescription Drug Costs

    Authored by Carl Schmid via RealClear Health (emphasis ours),

    President Biden has repeatedly promised to make health care more affordable. And his administration has taken some important steps. But sadly, officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services just passed up an opportunity to save patients millions at the pharmacy.

    In December, CMS released a draft of its annual rule regulating how private insurance plans must operate in the year ahead.

    Some of what CMS has proposed will certainly benefit many patients. For example, the new rule requires insurers who operate on the federal health exchange to include among their offerings standardized plans that include fixed-dollar-amount “copays” rather than “coinsurance.” With coinsurance, beneficiaries pay a percentage of the cost of the medication — a potentially steep financial burden for patients who need the latest, greatest (usually expensive) treatments. Under the new rule, a Gold-level plan would have a copay of $15 for a 30-day supply of generic medications, $30 for brand-name drugs and $250 for a specialty drug. Such a plan could potentially save patients thousands of dollars in coinsurance payments.

    The proposed rule also warns insurers against requiring high coinsurance rates for all of the medications prescribed to treat a particular health condition. It clearly states that insurers cannot discriminate against beneficiaries based on their health condition and expected health needs. And it requires formulary decisions to be based on clinical guidelines for treatment, not merely cost considerations.

    But in one key area, the proposed rule falls short — in a way that would be easy for CMS to rectify with a small revision when the rule is finalized.

    The problem concerns how insurers treat the financial assistance that drug makers often provide directly to patients. This assistance totaled $14 billion in 2019 — reducing patients’ costs and thus helping them afford their prescriptions and follow their doctors’ orders.

    The proposed rule, however, allows insurers not to count this patient assistance toward a policyholder’s annual out-of-pocket maximum. That’s an option more and more insurers are taking advantage of — nearly 25% of healthcare plans provided by medium and large businesses, for example, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

    To understand how unfair this is, consider a hypothetical. If a working-class patient receives $1,000 from a relative, or a local charity, to help cover a copay or coinsurance, insurers would count that spending towards her out-of-pocket maximum. But if the patient receives the same $1,000 from a drug company, those insurers wouldn’t count it.

    By refusing to do so, insurance companies both collect the $1,000 in financial assistance from the drug manufacturer while at the same time requiring the patient to pay that amount out-of-pocket. That’s double-dipping. In its effect on the patients’ pocketbook, the out-of-pocket maximum for which they are responsible increases by the amount of the financial assistance.

    The issue of how to treat this copay assistance isn’t an arcane accounting question — it directly impacts patients’ health.

    If taken properly, prescription drugs keep patients healthy and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices. But when patients fail to take their medicines due to cost concerns, they end up sicker, often requiring expensive hospital care. In fact, about one in every ten hospitalizations results from prescription non-adherence.

    Co-pay assistance can boost drug adherence and thus lower overall health spending — but only if patients can actually realize the savings.

    Twelve states and Puerto Rico have already passed laws requiring insurers to count manufacturer copay assistance toward beneficiaries’ annual out-of-pocket maximums. Others are looking to follow suit on this matter of basic fairness.

    But it’s a national problem and needs a national solution. In Congress, Reps. Donald McEachin (D-VA) and Rodney Davis (R-IL) have introduced a bipartisan bill, HR 5808, to address it directly by law. In the meantime, the Biden administration could easily solve it by revising the final rule – a big step toward fulfilling its promise to make drugs more affordable.

     

    Carl Schmid is executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, which promotes high-quality, affordable health care for people living with or at risk of HIV, hepatitis, and other serious and chronic health conditions. Follow the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute on Twitter: @HIVHep

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 21:00

  • "I'm Stunned": Beijing Olympics Was Total Ratings Disaster
    “I’m Stunned”: Beijing Olympics Was Total Ratings Disaster

    Between half-empty stands, Russian figure skaters berated on TV, announcers covering games from Connecticut, and a backdrop of serious human rights abuses, China’s ‘oppression’ Olympics earned dismal ratings for NBC.

    Kamila Valieva, of the Russian Olympic Committee, falls in the women’s free skate program during the figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

    According to Fox News, NBC’s $7.75 billion investment in 2014 which gave the network exclusive rights to the Games through 2032 is not paying off.

    Through Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, an average of 12.2 million watched the Olympics in primetime on NBC, cable, or its Peacock streaming service, a 42-percent dip from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Only 10 million watched NBC alone, a 47-percent drop from 2018, and through early last week, it was down 57 percent in the critical 25-54 age demographic from the Pyeongchang games. That was even taking into account the Super Bowl viewership boost NBC got from airing the Olympics directly after the network aired the game on Feb. 13. –Fox News

    “These Olympics were a disaster for the network: a buzz-free, hermetically-sealed event in an authoritarian country a half-day’s time zone away, where the enduring images will be the emotional meltdown of Russian teen-agers after a drug-tainted figure skating competition and a bereft Mikaela Shiffrin, sitting on a ski slope wondering what went wrong,” wrote the Associated Press.

    “Viewers stayed away in alarming numbers, and NBC has to wonder whether it was extraordinarily bad luck or if the brand of a once-unifying event for tens of millions of people is permanently tainted.”

    That said, AP noted that NBC had a significant increase in streaming viewership, going from 2.2 billion in 2018 to 3.5 billion – however as Slate pointed out: “to note that the reach of YouTube and TikTok is extending NBC’s viewership into the hundreds of millions might unintentionally send the network’s more lucrative broadcast audience into the sea of on-demand digital video consumption, where their value would be diluted.”

