• Everything You Need To Know About The Lab Leak (But Were Not Allowed To Ask)
  Everything You Need To Know About The Lab Leak (But Were Not Allowed To Ask)

  Authored by Pat Fidopiastis via The Brownstone Institute,

  Between 2014 and 2019, US tax dollars were funneled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance. Given that US scientists have far more virology expertise than the Chinese, this begs an obvious question: what type of research were US tax dollars paying for in Wuhan, China? Dr. Fauci’s surprising statement in an interview might provide the short answer to this question: “You don’t want to go to Hoboken, NJ or Fairfax, VA to be studying the bat-human interface that might lead to an outbreak, so you go to China.” 

  

  Given what we’ve endured for the past three years, Fauci’s “so you go to China” comment suggests that he hadn’t considered the global implications of a highly transmissible coronavirus leaking from a Chinese lab plagued by serious safety issues. 

  Unwilling to admit that he, EcoHealth Alliance, and their Chinese collaborators, are suspects in one of the largest crimes against humanity, Fauci instead opted to conspire with his boss, Francis Collins, to declare “lab leak” a “destructive conspiracy” that must be “put down.” Sadly, it’s clear that from the beginning, these two distinguished scientists made up their minds about virus origin without evidence from both sides of the debate. 

  Even worse, renowned scientists that rely on Fauci for their research funding, fearful of sanctions being placed on their life’s work, rallied around the “anti-lab leak” stance. One of the premier scientific journals, Science, whose political bias has become very apparent, attempted to provide legitimacy to Fauci’s position by publishing a paper by authors that claimed “dispositive evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from an animal at the Wuhan market. This paper allegedly “crushed” the lab-leak hypothesis, despite leaving much room for debate. 

  The good news is that Big Tech, scientific journals, and most media sources were forced to stop censoring countervailing evidence as it reached critical mass and began spilling over into the public domain. Far from being a “conspiracy,” there is a lot of evidence that strongly suggests SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus that spread from a Wuhan virology lab. Before getting into the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered and leaked from a lab, let’s start a debate around the “dispositive evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 is natural and emerged from the Wuhan market. 

  The “market origin hypothesis” is based on four debatable premises  

  The entirety of the “dispositive evidence” for market origin cited by Dr. Fauci and others can be summed up as follows: 1) “Early” cases allegedly lived near the market, 2) “early” SARS-CoV-2 lineages were allegedly associated with the market, 3) wild animals susceptible to COVID-19 were sold at the market, and 4) positive SARS-CoV-2 samples were found in the environment around the market and were allegedly “linked to human cases.” For many reasons, some of which are discussed here, none of this evidence is anywhere near “dispositive.” This is why reviewers forced the authors to remove the phrase “dispositive evidence” as a requirement for publication.   

  Did “early cases” really live near the market?

  The Science paper relied on a joint World Health Organization (WHO)-China report to define “early cases” as those that occurred in December 2019. However, the joint WHO-China report also states: “Based on molecular sequence data, the results suggested that the outbreak may have started sometime in the months before the middle of December 2019.” 

  This statement seems more in line with other evidence that the pandemic started earlier than December 2019. Urgent communications from the highest levels of the Chinese government circulating at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November 2019 reported a “complex and grave situation” at the lab. Was this “grave situation” the start of a SARS-CoV-2 “lab leak” unfolding in real -time, weeks before the rest of the world was made aware of the imminent pandemic? 

  There were also multiple reports from Chinese media and even the venerable Lancet that documented initial cases started before December 2019, as well as lab-based evidence of international spread as early as November 2019. Furthermore, shouldn’t we be alarmed that a group led by Chinese military scientists applied for a COVID-19 vaccine patent in February 2020? 

  If the first COVID-19 cases really were in December 2019, this means that inexperienced Chinese military researchers somehow managed to produce a COVID-19 vaccine based on traditional, less efficient methodology, in a little over a month. For comparison, it took vaccine giant Pfizer about 9 months to produce their vaccine based on more efficient mRNA methodology. Accurately pinpointing the true start date of the pandemic would allow us to assess how meaningful the “early cases” data are. If countervailing evidence is correct and cases that preceded December 2019 were missed or ignored, then a dataset beginning in December would most likely lead to flawed conclusions about pandemic origin.

  Were “early virus lineages” really associated with the market?

  In perhaps the clearest evidence of a crime scene coverup, Chinese scientists quietly removed from public databases at least 13 genome sequences representing the earliest SARS-CoV-2 strains. There is no legitimate reason for doing that. Fortunately, the files had been backed up before they were removed, allowing Dr. Jesse Bloom to be the first to retrieve them from Google Cloud and analyze them. 

  This is proof that the Science paper many claimed to have “crushed” the lab leak was unlikely to be fully representative of the viruses spreading at the start of the pandemic. Adding to the intrigue, one of the authors of the Science paper attempted to intimidate Dr. Bloom so he would not publish his findings. If the evidence for a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 is so “dispositive,” why would anyone feel the need to censor an expert like Dr. Bloom? 

  Animals susceptible to COVID-19 were sold at the market but none tested positive.

  Some of the animals trafficked at the market had been experimentally infected with SARS-CoV-2 in labs or deemed theoretically susceptible based on the presence of compatible receptors. However, the WHO-China Report revealed that none of the 457 samples taken from 188 animals at the market tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. A criticism of these negative results is that the market was “under-sampled.” The SARS-CoV-1 pandemic of 2003-2004 spread around the world causing about 8,000 documented infections, resulting in about 800 deaths. Chinese scientists mobilized immediately and within a few months discovered an identical virus that naturally occurs in palm civet cats that were sold in Chinese markets.  

  Yet here we are, three years later, thousands of additional animals have been sampled, millions of genomic sequences analyzed, and nothing close to SARS-CoV-2 has yet to be detected in nature. Why is that?

  Positive environmental samples found at the market were taken too late to infer virus origin

  SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples were detected at the market. However, the samples were taken between January and March 2020. By January, the virus had likely been spreading in Wuhan for more than a month, and had already spread internationally, so how much can we deduce from these samples taken from the heavily trafficked market, weeks after the pandemic started? In fact, those responsible for collecting the samples concluded, “Tthe market might have acted as an amplifier due to the high number of visitors every day.”

  In other words, infected people most likely entered the crowded market and spread the virus. It’s notable that many of the positive samples came from vendor stalls in which “aquatic products,” seafood, and vegetables were sold. None of these products could be a natural reservoir for SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the WHO-China report concludes that many of the environmental samples reflect “contamination from cases” (i.e., infected people) given how widely distributed the virus was by then. 

  The following is a review of some of the lab-based and circumstantial evidence supporting “lab leak.” Hopefully, this analysis will lay the foundation for honest, thoughtful discussion, leading to a true understanding of the origin of SARS-CoV-2. If we can’t have honesty, how will we ever minimize the chances of this happening again?

  Early strains of SARS-CoV-2 were unnaturally human adapted

  The “natural origin” hypothesis contends that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over into humans from an animal in December 2019. A virus that so recently jumped to humans from an animal should not bind to human cells with higher affinity than the animal host it came from. However, at the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky’s lab made the startling discovery that the earliest known strains of SARS-CoV-2 were unnaturally human-adapted. 

  In fact, these strains showed highest affinity for human cell receptors over receptors from bats, pangolins, and about eleven other animals known to harbor coronaviruses. Dr. Petrovsky submitted this important research to a top journal, Nature, in August 2020. In an egregious example of censorship, Nature delayed publishing the paper until June 2021, corresponding to when Dr. Fauci finally admitted that a lab leak could have started the pandemic.

  There was financial motivation and established methodology for creating pandemic viruses

  A rejected 2018 grant proposal submitted to DARPA that includes EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) collaborators gives us enough information to figure out the motivation and methodology that likely created SARS-CoV-2. The primary goal of the grant was to create a “complete inventory” of SARS-like coronaviruses taken from several bat caves in China. 

  What follows is a streamlined version of the workflow proposed by the researchers: 1) add the spike proteins from these novel bat coronaviruses to a previously characterized SARS-like bat coronavirus core, and insert genetic modifications to spike proteins for enhanced infectivity if necessary, 2) infect “humanized” mice with these lab-made viruses, 3) flag chimeric viruses capable of infecting the mice as potential pandemic strains, and 4) prepare “spike” protein vaccines from these potential pandemic strains and use them to “immunize” bats in caves (Fig. 1). 

  

  Fig. 1. Risky research methodology used by EcoHealth Alliance, WIV, and their collaborators to attempt to create bat vaccines. There’s no way of knowing in advance the pandemic potential of unnatural, chimeric SARS-like viruses created in this workflow.

  The authors of the DARPA proposal discuss the importance of spike protein cleavage by human enzymes such as furin in the ability of coronaviruses to spread optimally and become pandemic strains. Notably, they proposed to insert “human-specific cleavage sites” (e.g., furin cleavage site, FCS) in spike proteins that lack the functional cleavage sites and then “evaluate growth potential” of the modified viruses in human cells. 

  They further proposed to modify cleavage sites in highly abundant, low-risk SARS-like viruses taken from Chinese bat caves. These studies are precisely the type of work that could accidentally or intentionally create pandemic viruses. Although the proposal states that chimeric virus work would be done at the University of North Carolina, by Fauci’s own admission, “I can’t guarantee everything that’s going on in the Wuhan lab, we can’t do that.”  Furthermore, whenever a proposal this large (i.e., a $14 million request) is submitted, a great deal of the work will have already been done in advance to provide the “proof of concept” needed to sway reviewers. 

  The unique furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 is evidence of genetic engineering 

  Many natural coronaviruses contain an FCS, so why is an FCS in SARS-CoV-2 so suspicious? The answer is that the genomes of thousands of coronaviruses from hundreds of different animals have been sequenced, and it’s clear that only distant relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have an FCS (see Fig 1A, Table 1). 

  The closest known sibling of SARS-CoV-2, a bat coronavirus named RaTG13, at best weakly infects human cells and lacks an FCS. SARS-CoV is another sibling of SARS-CoV-2, and like all the other known siblings, also lacks an FCS. Without an FCS, SARS-CoV-1 spread around the world in 2003-2004 but fizzled out after infecting about 8,000 people. A comparison of the short stretch of amino acids in the spike protein clearly reveals the missing FCS in these SARS-CoV-2 siblings (Fig. 2). 

  

  Fig. 2. Comparison of partial spike protein amino acids showing the FCS of SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., “PRRAR”), and the lack of FCS in two of its siblings. Different letters represent unique amino acids. Identical amino acids in all three viruses are highlighted in yellow; dashed lines indicate the missing FCS. 

  The unique genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site is evidence of genetic engineering

  In coronaviruses, the blueprint for assembling proteins such as the surface spikes needed for infection lies in their RNA genome. The specific genomic sequence that encodes the short, all-important FCS within the SARS-CoV-2 spike is: CCU CGG CGG GCA CGU. Each three-letter bit of code (i.e., codon) dictates the specific amino acid to be used in building the FCS. Thus, CCU encodes “P” (for proline), CGG encodes “R” (for arginine), GCA encodes “A” (for alanine), and CGU also encodes “R.” 

  As you can see, there is redundancy in the genetic code (e.g., there are six different codons that a virus can use to encode arginine). The odd feature of the SARS-CoV-2 FCS is the double CGG codons. In fact, CGG is one of the rarest codons in human coronaviruses, yet there just so happens to be two right next to each other in the FCS, one of the most important sequences in the entire 29,903 “letters” making up the SARS-CoV-2 genome. 

  In fact, these are the only two CGG codons out of the 3,822 “letters” encoding the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and they are the only instance of a CGG-CGG doublet in any of the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2. Notably, an arginine-rich FCS enhances the ability of coronaviruses to infect cells. At this point, it should not surprise anyone that CGG codons are the preferred code for genetic engineers who wish to produce an arginine-containing protein in human cells. It’s hard to deny that the CGG-CGG in the SARS-CoV-2 FCS is “smoking gun”-level evidence of genetic tampering.  

  Suspicious cut sites in the SARS-CoV-2 genome are evidence of genetic engineering

  One method to create chimeric viruses utilizes specialized genome-cutting enzymes called “Endonucleases.” Endonucleases can be used to cut virus genomes in specific places, then the pieces can be strategically recombined to create chimeric viruses. Cut sites are randomly distributed in the genomes of natural viruses, but they can be precisely inserted or removed by scientists to make chimeric viruses in a laboratory. BsmBI and BsaI are two examples of endonucleases that co-authors of the DARPA grant used in previous work to make chimeric coronaviruses. 

  When present, the distribution of BsmBI and BsaI cut sites in viruses isolated from nature (e.g., SARS-CoV-1) are randomly distributed throughout the genome. Meanwhile, the distribution of cut sites in SARS-CoV-2 appear to be non-random and suggest genetic manipulation in a laboratory (Fig. 3). Curiously, a previous study involving EcoHealth Alliance described the insertion of two BsaI cut sites in a bat coronavirus called “WIV1” (i.e., Wuhan Institute of Virology 1), allowing scientists to make changes to the spike protein (see S9 Fig. Spike substitution strategy). 

  Two BsaI cut sites can be found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome (Fig. 3) in the same location as BsaI cut sites engineered into WIV1 back in 2017. The astronomical odds of this being coincidence cannot be overstated. According to the authors, “BsaI or BsmBI sites were introduced into the [spike]. Then any spike could be substituted into the genome of [lab engineered WIV1] through this strategy.” The same strategy might have been used in the construction of what would become the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

  

  Fig. 3. Distribution of BsmBI and BsaI cut sites in the genomes of the two pandemic SARS viruses. SARS-CoV-1 is a natural virus with cut sites that are randomly distributed, while distribution of cut sites in the SARS-CoV-2 genome appear to be non-random. The black bar represents the location of the spike gene; the FCS region is highlighted in red. BsaI can be used to cut out and replace most of the SARS-CoV-2 spike, including FCS, to alter virus infectivity.

  Strong circumstantial evidence supports the lab- leak hypothesis

  Three years into the current pandemic, with thousands of animals sampled and millions of genome sequences analyzed, nothing close to SARS-CoV-2 has been found in nature. In stark contrast to 2003-2004, China’s early response to COVID-19 was “disappearing” scientists and journalists, obfuscation, and deflecting blame for starting the pandemic away from themselves onto everything from the US Army to imported frozen fish. This is exactly the type of behavior you might expect from a guilty party.

  No one (except maybe the dishonest Chinese government) has ever denied that the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic is Wuhan, China. But what are the odds that such an explosive outbreak originated at the Wuhan market? This is just one market out of about 40,000 markets scattered around China, and it happens to be a few miles away from a lab that in 2017 became the first high-security virology lab on the Chinese mainland. 

  Here, a counterargument is that SARS-CoV-1 was a natural spillover from a market, so there’s precedence. But even the far less transmissible SARS-CoV-1, not long after being brought into the lab for study, eventually “leaked” with fatal consequences. 

  The origin of SARS-CoV-2 is the most important question of the pandemic, with implications that extend exponentially beyond scoring political points. At the start of the pandemic, even the journal Nature was sounding the alarm about the increasing role China’s military has been playing in secretive biomedical research in China. Yet, three years later all we have is obfuscation from China and Fauci and nothing even close to a natural ancestor of SARS-CoV-2. Throughout the pandemic, people parroted empty phrases like “Follow the science” without really following the science.

  So, let’s do that, let’s “Follow the science” (and the logic), because the genetic and circumstantial evidence for lab leak is impossible for any reasonable person to deny. 

  * * *

  Pat Fidopiastis is a Professor of Microbiology at California Polytechnic State University,

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/05/2023 – 00:00

• Australia Becomes 1st Country To Legalize Therapeutic Use Of MDMA & Psilocybin
  Australia Becomes 1st Country To Legalize Therapeutic Use Of MDMA & Psilocybin

  Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

  After decades of criminalization, Australia’s government said Friday that it will legalize the prescription of MDMA and psilocybin for the treatment of two medical conditions, a historic move hailed by researchers who have studied the therapeutic possibilities of the drugs.

  Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said in a statement that starting July 1, psychiatrists may prescribe MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine), commonly called “Molly” or “ecstasy” by recreational users, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psilocybin—the psychedelic prodrug compound in “magic” mushrooms—for treatment-resistant depression.

  

  “These are the only conditions where there is currently sufficient evidence for potential benefits in certain patients,” TGA said, adding that the drugs must be taken “in a controlled medical setting.”

  Advocates of MDMA and psilocybin are hopeful that one day doctors could prescribe them to treat a range of conditions, from alcoholism and eating disorders to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  David Caldicott, a clinical senior lecturer in emergency medicine at Australian National University, toldThe Guardian that Friday’s surprise announcement is a “very welcome step away from what has been decades of demonization.”

  Caldicott said it is now “abundantly clear” that both MDMA and psilocybin “can have dramatic effects” on hard-to-treat mental health problems, and that “in addition to a clear and evolving therapeutic benefit, [legalization] also offers the chance to catch up on the decades of lost opportunity [of] delving into the inner workings of the human mind, abandoned for so long as part of an ill-conceived, ideological ‘war on drugs.'”

  MDMA—which has been criminalized in Australia since 1987—was first patented by German drugmaker Merck in the early 1910s. After World War II the United States military explored possibilities for weaponizing MDMA as a truth serum as part of the MK-ULTRA mind control experiments aimed at creating real-life Manchurian candidates. A crossover from clinical usage in marriage and other therapies in the 1970s and ’80s to recreational consumption—especially in the disco and burgeoning rave scenes—in the latter decade sparked a conservative backlash in the form of emergency bans in countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

  The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifies MDMA and psilocybin as Schedule I substances, meaning they have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

  From 1 July this year, medicines containing the psychedelic substances psilocybin and MDMA can be prescribed by specifically authorised psychiatrists for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression.

  Read more: https://t.co/rJI9dRs3M7 pic.twitter.com/A8fTlWyX0w

  — TGA Australia (@TGAgovau) February 3, 2023

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  Patients who’ve tried MDMA therapy and those who treat them say otherwise. A study published last year by John Hopkins Health found that in a carefully controlled setting, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy held promise for “significant and durable improvements in depression.”

  The California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)—the world’s premier organization for psychedelic advocacy and research—interviewed Colorado massage therapist Rachael Kaplan about her MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD:

  For the majority of my life I prayed to die and fought suicidal urges as I struggled with complex PTSD. This PTSD was born out of chronic severe childhood abuse. Since then, my life has been a journey of searching for healing. I started going to therapy 21 years ago, and since then I have tried every healing modality that I could think of, such as bodywork, energy work, medications, residential treatment, and more. Many of these modalities were beneficial but none of them significantly reduced my trauma symptoms. I was still terrified most of the time…

  In my first MDMA-assisted psychotherapy session I was surprised that the MDMA helped me see the world as it was, instead of seeing it through my lens of terror. I thought that the MDMA would alter my perception of reality, but instead, it helped me see… more clearly… The MDMA session was the first time that I was able to stay present, explore, and process what had happened to me. This changed everything… There are no words for the gratitude that I feel.

  Jon Lubecky, an American Iraq War combat veteran who tried to kill himself five times, told NBC‘s “Today” in 2021 that MDMA therapy—also with MAPS—enabled him “to talk about things I had never brought up before to anyone.”

  “And it was OK. My body did not betray me. I didn’t get panic attacks. I didn’t shut down emotionally or just become so overemotional I couldn’t deal with anything,” he recounted.

  “This treatment is the reason my son has a father instead of a folded flag,” Lubecky said in a message to other veterans afflicted with PTSD. “I want all of you to be around in 2023 when this is [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]-approved. I know what your suffering is like. You can make it.”

  Founder and Executive Director of @MAPSnews, @RickDoblin Ph.D., discusses a new #psychedelic study that supports MDMA-assisted therapy as a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder (#PTSD) on @FoxBusiness. https://t.co/im1QEz3vdR

  — Psychedelic Science (@PsychedelicSci) February 2, 2023

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  MAPS’ latest clinical research on MDMA—which is aimed at winning FDA approval—is currently in phase three trials. The Biden administration said last year that it “anticipates” MDMA and psilocybin would be approved by the FDA by 2024 and is “exploring the prospect of establishing a federal task force to monitor” therapeutic possibilities of both drugs.

  Like MDMA, psilocybin—which occurs naturally in hundreds of fungal species and has been used by humans for medicinal, spiritual, and recreational purposes for millennia—remains illegal at the federal level in the U.S., although several states and municipalities have legalized or decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms, or have moved to do so.

  There have also been bipartisan congressional efforts to allow patients access to both drugs. Legislation introduced last year by U.S. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) would permit therapeutic use of certain Schedule I drugs for terminally ill patients. Meanwhile, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) passed amendments to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act providing more funding for psychedelic research and making it easier for veterans and active-duty troops suffering from PTSD to try drug-based treatments.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 23:30

• Theater Of The Absurd In J6 Courtrooms
  Theater Of The Absurd In J6 Courtrooms

  Authored by Julie Kelly via AmGreatness.com,

  As judges hand down one absurd sentence after another, one might be inclined to laugh at the absurdity of it all except, of course, it’s not funny…

  

  The Department of Justice carefully crafted the dramatic moment in court.

  A federal prosecutor handed an enclosed paper bag to an FBI agent responsible for investigating members of the Proud Boys, now on trial for seditious conspiracy related to their participation in the events of January 6. The bag contained “evidence of the unlawful entry of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and evidence of the disruption to the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” FBI Special Agent Elizabeth D’Angelo told assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Moore on Wednesday.

  D’Angelo cautiously pulled the evidence out of the bag to present to the jury.

  Spectators in D.C. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly’s courtroom were on the edge of their seats. What would the mystery bag reveal?

  Would it disclose the group’s intricate but failed plot to overthrow the government? A detailed list of weapons the “seditionists” planned to use in service of their dastardly deed? Names of targeted officials?

  A nervous hush fell over the room; sweat beads formed on furrowed brows. Finally, the big moment arrived.

  It was—a set of challenge coins.

  Moore: Can you give a brief description of what they are?

  D’Angelo: They are challenge coins. This one is black and gold—and this package contains four black and gold colored challenge coins.

  Moore: Are these the same coins that were seized from Zachary Rehl’s home?

  D’Angelo: Yes.

  What?

  Like many organizations, the Proud Boys produce coins that depict the group’s motto and attitude. When multiple armed FBI agents raided Rehl’s Philadelphia residence in March 2021, terrorizing his pregnant wife and pillaging his home, investigators found not one but several such coins.

  Prosecutors, however, didn’t explain how Rehl and his co-defendants—also found in possession of incriminating challenge coins during similar SWAT raids—deployed the dangerous faux currency that day. (One version included an image of a Pokemon character, apparently an insurrectionist himself.)

  Did the Proud Boys hurl the trinkets at officers clad in full riot gear outside the Capitol? Did they open locked doors with the coins? Did they use the coins to bribe “election deniers” in Congress?

  After all, no weapons were recovered at Rehl’s house. So what gives?

  No one knows. Judge Kelly, a Trump appointee, last month insisted the coins were admissible evidence to show a “relationship” among the defendants. 

  Welcome to the judicial funhouse formally known as the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse—a maze of distortions created by government clowns and ghouls intended to frighten those trapped within its confines while amusing others behind the scenes. Wednesday’s embarrassing spectacle is only a tiny glimpse into the charade unfolding on a daily basis in the heart of the nation’s capital.

  Consider just a few recent events. Last week, relatives of the late Brian Sicknick were allowed to read “victim impact” statements in the sentencing of Julian Khater, the man accused of spraying Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6. Although Sicknick did not die as a result of the spray—the coroner concluded he died of two strokes caused by a blood clot—Sicknick’s immediate family members continue to blame Khater for Sicknick’s passing, disproven claims nonetheless given the court’s imprimatur.

  Sicknick’s former girlfriend was allowed to participate in the stunt, even though she admitted the couple was on a “break” months before the Capitol protest. Dozens of Capitol Police officers also attended the hearing. The theatrics worked. Judge Thomas Hogan ordered Khater to serve 80 months in prison.

  A D.C. jury on January 23 returned all guilty verdicts in the trial of Richard Barnett, the man photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office that afternoon. It took jurors less than two hours to convict Barnett on eight counts including obstruction and civil disorder. He faces decades in prison.