    NBC’s unfortunate ratings comes after the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games were also a flop – averaging 12.9 million primetime viewers, the smallest Summer audience since the network began airing them in 1988 – and a drop of 49% over the Rio Olympics in 2016, and 58% vs. the 2012 London Games.

    Amid a U.S. diplomatic boycott, the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping thumbed its nose at the world as it exulted in Beijing being the first city to host both the Summer and Winter games. 

    China used a Uyghur athlete to deliver the Olympic flame in the opening ceremony – NBC’s Savannah Guthrie called it an “in your face response” to the West – despite its ongoing ethnic cleansing of the minority and first-person accounts of systemic rape, torture, and sterilization. It also used a Chinese military commander, who was involved in deadly clashes with Indian border forces in 2020, as a torchbearer in a move that angered India. -Fox News

    Perhaps a few more Uyghurs in the opening ceremony would have helped?

    “The media for the most part is still skittish when it comes to talking about Beijing’s acts in Xinjiang and other places,” author and prominent Chinese government critic Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital. “It’s not alleged human rights violations. They are atrocities. There’s genocide, as determined by both the Trump and Biden administrations. They’re crimes against humanity, and the coverage, and this is not just the U.S media, it’s around the world that you see there is an unwillingness to call it out for what it actually is.”

    Chang says that as an Olympics fan who skipped watching the games this year out of protest, NBC shouldn’t have broadcast them at all.

    “Normally I am totally glued, excluding all else, watching Olympics, but I didn’t this year at all, and the reason is I thought it was wrong to have the Games in China,” he said. “It was wrong for NBC to broadcast them … I’m surprised the ratings were so low. As a matter of fact, I’m stunned. And the reason is I thought these Games would attract an abnormally high viewership because it’s in China and because of all the things that go with that, including the atrocities.”

    “”I think part of it is because people just have made a decision that China is too atrocious to deal with, so therefore they didn’t watch,” Chang continued, saying he was happy at the crappy ratings.

    “There is karma in the world.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 20:40

  • "What-Aboutism" – Ruling Against Trump Leaves More Questions Than Answers On Free Speech
    “What-Aboutism” – Ruling Against Trump Leaves More Questions Than Answers On Free Speech

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the Hill on the decision in Thompson v. Trump, the case brought by Democratic members and Capitol police officers against President Trump, Donald J. Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and others for injuries (physical or emotional) related to the January 6th riot. The lawsuits against three out of four of the speakers from the rally on that day were dismissed but the motion on behalf of former President Donald Trump was denied. He could well prevail on appeal and there remain unanswered questions over the free speech protections that should be accorded such speeches.

    Here is the column:

    A “one-of-a-kind case.” Judge Amit Mehta‘s description of the litigation against four principal speakers at the Jan. 6 Trump rally may have been as much a prayer as a portrayal. As famed Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Hard cases make bad law” — and the litigation against President Trump and his associates is a hard case that just proved Holmes right.

    In consolidated cases brought by Democratic members of Congress and Capitol Police officers, Judge Mehta ruled on motions to dismiss by the former president, his son Donald Jr., former Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), as well as several extremist groups like the Oath Keepers. The judge dismissed the claims of a violent conspiracy against Trump Jr. and Giuliani, and he invited Brooks to file a motion to dismiss on the same grounds. He rejected arguments that their speeches at the rally caused the subsequent rioting in the Capitol. Yet, while admitting that the case raised difficult constitutional questions, he declined to dismiss the claim against Trump.

    The ruling will now allow a long-awaited appeal on core constitutional questions, including the protections for inflammatory speech.

    Most analysts expected that groups like the Oath Keepers would likely remain in the lawsuit, given their active role in the rioting and the recent charges of seditious conspiracy filed against them. The most controversial parties were the speakers at the rally near the White House before the riot.

    The judge’s 112-page opinion makes easy work of dismissing the claims against the other speakers. These speeches were reckless but constitutionally protected. Giuliani’s declaration — “Let’s have trial by combat” — has been cited by some critics as a clear incitement to an insurrection, but the judge found such arguments were implausible and that Giuliani’s words “were not likely” to cause a riot. He also found that Trump Jr.’s comments on the election were “protected speech,” and he rejected claims that Brooks urging Trump’s supporters to “start taking names and kicking ass” could be the basis for liability.

    I previously wrote that the claims against these four Jan. 6 speakers might find “a sympathetic trial judge” but that “they will likely fail on appeal, even if they survive the trial level litigation.” All but one of those claims are now dismissed on the trial level. Moreover, Judge Mehta’s opinion seems to reinforce the view that Trump’s speech was protected, too.

    The judge could well be reversed on the threshold question of immunity, raised by Trump, that presidents cannot be sued for speaking on matters of public interest. Mehta was honest in saying that “this is not an easy issue” and that “the alleged facts of this case are without precedent.” Yet, he offered a detailed explanation of why he believes such immunity should not extend to a speech contesting election results — the strongest portion of his decision. In so holding, Mehta is making new law — and some jurists on appeal, particularly on the Supreme Court, are likely to be concerned over the implications of such liability for a sitting president.

    However, it is the free speech issue that is most concerning. My concern is not based on any agreement with Trump’s view of the election or Congress’s certification of it; I criticized his speech as he gave it and later called for Congress to censure him; nevertheless, his remarks fall well short of the high standard set for criminal or civil liability for speech.

    The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected such liability despite the use of inflammatory or even violent words.

    In 1969, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that even a  Ku Klux Klan leader calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” In Hess v. Indiana, the court rejected the prosecution of a protester declaring an intention to take over the streets because “at worst, (the words) amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time.” In a third case, NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the court overturned a judgment against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after one of its officials promised to break the necks of opponents.

    Although Trump pumped up his Jan. 6 supporters with allegations of election fraud and calls to “fight like hell,” Judge Mehta acknowledged that Trump also told the crowd that “everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” His comments were consistent with a protest in saying that “we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

    In fairness to the court, it is merely saying that the case’s plaintiffs could possibly prove a conspiracy between Trump and some Jan. 6 groups. But he cites little support for such a conspiracy beyond facts like Trump’s earlier controversial statement in a debate that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.” The court’s careful, meticulous analysis on the earlier claims seems to break down over Trump’s status; it struggles to ignore the clear weight of prior case law and countervailing interpretations of Trump’s words.

    Despite a lengthy, detailed discussion of issues like presidential immunity, Mehta becomes more curt and cursory over Trump’s constitutional claims. When Trump’s lawyers said his language was largely indistinguishable from that of many Democrats like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Mehta chided them for playing “a game of what-aboutism.”

    That “what-aboutism,” however, is precisely the point.

    The selective imposition of liability for speech is the very thing that the First Amendment is designed to prevent.

    As rioting raged in Brooklyn Center, Minn. and nationwide in 2020, Congresswoman Waters went to Minnesota and told protesters there that they “gotta stay on the street” and “get more confrontational.” Others have used language very similar to Trump’s in declaring elections to be invalid (including Hillary Clinton calling Trump an “illegitimate president“) or urging supporters to “fight” or “battle” against Republicans; Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) once said, “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.”

    All of those statements arguably were reckless but clearly protected speech.

    Free speech demands bright lines. While this is a “one-of-a-kind case,” Trump’s comments were hardly unique. And Judge Mehta does not clearly establish why Giuliani’s “trial by combat” remark or Brooks’ “taking names and kicking ass” exhortation are not calls for imminent violence or lawlessness — but Trump’s “fight like hell” would be.

    With three of the four speakers now dismissed from the case, only Trump remains. Along with him remains the most looming question: whether the Jan. 6 speech, which was central to his impeachment, was protected under the Constitution. If Trump prevails on appeal, he may claim a degree of vindication thanks to some of his fiercest opponents.

    What the court dismisses as “a game of what-aboutism” is all about free speech.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 20:20

  • "Bronco Ice Mountain": Thousands Of Ford Broncos Are Stacking Up In A Michigan Lot
    “Bronco Ice Mountain”: Thousands Of Ford Broncos Are Stacking Up In A Michigan Lot

    “Thousands” of Ford Broncos have been piling up in a Michigan lot – held up for sale by the ongoing semiconductor shortage that has stung the automotive industry over the last 2 years and that  shows little sign of letting up. 

    Demand for the new Bronco has been robust since Ford re-did its design and re-introduced it years ago. But it appears that Ford is having trouble meeting that demand thanks to “two years of industry disruptions”, Autoblog pointed out over the long weekend. 

    Buyers had started to sign up to purchase the revamped Bronco as far back as 2020. But after dealing with issues like defective tops last summer, and now dealing with additional chip shortage roadblocks, it appears the supply sieve has yet to truly open. 

    As a result, trucks are now “stacking up in a lot outside the Michigan Assembly Plant”, Autoblog reports. 

    “All we can do at this point is scale as fast as we can and break the constraints and communicate to (buyers) what’s realistic,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said last week. 

    “I do think they could be communicating better,” one potential Bronco buyer said to Autoblog. The report noted that Ford’s distribution strategy of Broncos to dealerships remains dynamic and has not only customers – but also dealers – confused:

    Dealers and reservation holders thought Bronco orders would be filled on a first-come-first-serve basis. Instead, Ford decided 50% of production would be for reservation holders, 25% would factor in dealer location, the final 25% would consider a dealer’s historic sales figures. That weighted half the formula in favor of dealers in large markets. Then Ford changed the calculus to factor in Bronco Sport sales as well. Then Ford lowered the threshold for the percentage of Broncos a dealer needed provide to reservation holders out of the allocation, the result being that “four out of 10 new Broncos can go to a walk-in customer or the highest bidder.”

    Here is a video of what the lot outside the Michigan Plant currently looks like:

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 20:00

  • How The Pandemic Has Propelled Maritime Tech Deals To New Peaks
    How The Pandemic Has Propelled Maritime Tech Deals To New Peaks

    By Greg Miller of FreightWaves

    Maritime tech has never seen anything like the past 12 months: a whirlwind of deals that may be just the beginning.

    “Clearly, there is an influx of capital, especially over the last year, and the pace is just continuing to increase,” said Evan Efstathiou, founder of consultancy SkySail Advisors. “Shipping is in the spotlight. The volume and velocity [of deals] is on a different trajectory than we’ve ever seen before. The enthusiasm is frothy.”

    According to Marina Hadjipateras, co-founder of TMV, a VC firm with funds that invest in transportation, “There is money flowing in — more than ever — so there is an opportunity for shipping and supply chain tech. Valuations are very strong and they’re continuing to rise, especially as investors are paying more and more attention to this market.”

    Shipping and supply chain is “a hot topic now, as hot as health care over the past few decades,” Hadjipateras told American Shipper. “It’s trending.”

    Positions of container ships, bulkers and tankers as of Thursday

    Funding, company sales, IPOs

    Among the many maritime tech companies getting funded in 2021: project44, $201 million; Sofar Ocean, $39 million; Xeneta, $28.5 million; NYSHEX, $15 million; DeepSea Technologies, $9.1 million; Voyager Portal, $8.4 million; Wave BL, $8 million; K4 Mobility, $5.7 million; Vizion, $3.25 million; Portcast, $3.2 million; and Greywing, $2.5 million.