  The same day, four men were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other serious crimes tied to January 6. Alleged members of the Oath Keepers entered the Capitol an hour after Congress had evacuated the building, carried no weapons, stayed for less than 15 minutes, and vandalized nothing inside—a humiliating failure to overthrow democracy.

  Nonetheless, Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia handling every criminal case, bragged about his office’s victory. 

  “For the second time in recent months, a jury has found that a group of Americans entered into a seditious conspiracy against the United States,” Graves boasted.

  “The goal of this conspiracy was to prevent the execution of our laws that govern the peaceful transfer of power—striking at the very heart of our democracy. We are grateful to the thoughtful, deliberative work of this jury who gave weeks of their lives to carefully consider and deliver justice in this case and in so doing reaffirmed our democratic principles.” 

  (A week later, Graves charged a California doctor who attempted to save Ashli Babbitt’s life with four misdemeanors including “parading” in the Capitol.)

  The jury over which Graves swooned deliberated less than two days in a case comparable to treason.

  “You’re entitled to your political views but not to an insurrection. You were an insurrectionist.”

  So said Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly during the February 1 sentencing hearing for Daniel Caldwell, a Marine veteran who pleaded guilty to spraying police officers on January 6. Caldwell spent 19 months in pretrial detention before accepting the government’s plea offer last September. Through tears, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Caldwell begged Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, for mercy.

  She gave none.

  Explaining how her harsh sentence must “fortify against the revolutionary fervor that you and others felt on January 6 and may still feel today,” Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Caldwell to 68 months in jail.

  “Insurrection is not and cannot ever be warranted,” she lectured a man neither charged with nor convicted of insurrection.

  But perhaps no one better represents the warped imagination of the prosecutors and judges overseeing January 6 cases better than Tanya Chutkan. The Obama appointee is known for handing down the stiffest punishment against Trump supporters, ordering nonviolent protesters accused of low level offenses to serve time in jail even when the government recommends none. And she’s on a roll.

  Clearly agitated that Russell Alford, an Alabama man charged with the four most common misdemeanors in January 6 cases, chose to go to trial instead of accept the government’s plea offer, Chutkan scolded Alford for his 11-minute peaceful jaunt through the Capitol. “You may have not been breaking any glass, but make no mistake, that wouldn’t have been a mob without you,” Chutkan told Alford, convicted on all four counts last October after the jury spent only a few hours considering his fate. “You helped terrorize the real Patriots trying to fulfill their duty.”

  Insisting she was not penalizing Alford for exercising his constitutional right to demand a jury trial—the first jury trial in Chutkan’s courtroom since every other January 6 defendant, clearly aware of her reputation, has accepted plea deals—Chutkan commenced to do so, commenting on the number of lawyers on both sides involved in the trial and the jurors’ time. “The same system you are railing against worked.”

  While acknowledging Alford has no criminal record, Chutkan explained her ruling must act as “general deterrence” to warn others that the punishment for future insurrections will be “certain, swift, and serious.”

  She then sentenced Alford to 12 months in prison, one month less than the Justice Department suggested. (Prosecutors asked for 13 months and accused Alford of spreading “disinformation” about the killing of Ashli Babbitt.) Her sentence is the longest imposed yet for a Trump supporter found guilty of 4 misdemeanors.

  One might be inclined to laugh at the absurdity of it all except, of course, it’s not funny. Lives are being systematically destroyed to the obvious pleasure and gratification of taxpayer-paid lawyers and judges, who are the only ones smiling. Unfortunately for many innocent Americans, this theater of the absurd appears for now to be on an unlimited run.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 23:00

• The Chinese 'Spy Balloon' Story As Manufactured Crisis: An Alternative Reading
  The Chinese ‘Spy Balloon’ Story As Manufactured Crisis: An Alternative Reading

  Previous constant headlines of the Ukraine-Russia war were put on pause Friday into Saturday as the American public’s attention and discourse got temporarily consumed by the bizarre Chinese ‘spy balloon’ saga, which grew more dramatic by the hour until it was shot down by the Pentagon over the Atlantic Ocean.

  But few are currently asking the necessary deeper questions related to the timing. Given the last major balloon crisis to take over 24/7 network news coverage ended up being a complete hoax (remember the “balloon boy” stunt of 2009 which had the world breathless and on edge for a full news cycle?), the current context to the Chinese balloon story and the question of cui bono is worth a deeper dive…

  

  Entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand, who as a Westerner has spent many years living in China and frequently attempts to correct the often misleading analysis of mainstream press reports, offers an ‘alternative view’ of what’s fast unfolding below [emphasis ZH’s)…

  * * *

  “I took a bit of time to dissect the “spy balloon” story – both how it is portrayed in the US and China’s response,” Bertrand begins a lengthy thread. As you’ll see, the more you think about it, the more stunned you get at the sheer absurdity of the whole thing.”

  I took a bit of time to dissect the “spy balloon” story – both how it is portrayed in the US and China’s response.

  As you’ll see, the more you think about it, the more stunned you get at the sheer absurdity of the whole thing.

  A small 🧵

  — Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) February 4, 2023

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  First, the US story.

  China sent a “spy balloon” over highly strategic US sites. It chose to spy on these sites with a big visible balloon (reported as being “as big as multiple school buses”), that anyone can see with the naked eye from the ground, to “demonstrate it had the capability”, despite having a plethora of other more discreet ways to spy like satellites or stealth drones.

  Unclear that anyone doubted China had mastered the technology of *check notes* hot air balloons and why it therefore needed to demonstrate this capability… China chose to do so on the eve of Secretary of States Blinken’s visit to China, where he was invited, and hours after signaling Blinken would also be meeting with Xi during his visit, a high-level meeting not granted to any US Secretary of States in years.

  The story therefore being that China chose to disrupt a meeting with its own president and to sabotage its own efforts at détente in the US-China conflict… The Pentagon said it had been “tracking the balloon for quite some time” and that it wasn’t the first time such an incident occurred, but this time – for unclear reasons – it chose to do a public announcement. As a result, Blinken announced he was postponing his China trip.

  Now the story from the Chinese side.

  To them this is a fluke accident, the balloon being “a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes” that “deviated far from its planned course” because of strong “Westerlies” (wind that flows west to east) and “limited self-steering capability”, the main characteristic of a balloon being of course that it can only go up or down.

  

  A piece in WaPo seems to confirm this, quoting “experts in national security and aerospace [who] said the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitude balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting.”

  (Source: washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/… )

  

  The Pentagon itself said that “the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites” and that “the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat”. 

  I.e. the Pentagon themselves say it would make zero sense for China to use a balloon like this for intelligence purposes when it has satellites. Kind of begs the question why they decided to make a big deal out of it in the first place… 

  I’ll let you decide for yourself which story makes more sense… The sheer ridiculousness of this Nth “red scare” episode is absolutely obvious to anyone with an iota of common sense. Except, sadly, common sense seems to be in critically short supply nowadays. 

  Also, as often, the real story is probably why this story became a story in the first place.

  And the important context here is of course Blinken’s visit to China, which could – one can always dream – have been a step towards some form of de-escalation in China-US rapports. It was quite easily foreseeable that a story like this one on the eve of the trip would have made it politically very difficult for Blinken to go.

  

  So a plausible hypothesis is that this whole episode is an attempt by internal US forces to prevent any US-China détente. One alternative hypothesis, much less likely, is that it’s internal Chinese forces trying to do the same thing by sending this big balloon.

  Unlikely because:

  a) China has time on its side so it gains from reduced tensions with the US and there isn’t any obvious “faction” in China who believe the contrary

  b) it’d be immensely risky for anyone in China to do something like this as it’d undoubtedly be seen as an act of high treason with grave consequences for themselves

  c) again, balloons like this particular one basically can’t be steered so… 

  To plan sending a balloon like this from China to a place over US land isn’t even doable in the first place. The last hypothesis, which I guess is also somewhat likely, is that this is a series of unfortunate events without any malice on either side.

  1) Balloon deviates from course and gets in US airspace,

  2) people see it and Pentagon feels it has to communicate about it

  3) the media, wearing their usual “China bad” hat, decide to go all-in on the scare-mongering,

  4) political opposition and China hawks jump on the bandwagon,

  5) administration feels it has no other choice than to cancel the trip and doesn’t have the political courage to say “this is just a balloon that drifted off course”.

  If Putin doesn’t do anything this month, then the biggest story of February 2023 would be a balloon.

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 4, 2023

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  Well I guess in this scenario there is in fact malice on the media’s part and that of politicians and wider members of the blob but it’s “organic malice”, so to speak, jumping at a golden opportunity to scare-monger. 

  Conclusion: however you see it, this story is absolutely shameful and a sad reflection of the insane times we live in, when rather than take the time to carefully consider facts, apply reason and common sense, we instead choose as a society to incite fear and hostility.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 22:30

• Gun Background-Checks Reveal Firearms Demand Slumped After COVID Mania 
  Gun Background-Checks Reveal Firearms Demand Slumped After COVID Mania 

  Fears over the virus pandemic and social unrest in the last several years ignited demand for guns to unprecedented levels. Back then, the FBI’s monthly background checks, part of the process to purchase a firearm, soared to new monthly highs. Now the latest background check data shows the gun-buying craze wanes, though it remains elevated. 

  According to data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), unadjusted criminal background checks slid 12% to 2.67 million in January. Compared with 2022 figures, background checks increased by 3.2% from 2.59 million. However, NICS checks were down 43% from 4.69 million (a record high) in March 2021. 

  

  For this time of year, the 2.67 million figure is the third highest January ever. The only other times the FBI ran this many background checks on people who wanted to purchase firearms for the month of January was in 2020 and 2021. 

  

  Recall NICS background check data is a proxy for gun sales because there is no national database tracking firearms purchases. The data continues to confirm the mania phase of gun buying has subsided though interest in guns is above average. 

  Gun buying might be elevated because of out-of-control crime in liberal metro areas or President Biden threatening to ban semi-automatic rifles. 

  Meanwhile, Smith & Wesson Brands, one of the country’s largest firearms manufacturers, has seen shares tumble 50% since the blowoff top in the gun mania phase in mid-2021. 

  

  Data from Ammo Prices Now shows the most popular caliber for home defense has plunged since the mania a few years ago. 

  

  So what (or who) will cause the next panic buying of firearms? Will it be Biden?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 21:30

• DeSantis Admin Revoking Liquor License From Orlando Venue For Allowing Children At 'Drag Queen Christmas'
  DeSantis Admin Revoking Liquor License From Orlando Venue For Allowing Children At ‘Drag Queen Christmas’

  Authored by Dan M. Berger via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The state of Florida is yanking the liquor license of an Orlando performance venue, saying the “Drag Queen Christmas” show it hosted in December was sexually explicit while being marketed to families and children.

  

  Advertising for the event “did not provide notice as to the sexually explicit nature of the Show’s performance or other content,” the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco said in its complaint against the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation Inc., filed Feb. 3.

  “Respondent promoted the Show using targeted, Christmas-themed promotional materials that did not provide notice as to the sexually explicit nature of the Show’s performance or other content,” the complaint said, referencing a photo of the event’s listing online included as evidence.

  “Rather than call attention to the Show’s sexually explicit content or acknowledge that it might not be appropriate for children, Respondent’s promotional material unequivocally stated “all ages welcome.”

  “Prior to the Show occurring and based on media reports about the Show at other locations, Petitioner sent a letter to Respondent notifying Respondent that ‘sexually explicit drag show performances constitute public nuisances, lewd activity and disorderly conduct when minors are in attendance’ and that, if Respondent failed to ensure that minors were prohibited from attending such performances, its license would be subject to penalties up to and including revocation.”

  Notice on Door

  The center nevertheless allowed minors to attend, the complaint states. Its only response was to post a notice on its door that said, “while we are not restricting access to anyone under 18 please be advised some may think the context is not appropriate for under 18.”

  The notice was barely visible, as it was printed in small font on a piece of paper taped to the door, the state said in the complaint.

  The complaint includes photos of children attending the event and some of the objectionable content as evidence.

  The complaint charges the arts center with six counts: allowing performers to expose themselves in a lewd or lascivious manner and simulate sexual activity in the presence of children under 16; operating a “place of lewdness”; “allowing performers to expose prosthetic genitalia and breasts in a vulgar or indecent manner in the presence of children”; knowingly selling tickets to an obscene performance to an audience including children; disorderly conduct; and maintaining a nuisance.

  In the complaint, the division’s attorney asks its director, Sterling Whisenhunt, to revoke the center’s liquor license.

  The complaint describes examples of the show’s sexually explicit content, which The Epoch Times does not include in this account.

  Efforts to reach the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation Inc. were unsuccessful. The nonprofit group has yet to respond to an email from The Epoch Times.

  “Governor (Ron) DeSantis stands to protect the innocence of children, and the governor always follows through when he says he will do something,” his spokesman, Bryan Griffin, said in an email on Feb. 3.

  Griffin had said on Dec. 27 that the Department of Business and Professional Regulation was investigating the show. The department was aware, he said, of multiple complaints about a performance of the show in Fort Lauderdale on Dec. 26.

  By contrast, Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater clearly stated for a Dec. 29 performance of the show that attendance was restricted to those 18 or older, and proof of age would be required.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 21:00

• Brazil Sinks 'Toxic' Decommissioned Aircraft Carrier In Atlantic After Far-Left President Lula Fails To Intervene 
  Brazil Sinks ‘Toxic’ Decommissioned Aircraft Carrier In Atlantic After Far-Left President Lula Fails To Intervene 

  Brazil has unleashed anger from environmental activists around the globe after the government ordered the sinking of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean, a plan carried out on Friday.

  The “planned and controlled sinking occurred late in the afternoon” about 220 miles off the Brazilian coast, in a place with an “approximate depth of 5,000 meters [16,000 feet],” Brazil’s Navy confirmed in a statement. 

  

  “Regarding the hull of the decommissioned aircraft carrier ‘Sao Paulo’ … we inform that the operation of a planned and controlled sinking was carried out late in the afternoon, February 3, in strict accordance with the plan,” the navy explained.

  Though the navy said it sunk the ship in the safest possible area, after authorities couldn’t find a port that would permanently house the huge, 60-year old carrier, environmentalists are outraged and called on recently installed Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to halt the navy plans on an emergency basis.

  The activists have described that the carrier is filled with toxic materials, including asbestos and heavy metals which will inevitably flow into the ocean water and harm marine life.

  The carrier is also said to be rusting badly, and authorities deemed it a safety risk if anchored directly off the coast, given environmental factors so close to the shoreline and human civilization.

  Some international monitors went so far as to call Brazil’s actions a “state sponsored environmental crime”…

  Intentionally sinking the toxic aircraft carrier São Paulo would equate to a state-sponsored environmental crime. https://t.co/efiH9KLVSI

  — NGO Shipbreaking Platform (@NGOShipbreaking) January 21, 2023

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  International appeals for Brazil’s far-left president to block the navy plan didn’t result in any direct intervention: 

  A day before the sinking, the Brazilian attorney general’s office filed a new appeal before the Justice Department, saying the ship was carrying 9.6 tons of asbestos, a toxic substance, as well as 644 tons of inks and “other dangerous material.”

  The Basel Action Network (BAN), an NGO, called on Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to immediately halt the “dangerous” plan.

  The president, commonly referred to as Lula, took office last month and vowed to reverse surging environmental destruction that took place under the far-right former President Jai Bolsonaro.

  Brazil’s defense ministry had argued ahead of the sinking that a prior plan to hire a Turkish company to chop up the ship for scrap metal “represented an unprecedented attempt” by Brazil to safely dispose of it through “environmentally sound recycling”.

  

  However, that earlier plan failed after Turkish authorities blocked the company from following through, given it required a tug boat to pull it through the Mediterranean Sea, and this was deemed too risky.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 20:30

• Antidepressants Linked To Rise In Superbugs—New Study Reveals
  Antidepressants Linked To Rise In Superbugs—New Study Reveals

  Authored by Emma Suttle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The term ‘superbug’ conjures images of bacteria with superpowers—able to evade the effects of the antibiotics given to destroy them. The prolific use of antibiotics is thought to be the cause, and bacteria, in a fight for their survival, have adapted—making an increasing number of antibiotics ineffective against a growing number of bacterial infections.

  

  A new study published in PNAS on Jan. 23, 2023, has shown that antidepressants, some of the most widely prescribed medications in the world, cause antibiotic resistance, giving them the potential to become dangerous superbugs.

  “Even after a few days exposure, bacteria develop drug resistance, not only against one but multiple antibiotics,” Jianhua Guo, one of the study’s authors and a professor at the University of Queensland’s Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology, told Nature. “This is both interesting and scary.”

  In the study, researchers exposed Escherichia coli or E.coli bacteria to five common antidepressants: sertraline (Zoloft), duloxetine (Cymbalta), bupropion (Wellbutrin), escitalopram (Lexapro), and agomelatine (Valdoxan), then over a two month exposure period, the team exposed the bacteria to thirteen antibiotics representing six different classes of drugs.

  Every one of the antidepressants caused the E.coli to develop antibiotic resistance, but two in particular, sertraline (Zoloft) and duloxetine (Cymbalta), had the most pronounced effects, producing the largest number of resistant bacterial cells.

  Guo’s interest in non-antibiotic drugs contributing to antibiotic resistance came in 2014 when his lab discovered that there were more antibiotic-resistant genes in domestic wastewater than in wastewater from hospitals—where they use more antibiotics.

  This led to the discovery by his team and others that antidepressants were able to kill or slow the growth of certain bacteria, which Guo says provokes “an SOS response,” triggering defense mechanisms in the bacteria that help them survive and subsequently resist antibiotic treatments.

  These findings led Gou and his team to conduct the present study to find out if antidepressants could cause bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics.

  In addition to demonstrating that antidepressants cause antibiotic resistance, the study also found that the higher the dose of antidepressants, the faster the E. coli bacteria developed resistance and the more antibiotics they could resist within the two-month study window.

  Interestingly, the bacteria in well-oxygenated environments developed resistance more quickly than those in low-oxygen laboratory conditions. This might be good news for humans as a low oxygen environment better represents the human intestine, where E. coli bacteria grows in the body.

  The study also revealed that at least one of the antidepressants, sertraline, sold under the brand name Zoloft, encouraged the transmission of genes between bacterial cells, allowing the spread of resistance through a population. These transfers can happen between different types of bacterium, enabling resistance to jump between species, which can include going from harmless bacteria to infectious ones.

  The Prolific Use of Antidepressants

  Worldwide, antibiotic resistance is a serious public health threat. An estimated 1.2 million people died as a direct result of antibiotic resistance in 2019—and that number is expected to increase in the years ahead.

  A comprehensive epidemiological study led by the University of Bristol and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open, analyzed data on over 200,000 people. Researchers set out to see if long-term antidepressant use (over five and ten years) was associated with the development of six health problems: diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke (and related syndromes) as well as two mortality outcomes—death from cardiovascular disease or from any cause.

  Researchers found that long-term antidepressant use was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, and an increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and from any cause. The study notes that the risks were greater for those taking non-SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), which include mirtazapine, venlafaxine, duloxetine, and trazodone, and that their use was associated with a two-fold increased risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality at the 10-year mark.

  According to the Pharmaceutical Journal, antidepressant prescriptions in the U.K. have increased by 35 percent in the past six years, and those prescriptions rose by 5.1 percent in 2021/2022—the sixth consecutive annual increase. These numbers highlight not only an alarming rise in antidepressant use, but the implications of the potential antibiotic resistance of these drugs.

  Definitive Healthcare, who collect and analyze healthcare data, compiled a list of the top 20 antidepressants by prescription volume in the United States. The top three prescribed antidepressants for 2021 were:

  • Zoloft (sertraline hydrochloride)–18,337,255 prescriptions
  • Desyrel/Oleptro (trazodone hydrochloride)–15,175,105 prescriptions
  • Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride)–14,849,887 prescriptions

  The 20 antidepressant medications on the list account for nearly 130.5 million prescriptions in the United States in 2021 alone.

  How Dangerous is Antibiotic Resistance?

  According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development. They cite that a growing list of infections including pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, gonorrhea and foodborne diseases are becoming harder and sometimes impossible to treat as antibiotics become less effective.

  The WHO warns that “without urgent action, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill.”

  Some of the deadliest bacterial infections are tuberculosis, anthrax, tetanus, pneumonia, cholera, botulism, and pseudomonas infections. MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is one of the most common infections that have become resistant to antibiotics and the symptoms generally begin as swollen, painful red bumps on the skin that look like pimples or spider bites. Many cases are mild, but some can cause more serious infections that can be life-threatening. Because MRSA is difficult to treat and resistant to antibiotics, it is often referred to as a “superbug.”

  The PNAS study states that the United States’ high consumption of antibiotics—16,850 kilograms annually in the United States alone—with the addition of their findings, highlights the need to re-evaluate the antibiotic-like side effects of antidepressants.

  Implications for Humans

  Considering these effects were only observed in petri dishes, more research is needed to know if antidepressants could fuel the rise of superbugs in human bodies or the environment.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 20:00

• Apple's Crash Detection Feature Triggers False 911 Calls At Ski Resorts
  Apple’s Crash Detection Feature Triggers False 911 Calls At Ski Resorts

  Apple’s Crash Detection feature is causing severe headaches for emergency dispatchers around ski resort areas. 

  Skiers and snowboarders, with supported iPhone and Watch models, have been hitting the slopes this season and occasionally take a tumble. Their devices, packed with high-tech sensors, like the accelerometer and gyroscope, as well as advanced motion algorithms, mistakenly believe the user has been in an automobile crash. 

  Suppose skiers and snowboarders don’t respond to the cash notification within 20 seconds. In that case, the devices will automatically call 911 with an automated message that indicates, “The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash.” 

  

  A report from NYT said emergency dispatchers in Colorado had been inundated with false distress calls due to the crash detection feature. 

  Lately, emergency call centers in some ski regions have been inundated with inadvertent, automated calls, dozens or more a week. Phone operators often must put other calls, including real emergencies, on hold to clarify whether the latest siren has been prompted by a human at risk or an overzealous device.

  “My whole day is managing crash notifications,” said Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County’s emergency services, which received 185 such calls in the week from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22. (In winters past, the typical call volume on a busy day was roughly half that.) Ms. Dummer said that the onslaught was threatening to desensitize dispatchers and divert limited resources from true emergencies. -NYT 

  Last year, Apple introduced Crash Detection for iPhone 14 models and Watch Series 8. False alerts started popping up at theme parks last summer when the devices thought people on rollercoasters experienced a car crash. And the same thing happened: The devices flooded 911 operators with false alerts. 

  Apple needs to get a handle on this mishap or have its own call center if they want to continue with this feature. Bogging down emergency dispatchers with false alerts is a significant problem that needs to be fixed immediately. How did Apple technicians miss this? 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 19:30

• US To Open 4 New Sites In Philippines, Accelerating 'Pivot To Asia'
  US To Open 4 New Sites In Philippines, Accelerating ‘Pivot To Asia’

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute,

  Washington and Manila are close to inking an agreement that would see four new American installations opened in the Philippines. The new sites are part of a US military buildup in the Indo-Pacific to prepare for war with China.

  According to the Washington Post, negotiations are ongoing but a deal between Manila and Washington is nearing completion. Once inked, American forces are expected to have new sites at four Philippines bases.

  

  Two of the new facilities will be located in Luzon, in the northern half of the country. The military sites are expected to be used in a future war between Washington and Beijing, and “could give US forces a strategic position from which to mount operations in the event of a conflict in Taiwan or the South China Sea,” the Post reported.

  In 2012, then-President Barack Obama adopted a more aggressive policy toward China – dubbed the “pivot to Asia,” the largest military buildup since World War II. Under the strategy, Washington has authorized billions of dollars for new bases, ships and weapons to be deployed to the Asia Pacific. The Pentagon aims to encircle China with two-thirds of all US air and naval forces.

  The increased military activity has led to a string of deadly accidents in the region. A series of US warships have collided with civilian vessels, resulting in dozens of casualties. In 2018, an F-18 collided with a refueling aircraft off the coast of Japan, killing six.