    The flow of new money continues in 2022. Flexport raised $935 million this month in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Flexport at over $8 billion. Project44, which has a significant ocean presence, raised $240 million last month from investors including TPG and Goldman Sachs, at a valuation of $2.2 billion — a billion more than its valuation just eight months before.

    There has also been an unprecedented number of company acquisitions involving maritime tech.

    Last year, Alfa Laval bought StormGeo for $410 million; Kpler bought Clipper Data; ZeroNorth acquired Propulsion Dynamics; Lloyd’s Register acquired Greenstream; Spire bought exactEarth; Veson Nautical took over Oceanbolt; Accel-KKR bought Navis; FourKites built out its ocean offerings by buying Haven; and project44 acquired ocean platforms Clear Metal and Ocean Insights.

    The acquisitions keep coming in 2022. In January, ZeroNorth bought Clearlynx and VesselsValue acquired Viamar. Informa is in the process of selling its maritime data and intelligence unit.

    There have been public listings, as well. In August, Spire Global (NYSE: SPIR) began trading after a reverse merger with a SPAC; its current market cap is $437 million. In December, Windward sold $47 million of stock and listed in London (current market cap: $174 million).

    Cargo and market visibility

    Why the higher deal flow for shipping tech in 2021-22?

    On the funding side of the equation, massive pools of money have been searching for returns in an era of historically low interest rates. According to CB Insights, startups overall received $620 billion in funding last year, by far the highest annual total ever and more than double the $294 billion recorded in 2020.

    More of this money is finding its way to maritime tech because the three largest (and partially overlapping) categories of pitches — visibility, digitalization and decarbonization — are all hitting the mark simultaneously.

    Visibility, as in “Where’s my cargo?,” is largely associated with container shipping. But all vessel types, including tankers and bulkers, are covered by the broader category of market visibility and ship tracking (by companies such as MarineTraffic, Kpler and CargoMetrics), with market intelligence used for decision-making, chartering, trading and investing.

    Cargo visibility has received enormous attention in the COVID era, after pandemic disruptions created historic congestion and delays — and brought images of offshore traffic jams to the front page and the nightly news. From the Ever Given accident in the Suez Canal to over 100 ships waiting off Los Angeles/Long Beach to unfounded fears that the supply chain crisis would ruin Christmas, shipping has never been more in the public eye — and, in turn, the eyes of tech founders and investors, not to mention tech giants like Google.

    On Wednesday, Google Cloud and Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB) announced a 10-year strategic partnership, with its first priority being “to solve the increasing challenge of managing supply chain risk.” Dun & Bradstreet will be the founding partner of Google Cloud’s Supply Chain Twin, and new solutions will be developed to “improve end-to-end supply chain visibility.”

    Crunchbase called 2021 “a banner year for VC-backed supply chain management companies” and said that “funding shows no signs of breaking down.” Crunchbase data showed that $11.3 billion in funding was provided to supply chain companies, nearly double 2020 levels and 24% above the previous record year of 2019.

    Chart: American Shipper based on data from Crunchbase

    As more money flows toward the supply chain, more goes to the ocean sector.

    During the Hellenic/Norwegian American Chambers of Commerce (HACC/NACC) shipping forum on Feb. 8, Nikos Petrakakos of Ursus Maritime Capital explained, “What has brought the initial interest in the shipping world from people who aren’t in shipping is that they realize, through these disruptions in the supply chain, that having investments in trucking and rail doesn’t necessarily alleviate everything — if one cog is not working, the whole supply chain is not working. They realize that there’s a lot of untapped opportunity in the cargo visibility side of things in the maritime industry.

    “The initial attention is coming from later-stage VCs that are almost like a PE [private equity firm] looking for bigger companies and [to pay] bigger checks, whether it’s project44 or Navis, that kind of stuff. And then you also have increasing attention from the earlier-stage investors, like what Marina [Hadjipateras] is doing. There’s still a lot of different opportunities there. It’s a lot more nascent.”

    “Supply visibility is huge,” said Hadjipateras. “Shipping is in the news more. People want to invest in tech that’s going to make the industry more efficient. It’s not just the niche shipping funds now. It’s also the top-tier venture funds that are focusing on this.”

    Digitalization

    On the increased momentum for maritime tech, Petrakakos said, “It seems to be a mix of various causes but COVID certainly has triggered some of these changes … [although] many of these things were already in motion before.”

    The second big maritime tech pitch is digitalization: using technology to improve business processes and decision-making. As with visibility, COVID has acted as an accelerant.

    Efstathiou told American Shipper: “Because of COVID and people working from home, companies have been forced to work differently. They’ve realized that certain processes that worked just fine when everyone was in the office weren’t working so well in a distributed workforce environment.”

    Petrakakos said during the HACC/NACC event, “All the work from home has driven the digitalization side of things in shipping.”

    The supply chain squeeze is yet another COVID-era driver of accelerated digitalization. Disruptions to the supply chain laid bare the need for more efficient and nimbler networks, whether cargo was on land or sea (a goal that overlaps with cargo visibility).

    As Glasswing founder Rudina Seseri told Crunchbase, the supply chain industry had already realized before the pandemic that it was “going to get left behind” if it didn’t move on from pen and paper, “then COVID came and made it incredibly obvious and accelerated the adoption.”

    Decarbonization

    The third big pitch for shipping tech focuses on fuel efficiency and decarbonization. It spans all vessel types and provides potential for tech solutions to scale.

    The push to decarbonize shipping has been ongoing for years albeit progressing at a snail’s pace. The transition will require switching to a new fuel at some point in the future, and in the interim, reducing carbon emissions from the use of existing fuels — i.e., increasing fuel efficiency.