  The Joe Biden administration has accelerated the military buildup in the Pacific. Last week, the Department of Defense opened a new base in Guam. At the end of the year, the Pentagon awarded contracts to begin work on a new radar installation in Palau.

  The relationship between Manila and Washington has strengthened since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. became president in June. The previous leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, threatened to end the Visiting Forces Agreement with the US and suggested Manila could increase ties with Beijing.

  Manila and Washington’s converging views of the region has facilitated agreement regarding the new military bases. The United States sees Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and over Taiwan as crucial threats to the US-enforced international world order. Marcos “realizes the dynamics of the region at the moment and that the Philippines really needs to step up,” a Philippine official told the Post. The official added that Marcos has been monitoring developments in the Taiwan Strait and in the West Philippine Sea.

  

  The Biden administration has repeatedly promised the US military will come to the Philippines’ defense in the event of a violent conflict with China, including in the South China Sea, potentially over the disputed Whitson Reef.

  In a recently obtained memo, a four star Air Force general warned officers in his command that he believes the US “will fight [China] in 2025.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 19:00

• JPMorgan Warning: Israel Poses Higher Investment Risk
  JPMorgan Warning: Israel Poses Higher Investment Risk

  In an internal memo posted on Thursday, JPMorgan warned that Israel presents a greater investment risk due to recent developments associated with the ascent of Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government.  

  “Israel’s local markets have seen a flareup in idiosyncratic risk, as increased geopolitical tensions were added to investor concerns over plans for judicial reforms,” said JPMorgan in a memo first reported by Israel’s Channel 12. 

  The in-depth and negative analysis from the major multinational firm comes just days after Netanyahu claimed JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs weren’t concerned about the effect of the judicial proposals.

  פרסום ראשון – בנק ההשקעות ג׳יי פי מורגן, הפעם בדוח רשמי של מחלקת המחקר: הסיכון להשקעות בישראל עולה עקב התכנית המשפטית.
  המסמך כולל השוואה למצב בפולין, והתראה על חשש מפגיעה בדירוג האשראי.
  הדוח נשלח הלילה למשקיעים ולקוחות ברחבי העולם עם הבהרה שזו העמדה הרשמית של הבנק pic.twitter.com/2thbpXDRyQ

  — עמליה דואק (@AmalyaDuek) February 3, 2023

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  “Markets probably need to consider a risk of more persistently elevated risk premia given the less centrist tilt of the current government,” JPMorgan’s Europe Emerging Markets Research desk wrote. 

  Of course, saying the new Netanyahu government has a “less centrist tilt” is a huge understatement. It’s widely considered to be the most right-wing government in the country’s history, with critical positions controlled by members of ultranationalist and ultra-religious parties who are prone to both domestic and international provocations. 

  In its apparent own similar warning posted internally on Thursday and then circulated on Twitter on Friday, Barclays was more candid, called it a “heavily right-wing coalition.” (ZeroHedge can’t independently authenticate the memo.) Goldman Sachs has expressed its own “growing concern over domestic political developments.” 

  Netanyahu’s government has proposed a package of judicial reforms that would weaken the country’s High Court. One reform would allow the Knesset — Israel’s unicameral legislature — to override High Court decisions with a simple majority vote. Others would end the court’s practice of applying a “reasonableness” test when evaluating laws and government actions. 

  “The proposed judicial reforms have triggered significant local protests at various levels, with concerns over the institutional strength in the country and the potential negative impact on investment flows and growth,” writes JPMorgan. 

  

  Looking for an example of the potential fallout from judicial reforms, the JPMorgan authors point to Poland. “Following the judicial reforms in Poland, S&P Ratings downgraded its sovereign credit rating in Jan-16 to BBB+ (from A-).” Noting that Israel’s credit rating “stands comfortably in the investment grade bucket,” the memo says the reaction to an Israeli enactment of the proposed reforms should be “modest.” 

  The firm also highlights medium-term risk to investment flows to Israel: “Recent reports suggest that some foreign institutions have already started to move funds out of Israel over concerns over the judicial reform plans. The tech sector has been relatively vocal in voicing its opposition.” 

  The risks aren’t just associated with Israel’s legal system. JPMorgan also cites an increase in “geopolitical hostilities.” The Barclays Macro Research memo elaborates on that theme:

  “The reiteration of Israel’s strategy to ‘openly’ oppose any attempts by Iran to develop its nuclear programme, recent alleged drone strikes on Iran’s military facilities and discussions with the US on joint efforts against Iran’s nuclear deal …In addition, the recent re-escalation of Israel-Palestine issues, including the politics of the right-wing government in the West Bank, increase geopolitical instability in the region.” 

  In France, Netanyahu claimed he met with 60 French business people who told him, “What they’re saying about investors running away is nonsense. We want to increase our investments in Israel.” 

  Indian billionaire oligarch Gautam Adani is facing a huge scandal over credible allegations of fraud and money laundering.

  In the middle of this scandal, he had a friendly meeting with apartheid Israel’s far-right leader Netanyahu — who has also faced many corruption charges https://t.co/9nqHj3Qc1P

  — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 3, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 18:30

• Texas Governor Considers 'New' County Election After Ballot Issues Found
  Texas Governor Considers ‘New’ County Election After Ballot Issues Found

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for a new election in Harris County, Texas, after ballot issues were more widespread than officials had estimated them to be.

  

  In response to an analysis that found there was a ballot paper shortage that was far larger than previously reported, the governor said that “it’s so big it may have altered the outcome of elections.

  “It may necessitate new elections,” Abbott also wrote. “It WILL necessitate new LAWS that prevent Harris Co. from ever doing this again.”

  Abbott, a Republican, was responding to a KHOU-11 analysis suggesting that Harris County allotted ballot paper packets that were enough for 600 ballots to each of the county’s 121 voting centers. However, the analysis found that the total votes that were cast exceeded that amount by upwards of hundreds of ballots in some instances.

  Previously, Harris County had said that 46 to 68 centers ran out of their allotted ballot paper. The county’s elections administration released a report last month that had admitted there were problems during the Nov. 8 midterms, but it said that a full report will take months to complete.

  Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum, responding to KHOU on Tuesday, said that “the implications of your article cast the cloud into the community that those locations ran out of paper.”

  “There were over 4 million sheets of paper in the street on election day,” he also remarked to the station, suggesting there was no shortage.

  Harris County Refutes Governor

  A spokesperson for Harris County’s elections agency, Nadia A. Hakim, told The Epoch Times on Friday that the KHOU news story “is, at best, misleading” and disputed Abbott’s assertion.

  “One of several glaring failures of the story is that it compares turnout numbers at individual voting locations from 2018 (before countywide voting was implemented) to this past November’s election (when voters could vote at any location in the county),” Hakim added. “This apples to kale comparison never clarifies whether any site requested or received any additional paper. Precinct-level turnout in 2018 is not comparable to countywide voting centers in 2022. This is a critical mistake in analysis.”

  For the 2022 midterms, Harris County had nearly 5 million sheets of ballot paper and more than “3 million sheets of ballot paper were returned to the Elections Office after the conclusion of voting,” Hakim said. “There is no question that the supply of paper was more than sufficient for the 350,000 in-person voters who cast a two-page ballot on Election Day.”

  Other Details

  In November’s report, officials in the county—which includes Houston—some 170 of 782 locations weren’t able to complete their planned setups on Nov. 7 due to the Houston Astros World Series parade that was held the day before. The report did not specify which locations were impacted by the parade.

  “Overall, while the initial media reports suggested a problem more extensive than what the [Election Administrator Office] has been able to confirm, the EAO will continue reviewing the processes and will implement systems to ensure this type of challenge is never encountered in the future,” the report said.

  The report noted that paper ballot jams and inaccurate wait time updates caused issues at some polling locations.

  “Our investigation has not yet revealed how many of these [voting centers] had to turn voters away due to a paper shortage,” the report stated. “Media reports claimed that a total of 24 VCs (3.1 percent) ran out of paper and had to turn voters away.”

  

  But it claimed that “the judges at the VCs indicated that they did receive supplemental paper deliveries, and two of these [presiding judges] from these VCs reported they did not run out of paper at all.”

  Harris County’s elections divisions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 18:00

• It's Official: Ugly People More Likely To Wear Masks – University Study
  It’s Official: Ugly People More Likely To Wear Masks – University Study

  Aggravated by the holdouts who keep wearing face masks despite mounting evidence that they’re essentially useless against Covid-19? Maybe you should be a little grateful. 

  According to findings published at Frontiers in Psychology, people who consider themselves less attractive are more likely to continue wearing face masks. 

  “Our findings suggest that mask-wearing can shift from being a self-protection measure during the COVID-19 pandemic to a self-presentation tactic in the post-pandemic era.”

  The findings spring from a trio of studies using American subjects, conducted by researchers at Korea’s Seoul National University. The studies found that people with high self-perceived attractiveness are less willing to wear a mask, and vice versa.

  

  They also found that each groups’ respective anti- and pro-mask inclinations are intensified in situations where their attractiveness is important — such as a job interview, versus simply walking a dog. That is, someone who considers themselves relatively unattractive is more likely to mask up at the interview.  

  Earlier studies found that unattractive people are indeed considered more attractive when wearing masks, while the good-looking crowd is perceived as less attractive, the researchers noted. 

  Koreans have coined a slang term for less-attractive people who wear a mask to benefit from letting others give them the benefit of the doubt about what’s under it: “ma-gi-kkun.” In the United States, the term “mask-fishing” was popularized on TikTok, and has some traction in the school-age cohort. As the New York Times noted last year, masks “obscured all kinds of transformations teenagers may feel inclined to hide: braces, pimples, acne scars, the first growths of facial hair.”

  

  Meanwhile, the medical case for mask-wearing — which was rightfully doubted even in the early months — now lies in complete shambles. Most recently, a study-of-studies published in the peer-reviewed Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews concluded that, in the words of one author, “wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome.”

  Apparently, the only outcomes masks affect are the ones related to how others perceive us. While the latest research focused on attractiveness, in 2023, masks are increasingly sending signals about the wearers’ psychological health and intelligence.  

  I’m not going to spread that ridiculous article, but I’d wager that it’s less “ugly people wear masks” & more “people that are used to leveraging their adherence to beauty standards for social capital are more likely to refuse to wear masks”

  — COVID isn’t over just bc you’re over it (@STLMasking) February 2, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 17:30

• California Snowpack At 40 Year Highs…And Rising: Officials
  California Snowpack At 40 Year Highs…And Rising: Officials

  Authored by Rudy Blalock via The Epoch Times,

  Snowpack levels in California continue to increase, after reaching their highest level in 40 years, after weeks of storms in December and January.

  

  But, water officials reported that with a dry forecast ahead, more is needed to escape the state’s three-year drought.

  The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which is measured at Phillips Station near South Lake Tahoe, was measured at 205 percent of the historical average for the year on Feb. 1, following three of the wettest weeks California has had in years, according to officials.

  It additionally has risen 20 percent more than when it was measured last month.

  “Our snowpack is off to an incredible start. And it’s exactly what California needs to really help break from our ongoing drought,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of snow surveys and water supply forecasting with the California Department of Water Resources.

  He noted, however, that some of the state’s largest reservoirs are still lacking water.

  “We’ve seen an impressive increase in reservoir storage statewide, but there are still some of these larger reservoirs that are actually still below average,” he said.

  According to Guzman, since Dec. 1, there has been an increase of 9-million-acre feet in reservoir storage.

  “However, for every day that it doesn’t rain or snow, we gradually return to drier conditions,” he said.

  The recent measurement was also a 137 percent increase compared to an average taken last April, which is considered the peak of the annual snowpack.

  

  But according to Karla Nemeth, director of the water resources department, the state’s traditional snow peak date, may now be in flux.

  “What is happening with climate is that the timing of that peak is changing,” she said.

  She said the department is hopeful for a large return of water from the snowmelt into the state’s ground basins, which hold about 10 times more than reservoirs.

  “It takes a lot longer to fill our groundwater basins than it does our reservoir storage,” she said.

  Nemeth added that California isn’t out of the woods yet, regarding its current drought.

  She said recent storms could be followed by an excessive dry period.

  “There’s a lot more that needs to play out over the course of the next several months for us to really capture our full water supply picture here in California,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 17:00

• Americans Continue To Flee High-Tax New York And California — Here's Where They're Going
  Americans Continue To Flee High-Tax New York And California — Here’s Where They’re Going

  Last year the exodus out of the high-tax, high-crime Democratic strongholds of California, New York and Illinois continued, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

  

  In 2022, 343,000 people left the Golden State, while 299,557 left New York, and 141,656 left Illinois, Bloomberg reports.

  

  And which states saw the most new residents? Florida and Texas – home to low taxes and warm weather, followed by North Carolina and South Carolina.

  Florida saw an influx of 318,855 people, while Texas saw 230,961 new residents. And it’s not just for the weather and the taxes…

  “Everybody knows about the low taxes and great weather in these areas, but something else that makes these areas popular is the robust job market recovery after the pandemic,” said NAR Director of Real Estate Research, Nadia Evangelou. “Not only were their economies able to recover all the jobs that were lost, but there are 5% more jobs now than there were in 2020.“

  

  Of course, once these states flip blue thanks to the influx of coastal Democrats, the tax advantages and low crime will undoubtedly evaporate.

  Moving on the decline

  According to the Brookings Institution, the long-term trend of migration is slowing down, CBS News reports.

  For instance, from 2021 to 2022, about 9% of Americans moved, ranging from local to long-range moves. 

  That’s far lower than the roughly 20% of Americans who moved each year from the 1940s to 1960s — decades when more households were single-earner homes, making it easier to pick up and relocate versus double-earner households today.

  That said, longer-distance moves have picked up in recent years, as Americans find employment in different parts of the country.

  

  “This population shift paints a clear picture: People left high-tax, high-cost states for lower-tax, lower-cost alternatives,” wrote policy analyst Janelle Fritts in a blog post earlier this month.

  Notably, people who leave New York typically save 15x more from lower housing costs than from tax savings, an analysis from the Fiscal Policy Institute found.

  “Of the top twenty largest county-to-county flows out of New York State, median housing costs were substantially lower in the destination county,” reads the report. “On average, annual mortgage costs for median-priced homes are $18,300 lower in destination counties — a savings of 34% — than in New York origin counties.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 16:30

• Charlie Munger Doesn't Understand Bitcoin, Michael Saylor Mocks 99-Year-Old Western Elitist
  Charlie Munger Doesn’t Understand Bitcoin, Michael Saylor Mocks 99-Year-Old Western Elitist

  Authored by BTCCasey via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  Michael Saylor’s latest interview includes a blast at Western elites, specifically Charlie Munger.

  

  Munger recently penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled, “Why America Should Ban Crypto.” In it, he slammed cryptocurrencies, explaining that: 

  “Such wretched excess has gone on because there is a gap in regulation. A cryptocurrency is not a currency, not a commodity, and not a security. Instead, it’s a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house, entered into in a country where gambling contracts are traditionally regulated only by states that compete in laxity. Obviously the U.S. should now enact a new federal law that prevents this from happening.”

  This is not the first time that Munger has been openly negative towards bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, having previously called it “rat poison squared” and “a bad combo of fraud and delusion.”

  In a Friday interview with CNBC’s Morgan Brennan, Saylor addressed Munger’s recent op-ed and the Western elite’s opinions on Bitcoin.

  “If he was a business leader in South America or Africa or Asia and he spent a 100 hours studying the problem, he’d be more bullish on bitcoin than I am,” Saylor explained.

  “The Western elites have not had the time to study… but I’ve never really met someone with an incentive living in the rest of the world that spent some time thinking about it that wasn’t enthusiastic about bitcoin.”

  The “plight of the common man,” said Saylor, is better illustrated by recent events in Lebanon, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Venezuela – where local currencies have plunged in value.

  Today’s interview with @MorganLBrennan covered the success of @MicroStrategy, global adoption of #Bitcoin and #Lightning⚡️, the evolution of the crypto industry, and the digital transformation of money. pic.twitter.com/bEnLOVbpiJ

  — Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) February 3, 2023

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  Saylor said he is “sympathetic” to Munger’s broad crypto criticisms, and he called out the thousands of nonbitcoin tokens as little more than avenues for “gambling.”

  Saylor’s criticism of Munger came alongside further descriptions in regards to MicroStrategy’s plans to develop Lightning enterprise software, explaining for the first time in detail that “Microstrategy is actually developing MicroStrategy Lightning, our own enterprise Lightning offering. We’re going to allow CMOs to offer Lightning rewards or bitcoin rewards, like a frequent flier program, to hundreds of thousands or millions of their customers, all of their employees and all of their prospects, at the speed of light off a website — and we’re very enthusiastic about that.”

  

  The MicroStrategy chairman is obviously still bullish on bitcoin’s growth irrespective of the opinion of legacy billionaires like Munger. In addition, his comments highlight his attention to the global nature of Bitcoin and its ability to enable those who are not yet financially connected as the West is.

  Saylor has been persistent in his support for Bitcoin, and he believes that other regions around the world are more aware of the potential of the digital asset. With his commitment to developing Lightning enterprise software, Saylor is making clear his dedication to the adoption of bitcoin and to connecting the world in a new way.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 16:00

• US Stealth Jet Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon Off Carolinas
  US Stealth Jet Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon Off Carolinas

  Update (1600ET):

  US defense officials confirmed to Fox News an F-22 stealth jet fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder that brought down the Chinese surveillance balloon. The F-22 was based out of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. 

  NEW: senior defense official tells me an F22 fighter jet fired a single shot at the Chinese spy balloon in U.S. air space over Atlantic Ocean. The F22s flew from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

  — Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) February 4, 2023

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  Senior US military official says 1 air to air missile fired by F22 at 58,000 feet (an A9X missile) brought down China spy balloon. The balloon was at 60-65,000 feet when shot.

  — Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) February 4, 2023

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  *   *   *

  Update (1540ET): 

  Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III released a statement about the Chinese surveillance balloon being shot down. 

  This afternoon, at the direction of President Biden, US fighter aircraft assigned to U.S. Northern Command successfully brought down the high-altitude surveillance balloon launched by and belonging to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over the water off the coast of South Carolina in US airspace. The balloon, which was being used by the PRC in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States, was brought down above US territorial waters.

  On Wednesday, President Biden gave his authorization to take down the surveillance balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path.

  After careful analysis, US military commanders had determined downing the balloon while over land posed an undue risk to people across a wide area due to the size and altitude of the balloon and its surveillance payload. In accordance with the President’s direction, the Department of Defense developed options to take down the balloon safely over our territorial waters, while closely monitoring its path and intelligence collection activities. This action was taken in coordination, and with the full support, of the Canadian government. And we thank Canada for its contribution to tracking and analysis of the balloon through NORAD as it transited North America. Today’s deliberate and lawful action demonstrates that President Biden and his national security team will always put the safety and security of the American people first while responding effectively to the PRC’s unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”

  *   *   *

  Update (1441ET):

  A US F-22 stealth jet has shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon off the Carolina coast. 

  

  The best view so far of the surveillance balloon being shot down. 

  Best video so far of the Chinese spy balloon being shot down pic.twitter.com/MrWB403OqJ

  — BNO News Live (@BNODesk) February 4, 2023

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  More views of the F-22. 

  Photos show the Chinese Balloon being shot down by a F-22 Raptor from Myrtle Beach, SC!
  📸Me pic.twitter.com/AWSmILlRzg

  — Jake (@astroqv) February 4, 2023

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  The balloon is falling back to Earth. 

  

  Here comes the recovery vessel. 

  The USS Carter Hall (LSD-50) (along with numerous skipper sized surface craft, I assume) is arriving in the splashdown zone for balloon recovery. pic.twitter.com/dq7lWrHzKm

  — The Intel Crab (@IntelCrab) February 4, 2023

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  *   *   *

  Update (1330ET):

  Shortly after President Biden reportedly said, “we are going to take care of it,” referring to the Chinese spy balloon that is calmly drifting across US airspace, the FAA has shut down three airports and closed airspace in parts of North and South Carolina:

  

  Fighter jets are circling the spy balloon. 

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  F-22s returning after a brief holding orbit. pic.twitter.com/bRZ6uq7Knl

  — The Intel Crab (@IntelCrab) February 4, 2023

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  CCP balloon over North Myrtle Beach ‼️ Jets are circling ‼️ pic.twitter.com/BaG5VasQUp

  — SouthernFried (@southenFried) February 4, 2023

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  Video of what appears to be fighter, jets circling the China balloon above Conway, South Carolina pic.twitter.com/lvjW6WX2Gp

  — Andy Shain (@AndyShain) February 4, 2023

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  A US military surveillance plane is circling offshore of North Carolina. 

  

  A vessel with a large crane might be headed to an area where the military might shoot down the balloon.  

  The USS Carter Hall (LSD-50) is headed south from Beaufort, NC. May be used for balloon recovery efforts. Ship has a 30 ton crane on board. pic.twitter.com/nsCYQ1Tpqb

  — The Intel Crab (@IntelCrab) February 4, 2023

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  *   *   *

  A suspected Chinese surveillance balloon appears to be heading toward North Carolina, according to ABC News, citing a senior US official familiar with the situation. That official said the US would probably shoot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean and retrieve it. 

  Within the last hour, numerous Twitter users have uploaded footage of what appears to be the Chinese balloon floating above North Carolina. 

  Chinese balloon over Shelby North Carolina at 9:35 AM. Moving west south west. pic.twitter.com/EEj8vGk6La

  — Anne Eskridge (@AnneEskridge1) February 4, 2023

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  Here’s the #ChineseSpyBallon over Easley, SC around 8:45am this AM. The trajectory forecast I posted last night seems right on. The balloon should be visible anywhere in southern North Carolina and northern South Carolina at some point over the next 6-8 hours. 📸 Jason McDowell. pic.twitter.com/6hspFrIXqG

  — Ed Piotrowski (@EdPiotrowski) February 4, 2023

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  Chinese Spy Balloon currently SW of Polkville NC approximately over Kingston NC 9:44 AM #ChinaSpyBalloon @wxbrad pic.twitter.com/8OjdDwsgmN

  — Brian Branch (@BrianBranch13) February 4, 2023

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  Local police tell residents don’t shoot their guns at the giant balloon. 

  The Gastonia Police Department is asking residents to not shoot at the Chinese spy balloon if it flies over North Carolina pic.twitter.com/lD9VkI299M

  — Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) February 4, 2023

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  On Friday, we cited Capital Weather Gang, who accurately predicted the balloon’s trajectory while it was floating above the Midwest. Now updated predictions for Saturday morning show the balloon might be headed toward the Atlantic. 

  

  The balloon’s payload is approximately 90 feet long, or the length of two motorhomes, and the balloon itself is much larger. Here’s one of the clearest views of the balloon. 

  

  And there might be more balloons. We noted last night:

  “We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told Fox News Friday night. “We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon.”

  US officials have not ruled out shooting the balloon down. That might happen as soon as the balloon moves offshore into the Atlantic. Time for Space Force to shine. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 16:00

• US Says Russian Athletes Should Compete Under Neutral Flag At Olympics, Resists Ban
  US Says Russian Athletes Should Compete Under Neutral Flag At Olympics, Resists Ban

  Amid calls from Ukrainian officials to ban all Russian and Belarusian athletes from the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic summer games, the White House has issued a statement saying it agrees with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) policy of allowing the two countries to compete under a neutral flag.

  “In cases where sports organizations and event organizers, such as the International Olympics Committee, choose to permit athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in sporting events, they should be absolutely clear that they are not representing the Russian or Belarus states,” Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.

  

  She added that “the use of official state Russia and Belarus flags… should be prohibited as well.” The IOC last week had ruled that this will be the policy moving forward due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  But Kiev has consistently demanded that it’s for Russia to suffer “complete isolation” on the world stage, including at international sporting events. President Zelensky in a December phone call with IOC president Thomas Bach requested that Russia not even be able to participate as a neutral team.

  “Since February, 184 Ukrainian athletes have died as a result of Russia’s actions,” Zelensky said in the call. “One cannot try to be neutral when the foundations of peaceful life are being destroyed and universal human values are being ignored.”

  Bach had defended the committee’s the position that “Athletes cannot be punished for acts of their government as long as they do not contribute or support it.” He explained, “What we never did and we never want to do is prohibiting athletes from participating in sports only because of their passport.”