    This interim requirement appeals all around: to startup investors, founders and employees looking to advance decarbonization, and on the other side, to ship operators looking to improve environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials and, regardless of environmental concerns, reduce their fuel costs and thereby increase their profits.

    Zero-carbon targets may be decades out, but new ship efficiency rules (the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index, EEXI, and Carbon Intensity Index, CII) come into play next year, as does shipping’s inclusion in the EU Emission Trading System. Even more immediately, the price of ship fuel is now on the verge of breaching all-time highs set in 2011 and 2008.

    Nautilus Labs is a prime example of a tech startup targeting emissions by reducing fuel consumption; it raised $11 million in Series A funding in 2019 from investors including Microsoft’s M12 and Hadjipateras’ TMS. “Nautilus’ Series A was great for the industry and they’re going to continue to do larger rounds. They will be funded again, I’m sure,” affirmed Hadjipateras.

    Regarding shipping’s overall appeal to sustainability investors, she said: “A lot of people outside the shipping world look at shipping as almost the opposite of sustainability, and it’s true that inefficiencies are causing ships to emit more emissions. But shipping is integral to the world, and if investors think about the fact that they can actually do something good for the environment [by investing in platforms that reduce shipping emissions], that’s a whole different pool of money that will come in, along with the people who are experts in transportation.”

    Decarbonization-COVID connection?

    For visibility and digitalization, COVID’s accelerant role is clear. Whether the pandemic played a similar role in decarbonization investment is open to debate.

    Tuomas Riski of Norsepower Oy said during the HACC/NACC event that the “rapid uptake right now in emission-reduction technology” in shipping has four drivers: higher-than-ever fuel prices, expectations of future carbon pricing, compliance-based demand (related to the EEXI and CII regs) and the increasing importance of ESG to companies. “This all happened in the COVID period, but I don’t think COVID has been the real catalyst behind it. These things are just happening at the same time,” said Riski.

    On the other hand, if COVID-era policies push funds toward riskier bets amid a low-yield environment, and if incentives push money toward climate-aligned investments, there could be a timing connection between COVID and climate-aligned VC investing in shipping.

    There might also be business sentiment and psychological links between COVID and decarbonization. Hadjipateras noted, “There was a moment in COVID [during lockdowns] when air pollution was down and everything [with emissions] was so much better and we all sort of scratched our heads and thought: We need to change things and be more efficient.”

    Back in April 2020, when the Western world was in lockdown, shipping consultant Basil Karatzas told American Shipper, “Maybe COVID-19 increases people’s awareness of what’s truly important in society.”

    And in July 2020, JP Morgan published a report that posited an explicit connection between the pandemic and ESG. JP Morgan maintained that the pandemic could be a “major turning point for ESG investing,” because “as a result of the radical impact COVID-19 has had on global economies in such a short space of time, many policymakers and investors are viewing the crisis as a wake-up call” and “we believe that pandemics and environmental risks are viewed as similar in terms of impact,” ergo COVID “has renewed the focus on climate change.”

    What’s next?

    Despite the heavy deal flow in 2021-22, maritime is still relatively untrampled territory for technology investors compared to other industries. Even when it comes to the supply chain overall, the share of total funding remains small.

    Commenting on what’s next, Petrakakos said, “There’s still a lot of fragmentation in the industry so I would say there’s still a lot of consolidation that’s going to happen in the future, which will probably attract that next step of investors.” In other words, the high pace of shipping tech company sales seen in the past 12 months should continue.

    Petrakakos also believes that “using the data is the next step. So far, we’re just collecting data. The next step is actually using machine learning and AI [artificial intelligence] to give us actionable KPIs [key performance indicators].”

    AI prospects were likewise highlighted by DeepSea Technologies founder Roberto Coustas in recent comments to Tradewinds. AI is the key selling point for London-listed Windward, and the Google Cloud-Dun & Bradstreet partnership also pointed to AI and machine learning. Efstathiou highlighted AI and machine learning potential, too. “I think people in shipping are picking up on this more,” he said.

    In general, Efstathiou said of maritime tech’s prospects: “All of the stars are aligned on the money side, so the question is: Who’s going to come out with the innovation?” The further challenge is: “How do you scale up in shipping? You still come back to that question. It’s not an easy one to answer.”

    Efstathiou also sees the potential for a lot more company acquisitions, including the possibility of larger funds deploying very large amounts of cash for major maritime tech acquisitions, then using those buys as a base to continue to roll up other maritime tech companies. 

    Hadjipateras predicted a lot of action ahead. She sees more IPOs, although she believes this option depends on “if a company can verticalize into different forms of transportation. It’s about how big the total addressable market is.”

    She also expects more company acquisitions — driven more by tech platform buyers — and even more investments flowing to startups.

    “I see more funding going into all of the platforms that exist. Funding and scaling is going to happen throughout all of this year. A lot of companies are going out now [to raise money], and there’s going to be a lot more funding for the industry over the next year, which is great.”

    Companies are included in the SkySail landscape if they have been screened by SkySail, verify they are commercialized, and have product-market fit. Photo: SkySail Advisors

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 19:40

  • Shooting Erupts At Popular Mexican Beach Resort Again As Cartel Turf-War Escalates
    Shooting Erupts At Popular Mexican Beach Resort Again As Cartel Turf-War Escalates

    Tourists at a restaurant in the popular Mexican beach resort of Tulum were caught in the crossfire when a terrifying shootout interrupted their vacations. 

    According to local news Riviera Maya News, two people were killed and a third wounded at the luxurious Art Beach restaurant on Saturday night shortly after 2100 local time. Two young men were killed, and another was injured. 

    “The two murdered people were suspected drug traffickers,” La Política Online said. 

    Readers have been well aware of the uncontrolled violence that affects the Quintana Roo state, which includes Cancun, Cozumel, and Tulum. Shootings are occurring increasingly in tourist areas where some have been killed. 

    Last month, two Canadians were shot dead by an unknown gunman at a ritzy resort near Cancun. In November last year at the Hyatt Ziva Riviera hotel, south of Cancun, hundreds of tourists witnessed a shootout between rival drug gangs. The frequency of attacks comes as drug cartels try to secure turf in popular resort towns to pedal drugs to tourists. 

    As early April 2021, readers may recall, we reported “”Crisis In Paradise” – Mexican Tourist Mecca Descends Into Chaos As Cartels Wage War During Spring Break,” documented the rapid deterioration in the resort areas as cartels waged war on one another with tourists in the crossfire. 

    Here’s more of what has happened in the tropical warzone in the last year: 

    We usually don’t give out travel advice, but maybe skip out on popular Mexican beach towns for now until the chaos settles. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 19:20

  • Critical Race Theory Makes Its Way Into Mandatory Trainings At Top US Medical Schools, New Database Shows
    Critical Race Theory Makes Its Way Into Mandatory Trainings At Top US Medical Schools, New Database Shows

    By Bill Pan of The Epoch Times

    Almost all of the nation’s top 25 medical schools are incorporating ideas related to critical race theory (CRT) into mandatory training programs for students and staff, warned a watchdog website documenting leftist indoctrination in K-12 and higher education.

    Critical Race Training in Education, a project founded by Cornell University law professor William Jacobson, has recently put online a new database on America’s most prestigious medical schools. The database finds that 23 of those 25 institutions maintain some form of mandatory student training or coursework related to CRT doctrines.

    “The trainings can be targeted, such as a new requirement for a major or a department, or school-wide,” the website states, noting that the subjects of those trainings and coursework may be worded differently at individual schools, but usually use terms including “anti-racism,” “cultural competency,” “equity,” “implicit bias,” “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)” and critical race theory.

    The database also observes that 17 schools have mandatory CRT training for employees. For example, Cornell’s Weill Medical College requires all faculty and staff to complete “anti-bias training” on an annual basis while it works to “introduce additional educational content related to racism, social injustice, and social determinants of health into the medical curriculum.”

    In addition, 21 of the 25 listed institutions have offered their students materials such as books, talks, and articles by Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, two authors celebrated among proponents of CRT for their works on “anti-racism” and “white fragility.”

    Inspired by CRT, which interprets American society through the lens of a power struggle between white and non-white people, the self-styled “anti-racists” believe that racism is woven into every aspect of American life and must be identified and confronted with “anti-racist” actions. In her 2010 paper (pdf) titled “Addressing Whiteness in Nursing Education,” DiAngelo argued that the question “is not ‘Did racism take place?’ but rather, ‘In which ways did racism manifest in this specific context?’”

    “The direction of power between white people and people of color is historic, traditional, normalized, and deeply embedded in the fabric of US society,” DiAngelo wrote. “A key aspect of this emancipatory education process is to ‘raise the consciousness’ of white people about what racism is, and how it works.”

    A long-time critic of CRT and the so-called “woke” movement, Jacobson said this leads to a dangerous path for medical education.

    “The mantra of the so-called ‘anti-racism’ movement has no place in medicine. Current racial discrimination in order to remedy past racial discrimination is wrong generally, but is downright dangerous in medicine,” the professor told Fox News Digital, referencing a quote from “How To Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi.

    “When a patient presents for treatment, that person needs to be treated as an individual, not just as a member of some larger racial or ethnic group,” Jacobson added.

    Last year, the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest national organization representing physicians and medical students, pledged to dump its long-held concept of meritocracy and embrace “racial justice” and “health equity.”

    In an 86-page strategic plan, the AMA set out a three-year road map detailing how the advocacy group will use its influence to dismantle “structural and institutional racism” and advance “social and racial justice” in America’s health care system.

    Part of its plan is to “expand medical school and physician education to include equity, anti-racism, structural competency, public health and social sciences, critical race theory and historical basis of disease,” reads the document, which is loaded with CRT vocabulary.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 19:00

  • Watch: Two More Black Hawks Down In Utah
    Watch: Two More Black Hawks Down In Utah

    Two Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters belonging to the Utah National Guard crashed during a field training exercise Tuesday at Mineral Basin, just outside of the Snowbird Ski Resort, according to Salt Lake City-based KUTV News. 

    Aviation Public Affairs Officer Jared Jones said both Black Hawks were conducting a winter mountain training exercise around 0930 local time when they touched down in an approved landing zone. As the one helicopter landed, both experienced white-out conditions, and that was when the main rotor blade from one of the helicopters struck the other. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “We are grateful that no one was seriously injured thanks to the quick reaction and training of both command pilots,” said Maj. Matthew Green, commander 2nd General Support Aviation Battalion. “Right now, our top priority is taking care of both crews.”

    The landing zone was near Snowbird Ski Resort. No skiers in the area were injured at the time of the incident. 

    A video of the incident was posted on Twitter while skiers stood in disbelief hundreds of yards away. Both helicopters can be seen landing, as the downforce of their main rotor blades created enough downforce to produce white-out conditions. Then a loud bang could be heard as it appears both main rotors of the helicopters touched. It’s hard to tell which helicopter caused the accident due to white-out conditions. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Pictures of the aftermath show debris littered the ski area as both helicopters appeared damaged. 