  Based on the latest IOC ruling, neither Russian nor Belarusian officials will be allowed to attend the games, and essentially all Russian or Belarusian national displays will be banned.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 15:30

• From EMP-Delivery To Nuke-Mapping: Potential Purposes Of China's High-Altitude Invasion
  From EMP-Delivery To Nuke-Mapping: Potential Purposes Of China’s High-Altitude Invasion

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

  My home state of Montana was recently featured in news feeds this week as the first to observe and identify what the US Air Force says is a Chinese spy balloon. The Chinese claim it is a civilian weather apparatus that was blown off course and they expressed “regret” for the event, but the equipment visible in photographs suggests that this is a lie. Beyond that, another similar balloon has been spotted over Latin America – One wayward high tech Chinese balloon might be believable, but two is not a coincidence.

  There are numerous theories as to why such a surveillance platform would be used by the CCP and what it is designed to look for, and I thought I would offer a couple theories based on my years of study into similar projects pursued by the US Department of Defense and DARPA.

  First, the immediate question is why the Biden Administration has not destroyed the balloon? Why not shoot first and ask questions later? Well, Biden’s silence on this issue suggests he either has no answers or that the truth will make the American public very angry. The most likely reason it has not been shot down is because it is very difficult to shoot down.

  [It appears the balloon has finally been shot down, but only after the device crossed the entire country – Whatever data the platform was meant to collect, China likely has it now]. 

  High altitude balloons travel at 80,000 to 120,000 feet. The average fighter jet can hit altitudes of 65,000 feet and new generation drones can climb to 50,000 feet. These balloons also emit little to no heat signature, which makes them very difficult to target using missiles. If laser technology exists that has such a range, the US military is not talking about it. It might actually be easier to shoot down a Chinese satellite than one of these balloons.

  

  Is there a way? It could be done perhaps with a missile using a large fragmentation-type warhead, but the White House does not seem too interested in exploring options.

  Another explanation is that the DoD is waiting to see what these balloons do. This is where I would present a few theories as to their purpose. Here is what I think is most likely given the progress of spy balloon technology right now…

  Chinese ALTA Balloon Program

  For a few years now DARPA has been playing with a concept for high altitude surveillance balloons using a technology called “Strat-OAWL.” Balloons have been fielded for centuries as surveillance weapons, but unpredictable wind and atmospheric changes push the balloons around, making them useless within a coupe of days for any specific region.

  To break it down simply, Strat-OAWL is the experimental use of lasers to read wind speed and direction far ahead of a balloon. The balloon then uses that data to increase or decrease altitude to ride airstreams in whatever directing the military wants the balloon to go. This could allow increased navigational control, but the Holy Grail that DARPA seeks is a high alt balloon that can stay in one place indefinitely.

  I find this idea impractical, like most DARPA projects, if only because wind currents can change faster than any balloon can adjust altitude, but I do see the potential uses here. The Chinese could unleash hundreds of high flying spy balloons with similar capabilities to spy satellites at a fraction of the cost and with less risk of destruction by enemy fire. The CCP may be attempting to test their own version of the DARPA directional balloon tech, while also waiting to see if the US has the means to shoot down the devices.

  Lidar Observation From A Balloon Platform

  The Chinese have been messing with lidar technology a lot lately. Lidar uses pulsed lasers to measure small variations in terrain to uncover hidden shapes and structures. It also has a knack for cutting through forest canopy and other obstructions. The problem with lidar is that the platforms commonly used to carry the apparatus are faster moving and only capture a snapshot in time. Also, it cannot see through thick clouds, dust, rain, snow or fog.

  NASA and DARPA have both been testing lidar from balloons as a means to keep the lasers in the sky longer above a specific area. The Chinese balloon also looks somewhat similar to the equipment used on European lidar balloon experiments.

  A lidar based spy balloon would explain Chinese interest in Eastern Montana, where there are numerous known nuclear missile silos as well as suspected hidden silos. The Chinese balloon did in fact come near at least one known nuclear missile base near Billings. Lidar could be exploited to find hidden bases in the region.

  Multispectral Imaging

  Much like Lidar, multispectral imaging tech is highly dependent on the platform that it is mounted on. MI is used to measure wavelengths of light that are not visible to the human eye and it is tested in many scientific applications. However, there are military applications, including using MI to discover hidden variations in terrain that do not match the surrounding environment. In other words, its meant to sniff out camouflaged buildings, vehicles, fighting positions, etc.

  China launched two satellites for multispectral imaging in 2019 and may now be trying to test the same equipment on balloons. It’s hard to say if they are looking for a unique target, or if they are just establishing baseline image maps to be used in the future for…who knows?

  Weapons Delivery Platform

  High altitude balloons are cheap and relatively effective surveillance platforms that can be used much like satellites but, with the right equipment, could become far more maneuverable. With the CCP’s limited resources it makes sense that they would be utilizing low-cost and low visibility measures instead of expensive and easier to target long range drones or spy planes.

  However, these systems are not just useful for observation – They can also be used to deliver weapons packages, including EMP weapons, nuclear weapons and biological agents. The US has been testing balloons for nuclear delivery ever since Operation Yucca in 1956.

  In the event of war between China and the US, the CCP may be looking for a way to strike with weapons of mass destruction with a passive delivery system that’s hard to defend against.

  The end goal is difficult to figure out. No doubt, the Chinese expect conflict with the US in the near future. The surveillance may be in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan in the near term (next couple years).

  Or, the entire circus may just be designed to see how America reacts. So far, the Biden White House has done nothing and has said nothing.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 02/04/2023 – 15:00

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• Victor Davis Hanson: 'Race' Everywhere
  Victor Davis Hanson: ‘Race’ Everywhere

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

  Recently an unarmed 29-year-old African American, Tyre Nichols, was brutally beaten to death by five black Memphis police officers. They were charged with murder. All belonged to a special crime unit known as the Scorpions. 

  Both the victimizers and victim were black. The Memphis police chief is black. The assistant police chief is black. 

  Nearly 60 percent of the police force is black. The white population of Memphis is about 25 percent. 

  The now-disbanded Scorpion unit of mostly black officers was created as a response to grassroots appeals to stop spiraling crime in mostly black neighborhoods. 

  The death of Tyre Nichols could be attributed to many things: a basic lack of humanity on the part of the officers, poor police training, lax administrative supervision, and lowered hiring standards.  

  

  Instead, no sooner was the beating death announced than accusations of “systemic racism” surfaced. 

  Van Jones, the former Obama Administration green czar and recent recipient of Jeff Bezos’ $100 million “courage and civility award,” pronounced on CNN that the black police oppressors were acting out white racism. 

  Some claimed that charging the five black officers with murder was itself racist. Others alleged that creating the unit in the first place to reduce black-on-black crime was racist.  

  Yet, when everything becomes racist, then nothing in particular can be racist.

  About the same time, the city of San Francisco, along with the state of California, was exploring paying out huge cash reparations to its African-American residents for the ancestral sin of slavery. 

  That evil institution was abolished some 158 years ago through a Civil War that killed some 700,000 Americans. 

  Yet California was always a free state with no history of slavery. 

  No resident of America in six generations has been either a slave or slave owner. 

  Such multibillion-dollar payouts apparently are to be funded by a nearly bankrupt state facing a $25 billion budget shortfall. 

  How do we quantify either current eligibility or culpability in multiracial California where 27 percent of the residents were not born in the United States? Whites make up only 35 percent of the state’s population. 

  College campuses increasingly greenlight racially segregated resident housing. 

  These reactionaries seem eager to return to “separate but equal” apartheid, supposedly outlawed nearly 60 years ago by the 1964 Civil Right Act. 

  A recent National Association of Scholars study found that of some 173 schools surveyed, 42 percent provided racially segregated residences. Some 46 percent offered racially segregated orientation programs. An overwhelming 72 percent  hosted racially segregated graduation ceremonies.

  So-called “safe spaces” on campus exclude students on the basis of race, especially whites who are reduced to stereotyped members of a toxic collective.

  Race-based admissions have transmogrified from proportional representation—the entering class should reflect roughly the racial make-up of the nation—to reparatory or compensatory admittance. 

  So, for example, Stanford University’s incoming class of 2026 lists white students at 22 percent of the enrolled, roughly one-third of their percentage of the nation’s general population. 

  Ironically, current racial engineering resurrects the old quota systems used in the past to discriminate against Jews. 

  “Whites”—to the extent we can determine any race in an intermarried, multiracial society—do not fit the now ossified definition of an exploitive majority. 

  They no longer even compose a majority in most major American cities and in some states. 

  They rank well behind many nonwhite ethnic groups in terms of per capita income and millions of working-class Americans certainly don’t fit the tired stereotype of “privileged.”  

  In racist fashion, white males are often smeared as exhibiting collective “white rage.” 

  Yet they commit suicide at double their demographics—and more than twice as frequently as blacks and Latinos. 

  They were also killed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq at twice their numbers in the general population. 

  In terms of hate-crime offenders, whites are demographically underrepresented. The most overrepresented victims of hate crimes are whites of Jewish background.

  Whites commit violent crimes against those of different races at rates below their percentages in the general population.

  In sum, class, not race, remains the best litmus test of being underprivileged in America. It is no longer synonymous with race.

  

  No wonder the identity politics industry now strains to attach prefixes such as “systemic” or “implicit” to “racism,” or “micro” to “aggression,” purportedly to ferret out bias that otherwise is not apparent. 

  Pause to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history.

  To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord. 

  But national cohesion is only possible through citizens subordinating their tribal interests to a common culture. Only then do they cease being automatons of warring tribes and collectives. 

  As the world becomes ever scarier, Americans must—as Benjamin Franklin once warned—hang together, or most certainly they will soon all hang separately.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 23:40

• Charting Three Decades Of The World's Working Poor
  Charting Three Decades Of The World’s Working Poor

  Poverty is often associated with unemployment – however, millions of working people around the world are living in what’s considered to be extreme poverty, or less than $1.90 per day.

  Thankfully, the world’s population of poor workers has decreased substantially over the last few decades. But how exactly has it changed since 1991, and where is the majority of the working poor population living today?

  This graphic by Visual Capitalst’s Gilbert Fontana uses data from the International Labour Organization (ILO) to show the regional breakdown of the world’s working poor, and how this demographic has changed in the last few decades.

  

  From Asia to Africa

  In 1991, about 808 million employed people were living in extreme poverty, or nearly 15% of the global population at the time.

  As the graphic above shows, a majority of this population lived in Eastern Asia, most notably in China, which was the world’s most populous country until only very recently.

  However, thanks to China’s economic reforms, and political reforms like the National “8-7” Poverty Reduction Plan, millions of people in the country were lifted out of poverty.

  Today, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the world’s highest concentration of working poor. Below, we’ll take a closer look at the region and zoom in on select countries.

  Zooming in on Sub-Saharan Africa

  As of 2021, 11 of the 49 countries that make up Sub-Saharan Africa had a working poverty rate that made up over half their population.

  Here’s a look at these 11 countries, and the percentage of their working population that lives in extreme poverty:

  

   

  Burundi is first on the list, with 79% of its working population living below the poverty line. One reason for this is the country’s struggling economy—Burundi has the lowest GDP per capita of any country in the world.

  Because of the economic conditions in the country, many people struggle to meet their basic needs. For instance, it’s estimated that 40% of urban dwellers in Burundi don’t have access to safe drinking water.

  But Burundi is not alone, with other countries like Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo also having more than two-thirds of their working population in extreme poverty. Which countries will be able to able to lift their people out of poverty next?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 23:20

• How Will AI Change Our Lives?
  How Will AI Change Our Lives?

  The meteoric rise of ChatGPT has been a watershed moment for artificial intelligence as it enabled millions of users, regular people, to experiment with AI and witness its astonishing capabilities first-hand.

  And. as Statista’ Felix Richter notes, while there are still limitations, ChatGPT delivers impressive results, making people aware of how far artificial intelligence has already come.

  It’s no coincidence that both Alphabet and Microsoft named the shift to AI as one of the biggest challenges their facing when they announced their restructuring plans earlier this month.

  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even spoke of an upcoming platform shift, likely referring to AI-enabled services as the next big change in tech after the shift to mobile.

  But what do consumers ultimately expect to change due to the increased use of artificial intelligence and which areas of life will most likely be affected in the next three to five years? Ipsos carried out a global survey on the subject in late 2021 and the following chart sums up the results.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  “[AI] is going to change the world more than anything in the history of mankind. More than electricity.”

  — AI oracle and venture capitalist Dr Kai-Fu Lee, 2018

   

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 22:40

• Democrats Propose Abraham Lincoln Statue Removal
  Democrats Propose Abraham Lincoln Statue Removal

  Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Democrat and Confederate President Jefferson may have been unable to expel President Abraham Lincoln from the capitol, but Democrat delegate Eleanor Norton (D-D.C.) might.

  

  Norton, Washington D.C.’s non-voting Congressional representative, reintroduced legislation to remove a statue of Lincoln with a kneeling freed slave.

  The statue has stood in Lincoln Park near the Capitol since 1876. It depicts a slave, shirtless and shackles broken, about to stand up. Lincoln stretches out his hand over the man.

  Freed slaves paid for its creation. But according to Norton’s press release, that’s not enough.

  

  “The paternalistic statue depicting a Black man on his knees in front of President Lincoln fails to recognize African Americans’ agency in pressing for their own emancipation,” the delegate’s press release reads.

  Norton’s bill would have the statue removed from Lincoln Park and placed in a museum “with an explanation of its origin and meaning.”

  She also noted that the freed slaves who paid for the statue didn’t get input in its design.

  “Although formerly enslaved Americans paid for this statue, the design and sculpting process was done without their input or participation, and it shows,” Norton said. “At the time, they had only recently been liberated from slavery and were grateful for any recognition of their freedom.”

  Norton noted that renowned abolitionist and freed slave Frederick Douglass spoke to dedicate the stature but “pointedly did not praise the statue.”

  Past and Present

  Douglass’s speech expresses a complex set of feelings. He refers to Lincoln as the “white man’s President” but also praises him as a “great man” and “liberator” who “hated slavery.”

  “We have done a good work for our race today,” Douglass said at the statue’s unveiling. “In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 22:20

• Councilwoman Fatally Shot Outside New Jersey Home Was 'Targeted'
  Councilwoman Fatally Shot Outside New Jersey Home Was ‘Targeted’

  Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Eunice Dwumfour, a 30-year-old New Jersey councilwoman, was found dead outside her Sayreville home Wednesday evening in what officials believe was a “targeted” attack, authorities say.

  

  In a press release, Sayreville police chief Daniel Plumacker and Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone said a woman, later identified as Dwumfour, was located by police at 7:22 p.m. inside her vehicle with multiple gunshot wounds.

  Police said the councilwoman was pronounced dead on the scene, noting that the incident is being investigated as a homicide.

  No arrests have been reported in connection with the shooting. However, an eyewitness who lives in the area saw an individual, possibly the suspect, running toward the Garden State Parkway, which is near the scene of the shooting, RLS Media reported.

  Authorities told news outlets that Dwumfour was believed to be the intended target, but have not given a motive.

  The Sayreville Police Department, meanwhile, alerted citizens in a statement on Facebook of police activity in the area while advising everyone to avoid the scene.

  A video shared on social media by Charlie Kratovil, a journalist and the founder of New Brunswick Today, shows police at the scene of the shooting as a white Nissan SUV is being towed away.

  Kratovil said on Twitter that he personally knew Dwumfour and described the councilwoman as “a very kind person and public servant.”

  “A huge loss for the Sayreville community,” Kratovil wrote. “May she rest in peace.”

  Dwumfour, a Republican and political newcomer, was elected in November 2021 and started her three-year term after winning against an incumbent Democrat in the Borough of Sayreville.

  Sayreville Mayor Victoria Kilpatrick said in a statement on Thursday that the community is “shocked and saddened” at the loss of the councilwoman, adding that she had personally “worked very closely” with her as she served on the Borough Council.

  “The fact that she was taken from us by a despicable criminal act makes this incident all the more horrifying,” Kilpatrick said, noting that she’s confident law enforcement “will bring this fast-moving investigation to a quick and successful conclusion and look forward to the identification, arrest, and successful prosecution of the person responsible.”

  In a statement, the New Jersey Republican Party remembered Dwumfour for her “steadfast dedication to the community, as well as her deep and abiding Christian faith.”

  “I would like to express our horror and deepest sorrow at the senseless violence that claimed the life of Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour,” said Bob Hugin, chairman of the committee. “We have the utmost confidence that law enforcement will bring the perpetrators of this heartbreaking tragedy to justice.”

  New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement that he was “stunned” after hearing about the news of Dwumfour’s murder.

  “Her career of public service was just beginning, and by all accounts, she had already built a reputation as a committed member of the Borough Council who took her responsibility with the utmost diligence and seriousness,” Murphy said.

  I am stunned by the news of Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour’s murder last evening in an act of gun violence. I send my condolences to her family and friends, and the entire Sayreville community.

  I urge anyone with information to contact Sayreville local law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/mHulQuOrVZ

  — Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) February 2, 2023

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  Tributes

  Friends of the councilwoman posted tributes on Facebook, saying the shooting “shocked [and] scared” them.

  “[Dwumfour] was killed 300 feet from my home this evening. She was shot while returning back home. She was a woman full of life,” said Mahesh Chitnis, a member of Sayreville’s Human Relations Commission (HRC), of which Dwumfour is also a former member.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 21:40

• Sales Of $10 Million-Plus Homes In Brooklyn Reach A Record In 2022
  Sales Of $10 Million-Plus Homes In Brooklyn Reach A Record In 2022

  While questions about the housing market in general continue to swirl and as we anxiously await how much deflation we are in store for in the housing industry, at least one area is on an upswing: Brooklyn.

  This week it was reported that a “record” number of homes in the borough sold for $10 million or more in 2022, according to Bloomberg. It once again paints a picture of people trying to get out of the heart of U.S. cities – Bloomberg noted that people were drawn to the “family friendly” neighborhoods.

  Last year there were 13 sales over $10 million, which was up from 3 in 2021, the report says, citing Compass. 

  Leonard Steinberg, a broker at Compass, commented: “A decade or so ago, people went to Brooklyn as a secondary choice because of affordability. Nowadays, a wave of people are choosing
  Brooklyn as a first choice and not even considering Manhattan. It has nothing to do with price. It has everything to do with quality of life, a sense of community and just that small town, big city feel that you can really only achieve there.”

  

  Of the homes that sold, six were in Brooklyn Heights, three in Park Slope and one in Cobble Hill, the report says. 

  Across the U.S., we are seeing a similar pattern from $10 million-plus markets. In places like Austin, sales of such homes were up from zero in 2021 to 5 in 2022. In North Florida, sales of similarly priced properties were up to four in 2022 from just one in 2021. 

  “What we’re seeing is that wealth is spreading and wealth is very comfortable being removed from big cities because creating the wealth and maintaining the wealth can be done from multiple locations,” Steinberg continued. 

  Bloomberg noted that: “The most expensive deal in Brooklyn last year was at 88 Remsen St. in Brooklyn Heights, a brownstone with carriage house that traded for $18.3 million in September.”

  Steinberg attributes the rise in prices not just to demand, but also “inflation in the prices of luxury homes and goods”.

  “A lot of these homes have wonderful historic details that no one is going to recreate today. You’ll pay an enormous premium for beautiful, move-in renovated homes,” he concluded. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 21:20

• Secret CCP Overseas Police Station In NYC Closed After Reported FBI Raid
  Secret CCP Overseas Police Station In NYC Closed After Reported FBI Raid

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A covert overseas police station run by the Chinese regime in New York has been shuttered following a reported raid by the FBI.

  “The FBI has confirmed that the ‘overseas police station’ in New York linked to Fuzhou has closed,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to The Epoch Times.

  “We continue to be concerned about PRC [People’s Republic of China] transnational repression efforts around the world and are also coordinating with allies and partners on this issue.”

  

  The closure of the facility in New York’s Chinatown comes just weeks after The New York Times reported that FBI agents raided and searched the building at an undisclosed time last fall.

  The facility and more than 100 others like it form a network of covert facilities from which experts believe that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is conducting a campaign of transnational repression.

  According to two reports published in October 2022 and December 2022 by Safeguard Defenders, a nonprofit organization, the overseas police outposts are used to collect intelligence and even forcibly repatriate Chinese dissidents to the mainland to be imprisoned.

  “We are aware of reports regarding alleged PRC ‘overseas police stations,’” the State Department spokesperson said.

  “We take this issue very seriously. Establishing so-called overseas police stations without the invitation or approval of the country in which they are operating raises serious issues of respect for the sovereignty of that country.”

  The spokesperson referred The Epoch Times to the FBI and Justice Department for further information. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time, and the FBI declined to comment on the matter.

  China’s Communist Regime ‘Violates Sovereignty’

  Chinese authorities maintain that the facilities, which operate in 53 nations, assist Chinese immigrants in foreign nations with tasks that would normally be handled by a consulate, such as renewing driver’s licenses and visas.

  However, the stations have been linked to the CCP’s United Front Work Department, an agency that works to advance the regime’s interests abroad by spreading propaganda, conducting foreign influence operations, suppressing dissident movements, gathering intelligence, and facilitating the transfer of technology to communist China.

  As such, many nations have voiced concern that the facilities are a threat to national security and a violation of sovereignty.

  Irish, Canadian, and Dutch officials have called for China to shut down similar police operations in their countries. Likewise, FBI Director Christopher Wray has characterized them as a violation of U.S. sovereignty.

  “I’m very concerned about this,” Wray said during a November 2022 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

  “I have to be careful about discussing our specific investigative work, but to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop—you know, in New York, let’s say—without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.”

  He refrained at the time from commenting on the legality of the overseas police stations but said they were part of the CCP’s campaign of global transnational repression and linked them to CCP efforts to spy on Americans.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 21:00

• Jim Jordan Subpoenas Garland, Wray Over School Board Memo Used Against 'Domestic Terrorist' Parents
  Jim Jordan Subpoenas Garland, Wray Over School Board Memo Used Against ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Parents

  House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has fired off his first subpoenas of the new Congressional session.

  

  The recipients include Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, in order to get to the bottom of a controversial memo which the DOJ used to justify activating the FBI Counterterrorism Division to investigate parents voicing their opposition to a variety of topics – primarily mask and vaccine mandates, and teaching critical race theory.

  The Garland memo

  On October 4 of 2021, AG Merrick Garland issued a memorandum announcing a concentrated effort to target any threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents toward school personnel.

  The announcement came came days after the national association of school boards asked the Biden administration to take “extraordinary measures” to prevent alleged threats against school staff that the association said was coming from parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory.

  In late October, however, it was revealed that Garland based the memo on unsupported claims made by the National School Boards Association, which apologized for inflammatory language. Garland maintains that the letter had no bearing on the DOJ’s stance.

  The subpoenas ask for all communications between the recipients and the National School Boards Association.

  Jordan, who has repeatedly claimed that the memo was used to justify labeling concerned parents as domestic terrorists, told NBC‘s “Meet The Press” recently that “the chilling impact on the First Amendment free speech is what we care about.”

  

  “School board writes a letter on Sept. 29th. Five days later, the Attorney General of the United States issues a memorandum to 101 U.S. attorneys offices around the country saying, ‘Set up this line that they can report on.’ … When have you ever seen the federal government move that fast?” he asked.

  Democrats, meanwhile, have accused Jordan of peddling conspiracy theories.

  “The conspiracy theories underpinning today’s subpoenas have been debunked with facts time and time again, but Republicans do not want to be bothered by this inconvenient truth. There is no amount of documents that will satisfy the MAGA obsession with conspiracies,” according to Del. Stacey Plaskett (VI), the top Democrat on the Judiciary subcommittee tasked with examining the “weaponization” of the federal government.

  A ‘protected disclosure’:

  In mid-November, 2021, House Judiciary Committee Republicans sent a letter to Garland after an FBI whistleblower came forward with “a protected disclosure” – claiming that “the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division had been compiling and categorizing threat assessments related to parents, including a document directing FBI personnel to use a specific “threat tag” to track potential investigations.”

  “This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents,” the letter continues.

  This is the smoking gun. Attorney General Garland provided zero evidence that parents are engaging in credible threats or acts of violence. And yet, he mobilized the FBI Counterterrorism Division to use counterterrorism tools for investigating, tracking, and tagging parents. pic.twitter.com/PHpVIqvlBw

  — Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) November 16, 2021

  According to a public statement by Grassley regarding the one-page letter: 

  “The Department of Justice owes the American people a better answer than just a one-page letter that says nothing about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is involved in local school-board matters. Now more than ever, parents should be their kids’ strongest and best advocates. They have the God-given right to do so. And the Justice Department ought to be doing everything it can to protect that right, not scare them out of exercising that right. Attorney General Garland should withdraw his memo. And he should take Congress’s oversight, and concern for the rights of parents, more seriously.”

   

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 20:40

• 368 Arrested, 131 Rescued In California Sex Trafficking Operation
  368 Arrested, 131 Rescued In California Sex Trafficking Operation

  Authored by Jack Bradley via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Authorities arrested 368 people and rescued 131 victims involved in human trafficking in a weeklong statewide multi-agency task force, announced Feb. 1.

  

  “We know that the sex trade is a prolific one that exists throughout this state and throughout our nation,” said Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Michel Moore . “It’s an ugly scar against this great country that exists too oftentimes in plain sight.”

  Operation Reclaim and Rebuild was conducted between Jan. 22 and Jan. 28 in nine counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino, Moore said at a news conference at the department’s Elysian Park Academy.

  Numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were involved in the effort, including the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

  The victims’ ages ranged from 13 to 52, including six children, and the average age was the mid-20s, Moore said.

  Investigators worked with victim advocacy groups in providing services and resources “to help [victims] escape from this life-threatening environment,” he said.

  Investigators responded to various advertisements offering sexual services and went to massage parlors suspected of being involved in trafficking. Among the arrestees were pimps and panderers, along with customers of such services, Moore said.

  The victims are being exploited by “threat of death” or coercion, or threats against their family, while some are kidnapped and isolated from their former support to become dependent on the trafficker, according to Moore.

  Moore noted that “in the old days,” the victims of human traffickers were often regarded by law enforcement as criminals, but a more modern attitude is to regard them as having been exploited by criminals—many of them having been kidnapped and held against their will.

  Authorities stressed that the seven-day task force is only a part of law enforcement agencies’ everyday effort to combat sex trafficking.

  

  Victims are sometimes brought in from other states or countries, said David Cox, COO for ZOE International, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps victims recover once rescued locally and internationally.

  Cox said his organization, partnering with a similar Los Angeles-based nonprofit Saving Innocents, has cared for 489 youth victims of sex trafficking this past year, with some as young as 11.

  “In our city, kids are being raped 20 to 30 times a day,” he said.

  Journey Out, another LA-based nonproft combating human trafficking, cared for 256 adult victims last year, Cox said.

  He said sex trade is a violent industry, as some of these victims have been pistol-whipped, jumped out of moving vehicles to escape, chased down and beaten, gone missing, or lost their lives.

  “Traffickers are master predators. They’re on the hunt for vulnerable kids and adults,” he said.

  City News Service contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 20:20

• Visualizing Global 2023 GDP Growth Forecasts By Country
  Visualizing Global 2023 GDP Growth Forecasts By Country

  Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, talk of global recession has dominated the outlook for 2023.

  But, as Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld notes, high inflation, spurred by rising energy costs, has tested GDP growth. Tightening monetary policy in the U.S., with interest rates jumping from roughly 0% to over 4% in 2022, has historically preceded a downturn about one to two years later.

  For European economies, energy prices are critical. The good news is that prices have fallen recently since March highs, but the continent remains on shaky ground.

  

  The above infographic maps GDP growth forecasts by country for the year ahead, based on projections from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) October 2022 Outlook and January 2023 update.

  2023 GDP Growth Outlook

  The world economy is projected to see just 2.9% GDP growth in 2023, down from 3.2% projected for 2022.

  This is a 0.2% increase since the October 2022 Outlook thanks in part to China’s reopening, higher global demand, and slowing inflation projected across certain countries in the year ahead.

  With this in mind, we show GDP growth forecasts for 191 jurisdictions given multiple economic headwinds—and a few emerging bright spots in 2023.

  Country / Region	2023 Real GDP % Change (Projected)
  🇦🇱 Albania	2.5%
  🇩🇿 Algeria	2.6%
  🇦🇴 Angola	3.4%
  🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda	5.6%
  🇦🇷 Argentina*	2.0%
  🇦🇲 Armenia	3.5%
  🇦🇼 Aruba	2.0%
  🇦🇺 Australia*	1.6%
  🇦🇹 Austria	1.0%
  🇦🇿 Azerbaijan	2.5%
  🇧🇭 Bahrain	3.0%
  🇧🇩 Bangladesh	6.0%
  🇧🇧 Barbados	5.0%
  🇧🇾 Belarus	0.2%
  🇧🇪 Belgium	0.4%
  🇧🇿 Belize	2.0%
  🇧🇯 Benin	6.2%
  🇧🇹 Bhutan	4.3%
  🇧🇴 Bolivia	3.2%
  🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina	2.0%
  🇧🇼 Botswana	4.0%
  🇧🇷 Brazil*	1.2%
  🇧🇳 Brunei Darussalam	3.3%
  🇧🇬 Bulgaria	3.0%
  🇧🇫 Burkina Faso	4.8%
  🇧🇮 Burundi	4.1%
  🇨🇻 Cabo Verde	4.8%
  🇨🇲 Cameroon	4.6%
  🇰🇭 Cambodia	6.2%
  🇨🇦 Canada*	1.5%
  🇨🇫 Central African Republic	3.0%
  🇹🇩 Chad	3.4%
  🇨🇱 Chile	-1.0%
  🇨🇳 China*	5.3%
  🇨🇴 Colombia	2.2%
  🇰🇲 Comoros	3.4%
  🇨🇷 Costa Rica	2.9%
  🇨🇮 Côte d’Ivoire	6.5%
  🇭🇷 Croatia	3.5%
  🇨🇾 Cyprus	2.5%
  🇨🇿 Czech Republic	1.5%
  🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of the Congo	6.7%
  🇩🇰 Denmark	0.6%
  🇩🇯 Djibouti	5.0%
  🇩🇲 Dominica	4.9%
  🇩🇴 Dominican Republic	4.5%
  🇪🇨 Ecuador	2.7%
  🇪🇬 Egypt*	4.0%
  🇸🇻 El Salvador	1.7%
  🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea	-3.1%
  🇪🇷 Eritrea	2.9%
  🇪🇪 Estonia	1.8%
  🇸🇿 Eswatini	1.8%
  🇪🇹 Ethiopia	5.3%
  🇫🇯 Fiji	6.9%
  🇫🇮 Finland	0.5%
  🇫🇷 France*	0.7%
  🇲🇰 North Macedonia	3.0%
  🇬🇦 Gabon	3.7%
  Georgia	4.0%
  Germany*	0.1%
  Ghana	2.8%
  Greece	1.8%
  Grenada	3.6%
  Guatemala	3.2%
  Guinea	5.1%
  Guinea-Bissau	4.5%
  Guyana	25.2%
  Haiti	0.5%
  Honduras	3.5%
  Hong Kong SAR	3.9%
  Hungary	1.8%
  Iceland	2.9%
  India*	6.1%
  Indonesia*	4.8%
  Iraq	4.0%
  Ireland	4.0%
  Iran*	2.0%
  Israel	3.0%
  Italy*	0.6%
  Jamaica	3.0%
  Japan*	1.8%
  Jordan	2.7%
  Kazakhstan*	4.3%
  Kenya	5.1%
  Kiribati	2.4%
  South Korea*	1.7%
  Kosovo	3.5%
  Kuwait	2.6%
  Kyrgyz Republic	3.2%
  Lao P.D.R.	3.1%
  Latvia	1.6%
  Lesotho	1.6%
  Liberia	4.2%
  Libya	17.9%
  Lithuania	1.1%
  Luxembourg	1.1%
  Macao SAR	56.7%
  Madagascar	5.2%
  🇲🇼 Malawi	2.5%
  🇲🇾 Malaysia*	4.4%
  🇲🇻 Maldives	6.1%
  🇲🇱 Mali	5.3%
  🇲🇹 Malta	3.3%
  🇲🇭 Marshall Islands	3.2%
  🇲🇷 Mauritania	4.8%
  🇲🇺 Mauritius	5.4%
  🇲🇽 Mexico*	1.7%
  🇫🇲 Micronesia	2.9%
  🇲🇩 Moldova	2.3%
  🇲🇳 Mongolia	5.0%
  🇲🇪 Montenegro	2.5%
  🇲🇦 Morocco	3.1%
  🇲🇿 Mozambique	4.9%
  🇲🇲 Myanmar	3.3%
  🇳🇦 Namibia	3.2%
  🇳🇷 Nauru	2.0%
  🇳🇵 Nepal	5.0%
  🇳🇱 Netherlands*	0.6%
  🇳🇿 New Zealand	1.9%
  🇳🇮 Nicaragua	3.0%
  🇳🇪 Niger	7.3%
  🇳🇬 Nigeria*	3.2%
  🇳🇴 Norway	2.6%
  🇴🇲 Oman	4.1%
  🇵🇰 Pakistan*	2.0%
  🇵🇼 Palau	12.3%
  🇵🇦 Panama	4.0%
  🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea	5.1%
  🇵🇾 Paraguay	4.3%
  🇵🇪 Peru	2.6%
  🇵🇭 Philippines*	5.0%
  🇵🇱 Poland*	0.3%
  🇵🇹 Portugal	0.7%
  🇵🇷 Puerto Rico	0.4%
  🇶🇦 Qatar	2.4%
  🇨🇬 Republic of Congo	4.6%
  🇷🇴 Romania	3.1%
  🇷🇺 Russia*	0.3%
  🇷🇼 Rwanda	6.7%
  🇼🇸 Samoa	4.0%
  🇸🇲 San Marino	0.8%
  🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe	2.6%
  🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia*	2.6%
  🇸🇳 Senegal	8.1%
  🇷🇸 Serbia	2.7%
  🇸🇨 Seychelles	5.2%
  🇸🇱 Sierra Leone	3.3%
  🇸🇬 Singapore	2.3%
  🇸🇰 Slovak Republic	1.5%
  🇸🇮 Slovenia	1.7%
  🇸🇧 Solomon Islands	2.6%
  🇸🇴 Somalia	3.1%
  🇿🇦 South Africa*	1.2%
  🇸🇸 South Sudan	5.6%
  🇪🇸 Spain*	1.1%
  🇱🇰 Sri Lanka	-3.0%
  🇰🇳 St. Kitts and Nevis	4.8%
  🇱🇨 St. Lucia	5.8%
  🇻🇨 St. Vincent and the Grenadines	6.0%
  🇸🇩 Sudan	2.6%
  🇸🇷 Suriname	2.3%
  🇸🇪 Sweden	-0.1%
  🇨🇭 Switzerland	0.8%
  🇹🇼 Taiwan	2.8%
  🇹🇯 Tajikistan	4.0%
  🇹🇿 Tanzania	5.2%
  🇹🇭 Thailand*	3.7%
  🇧🇸 The Bahamas	4.1%
  🇬🇲 The Gambia	6.0%
  🇹🇱 Timor-Leste	4.2%
  🇹🇬 Togo	6.2%
  🇹🇴 Tonga	2.9%
  🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago	3.5%
  🇹🇳 Tunisia	1.6%
  🇹🇷 Turkey*	3.0%
  🇹🇲 Turkmenistan	2.3%
  🇹🇻 Tuvalu	3.5%
  🇺🇬 Uganda	5.9%
  🇺🇦 Ukraine	N/A
  🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates	4.2%
  🇬🇧 United Kingdom*	-0.6%
  🇺🇲 U.S.*	1.4%
  🇺🇾 Uruguay	3.6%
  🇺🇿 Uzbekistan	4.7%
  🇻🇺 Vanuatu	3.1%
  🇻🇪 Venezuela	6.5%
  🇻🇳 Vietnam	6.2%
  West Bank and Gaza	3.5%
  🇾🇪 Yemen	3.3%
  🇿🇲 Zambia	4.0%
  🇿🇼 Zimbabwe	2.8%

  *Reflect updated figures from the January 2023 IMF Update.

  The U.S. is forecast to see 1.4% GDP growth in 2023, up from 1.0% seen in the last October projection.

  Still, signs of economic weakness can be seen in the growing wave of tech layoffs, foreshadowed as a white-collar or ‘Patagonia-vest’ recession. Last year, 88,000 tech jobs were cut and this trend has continued into 2023. Major financial firms have also followed suit. Still, unemployment remains fairly steadfast, at 3.5% as of December 2022. Going forward, concerns remain around inflation and the path of interest rate hikes, though both show signs of slowing.

  Across Europe, the average projected GDP growth rate is 0.7% for 2023, a sharp decline from the 2.1% forecast for last year.

  Both Germany and Italy are forecast to see slight growth, at 0.1% and 0.6%, respectively. Growth forecasts were revised upwards since the IMF’s October release. However, an ongoing energy crisis exposes the manufacturing sector to vulnerabilities, with potential spillover effects to consumers and businesses, and overall Euro Area growth.

  China remains an open question. In 2023, growth is predicted to rise 5.2%, higher than many large economies. While its real estate sector has shown signs of weakness, the recent opening on January 8th, following 1,016 days of zero-Covid policy, could boost demand and economic activity.

  A Long Way to Go

  The IMF has stated that 2023 will feel like a recession for much of the global economy. But whether it is headed for a recovery or a sharper decline remains unknown.

  Today, two factors propping up the global economy are lower-than-expected energy prices and resilient private sector balance sheets. European natural gas prices have sunk to levels seen before the war in Ukraine. During the height of energy shocks, firms showed a notable ability to withstand astronomical energy prices squeezing their finances. They are also sitting on significant cash reserves.

  On the other hand, inflation is far from over. To counter this effect, many central banks will have to use measures to rein in prices. This may in turn have a dampening effect on economic growth and financial markets, with unknown consequences.

  As economic data continues to be released over the year, there may be a divergence between consumer sentiment and whether things are actually changing in the economy. Where the economy is heading in 2023 will be anyone’s guess.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 20:00

• ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Releases Tool To Check If Text Was Written By A Human
  ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Releases Tool To Check If Text Was Written By A Human

  Authored by Jane Nguyen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  OpenAI, the maker of chatbot ChatGPT, announced on Tuesday that it has released a new software tool to help detect whether someone is trying to pass off AI-generated text as something that was written by a person.

  

  The tool, known as a classifier, comes two months after the release of ChatGPT, a chatbot that generates human-like responses based on the input it is given. Schools were quick to limit ChatGPT’s use over concerns that it could fuel academic dishonesty and hinder learning, as students have been using the chatbot to create content that they are passing off as their own.

  OpenAI researchers said that while it was “impossible to reliably detect all AI-written text,” good classifiers could pick up signs that text was written by AI. They said the tool could be useful in cases where AI was used for “academic dishonesty” and when AI chatbots were positioned as humans.

  In a press release, OpenAI warns the classified’s public beta mode is “not fully reliable,” saying that it aims to collect feedback and share improved methods in the future.

  The firm admitted the classifier only correctly identified 26 percent of AI-written English texts. It also incorrectly labeled human-written text as AI-written 9 percent of the time.

  The classifier also has several limitations, including its unreliability on text below 1,000 characters, as well as misidentifying some human-written text as AI-written. It also only works in English for now, as it performs “significantly worse in other languages and it is unreliable on code.” Finally, AI-written text can be edited to evade the classifier, according to OpenAI.

  “It should not be used as a primary decision-making tool, but instead as a complement to other methods of determining the source of a piece of text,” OpenAI said.

  ChatGPT is a free program that generates text in response to a prompt, including articles, essays, jokes, and even poetry.

  Since ChatGPT debuted in November 2022 and gained wide popularity among millions of users, some of the largest U.S. school districts have banned the AI chatbot over concerns that students will use the text generator to cheat or plagiarize.

  Following the wave of attention, last week Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, a research-oriented San Francisco startup, and said it would incorporate the startup’s AI models into its products for consumers and businesses.

  Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 19:40

• NYT Claims Russian Troop Deaths Nearing 200K, Far Surpassing All Prior Estimates
  NYT Claims Russian Troop Deaths Nearing 200K, Far Surpassing All Prior Estimates

  By late last year, US officials as well as most reports emerging in international media estimated that in total 200,000 Russian and Ukrainian troops had been killed since the start of the Ukraine invasion. In November and December, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had offered up to that point the highest estimate thus far of 200,000 from both sides, also saying 40,000 civilians had been killed. There was reason even at that time to doubt this highest-end estimate, especially when compared to reports compiled by other international monitors.

  But The New York Times has issued a report this week citing Western officials who now say that close to 200,000 troops have been killed on the Russian side alone.

  

  This far surpasses even recent estimates by the Ukrainian government. In December, Kiev claimed that 90,000 Russian troops had died compared to its own losses of 13,000 – according to Ukraine’s General Staff.

  But the fresh Thursday NYT report asserts the following: 

  The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials.

  Though in the next line the Times admits casualties from the war “are notoriously difficult to estimate” – the report relies in part for its very high tally on information coming out of the Soledar and Bakhmut offensives, which have been costly for both sides.

  “The figures for Ukraine and Russia are estimates based on satellite imagery, communication intercepts, social media and on-the-ground media reports, as well as official reporting from both governments,” the newspaper added.

  At the same time, the Ukrainian side is also believed to be losing hundreds daily as it tries to defend Bakhmut. By many accounts, the Russians have the upper-hand and have nearly encircled the strategic city in Donetsk region. 

  New on MoA:
  Ukraine SitRep:
  U.S.-Russia Talks, Bakhmut Retreat, Laughable Casualty Numbershttps://t.co/I6zLGhuUF7
  Pics:
  Bakhmut front – Number of Ukrainian brigades
  January 17 – 28 units / February 3 – 18 units pic.twitter.com/bZmccUMSIN

  — Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) February 3, 2023

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

  “Ukraine’s casualty figures are also difficult to ascertain, given Kyiv’s reluctance to disclose its own wartime losses. But in Bakhmut, hundreds of Ukrainian troops have been wounded and killed daily at times as well, officials said,” the Times notes.

  And yet 200,000 on the Russian side alone, as NYT claims, is a huge jump from Milley’s own estimate of 100,000 given late last year, making it highly dubious. Again, this also makes recent estimates from the Ukrainian government look conservative by comparison.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 19:20

• Watch: 14 Videos That Will Make You Want To Scream Out "Are You Kidding Me?"
  Watch: 14 Videos That Will Make You Want To Scream Out “Are You Kidding Me?”

  Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

  Every day we continue to get even more evidence that our society is going completely and utterly insane. 

  

  I really wish that this wasn’t true.  I really wish that we could just hit the rewind button and go back several decades to a time when most people tried to behave normally and there wasn’t rampant corruption all around us.  Unfortunately, our social decay has shifted into “turbo mode” over the past several years, and at this point a lot of Americans actually celebrate the evil that is gnawing away at the foundations of our society like cancer.  Some of the videos that I am about to share with you are really creepy, some of them are quite funny, and some of them are incredibly alarming.  But ultimately they all have something to say about where we currently are as a society.  The following are 14 videos that will make you want to scream out “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”…

  #1 This is the super creepy way that Bill Gates responded when a reporter recently confronted him about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein…

  JUST IN – Bill Gates says he had dinner with Jeffrey Epstein and “that’s all.”pic.twitter.com/o405qQ8j4t

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 30, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #2 “This is what leftism does to you”

  This is what leftism does to you. pic.twitter.com/2bVheaA0Sr

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 30, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #3 “I’m old enough to remember when going to an airport was not reminiscent of bootcamp”

  I’m old enough to remember when going to an airport was not reminiscent of bootcamp. pic.twitter.com/32RQASgt2f

  — Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 20, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #4 Joe Biden decided to get way too cozy with a female reporter…

  REPORTER: “What’s behind your decision to end the COVID emergency?”

  BIDEN: “The COVID emergency will end when the Supreme Court ends it.” pic.twitter.com/bDRwfQW1g6

  — VINnews (@VINNews) January 31, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #5 What would you do if somebody did this to you?

  Good morning pic.twitter.com/ni0BAYFRg8

  — No One 🇺🇸 (@tweettruth2me) January 23, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #6 “A transgender killer is identifying as a baby in order to get better treatment in prison”

  Are you kidding me?

  #7 “Biden documents scandal includes 1850 Boxes, enough to fill a tractor trailer, plus 415 GB of electronic records”

  HOLY SHIT!! Biden documents scandal includes 1850 Boxes, enough to fill a tractor trailer, plus 415 GB of electronic records! The Senate Intelligence Committee is demanding Biden turn these documents over, but they are refusing to do so!! pic.twitter.com/ifLRnsWEan

  — Matt Clark (@MattClarkReport) January 30, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #8 “If you don’t like your job, just quit”

  “If you don’t like your job, just quit. But what if there’s nowhere to go. What if everywhere has ubiquitous monitoring.” From this year’s WEF. Terrifying. pic.twitter.com/kzVI9jpTvp

  — Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) January 31, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #9 MSNBC host Yasmin Vossoughian says that her myocarditis was caused by a “common cold”…

  Are you kidding me?

  #10 A public school teacher laughs about corrupting her students…

  Teacher laughs about bringing “political unrest” in her school by pushing pronouns, showing up with purple hair, and mocking the bible pic.twitter.com/3VJ2T014Ip

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 16, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #11 “You wanted equality, and now you are complaining that they don’t want to be in a relationship with you…”

  Damn pic.twitter.com/cHCBvOgP79

  — 🇬🇧 IM 🇬🇧 (@TellYourSonThis) January 29, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #12 I thought that you told us that the pandemic was “over”…

  JOE BIDEN in September 2022: “the pandemic is over.”

  JOE BIDEN, today: keeps COVID public health emergency in place until May 2023.pic.twitter.com/1RvF1vALJQ

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 31, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #13 This is how they are recruiting new soldiers in Ukraine, and our leaders are apparently just fine with this…

  How is mobilization carried out in Ukraine? pic.twitter.com/50Ldl6a7aP

  — Viktoriya Samarina (@viktoriyarus34) January 27, 2023

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

  Are you kidding me?

  #14 Do you think that we will ever be able to get American kids to do this?

  ‘Shuudan koudou’ is a group exercise that requires the participants to create various intersecting formations by doing synchronised group walks.

  The art of Japanese precision walking by these high school students is stunning pic.twitter.com/Lqtb9Lh6qJ

  — Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 20, 2023

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

  I was absolutely stunned by the precision that those Japanese students were able to achieve.

  Here in the United States, many of our high school students can barely even read once they graduate from high school.

  Of course we didn’t get here by accident.

  Our society is a giant mess because our leaders have been making the wrong decisions for decades.

  If we don’t reverse course, things will only get worse.

  So hopefully America will wake up soon, because the clock is ticking.

  *  *  *

  It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 19:00

• IRS Issues Tax Return Checklist With Key Warning About The Dreaded Notice Letter
  IRS Issues Tax Return Checklist With Key Warning About The Dreaded Notice Letter

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a checklist to make tax preparation smoother in 2023, which features a key cautionary tip on how to avoid getting a dreaded notice or bill from the tax man.

  

  The IRS’ list of “key points to keep in mind” when preparing to file a 2022 tax return, issued on Jan. 31, includes recommendations like choosing a tax professional carefully and filing electronically with direct deposit to receive refunds quickly.

  The list also includes a warning to taxpayers that they must report all types of income on their tax returns.

  “This is important to avoid receiving a notice or a bill from the IRS,” the agency stated.

  The IRS singled out several sources of income for taxpayers not to forget to include in their filings, including sales from goods created and sold on online platforms; investment income; money from part-time or seasonal work, self-employment, or other business activities; and services provided via mobile apps.

  It appears that the proliferation of digital assets like cryptocurrencies and tokens has come into sharp focus at the IRS, prompting the agency to highlight the fact that these are considered taxable property and failure to report them can result in penalties and interest—and a potentially upsetting IRS notice letter.

  Focus on Digital Asset Reporting

  The IRS recently issued a cautionary reminder that taxpayers must report all digital asset-related income and answer a new digital asset question on their 2022 federal income tax returns.

  A key change on tax forms this year is that the IRS has replaced the term “virtual currency” with “digital assets,” in addition to some other modifications to the wording.

  The “Yes” or “No” question, which was expanded and revised this year to update terminology, reads as follows:

  “At any time during 2022, did you: (a) receive (as a reward, award, or payment for property or services); or (b) sell, exchange, gift or otherwise dispose of a digital asset (or a financial interest in a digital asset)?”

  The question appears at the top of tax forms 1040, Individual Income Tax Return, 1040-SR, U.S. Tax Return for Seniors, and 1040-NR, U.S. Nonresident Alien Income Tax Return.

  “All taxpayers must answer the question regardless of whether they engaged in any transactions involving digital assets,” the agency cautioned.

  It is a legal requirement to accurately report all income, including income from digital assets, on federal income tax returns. Failure to do so could result in non-compliance with tax laws and possible penalties.

  Taxpayers need to check the “Yes” box if they:

  • Received digital assets as payment for property or services provided;
  • Transferred digital assets for free (without receiving any consideration) as a bona fide gift;
  • Received digital assets resulting from a reward or award;
  • Received new digital assets resulting from mining, staking, and similar activities;
  • Received digital assets resulting from a hard fork (a branching of a cryptocurrency’s blockchain that splits a single cryptocurrency into two);
  • Disposed of digital assets in exchange for property or services;
  • Disposed of a digital asset in exchange or trade for another digital asset;
  • Sold a digital asset; or
  • Otherwise disposed of any other financial interest in a digital asset.

  Those who tick the “Yes” box must also report all income related to their digital asset transactions on relevant forms. For instance, an investor who sold cryptocurrency during 2022 would use Form 8949, Sales and other Dispositions of Capital Assets.

  Taxpayers should check the “No” box if they merely owned digital assets, but didn’t engage in any transactions involving them in 2022.

  They should also tick “No” if they merely transferred digital assets from one wallet or account they own or control to another one that they own or control, and if they bought digital assets using real currency like the U.S. dollar.

  IRS Notice

  Besides recommending that taxpayers accurately report all income, tax professionals typically urge people to double-check their returns to ensure that the information on them is accurate and matches documentation like W-2 forms if they want to avoid getting a letter from the tax man.

  But if for some reason the IRS does send a letter or notice to taxpayers, there are a number of things they should keep in mind.

  For starters, when an IRS letter or notice arrives, taxpayers should read it carefully and take appropriate action, such as making a payment or disputing the notice if they disagree with it.

  They should keep the letter or notice for their records and watch for scams, as the IRS will not contact taxpayers through social media or text message.

  The first contact from the IRS is usually by mail, and taxpayers can view their tax account information on IRS.gov if unsure of the money owed.

  “Getting mail from the IRS is not a cause for panic, but it should not be ignored either,” the IRS said in a recent “next steps” list of what to do if someone receives an IRS notice or letter.

  Other ‘Key Points’ for Smooth Filing

  In its tax-filing checklist, the IRS also recommends that taxpayers gather all necessary documents and records before preparing their tax returns. This includes Social Security numbers, bank information, income forms such as W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s, and any IRS letters regarding tax credits or deductions.

  The IRS recommends electronic filing with direct deposit to speed up the refund process.

  The agency advises that eligible taxpayers can access free tax-preparation resources through IRS Free File or volunteer programs such as Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE).

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 18:40

• "The Jury Got It Right" – Musk Wins Lawsuit Over 'Funding Secured' Tweet
  “The Jury Got It Right” – Musk Wins Lawsuit Over ‘Funding Secured’ Tweet

  Having previously noted the absurdity of the trial, Elon Musk has defeated a shareholder lawsuit alleging that tweets claiming he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private cost investors billions of dollars in losses.

  

  As The Wall Street Journal reports, the nine-person San Francisco-based jury said the investors who brought the class-action case failed to prove that Mr. Musk hurt them by tweeting about a possible deal.

  “The jury got it right,” Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, said after the verdict.

  Musk testified that the “funding secured” tweet was “absolutely truthful,” touting what he described as an “unequivocal” commitment by Saudi Arabia even though he had nothing in writing.

  As Bloomberg reports, Musk gave jurors other reasons to believe him.

  He said he felt compelled to reveal that he was considering taking Tesla private because earlier that day, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia was building a sizable stake in Tesla.

  He testified he was afraid his going-private plans might also be leaked, and that he wanted to put all Tesla investors on equal-footing by broadcasting his plans on Twitter.

  Musk also said that if required, he could’ve divested his ownership stake in his closely held rocket-ship company, SpaceX, to fund the transaction.

  This case is unusual for having gone to trial.

  From 1997 to 2001, less than 0.2% of federal securities class-action cases, excluding those involving mergers or acquisitions, were tried to a verdict, according to Cornerstone Research.

  Musk, who had taken the stand as a witness in the case, was present in court during closing arguments.

  

  As The FT reports, the “funding secured” tweet has already proven costly for Musk. He and Tesla each paid $20mn to settle legal action from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk also had to resign as the carmaker’s chair, although he kept his position as chief executive.

  However, Musk has criticized the SEC in the years since, saying he felt pressured to settle and suggesting that doing so made him appear guilty.

  This case, he said in a deposition, was an opportunity to “clear the record.”

  And now he has!

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 18:20

• Americans Hosting Super Bowl Parties Breathe A Sigh Of Relief After Chicken Wing, Avocado Prices Drop
  Americans Hosting Super Bowl Parties Breathe A Sigh Of Relief After Chicken Wing, Avocado Prices Drop

  Tens of millions of Americans are preparing to host Super Bowl LVII parties on Feb. 12. Unlike last Super Bowl, food inflation for chicken wings and guacamole has subsided — a relief for football fans hosting parties.

  A new report from Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute shows chicken wing prices have fallen 22% since last January. Last year, around this time, Americans were irritated by expensive wings, priced as much as $3.38 per pound. Now prices are around $2.65 per pound as supply remains plentiful. 

  Besides chicken wings, guacamole is the second most popular food at a Super Bowl party. And there’s more good news because the price of avocados has slid 20% versus a year ago. In Mexico, prices for a 20-pound box of avocados have plunged 67% since peaking at $51.25 in May 2022. 

  

  Data from National Retail Foundation (NRF) and Prosper Insights and Analytics expect 192.9 million Americans will tune in to the big game. Of that, 103.5 million are planning to attend or host a Super Bowl party. 

  With nine days left (as of Friday) until the game … just how long until President Biden’s 70-person social media team touts all these cost savings on Twitter? Remember, they did a few years ago for the Fourth of July — when the consumer saved a few cents. 

  As for beverages, the Wells Fargo report noted beer prices increased 11%, and soda jumped 25% versus last year. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows food inflation is around 11.8% versus last year and 8.3% for food outside the home. 

  For those planning to host a party, don’t wait until the last minute, as surging demand before the game might entice retailers to increase prices. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 18:00

• "Woke Ideology Has Infected Every Aspect Of American Life", Sen. Rubio Warns
  “Woke Ideology Has Infected Every Aspect Of American Life”, Sen. Rubio Warns

  Authored by Shelby Kearns via Campus Reform,

  Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Chip Roy recently introduced the Restoring Military Focus Act, identical bills in the House and Senate that will “eliminate the position of the Chief Diversity Officer of the Department of Defense [(DOD)].”

  

  In a press release, Rep. Roy stated that the Pentagon “is not supposed to be a woke social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform.”

  The Restoring Military Focus Act, according to the press release, will “push back against the progressive agenda” by revising the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA allocated funds for the DOD’s Chief Diversity Officer and the Senior Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion of each military department.

  Rubio and Roy’s bills will eliminate these positions and prohibit their future funding.

  “Not only are these positions a waste of hard-earned tax-payers dollars, but they also undermine and distract from the purpose of the U.S. military,” the press release says.

  Sen. Rubio said that “[w]oke ideology has infected every aspect of American life and culture.” Initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT), as Campus Reform has reported, are present in professional associations, major foundations, and even U.S. military academies.

  Not all members of Congress, however, share the concerns of Rubio, Chip, and the bills’ co-sponsors over “woke” culture. Rep. Pat Ryan told Military.com that he has “zero time for the political distractions.”

  Ryan is the Democratic congressman who represents the district that includes his alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy West Point.

  He plans to rejoin the House Armed Services Committee, according to Military.com, and suggested that Republicans sounding the alarm over critical race theory (CRT) in military academies is a distraction.

  Other Republican leaders have pushed back against the politicization of the military academies and DOD-affiliated K-12 schools, including an investigation of the chief DEI officer for the DOD’s Education Activity.

  The DEI officer tweeted that she is “exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women.” Before she made her Twitter account private, as the New York Post reported, she described the “CAUdacity,” or caucasian audacity, of participants in a professional development session.

  Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties for comment and will update this article accordingly. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 17:40

• DeSantis Moves To Eliminate Taxes On Gas Stoves As DoE Makes Major Push To Regulate
  DeSantis Moves To Eliminate Taxes On Gas Stoves As DoE Makes Major Push To Regulate

  Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) on Wednesday announced a plan to exempt gas stoves and other gas appliances from state sales tax, a move which follows weeks of debate over whether the Biden administration was serious about banning them (they were).

  

  “No tax permanently on gas stoves,” said DeSantis. “They want your gas stove and we’re not going to let that happen.”

  The move comes as the Department of Energy proposed new efficiency rules for natural gas stoves and other consumer cooking appliances. The proposal would set limits on energy consumption for gas stoves, and overall energy usage standards on both electric and gas stoves and ovens.

  DeSantis’ plan was included in his new budget – the first of his second term. Among the many breaks for taxpayers would be a permanent $7 million exemption on appliances fueled by combustible gas – including propane, butane, liquefied petroleum, natural gas and syngas.

  In January, Richard Trumka Jr. from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, discussed the possibility of a ban on gas stoves. He later walked back his statement, tweeting “To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves. Regulations apply to new products. For Americans who CHOOSE to switch from gas to electric, there is support available — Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a $840 rebate.”

  

  As MarketWatch notes, California already bans gas appliances from new residential construction projects, while New York City will impose a similar ban starting next year. Chicago’s mayor Lori Lightfoot is proposing to do the same.

  A host of Republicans — along with some Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states, including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — were inflamed at the prospect of a gas-stove ban, and many pointed fingers at the Biden administration. -MarketWatch

  Following outrage over the possibility of a gas stove ban, Republicans (and Joe Manchin (D-WV)) slammed the Biden administration – causing White House spox Karine Jean-Pierre to clarify that the CPSC is an independent body, and that Biden doesn’t back a ban on gas stoves.

  Except an internal memo dated Oct. 25, 2022 revealed that the Biden administration was serious about banning natural gas powered stoves prior to national outrage over the idea.

  In the memo dated Oct. 25, 2022, Richard Trumka Jr. — whom President Biden appointed to serve on the five-person Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) — wrote to a fellow commissioner that there was sufficient evidence for the agency to move forward with a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) to ban gas stoves in the near future. Trumka’s memo was titled, “NPR Proposing Ban on Gas Stoves (Indoor Air Quality).”

  “The need for gas stove regulation has reached a boiling point,” the CPSC commissioner wrote in the October memo. “CPSC has the responsibility to ban consumer products that emit hazardous substances, particularly, when those emissions harm children, under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act.”

  “Emerging evidence is sufficient to conclude that gas stoves in homes emit toxic gasses that cause illness and that lower-cost, safer alternatives are available,” Trumka added. -Fox News

  Months after the memo was sent, Trumka made his comments to Bloomberg, saying that “any option is on the table.”

  

  More on the DoE’s proposed efficiency rules via The Epoch Times,

  Industry Responds

  After the proposed rule was issued Wednesday, officials with natural gas industry groups expressed alarm.

  “We are concerned that this is another attempt by the federal government to use regulations to remove viable and efficient natural gas products from the market,” Karen Harbert, president of the American Gas Association, told Bloomberg News

  A spokesperson for another trade group expressed alarm over the proposed rule.

  “This approach by the DOE could effectively ban gas appliances,” said Jill Notini, vice president, communications and marketing, at the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, according to the outlet. “We are concerned this approach could eliminate fully featured gas products.”

  Some states and localities, meanwhile, have already proposed bans on installing new gas appliances and furnaces in newly constructed homes, sparking more alarm.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 17:20

• N.Korea Warns Of 'Toughest Reaction' After Bigger US-South Korea Drills Announced
  N.Korea Warns Of ‘Toughest Reaction’ After Bigger US-South Korea Drills Announced

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  North Korea on Thursday responded to the US and South Korea announcing they would be expanding joint military exercises, warning the steps are pushing toward an “extreme red-line” and will provoke the “toughest reaction.”

  “The military and political situation in the Korean peninsula and the region has reached an extremely dangerous phase due to the reckless military confrontations and hostile acts of the US and its vassal forces,” a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

  

  On top of increasing the size of upcoming military drills, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the US will deploy more “strategic assets” to the Korean Peninsula, including bombers and fighter jets.

  “If the US continues to introduce strategic assets into the Korean Peninsula and its surrounding area, the DPRK will make clearer its deterring activities without fail according to their nature,” the North Korean statement said.

  Pyongyang said that it would respond under the principle of “nuke for nuke and an all-out confrontation for an all-out confrontation.”

  In 2022, North Korea launched a record number of missile tests as the US and South Korea began holding large-scale joint exercises for the first time since 2017.

  The US and South Korean plans to increase those war games this year are almost guaranteed to provoke more weapons tests, and the Biden administration shows no interest in backing down.

  The White House claimed that it has no “hostile intent” toward North Korea and insisted it seeks “serious and sustained diplomacy.” But Pyongyang said it won’t hold a dialogue with the US as long as it pursues a “hostile policy” and keeps ramping up its military activity in the region.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/03/2023 – 17:00

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• Escobar: The Trials And Tribulations Of The Collective West
  Escobar: The Trials And Tribulations Of The Collective West

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  Sit back, relax and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both…

  

  One may be excused to imagine all sorts of amusement games unrolling at the HQ of the Russian General Staff as The Empire and NATO go literally bonkers. What crazy stunt will they come up with next – short of WWIII?

  Here is a delightful put down of NATO’s dementia praecox. Everything so far has failed, from “crippling sanctions” to all sorts of wunderwaffen, while the whole Global South marvels at the exploits of Wagner PMC – now configured as the planet’s top urban fighting machine.

  CIA mouthpiece Washington Post duly released how Washington, once again, had the Liver Sausage Chancellor Scholz for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The idea was floated by Secretary of State Tony Blinken: let’s announce we will deliver M1 Abrams to Ukraine in a hazy, unspecified future, thus providing cover for Scholz to release the Leopards now.

  Don’t you just love German sovereignty in action?

  Every military analyst with an IQ over room temperature knows all those Leopards will be duly incinerated – or better yet, captured, and dissected by Russian military specialists.

  So what happens next is yet another vector of the – very successful so far – U.S.-unleashed German de-industrualization racket: the Americans will invade the German industrial military complex with their “much improved” Abrams – which may perhaps arrive in 2024, when only a rump Ukraine may still exist, or never arrive at all. So no need for the Abrams to prove themselves in actual combat – as in being captured and/or incinerated.

  Rumors in Washington advance that the U.S. “strategy” in Ukraine – extensively detailed by endless think tank reports – had to be adapted. It’s not about “defeating Russia” anymore, but providing Kiev with the means to “scare” Russia. The Russian General Staff must be trembling in their boots.

  Meanwhile, in real life, nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armoured version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon. And that happens even if the much ballyhooded “Big Arrow” Russian offensive starts in a few days or weeks, or never starts at all.

  Arguably the Russian General Staff has concluded a long time ago there’s no point in reducing Ukraine to rubble in a matter of hours – something they could easily accomplish. Thus the fabled mincing machine approach – offering no excuses for NATO to “escalate” (which they continue to do anyway, as Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg is so fond of parroting).

  The trick is that NATO’s escalation overdrive, as it happens, is somewhat controlled by the Russian General Staff, which is always calculating which optimal maneuvers will consume NATO’s military hardware faster. Call it a Russian version of the popular axiom “frog in a boiling pot doesn’t realize it’s being cooked until it croaks.”

  Attacking Russia-China-Iran

  Absolute desperation is now graphically extrapolating into attacks on Iran. Both Russia and China have Iran as their key ally in West Asia for the whole, complex process of Eurasia integration; strategic partnerships interlink the trio.

  So attacking the Ministry of Defense in Isfahan with drones – total fail – and bombing an IRGC convoy of humanitarian aid crossing from Iraq to Syria is a serious U.S.-Israel-coordinated provocation.

  Essentially these are also attacks against Russia and China. Israel cannot lift its hand or foot without U.S. permission. Iranian intel may be able to establish how the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal in charge of U.S. foreign policy authorized if not ordered these attacks, which of course are directly connected to NATO’s desperation in Ukraine.

  When in doubt, just come back to Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski: “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps, Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by contemporary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc.”

  And mirroring Ukraine/Russia there’s of course Taiwan/China.

  As Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar has extensively explained, if Taiwan manufactures chips for U.S. missiles Washington then sends to Taiwan for its “self-defense”, but Taiwan needs to wait because the missiles are needed in Ukraine instead, or chips can’t be shipped to the U.S. owing to a possible sea and air blockade imposed by China, the Americans will be operationally ill-equipped to support their two-front war against peer competitors Russia and China.

  Bye bye Pax Americana. It’s the fear, actually paranoia, of a destroyed Taiwan – and the destruction in every scenario would be provoked by the Americans themselves – that has led the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal to demand their chips be Made in USA.

  On the energy front, since U.S. energy costs are low, Washington gambled that much of the deindustrialization of Germany would revert to American benefit. Yet since Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil prices are lower than the U.S., not much production may be shifting to the Hegemon: it will go to China.

  To the bottom of the Grand Canyon!

  The January 10 joint declaration between EU-NATO graphically shows how the EU is no more than the P.R. arm of NATO.

  This NATO-EU joint mission consists in using all economic, political and military means to make sure the “jungle” always behaves according to the “rules-based international order” and accepts to be plundered ad infinitum by the “blooming garden”.

  So in the end what’s left of “Europe”, when it’s NATO – actually Washington – that really rules?

  “Europe”, according to relentless propaganda, means defending “our values” – as in peace, democracy and prosperity. The trick is that unelected elites forced the implicit identification of this imagined, practically sacred “Europe” with the European Union. And that’s how the EU has acquired a mythical identity.

  Of course, in real life the EU – as in the real, politically organized “Europe” – has performed as a toxic instrument of division among European peoples.

  Instead of peace, it has invested in all-out rabid war against Russia. The EU is arguably the most democratically irresponsible institution on the planet: spend a day in Brussels and you understand everything. And instead of prosperity, the EU has institutionalized austerity.

  So sit back, relax and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 23:50

• If You're A Warehouse Worker. This Boston Dynamics Video Might Be An Ominous Sign
  If You’re A Warehouse Worker. This Boston Dynamics Video Might Be An Ominous Sign

  Warehouse automation continues to accelerate as millions of jobs are at risk of being displaced. The latest automation nightmare for warehouse laborers comes from a new video uploaded on YouTube by Boston Dynamics. 

  In a press release, the US robotics firm announced that Deutsche Post DHL Group has successfully deployed the Stretch robot for loading and unloading boxes from tractor trailers at warehouse docks. 

  “Unloading boxes is a strenuous, physically demanding work process which can impact an associate’s ability to work efficiently. By automating this process, DHL Supply Chain explained, the operation not only addresses safety concerns but also the ongoing labor supply challenge by redirecting skilled labor to focus on value-add, strategic tasks in other areas of the warehouse,” DHL wrote in a press release. 

  Translation: DHL is automating its supply chain and won’t need as many warehouse workers in the future. 

  “The custom-designed, lightweight arm of the robot has seven degrees-of-freedom, which gives it the length and flexibility to reach cases throughout the trailer or container,” DHL continued in the press release. 

  By the end of this decade, DHL and other major companies, such as Amazon, are set to fully automate their warehouses. After all, robots don’t strike over wages and working conditions. 

  So for all those warehouse workers — the video above is an ominous sign your job will be in jeopardy. 

  Perhaps “learn to code,” but that might be challenging to land a job at a major tech firm considering the mass layoffs. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 23:30

• US Firms Investing Billions In China’s AI Sector: Report
  US Firms Investing Billions In China’s AI Sector: Report

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  U.S. companies were involved in at least 37 percent of the total investment transactions in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) sector between 2015 and 2021, according to a new report.

  

  The report (pdf), published by the Georgetown University Center for Security and Emerging Technology, found that $40.2 billion in investment transactions into Chinese AI companies had American backing, though it was unclear what percentage of that amount was made by U.S. investors or their overseas counterparts.

  The money was given to 251 Chinese AI companies, primarily as venture capital angel, seed, and pre-seed stage investments.

  There are risks with such investments, the report noted, as they are generally accompanied by other intangible benefits in which U.S. expertise is delivered to China-based companies.

  “While Crunchbase data suggests that U.S. outbound investment into Chinese AI companies is limited, such financial activity, commercial linkages, and the tacit expertise that transfers from U.S.-based funders to target companies in China’s booming AI ecosystem carry implications that extend beyond the business sector,” the report said.

  “Earlier stage VC investments in particular can provide intangible benefits beyond capital, including mentorship and coaching, name recognition, and networking opportunities. As such, U.S. outbound investment in Chinese technology, and particularly AI, merits additional attention and tracking.”

  US Firms Funding Chinese AI Companies

  American investments in China-based AI companies have come under fire in recent years due to the amount of control exercised over such companies by China’s communist regime.

  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, has implemented several laws that require China-based companies to make all data in their possession available to the regime upon request.

  This means that any data or technologies developed by China-based companies with U.S. backing could directly be used by the CCP to improve upon its military capabilities, in line with the regime’s “military-civil fusion” strategy.

  Moreover, such investments directly fuel China’s efforts to overtake the United States as the lead technological power.

  This is demonstrated by the value of the investments being made by U.S. sources into China’s AI companies. Whereas investment transactions involving U.S. funding sources only made up 17 percent of the total number of transactions made, the report said, those transactions accounted for 37 percent of the total funding value of all such transactions.

  Notably, the U.S. investments also include major funding for Chinese companies whose research could tangibly benefit the Chinese military’s pursuit of AI and autonomous systems.

  “Some of the largest investments include Goldman Sachs’ solo investment in 1KMXC, an AI-enabled robotics company, as well as an investment by three U.S.-based VC firms in Geek+, an autonomous mobile robot company,” the report said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 23:10

• Can Chat GPT3 Make Pennsylvania A Red State?
  Can Chat GPT3 Make Pennsylvania A Red State?

  Authored by  Athan Koutsiouroumbas via RealClear Wire,

  In the past three weeks, policymakers had their worlds rocked by generative artificial intelligence. The problem is that they don’t know it – yet.

  

  First, a team of researchers demonstrated that Open AI’s Chat GPT3 can pass the stringent United States Medical Licensing Exam. Days later, Chat GPT 3 passed a bar exam. Finally, Chat GPT3 passed the prestigious Wharton Business School’s rigorous core examination.

  The Wharton researcher writes, “OpenAI’s Chat GPT3 has shown a remarkable ability to automate some of the skills of highly compensated knowledge workers in general and specifically the knowledge workers in the jobs held by MBA graduates including analysts, managers, and consultants.”

  Lawyers, doctors, administrators, managers, and consultants are some of the most highly compensated professionals in the United States. Generative artificial intelligence is banishing them to obsolescence.

  With only 375 employees, the unprofitable Chat GPT3 was acquired by behemoth Microsoft at a valuation reportedly northward of $30 billion. For perspective, with over 42,000 highly educated healthcare employees, AmerisourceBergen is the largest company by revenue headquartered in Pennsylvania. Its valuation is $33.25 billion. So, with 99% fewer employees, the unprofitable Chat GPT3 is already worth nearly the same as the largest company in the Commonwealth.

  Microsoft has already pledged $10 billion to optimize Chat GPT3 toward profitability. Tens of billions more dollars are coming.

  The last time policymakers were presented with displacement on this scale was the globalization that decimated the American working class. The solution for Pennsylvania policymakers was to pivot the state’s economy to “Eds and Meds,” which now constitute 44% of total employment.

  Those industries were chosen because spending is generated predominantly by the government, which is historically stable. To quote Ronald Reagan, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear.” Pennsylvania policymakers knew that they were making safe bets as those markets would almost always exist.

  The pivot worked, with Pennsylvania stabilizing its population decline. Communities able to make the pivot, particularly in the suburbs, saw prosperity.

  Once reliably Republican, the suburban voters employed by “Eds and Meds” now constitute the Democratic Party’s base. The rise of conservative populism, which pointed the finger at college-educated elites for the decline of the working class, accelerated the trend.

  The reticence of suburban elites to choose Republican candidates is understandable, considering some in the GOP’s working-class base label them the enemy. For many in the working class, the contempt is personal, as they perceive the college-educated as having enriched themselves at their expense, via globalization.

  But generative artificial intelligence is poised to inflict the same level of economic devastation on suburban elites as suffered by the working class through globalization. Some elites will undoubtedly find sure footing in the pending economy created by generative artificial intelligence. But many others will not.

  The Rust Belt’s decline took decades to manifest. Its slow pace helped shield policymakers from criticism because gradual change enabled some Americans to find solutions on their own.

  In contrast to globalization’s slow deindustrialization, however, technological adoption moves at lightning speed and is only getting faster. “Eds and Meds” suburbanites are unlikely to gain a reprieve through gradual transition. Profitable generative artificial intelligence business models may surface within a year. Suburban prosperity could be severely undermined before the next Winter Olympics. Policymakers need immediate solutions.

  Political polarization rises during economic decline. A 20-point gap persists between the political affiliations of college-educated and non-college-educated Americans. It is one of the most pronounced cleavages in American politics.

  The displacement potentially caused by generative artificial intelligence could put college-educated voters back into electoral play for Republicans, presuming the GOP can deliver something for them.

  The path to help these Pennsylvanians, one that would be exclusive to Republicans, is rapid reindustrialization. The prerequisites for rapid reindustrialization are affordable, abundant energy and school choice. Both are fundamental tenets of the GOP platform.

  Pennsylvania is blessed with abundant natural resources and is a net exporter of energy. It has educational entrepreneurs pleading for the opportunity to create the most industrially skilled workforce on the planet. Products made in Pennsylvania can reach most of the continental United States or international waters within 24 hours. Among the 50 states, this “iron triangle” of energy-workforce-logistics may be unique to Pennsylvania.

  Rapid reindustrialization is the path that unites all educational backgrounds to produce real, sustainable wealth. Instead of pitting the educational classes against one another, it makes them partners in success.

  Pennsylvania Republican policymakers have the opportunity before them to accomplish what Ron DeSantis has achieved in Florida: a generational political realignment of a state.

  Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s Republican Party leaders have proposed spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a 2022 midterm post-mortem. That’s fine. But the lesson of the 2022 midterm is that voters do not reward looking backwards.

  A crisis has begun. The GOP will respond either by providing tomorrow’s leaders or being condemned by history for failing to rise to the challenge.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 22:30

• 'High-Speed Rail' – California & Japan Are Different
  ‘High-Speed Rail’ – California & Japan Are Different

  Authored by Thomas Buckley via ‘The Point’ Substack,

  Well, it’s big in Japan…

  

  That is what proponents of California’s high speed rail project say when asked about the whys and wherefores of the system.  In other words, if it works somewhere else it will work here.

  That argument, though, falls in the face of a rather basic fact:  California and Japan are different.

  It is true that Japan’s high speed rail system, first begun in 1964, actually makes money – a lot, in fact.  The iconic first line, Shinkansen Tokaido, alone carries 90 million people a year and has an operating profit of about $4.4 billion dollars.  That does not include capital costs, but teasing that number out after 60 years of operation and the privatization of the route in the late 1980s is extremely difficult – suffice to say the deal has “worked” for the owners.

  There are multiple other Shinkansen lines in Japan, most of which also realize an operating profit (the latest expansion to Hokkaido – the very large island north of the Japanese mainland – has proven to be problematic, though.)

  Focusing on the Tokaido line – the line typically referred to for comparison – shows a few similarities but many glaring differences.  It’s distance is 320 miles, not terribly different from the 390 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco.  Also, it takes two and half hours – again not too dissimilar  – and, in a downtown to downtown comparison, is faster and more convenient than flying (though not cheaper – it’s about $100 to fly and about $160 to take the Shinkansen) just like California’s project is supposed to be.

  But that’s about it.

  First, there is the issue of population.  The Tokaido line (with its “Nozomi” train only stopping in the largest cities and hence the fastest) runs from Tokyo to Osaka, which alone have combined populations of 17 million, compared to 11 million for LA (including the county) and San Francisco. 

  In the cities along the Tokaido route there are 9 million more people; in the space between LA and SF, there are less than 3 million.  For comparison, the smallest city on the Tokaido is Shinagawa at 400,000 people; the smallest city on the California system is Gilroy, at 58,000.  All told, the average “stop population” between LA and SF is about 250,000 – on the Tokaido/Nozomi is 2,250,000.

  It is these concentrations and the economies of scale they allow that drive the success of the Tokaido line – California’s system is simply not in the same league.

  The Nozomi train operates 32 1,300-seat trains each way every day; pretty much on the half-hour with fewer overnight, while the two other slower (but still high speed) trains on the same system operate much more frequently and make many more stops.

  Note on the following information– when dealing with California High Speed Rail (CHSR) Authority numbers – time or money – it is a good idea to remind oneself that they have never been right before, so really really big grain – meet salt.

  The CHSR system will – in its “horizon year” of 2040, operate 105 southbound and 103 northbound trains per day over the system.  Southbound, 64 trains will start in San Francisco, 20 in San Jose, and 21 in Merced.  Northbound, 42 trains will start in Anaheim, 44 in Los Angeles, and 17 will start in Merced (note – that means 86 trains will pass through LA northbound every day.)

  The system will operate 18 hours per day, with six hours designated “peak;” about half of the trains will operate during those six hours, the other half during the 12 “off peak” hours.

  That means LA’s Union Station will – during the morning commute – see a train going north about every eight minutes, every day.

  At 1,200 (could be a bit lower, could be a bit higher as the final design is not yet set) seats per train, about 10,000 people could leave LA between 7 and 8 a.m.  For the system to hit its ridership (and therefore revenue) goals, about 5,000 have to.

  Six trains will run non-stop from LA to SF and 10 will run with only stops at San Jose and Burbank – the non-stops are expected to meet the 2 hour and 40 minute time limit set by original bond; the other trains will not.

  Like the Tokaido, California’s system will charge different fares for different distances traveled … sort of.

  The 2020 ridership estimate report shows a ticket price (one way) of $100 from San Francisco to Bakersfield.  The cost to travel to LA or even Anaheim?  Also $100.  It appears planners simply worked – in accordance with the original bond measure – backwards from a typical Southwest fare to set the cap.

  For those traveling to/from smaller cities, the fares are obviously less.  For example, San Francisco to San Jose is $26, SF to Merced is $66, Los Angeles to Anaheim is $34, etc.. 

  While the high-speed rail has been touted as a way to make lower cost Central Valley housing more accessible, the fare rates could significantly impact that desire as it would cost about $30,000 a year to commute from Merced into the city (admittedly, it can most likely be assumed there will be some sort of farepass/frequent user program will cut that price.)

  But at numbers in the thousands per month, the incentive to move out of more expensive cities becomes far less – why spend the money on train fare rather than on a more expensive, more central home if it’s going to be a wash, unless you were going to move anyway to raise a family and mow the lawn?

  As to overall finances, the most the CHSR says the LA to SF system will cost is $113 billion and it will be done in 2033, four years after the Central Valley “starter kit” is done.

  Exactly where the money will come from remains a bit of a puzzle, but the CHSR is hoping the Cap and Trade money it gets will be extended to 2050 (an extra $10-20 billion,) that they will find more federal funds including non-transportation grants for things such as renewable energy and “social equity.”

  As to a private investor, the CHSR admits they are not quite ready for that but that once the system is running and turning an operational profit businesses will come knocking to invest.

  Speaking of operational profit, the CHSR projects there is a “99.4%” likelihood it make an operational profit by 2040.  It should be noted “operational profit” is just that – how much more money you bring in than you have to spend every day and is not related to the capital cost.

  If – IF – the system makes $1.4 billion it expects to in 2040, that would give it a return on capital investment of 1.4% percent.  That’s not terribly good and may make private companies think again and again and again about investing. 

  In other words, if (not accounting for inflation) the CHSR simply saved its money to build the rest of the system – the San Diego, Sacramento extensions – it would take about 40 years of “profit” to cover the cost

  And those revenues figures are based on having about 1 million riders a week,  about 140,000 a day, about 6,000 an hour, 100 a minute.

  For proper context: Currently about 2.5 million people fly each year between LA and the Bay Area. And about 700,000 currently take Amtrak to/from Bakersfield to Oakland and/or Sacramento. That’s 3.2 million – total.

  Note – assuming the new system attracts a few more riders in the Central Valley alone, that means the “south from Bakersfield” and the “Merced to San Francisco” and the “long haul” trips will have to attract about 50 million riders alone

  Obviously, a whole bunch of other people drive to and from and in between, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to wonder if the 51 million annual riders the HSR estimates will use the system may be just a tad bit on the optimistic side

  All this to be able to get from Fresno to Bakersfield for $63 six years from now.

  That’s 20 bucks more than Amtrak charges today.

  *  *  *

  The Point is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 21:50

• Inside The Secret Government Meeting On COVID-19 Natural Immunity
  Inside The Secret Government Meeting On COVID-19 Natural Immunity

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Four of the highest ranking U.S. health officials—including Dr. Anthony Fauci—met in secret to discuss whether or not naturally immune people should be exempt from getting COVID-19 vaccines, The Epoch Times can reveal.

  

  The officials brought in four outside experts to discuss whether the protection gained after recovering from COVID-19—known as natural immunity—should count as one or more vaccine doses.

  “There was interest in several people in the administration in hearing basically the opinions of four immunologists in terms of what we thought about … natural infection as contributing to protection against moderate to severe disease, and to what extent that should influence dosing,” Dr. Paul Offit, one of the experts, told The Epoch Times.

  Offit and another expert took the position that the naturally immune need fewer doses. The other two experts argued natural immunity shouldn’t count as anything.

  The discussion did not lead to a change in U.S. vaccination policy, which has never acknowledged post-infection protection. Fauci and the other U.S. officials who heard from the experts have repeatedly downplayed that protection, claiming that it is inferior to vaccine-bestowed immunity. Most studies on the subject indicate the opposite.

  The meeting, held in October 2021, was briefly discussed before on a podcast. The Epoch Times has independently confirmed the meeting took place, identified all of the participants, and uncovered other key details.

  Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who did not participate in the meeting, criticized how such a consequential discussion took place behind closed doors with only a few people present.

  “It was a really impactful decision that they made in private with a very small number of people involved. And they reached the wrong decision,” Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

  

  The Participants

  From the government:

  • Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden until the end of 2022
  • Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general
  • Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  • Dr. Francis Collins, head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which includes the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, until December 2021
  • Dr. Bechara Choucair, the White House vaccine coordinator until November 2021

  From outside the government:

  • Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on vaccines
  • Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a former member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board
  • Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University
  • Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the Baylor College of Medicine’s School of Tropical Medicine

  Fauci and Murthy decided to hold the meeting, according to emails The Epoch Times obtained.

  “Would you be available tonight from 9-9:30 for a call with a few other scientific colleagues on infection-induced immunity? Tony and I just discussed and were hoping to do this sooner rather than later if possible,” Murthy wrote in one missive to Fauci, Walensky, and Collins.

  All three quickly said they could make it.

  Walensky asked who would be there.

  Murthy listed the participants. “I think you know all of them right?” he said.

  Walensky said she knew all but one person. “Sounds like a good crew,” she added.

  

  ‘Clear Benefit’

  During the meeting, Offit put forth his position—that natural immunity should count as two doses.

  At the time, the CDC recommended three shots—a two-dose primary series and a booster—for many Americans 18 and older, soon expanding that advice to all adults, even though trials of the boosters only analyzed immunogenicity and efficacy among those without evidence of prior infection.

  Research indicated that natural immunity was long-lasting and superior to vaccination. On the other hand, the CDC published a paper in its quasi-journal that concluded vaccination was better.

  Osterholm sided with Offit, but thought that having recovered from COVID-19 should only count as a single dose.

  “I added my voice at the meeting to count an infection as equivalent to a dose of vaccine! I’ve always believed hybrid immunity likely provides the most protection,” Osterholm told The Epoch Times via email.

  Hybrid immunity refers to getting a vaccine after recovering from COVID-19.

  Some papers have found vaccination after recovery boosts antibodies, which are believed to be a correlate of protection. Other research has shown that the naturally immune have a higher risk of side effects than those who haven’t recovered from infection. Some experts believe the risk is worth the benefit but others do not.

  Hotez and Iwasaki, meanwhile, made the case that natural immunity should not count as any dose—as has been the case in virtually the entire United States since the COVID-19 vaccines were first rolled out.

  Iwasaki referred to a British preprint study, soon after published in Nature, that concluded, based on survey data, that the protection from the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines was heightened among people with evidence of prior infection. She also noted a study she worked on that found the naturally immune had higher antibody titers than the vaccinated, but that the vaccinated “reached comparable levels of neutralization responses to the ancestral strain after the second vaccine dose.” The researchers also discovered T cells—thought to protect against severe illness—were boosted by vaccination.

  There’s a “clear benefit” to boosting regardless of prior infection, Iwasaki, who has since received more than $2 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told participants after the meeting in an email obtained by The Epoch Times. Hotez received $789,000 in grants from the NIH in fiscal year 2020, and has received other grants totaling millions in previous years. Offit, who co-invented the rotavirus vaccine, received $3.5 million in NIH grants from 1985 through 2004.

  Hotez declined interview requests through a spokesperson. Iwasaki did not respond to requests for comment.

  No participants represented experts like Bhattacharya who say that the naturally immune generally don’t need any doses at all.

  

  Public Statements

  In public, Hotez repeatedly portrayed natural immunity as worse than vaccination, including citing the widely criticized CDC paper, which drew from just two months of testing in a single state.

  In one post on Twitter on Oct. 29, 2021, he referred to another CDC study, which concluded that the naturally immune were five times as likely to test positive compared to vaccinated people with no prior infection, and stated: “Still more evidence, this time from @CDCMMWR showing that vaccine-induced immunity is way better than infection and recovery, what some call weirdly ‘natural immunity’. The antivaccine and far right groups go ballistic, but it’s the reality.”

  That same day, the CDC issued a “science brief” that detailed the agency’s position on natural immunity versus the protection from vaccines. The brief, which has never been updated, says that available evidence shows both the vaccinated and naturally immune “have a low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months” but that “the body of evidence for infection-induced immunity is more limited than that for vaccine-induced immunity.”

  Evidence shows that vaccination after infection, or hybrid immunity, “significantly enhances protection and further reduces risk of reinfection” and is the foundation of the CDC’s recommendations, the agency said.

  Several months later, the CDC acknowledged that natural immunity was superior to vaccination against the Delta variant, which was displaced in late 2021 by Omicron. The CDC, which has made misleading representations before on the evidence supporting vaccination of the naturally immune, did not respond to a request for comment regarding whether the agency will ever update the brief.

  Iwasaki had initially been open to curbing the number of doses for the naturally immune—”I think this supports the idea of just giving one dose to people who had covid19,” she said in response to one Twitter post in early 2021, which is restricted from view—but later came to argue that each person who is infected has a different immune response, and that the natural immunity, even if strong initially, wanes over time.

  Osterholm has knocked people who claim natural immunity is weak or non-existent, but has also claimed that vaccine-bestowed immunity is better. Osterholm also changed the stance he took in the meeting just several months later, saying in February 2022 that “we’ve got to make three doses the actual standard” while also “trying to understand what kind of immunity we get from a previous infection.”

  Offit has been the leading critic on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which advises U.S. regulators on vaccines, over their authorizations of COVID-19 boosters. Offit has said boosters are unnecessary for the young and healthy because they don’t add much to the primary series. He also criticized regulators for authorizing updated shots without consulting the committee and absent clinical data. Two of the top U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials resigned over the booster push. No FDA officials were listed on invitations to the secret meeting on natural immunity.

  Fauci and Walensky Downplay Natural Immunity

  Fauci and Walensky, two of the most visible U.S. health officials during the pandemic, have repeatedly downplayed natural immunity.

  Fauci, who said in an email in March 2020 that he assumed there would be “substantial immunity post infection,” would say later that natural immunity was real but that the durability was uncertain. He noted the studies finding higher antibody levels from hybrid immunity.

  In September 2021, months after claiming that vaccinated people “can feel safe that they are not going to get infected,” Fauci said that he did not have “a really firm answer” on whether the naturally immune should get vaccinated.

  “It is conceivable that you got infected, you’re protected—but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time,” Fauci said on CNN when pressed on the issue. “So I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”

  After the meeting, Fauci would say that natural immunity and vaccine-bestowed immunity both wane, and that people should get vaccinated regardless of prior infection to boost their protection.

  Walensky, before she became CDC director, signed a document called the John Snow Memorandum in response to the Great Barrington Declaration, which Bhattacharya coauthored. The declaration called for focused protection of the elderly and otherwise infirm, stating, “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”

  The memorandum, in contrast, said there was “no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection” and supported the harsh lockdown measures that had been imposed in the United States and elsewhere.

  In March 2021, after becoming director, Walensky released recommendations that the naturally immune get vaccinated, noting that there was “substantial durability” of protection six months after infection but that “rare cases of reinfection” had been reported.

  Walensky hyped the CDC study on natural immunity in August 2021, and the second study in October 2021. But when the third paper came out concluding natural immunity was superior, she did not issue a statement. Walensky later told a blog that the study found natural immunity provided strong protection, “perhaps even more so than those who had been vaccinated and not yet boosted.”

  But, because it came before Omicron, she said, “it’s not entirely clear how that protection works in the context of Omicron and boosting.”

  Walensky, Murthy, and Collins did not respond to requests for interviews. Fauci, who stepped down from his positions in late 2022, could not be reached.

  Murthy and Collins also portrayed natural immunity as inferior. “From the studies about natural immunity, we are seeing more and more data that tells us that while you get some protection from natural infection, it’s not nearly as strong as what you get from the vaccine,” Murthy said on CNN about two months before the meeting. Collins, in a series of blog posts, highlighted the studies showing higher antibody levels after vaccination and urged people to get vaccinated. He also voiced support for vaccine mandates.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 21:10

• "Significant Threat To National Security": US Air Force Warns Over Chinese Corn Mill In North Dakota
  “Significant Threat To National Security”: US Air Force Warns Over Chinese Corn Mill In North Dakota

  The US Air Force has warned that the construction of a Chinese-owned corn mill in North Dakota poses a “significant threat to national security.”

  

  The company which owns the mill is Fufeng Group, an MSG and xantham gum manufacturer based in Shandong province, China, bought 370 acres of farmland in Grand Forks – along with the promise that the $700 million site would economically benefit the region.

  According to GOP Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, however, the Air Force says: “the proposed project presents a significant threat to national security with both near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area,” though the military branch declined to state specific threats.

  Thousands of residents have speculated that the corn mill might be used for spying, however.

  In August of last year, at least 5,000 residents signed a petition aimed at preventing the mill’s construction.

  Mayor Brandon Bochenski, while initially supportive of the mill, came out on Tuesday saying that it should be stopped.

  “The federal government has requested the city’s help in stopping the project as geo-political tensions have greatly increased since the initial announcement of the project,” he said, adding that he would block construction by denying building permits and refusing to connect city infrastructure to the site, Yahoo News reports.

  Fufeng USA’s Chief Operating Officer Eric Chutorash has since denied that the mill would be used to spy on or harm the U.S.

  The corn mill was proposed to be built 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is home to U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units, including its top-secret drone technology. -Yahoo!

  In a Tuesday joint press release, Cramer and Hoeven called on Grand Forks officials to “discontinue” the project, and instead “work together to find an American company to develop the agriculture project.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 20:50

• Early Primary State Voters Willing To Move Past Trump, Biden
  Early Primary State Voters Willing To Move Past Trump, Biden

  Authored by Dallas Woodhouse via RealClear Wire,

  As Trump and Biden focus their attention on the early primary state of South Carolina, Palmetto State voters are thinking about the future, one that focuses on public policy solutions, not “gotcha” politics and controversies of the past. Voters are expressing a willingness to move on from both the former and current president if they can’t meet the moment with real solutions to the problems facing everyday voters.

  

  South Carolinians are looking for concrete proposals to address inflation. 78% of SC voters are concerned with their family’s ability to pay their bills due to inflation, with nearly half (48.4%) saying they are very concerned, according to a new poll from the South Carolina Policy Council. Less than four in ten SC voters believe America on the right track, with 58% saying it is on the wrong track.

  Voters across the board still believe that lower taxes help spur economic growth.

  Nearly four in five (79%) likely SC voters said further tax reductions are important for creating new jobs and attracting business, with 54% saying they are very important.

  85% of GOP voters said further tax cuts are important for economic growth, as did 68% of Democrat voters and 81% of independent voters.

  South Carolina voters are also demanding more government transparency. 83% agreed that government bodies should be required to livestream their public meetings on the internet for greater transparency and accountability.

  Critically, the survey data shows voters are highly interested in moving on from both Biden and Trump.

  In fact, 54% of likely 2024 SC voters agreed that “the country would be better off if neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump is elected President in 2024.” Only 30% said they disagree.

  Other important takeaways include:

  1. A majority (51%) of likely voters viewed Trump unfavorably, compared with 46% who viewed him favorably.
  2. Biden is viewed unfavorably by 54% of likely voters, while only 45% viewed him favorably.
  3. Of Republican primary voters, only 37% said the GOP should nominate Trump in 2024, while 47% said the GOP should nominate someone else.
  4. In a head-to-head matchup, a majority of likely Republican voters favored Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (52%) over former President Donald Trump (33%) by a whopping 19%.
  5. Nearly half (46%) of Republican primary voters that viewed Trump very favorably said the GOP should nominate someone else.

  Of the SC voters who viewed Biden very favorably, 38% still said America would be better off if neither Biden nor Trump were elected in 2024.

  Of SC Democratic primary voters, only 43% said their party should nominate Joe Biden for re-election in 2024, while 38% answered someone else.  

  A full 20% of Democrats were unsure of whom the party should nominate. Overall, more than half (58%) of likely Democrat voters indicated they are not sold on Biden in 2024.

  While South Carolina is a reliable GOP state in the general election, data just to the north in purple North Carolina is shockingly similar, according to new polling conducted by Differentiator Data.

  The results show that Trump is viewed favorably by just 38% of North Carolina’s likely voters. Only 42% of NC voters viewed President Biden favorably. Republican voters favored Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (47%) over Trump (35%) by 12 points in a six person GOP field. Nearly half of GOP voters that viewed Trump favorably would still pick DeSantis or another candidate.

  For Trump and Biden to win back the voters they have lost, they will have to turn the page on the past and deliver an optimistic, forward-looking agenda for the future – a herculean task for two men who have been on the earth for eight decades. Another nasty personal fight between the two of them might produce an electoral winner, but not one who can capture the hearts and minds of Americans and successfully lead the country.

  South Carolinians will be key in deciding which Republican and which Democrat will become their party’s nominee.  North Carolina, decided by just 1.75% in 2020, will be a key swing state in the 2024 general election.

  Yet across the Carolinas, voters are already sending signals. Voters are hungry for fresh, new policy ideas. They want competent leadership that can deliver real policy solutions to address real world problems.

  The question is, can either party and its candidates deliver?

  Dallas Woodhouse is the Executive Director of the South Carolina Policy Council.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 20:30

• Turkey Can Forget About Getting F-16s If Sweden, Finland NATO Bids Blocked: Senators
  Turkey Can Forget About Getting F-16s If Sweden, Finland NATO Bids Blocked: Senators

  The United States is now threatening Turkey with holding more American-made fighter jets captive, this time over the Erdogan government’s refusal to allow Sweden into NATO.

  Turkey starting in 2021 issued a formal request purchase 40 F-16 jets and about 80 modernization kits from the US, but a group of over two dozen US senators has said they are ready to block the sale if Turkey doesn’t ratify Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession protocols. 

  

  “Congress cannot consider future support for Türkiye, including the sale of F-16 fighter jets, until Türkiye completes ratification of the accession protocols,” the senators, led by Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), wrote in a letter to the president Thursday.

  “Failure to ratify the protocols or present a timeline for ratification threatens the Alliance’s unity at a key moment in history, as Russia continues its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” the lawmakers stressed.

  The White House appears favorable to the Congressional members’ stance regarding getting tougher on Turkey while Ankara blocks Sweden’s NATO membership: 

  “We have made the same point to our Turkish allies … that we need this Congress’s support moving forward for the security enhancements that we think that they need, as allies, F16s, some of them are old, but that this Congress is likely to look far more favorably on that after ratification,” [Victoria] Nuland said, urging senators to “keep making your points and we will too.”

  But Turkey has never been easily pressured by Washington – and this is perhaps given the Turkish military remains the second largest in NATO, and the fact that Turkey plays host to American military bases.

  With the F-16 hold-up now having dragged on a couple of years, Turkey has long flirted with the idea of acquiring Russian-made Su-35s and Su-57 fighter jets, causing alarm among NATO allies. Turkey has argued it’s a problem of Washington’s own making, given the 2019 decision to boot Turkey from the Lockheed F-35 program.

  Lately, Erdogan has said Turkey looks favorably on Finland joining the alliance, while at the same time suspending accession talks with Swedish officials, especially after last month’s Quran-burning incident in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 20:10

• Record 285,000 Illinois Residents Saw Power Shut-Offs Due To Non-Payment In 2022
  Record 285,000 Illinois Residents Saw Power Shut-Offs Due To Non-Payment In 2022

  Authored by Jarryd Jaeger via The Post Millennial,

  A new report compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity has revealed that the number of households having their electricity disconnected by power companies as a result of not being able to pay soared between 2021 and 2022.

  

  Leading the way among states who report such data is Illinois, whose main electricity providers shut down power for nearly 300,000 households between January and October 2022, a massive increase over the previous year. 

  According to the report, disconnects in Illinois rose 26 percent from 2021 to 284,720 in the first ten months of 2022. The state’s two largest electricity providers, Exelon’s Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and Amaren, accounted for the vast majority of shut-offs.

  Both companies are investor-owned and have been criticized for increasing executives’ salaries while working to make electricity more expensive for customers.

  As the report states, ComEd imposed a 26 percent rate hike in October 2021, and gained permission from regulators in November 2022 to raise prices yet again by $199 million. All the while, customers were having their lights turned off for non-payment.

  During this time, ComEd was also embroiled in a corruption scandal, in which it was accused of “using ratepayer funds as part of a bribery scheme” to secure the passage of 2011 legislation that implemented a “formula rate” system. The system subjected customers to hundreds of millions of dollars in rate hikes over the last decade, but ComEd benefited to the tune of nearly $4.7 billion.

  At the onset of Covid-19, a moratorium on shutoffs due to nonpayment was imposed across the nation, however, Illinois was one of the states that ended the policy as soon as it possibly could. By late 2021, no such forgiveness was offered.

  “The preventable practice of disconnections keeps millions of Americans in poverty and narrows their avenues of escape,” the report lamented. “By giving utility companies the power to penalize poverty, we license them to perpetuate it.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 19:50

• 'The Scandal Would Be Enormous': Pfizer Director Worried About Vax-Induced Menstrual Irregularities
  ‘The Scandal Would Be Enormous’: Pfizer Director Worried About Vax-Induced Menstrual Irregularities

  Project Veritas on Thursday released a new segment of undercover footage of Pfizer director Jordon Walker in which the Director of R&D within the company’s mRNA operation expressed concern over how the COVID-19 vaccine may be affecting women’s reproductive health.

  

  “There is something irregular about the menstrual cycles. So, people will have to investigate that down the line,” Walker told an undercover journalist he thought he was on a date with.

  “The [COVID] vaccine shouldn’t be interfering with that [menstrual cycles]. So, we don’t really know,” he added.

  Walker also hopes we don’t discover that “somehow this mRNA lingers in the body and like — because it has to be affecting something hormonal to impact menstrual cycles,” adding “I hope we don’t discover something really bad down the line…If something were to happen downstream and it was, like, really bad? I mean, the scale of that scandal would be enormous.”

  Watch:

  BREAKING: @Pfizer Director Concerned Over Women’s Reproductive Heath After COVID-19 Vaccinations

  “There is something irregular about their menstrual cycles…concerning…The vaccine shouldn’t be interfering with that…It has to be affecting something hormonal…”#Pfertility pic.twitter.com/XAuMPJNShD

  — Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) February 2, 2023

   

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

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 19:30

• Growing Number Of Doctors Say They Won’t Get COVID-19 Booster Shots
  Growing Number Of Doctors Say They Won’t Get COVID-19 Booster Shots

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A growing number of doctors say that they will not get COVID-19 vaccine boosters, citing a lack of clinical trial evidence.

  “I have taken my last COVID vaccine without RCT level evidence it will reduce my risk of severe disease,” Dr. Todd Lee, an infectious disease expert at McGill University, wrote on Twitter.

  

  Lee was pointing to the lack of randomized clinical trial (RCT) results for the updated boosters, which were cleared in the United States and Canada in the fall of 2022 primarily based on data from experiments with mice.

  Lee, who has received three vaccine doses, noted that he was infected with the Omicron virus variant—the vaccines provide little protection against infection—and described himself as a healthy male in his 40s.

  Dr. Vinay Prasad, a professor of epidemiology and biostatics at the University of California, San Francisco, also said he wouldn’t take any additional shots until clinical trial data become available.

  “I took at least 1 dose against my will. It was unethical and scientifically bankrupt,” he said.

  Allison Krug, an epidemiologist who co-authored a study that found teenage boys were more likely to suffer heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination than COVID-19 infection, recounted explaining to her doctor why she was refusing a booster and said her doctor agreed with her position.

  She called on people to “join the movement to demand appropriate evidence,” pointing to a blog post from Prasad.

  “Pay close attention to note this isn’t anti-vaccine sentiment. This is ‘provide [hard] evidence of benefit to justify ongoing use’ which is very different. It is only fair for a 30 billion dollar a year product given to hundreds of millions,” Lee said.

  Dr. Mark Silverberg, who founded the Toronto Immune and Digestive Health Institute; Kevin Bass, a medical student; and Dr. Tracy Høeg, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, joined Lee and Prasad in stating their opposition to more boosters, at least for now.

  Høeg said she did not need clinical trials to know she’s not getting any boosters after receiving a two-dose primary series, adding that she took the second dose “against my will.”

  “I also had an adverse reaction to dose 1 moderna and, if I could do it again, I would not have had any covid vaccines,” she said on Twitter. “I was glad my parents in their 70s could get covid vaccinated but have yet to see non-confounded data to advise them about the bivalent booster. I would have liked to see an RCT for the bivalent for people their age and for adults with health conditions that put them at risk.”

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization to updated boosters, or bivalent shots, from Pfizer and Moderna in August 2022 despite there being no human data.

  Observational data suggests the boosters provide little protection against infection and solid shielding against severe illness, at least initially.

  Five months after the authorization was granted, no clinical trial data has been made available for the bivalents, which target the Wuhan strain as well as the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron. Moderna presented efficacy estimates for a different bivalent, which has never been used in the United States, during a recent meeting. The company estimated the booster increased protection against infection by just 10 percent.

  The FDA is preparing to order all Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines be replaced with the bivalents. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issues recommendations on vaccines, continues advising virtually all Americans to get a primary series and multiple boosters.

  Professor Calls for Halt to Messenger RNA Vaccines

  A professor, meanwhile, became the latest to call for a halt to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are both based on messenger RNA technology.

  “At this point in time, all COVID mRNA vaccination program[s] should stop immediately,” Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a video statement. “They should stop because they completely failed to fulfill any of their advertised promise[s] regarding efficacy. And more importantly, they should stop because of the mounting and indisputable evidence that they cause unprecedented level of harm, including the death of young people and children.”

  Levi was referring to post-vaccination heart inflammation, or myocarditis. The condition is one of the few that authorities have acknowledged is caused by the messenger RNA vaccines.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 19:10

• Adani Races To Restore Confidence With Lender Talks As Corporate Empire Falters
  Adani Races To Restore Confidence With Lender Talks As Corporate Empire Falters

  Losses in Gautam Adani’s corporate empire surged to $108 billion on Thursday, sparking fears of a potential systemic implosion one day after the Indian conglomerate’s flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. scrapped a 200 billion-rupee ($2.4 billion) stock offering. 

  The suddenness of the equity offering withdrawal reverberated across markets, politics, and business circles. One dealmaker told Bloomberg that he has never seen an equity offering canceled so quickly in his two-decade career.

  Indian lawmakers are questioning and requesting a broader probe into the plunge in Adani Enterprises shares. Even the Reserve Bank of India is checking on banking exposure to ensure there’s no systemic threat. 

  In a separate report, Bloomberg said Credit Suisse and Citigroup have stopped accepting some bonds issued by Adani’s companies as collateral for margin loans to high-net-worth clients. However, Goldman Sachs told investors Adani bond prices have likely hit a floor. 

  A crisis in confidence plagues Adani and his corporate empire, and he is racing to plug the holes in his sinking ship.

  A person familiar with the situation said Adani is in discussions with lenders to prepay and release pledged shares as he seeks to restore confidence,. 

  Adani nor his companies have faced margin calls on these pledges and aiming for quick prepayment, the person said, adding the move is to dismiss concerns about margin calls. 

  They noted Adani officials would address investors about the prepayment in the coming days.

  This turmoil comes in the wake of Hindenburg Research’s short-seller report. The US firm alleges Adani oversees a sprawling empire built on market manipulation and accounting fraud — allegations he and his conglomerate have repeatedly denied.

  Simultaneously, Adani’s personal wealth has taken a massive hit. In just six trading sessions, the billionaire, but no longer Asia’s richest person, has lost $52 billion in personal wealth. 

  

  Adani’s primary goal in the short term is to remove concerns about a wave of potential margin calls concerns and default risk as dollar bonds plunge to very distressed levels. 

  There is no clear messaging (yet) from India’s government if they will get involved in the fight between Hindenburg and Adani. 

  “Adani and his officials are trying their best to paint it as a foreign conspiracy against the rise of India as an economic power,” said Ashok Swain, head of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. 

  However, fund managers aren’t buying that messaging: veteran emerging-markets investor Mark Mobius told Bloomberg that Adani Enterprises’ massive debt load “scared us away” from participating in the share offering.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 18:50

• DHS Will Allow Border Agents To Testify On Border Crisis After Subpoena Threats
  DHS Will Allow Border Agents To Testify On Border Crisis After Subpoena Threats

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will allow two chief border patrol agents to testify before a Congressional hearing on the U.S. border crisis, after initially trying to “muzzle” them, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).

  

  In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Comer highlighted how DHS leadership sought to prevent the chief border agents from testifying at the Feb. 7 hearing, but later reversed its stance after Comer threatened to use subpoenas.

  The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability plans to hold the hearing to gather facts from U.S. Border Patrol witnesses. The hearing is titled “On the Front Lines of the Border Crisis: A Hearing with Chief Patrol Agents.”

  Comer wrote that he invited the agents’ testimony on Jan. 19 and that DHS “initially sought to prevent Congress from hearing invaluable testimony from Chief Patrol Agents, believing that DHS’s internal protocols superseded Congressional oversight prerogatives.”

  “I am pleased that the DHS is no longer taking such a position, and will make available as witnesses Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez, Rio Grande Valley Sector and Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin, Tucson Sector,” Comer wrote (pdf). “These two law enforcement professionals also serve as Lead Field Coordinators for the border regions that collectively include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.”

  In a statement, Comer described the Biden administration’s “radical open borders policies” as the cause of the “worst border crisis in American history.”

  “Starting on day one in office, President [Joe] Biden and his administration rolled back deterrent-focused policies, halted the construction of the border wall, gutted interior enforcement, pushed amnesty for illegal immigrants—all of which have made it difficult for U.S. Border Patrol agents to secure the border,” Comer said in a statement.

  “Next week, we will hear firsthand from the Border Patrol about this humanitarian and national security crisis,” he continued, adding the Republicans on the panel were committed to holding the Biden administration accountable.

  

  Republicans Move to Impeach Mayorkas

  Republicans have been critical of Mayorkas’s handling of the crisis at the southern U.S. border, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) repeatedly calling on him to resign last year, and declaring his intention to investigate and impeach Mayorkas.

  On Monday, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told Fox News that he intends to file articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 18:30

• Woman Charged With Stealing $1.5 Million In Chicken Wings From Chicago Suburb School District
  Woman Charged With Stealing $1.5 Million In Chicken Wings From Chicago Suburb School District

  A 66-year-old woman was charged with stealing over $1.5 million worth of food – primarily chicken wings, while working as the Director of Food Services for a school district within a suburb of Chicago.

  Bond was set at $150,000 Thursday for Vera Lidell, who began working for Harvey School District 152 in July 2020, placed hundreds of unauthorized orders for items between July 2020 and February 2022 – which included 11,000 cases of chicken wings through the school’s primary supplier, Gordon Food Service.

  

  Liddell is accused of placing the orders alongside legitimate orders for the district.

  “The massive fraud began at the height of COVID during a time when students were not allowed to be physically present in school. Even though the children were learning remotely, the school district continued to provide meals for the students that their families could pick up,” according to prosecutors.

  “The food was never brought to the school or provided to the students,” reads the proffer.

  Believing the orders were genuine, Gordon Food Service billed Harvey School District 152, which then paid for the food items, according to court records. Lidell would then allegedly use one of the school district’s cargo vans to pick up and transport the stolen food.

  A routine mid-year audit conducted by the district’s business manager in January 2022 showed the food service department had exceeded its annual budget by over $300,000 despite only being halfway through the school year, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Lidell was the only person responsible for placing food orders on behalf of the district. –Fox5NY

  “Upon closer review, she discovered individual invoices signed by Liddell for massive quantities of chicken wings, an item that was never served to students because they contain bones,” the proffer continues.

  Gordon Food Service employees got to know Lidell “due to the massive amount of chicken wings she would purchase,” while surveillance footage from the facility revealed that she would often arrive prior to them opening to pick up orders.

  Lidell, whose bail is set at $150,000, is currently being held at Cook County Jail until she’s scheduled to appear in court again on Feb. 22.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 18:10

• Apple Pares Much Of Drop During Earnings Call
  Apple Pares Much Of Drop During Earnings Call

  Update 6:00pm:  Apple has staged a remarkable reversal after hours, and erased almost the entire loss after the company said that it expects a 5% impact from FX rates in Q2, and also expects iPhone revenue growth to accelerate in Q2. CEO Tim Cook was also asked whether the move to higher ASPs for the iPhone is sustainable in light of the sharp decline in sales, and whether this will continue in a worsening economy. Cook said the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max did extremely well until the supply-chain constraints. He says this is definitely a “strong Pro cycle” and credits the new features in the device. He says he’s happy that Apple is now shipping to the demand.

  Tim Cook also said that AI is critical to Apple and mentions features like crash-and-fall detection and the use of AI in features like EKG on the Apple Watch. He says AI will effect everything the company does, including all products and services.

  Apple is quite bullish on India and other emerging markets, with CEO Tim Cook saying the company will soon open its first retail stores in India. He also said Apple saw marked improvement in China in December (versus November) after another round of Covid re-openings.

  As Bloomberg notes, the company also stuck to a line that revenue and sales of individual product categories would have been higher if not for supply-chain constraints and issues stemming from the macroeconomic environment.

  

  * * *

  With both Amazon and Google sliding after reporting disappointing earnings and mixed guidance, it was all up to the world’s biggest company, AAPL, to provide some hail mary for the tech earnings season which for better or worse is concentrated in a one hour stretch this afternoon. Alas, it was not meant to be and after missing on the top and bottom line, AAPL has joined the parade of selling and tumbled after hours due to numbers which the market was clearly not impressed with.

  • EPS $1.88 vs. $2.10 y/y, missing estimate $1.94
  • Gross margin $50.33 billion, -7.2% y/y, missing estimate $52.03 billion
  • Revenue $117.15 billion, -5.5% y/y, missing estimate $121.14 billion
    • Products revenue $96.39 billion, -7.7% y/y, missing estimate $98.98 billion
    • IPhone revenue $65.78 billion, -8.2% y/y, missing estimate $68.3 billion
    • Mac revenue $7.74 billion, -29% y/y, missing estimate $9.72 billion
    • IPad revenue $9.40 billion, +30% y/y, beating estimate $7.78 billion
    • Wearables, home and accessories $13.48 billion, -8.3% y/y, missing estimate $15.32 billion
    • Service revenue $20.77 billion, +6.4% y/y, beating estimate $20.47 billion
    • Greater China rev. $23.91 billion, -7.3% y/y, beating estimate $21.8 billion
  • Cash and cash equivalents $20.54 billion, -45% y/y, estimate $29.91 billion

  

  And here is AAPL’s diluted EPS in context: needless to say, could have been better.

  

  Commenting on the quarter, Tim Cook said that “during the December quarter, we achieved a major milestone and are excited to report that we now have more than 2 billion active devices as part of our growing installed base.”

  CFO Luca Maester chimed in: “our record September quarter results continue to demonstrate our ability to execute effectively in spite of a challenging and volatile macroeconomic backdrop. We continued to invest in our long-term growth plans, generated over $24 billion in operating cash flow, and returned over $29 billion to our shareholders during the quarter. The strength of our ecosystem, unmatched customer loyalty, and record sales spurred our active installed base of devices to a new all-time high. This quarter capped another record-breaking year for Apple, with revenue growing over $28 billion and operating cash flow up $18 billion versus last year.”

  Going back to the results, Apple missed consensus revenue in most product categories, with the exception of iPads, to wit:

  • IPhone revenue $65.78 billion, missing estimate $68.3 billion
  • Mac revenue $7.74 billion, missing estimate $9.72 billion
  • Wearables, home and accessories $13.48 billion, missing estimate $15.32 billion
  • IPad revenue $9.40 billion, beating estimate $7.78 billion

  

  Of note: Apple recorded its first decline in iPhone revenue since the third quarter of 2020; yet in context, the 8% drop was still less than the 20% decrease reported by Samsung. Other major smartphone providers that have yet to report are expecting to see double-digit losses. Ironically, Apple may have fared comparatively well on smartphone revenue.

  The silver lining: service revenue $20.77 billion, +6.4% y/y, beating estimates of $20.47 billion…

  

  … and rose 6.5% Y/Y, an improvement from last quarter’s 5.0%

  

  One other place where investors were pleasantly surprised was China sales, which at $23.91 billion, beat the estimate of $21.8 billion by more than $2 billion.

  

  None of that changes the fact that AAPL’s sales by region were uniformly negative across the board.

  

  And another potential problem: AAPL’s gross cash continues to slide, dropping to $165 billion, the lowest since June 2014…

  

  … while cash net of debt rebounded modestly from $49 billion to $54 billion, just above a 12 year low with the company having spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks. Let’s hope that Apple doesn’t actually need to use that cash.

  

  Commenting on the results, Bloomberg writes that the results show that Apple hasn’t been able to dodge the tech slowdown afflicting many of its competitors. Demand for smartphones and computers has slumped in the past year, and Covid-19 restrictions in China added to Apple’s woes during the holiday sales period. Timing was another issue: The company didn’t launch new Macs and HomePods until recent weeks, missing the end of the first quarter.

  In response to these disappointing earnings, the stock predictably slumped as much as 4% before recouping some losses, although even with the drop it is back to where it was… yesterday.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 18:05

• "All Clear": How The FBI Handling Of The Biden Investigation Could Make Things Difficult For The Special Counsel
  “All Clear”: How The FBI Handling Of The Biden Investigation Could Make Things Difficult For The Special Counsel

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in the New York Post on the latest developments in the Biden classified document investigation. The latest search occurred on the first day at the office for Robert Hur as Special Counsel. He may find that any potential criminal case has already been made more difficult by decisions by the FBI.

  

  Here is the column:

  The FBI issued the “all clear” on its latest search of one of President Biden’s residences. The announcement came with the first day of special counsel Robert Hur on the job at the Justice Department.

  Hur may find that the Biden legal team feels that “all clear” extends beyond the latest search.

  It could be challenging to make a criminal case after how the investigation has been handled.

  At every stage, the FBI has adopted an approach that would compromise or complicate any criminal charge.

  The FBI left the home untouched for over three months after classified documents were found in Biden’s former office in DC. While it was recently learned that the FBI did go to that office a couple weeks later, they reportedly elected to have personal counsel for the president conduct searches on the residences. Biden then spent weeks traveling to these residences after the FBI waited to search the premises.

  The private searches clearly went through these documents and moved (and potentially organized) material. Despite being given the opportunity to conduct and record the initial searches, the FBI will now have to rely on the accounts of private counsel on how these documents were originally left, including any visible classification markings.

  For example, to go through the papers, counsel had to handle them, sort them, and stack or box them. That means that the original conditions are lost in determining, for example, if anyone in the vicinity could have seen a telltale bordered classified jacket or whether a classified document was partially or fully outside of a jacket.

  The FBI allowed uncleared private counsel to tread all over these scenes, creating a nightmare of chain of custody.

  It then waited weeks to send its own agents to places like Rehoboth Beach as counsel and the Bidens frequented the property.

  It is also not clear how the FBI conducted these searches. Reports recently indicated that Biden included classified information in notebooks that were seized in earlier searches. If true, that is a nightmare for investigators because it would require agents to do more than simply look for classified documents with markings at the beginning of paragraphs and tops of pages. They would have to actually read material to determine if Biden incorporated classified material.

  In fairness to the FBI, the same hands-off approach was initially used with Trump as the FBI allowed for material to be collected and stored with additional security at Mar-a-Lago.

  There are two differences.

  First, Trump never denied having such material. He insisted that he was allowed to have the files because he considered them unclassified.

  Second, while the Trump team insists that the FBI was given access to the documents, Trump resisted efforts to turn over all of the documents. Indeed, the FBI has raised a pattern of obstruction and false statements.

  With Biden, the FBI did not know where documents might be located. The findings overlap with residential and office space used by Biden over the years. Moreover, they were reportedly told that they could search and seize any documents. They did not use that opportunity to search all of these locations, even after counsel erroneously stated that no more classified material was present at these locations.

  The FBI is moving no more aggressively with other possible areas containing classified material. The FBI still has not reportedly searched the massive trove of Biden documents being stored at the University of Delaware. Reports indicate that Biden removed classified material as senator and these records cover that period. Looking for a few documents in Rehoboth Beach and not the university (roughly 80 miles away) with a truckload of documents is like driving past the ocean to go fishing in a wading pool.

  The result for Hur is a case that is messier than Biden’s garage.

  It is hard to see how this investigation would yield a solid criminal case absent confirmation that Biden worked off clearly classified material.

  If so, he showed both intent and knowledge of unlawful possession during prior years. It would also make his categorical denials of any knowledge appear more sinister and incriminating.

  Either way, none of this suggests “transparency,” as Biden likes to boast. The investigation has proceeded with a small fraction of the information leaked or released against Trump. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) also says that the National Archives were blocked from putting out a press release about the case — either by the Department of Justice or the White House. Combined with the fact that nothing was made public until after the midterms, it shows that Biden’s team wanted to keep this quiet.

  In the end, both Biden and Trump come out looking bad but that is not nearly as bad a thing for Trump.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 17:50

• Princeton Ban On Cheating 'Unfairly Targets' Minorities, According To Student Op-Ed
  Princeton Ban On Cheating ‘Unfairly Targets’ Minorities, According To Student Op-Ed

  A student at Princeton University argued in a Sunday night opinion article that the school’s ban on plagiarizing or cheating ‘disadvantages’ minority students.

  The author, Emilly Santos, says that the Ivy League school’s Undergraduate Honor Code, which is “tasked with holding students accountable and honest in academic settings, mirrors the criminal justice system in its rules and effects.”

  

  “It is harmful to the entirety of the Princeton community: the fear