    Here’s a video of the helicopters, on approach, moments before landing in the approved landing zone. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Maybe the Utah National Guard has some more winter survivability training to complete. Clearly, they’re not ready for war with Russia if all breaks out in Ukraine.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 18:40

  • Ivy League Parents Fearful To Speak Out Publicly As Lia Thomas Dominates Their Daughters
    Ivy League Parents Fearful To Speak Out Publicly As Lia Thomas Dominates Their Daughters

    Authored by Margaret Kelly via TheCollegeFix.com,

    Lia Thomas, the transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer who has smashed college women’s records since early December, was the high-point scorer and the only swimmer to win three individual events at the Ivy League Swimming and Diving Championship last weekend.

    Suzy Weiss, writing for Bari Weiss’s “Common Sense” Substack newsletter, reported suppressed ambivalence from the sidelines.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Thomas is “a totem in the culture wars,” Weiss wrote, embodying abstract and divisive debates about the meaning of male and female. Parents who wish to support minority rights — or simply align with the progressive elite — reached the limits of their liberalism as Thomas dominated their Ivy League daughters.

    These parents helped get their children into the most competitive colleges in the world.

    “They have opinions about everything,” Weiss wrote. “They will explain how there’s a $400 swimsuit that you can only wear once, but that might be worth it for the tenth of a second.”

    “But as history unfolds in front of their noses,” Weiss stated, “they refuse to comment.”

    One anonymous Penn dad at the competition addressed the issue directly:

    “No amount of hormone suppression will ever roll back the advantages Lia possesses because of male puberty.”

    He and his wife said their daughters have received “veiled threats” from the university to discourage them from speaking out.

    Says another Penn mother,

    “They haven’t asked our girls how they feel about any of this.”

    Other parents tried to withhold more than their names. One mother said she was pleased for Thomas — and then asked Weiss to delete the recording of their interview.

    Another Penn mom said her own daughter told her not to comment.

    “She’s worried about getting into grad school,” the mom told Weiss, “and she doesn’t want my name or hers to come up on Google attached to this.”

    After speaking to another dad, Weiss was contacted by his wife, who implored her to take his name off the record.

    “Please don’t hurt my child!” she texted.

    Parents on the sidelines fear more than the defeat of their daughters this time around — they worry about permanent setbacks for biological women.

    “The parents’ longer-run fear is that college coaches will start recruiting trans athletes, and that female athletes who have worked tirelessly in high school won’t get a fair shot,” Weiss wrote.

    “They say their daughters can’t reasonably train harder, lift more, or do anything to overcome the biological facts that make Thomas impossible for them to beat.”

    “The NCAA and Ivy League are essentially telling their daughters, they say, to set their hopes on second place.”

    Weiss wrote that she thinks that Weiss’s own parents, watching from the sidelines, must “want everyone to leave their kid alone.”

    And the parents don’t seem to bear a personal grudge against Lia, Weiss said. Most said they’d accept Thomas swimming with males or in some other, independent category.

    Another anonymous Penn father, whose daughter swims against Thomas, said he blames the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Organization, a nonprofit that regulates student athletes from North American institutions. The mom added that the organization “has done biological women, and [Lia], wrong, and they need to fix it.”

    An unnamed Princeton dad frames the issue more starkly: “Either the people supporting this are on the wrong side of history, or it’s the end of women’s swimming.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 18:20

  • Market Sentiment Has Never Been Worse And Everyone Is Hedging For A Crash
    Market Sentiment Has Never Been Worse And Everyone Is Hedging For A Crash

    Back in 2007, Jim Cramer famously screamed at Erin Burnett that the Fed “has no idea how bad it is out there… They know Nothing!” Today’s market would agree with Cramer.

    While stocks have been hammered by a relentless, furious pounding for much of 2022 which culminated today with the S&P officially entering a 10% correction from its all time highs…

    … a better look at market sentiment comes from the latest AAII bull minus bear index, which shows that trader sentiment has rarely been worse.

    The latest Morgan Stanley Prime Brokerage report (available to professional subscribers) showed just how broken bullish sentiment has become. According to the bank’s PB group, in the last week, net leverage across long/short funds had fallen to just 48%, the lowest level seen since June 2020, as hedge funds piled into shorts.

    As the bank further details, last week’s selling “was largely concentrated within N. America, though HFs did also skew towards  selling EU equities as well. Most of the selling on Thursday came on the short side, with short additions in N. Am in line with some of the largest levels we have seen YTD.”

    But besides just aggressive shorting of stocks – one which would need just one word of hope from the Fed to spark a massive squeeze – increasingly bearish traders have been expressing their outlook by taking out record downside hedges, which as Bloomberg notes today, “may be one reason the worst has so far been avoided.”

    As we first noted several weeks ago, when we showed the record amount of puts being purchased which according to Goldman have recently averaged to roughly $1 trillion per day…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    … Bloomberg today picks up on this, noting that traders have been steadily boosting bets against equities, “shaking off a reluctance to short tracing to last year’s meme stock upheaval.” As a result, not only have bearish bets on the SPY ETF surged, but put open interest on bond-focused products has also risen to historic levels. Meanwhile, professional managers have been hedging their credit exposures.

    It is this unprecedented downside protection that has allowed markets to remain relatively resilient overnight, shaking off a decline in futures that at one point reached nearly 3% on the Nasdaq 100 Index.

    “When markets are at record highs, there’s a lot of room for downside movement,” Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab, said by phone. “I would think that might diminish the impact of this.”

    So just how pervasive is bearish sentiment? According to Bloomberg data, short interest as a percentage of SPY float has doubled since the start of the year, last week reaching the highest since December 2020, according to data from IHS Markit Ltd. More than 6% of the fund is now out on loan.

    But while some are shorting the SPY, others are just buying puts, with SPY open interest last week climbed to a two-month high, and a Cboe put-to-call ratio that tracks the volume of options tied to everything from single stocks to indexes, including the S&P 500 and the VIX fear gauge, has also spiked. Among Russia-centric securities, open interest for bearish put contracts on the $1.4 billion VanEck Russia ETF (RSX) — which primarily tracks Russian energy and mining stocks — surged to the highest level since April 2018 last week.

    It is this “frantic hedging” that is helping buffer any decline, said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co, preventing the market from flushing to the downside, a process which many way will be necessary for risk sentiment to truly bottom.

    “It’s very similar to when a stock with very high short-interest gets some bad news. The decline tends to be much more orderly as those shorts starting taking profits and cover their positions,” he said.

    Meanwhile, as we first pointed out two weeks ago, a similar story has been playing out in the corporate-bond space as the Fed ramped up rhetoric. Put open interest for both the largest High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) and its Investment Grade peer (LQD) has surged to near records.

    “HYG and LQD have been a clear focus with more consistent hedging in those products than we have ever seen,” said Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna.

    A similar dynamic was observed by Goldman’s Prime Broker which found that shorts on credit ETFs have increased by 29% this year, outpacing the overall short-book for U.S. exchange-traded funds, which has risen by 5% in the same stretch. Overall, hedge funds tracked by the bank had at the start of February boosted short positions in every week but one since early November.

    Even before the Ukraine shock, Investors were already hedging because of the Fed’s hawkish tilt, said Schwab’s Frederick. And while the case can be made the bearish buildups are a view on the market continuing to sell off, traders buy protection not because they want to have the chance to use it but because they’re hoping not to. It also help the market sell off in a much more orderly manner. 

    “It’s like an insurance policy. When you buy an insurance policy on a car, it’s not because you hope you crash — it’s because you know it might happen,” he said.

    Still, as Bloomberg notes, while it’s possible that all of the protective stockpiles could make downside moves less violent, “it could also be the case that the market is still misunderstanding what the macro implications of a Ukraine conflict are”, according to Peter Chatwell, head of multi-asset strategy at Mizuho International.

    Sanctions on Russia could push up inflation “and therefore ratchet up the central bank hawkishness even further. As such, rates products are unlikely to perform as a safe haven,” he said. “And when the rates products fail to act as a hedge, that will in turn generate more selling of risk assets.”

    Which is true, unless of course, commodities surge so high they spark a global recession, similar to what we saw in the summer of 2008. In that case all those puts will certainly come in handy. They will also come in very handy if Morgan Stanley is right, and we are now reliving the late 2018 playbook, which will send the S&P tumbling down to 3,800 by the end of March…

    … a collapse which most agree will finally trigger the Fed put because while Biden may be terrified about inflation, just wait until he finds out what a market crash will do to his approval ratings.

    And as investors are ramping up their bets for a market apocalypse, the bulls are quietly going extinct. While stocks are not dropping nearly as fast as they would if downside hedges weren’t in place, they are still falling, and as noted above, the S&P 500 is now more than 10% from its record high at the start of the year, signaling a technical correction. The drop has also pushed the index below its 200-day moving average in recent days, a bearish omen suggesting it could slide toward a much lower floor.

    The S&P 500 is “living on the edge of support” around the 4,300 level, according to Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler. A breach below that “would validate a lower low following a lower high, checking the classification box for a downtrend and forcing us to reevaluate our bull market thesis,” he wrote. Though he’s sticking with his 5,150 year-end price target for now, he says “the technical backdrop is deteriorating quickly along with our confidence in our year-end price objective.”

    Among the bulls who conviction is fading by the day, and who say the price action itself convinces them the market is in trouble, is Evercore ISI technical strategist Richard Ross who said that his work continues to suggest the S&P 500 is headed toward a deep drop. He predicts a break below 4,200 could take the index to 3,600 – roughly in line with Morgan Stanley’s forecast –  a decline of roughly 16% from where it closed Tuesday.

    “While ephemeral relief rallies will occur as the conflict ebbs and flows, the seeds of the current decline were planted by policy and the pandemic long before troops massed on the border,” he wrote in a note. He said he urged clients to fight the temptation to buy brief rallies given “the ominous specter of the highest inflation in 40 years and more hikes than meetings to combat said inflation.”

    Another among the reformer bears is Bloomberg Intelligence’s Gina Martin Adams, who noted that the S&P 500 is testing critical support levels that, if broken, suggest another 10% correction is ahead. The key level to watch is 4,280, and “even though the pattern may only emerge if the S&P 500 closes below that key support, a combination of weakening internals, rising interest rates, slowing growth and inflation pressure may result in a head-and-shoulders topping formation for the index,” she wrote in a note titled “Commodities May Be the Only Thing Keeping S&P 500 Above Water.”

    Finally, chartist Katie Stockton said stock indexes saw short-term momentum turn negative last week following a brief rally off January’s lows. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 are “at a proving ground” as they approach those January lows once again.

    “There are no signs of downside exhaustion yet, suggesting these levels will be tested in the days ahead,” she wrote, and she is right: as long as the market continues to drift lower and fails to flush, dragging the once invincible “market generals” along with it, stocks will not bottom, a sentiment encapsulated by the old Baron Rothschild maxim: “buy when there is blood on the streets.”

    We are not there just yet, but as literal blood starts flowing in the streets, not even the record put overhang will prevent what’s coming.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/22/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest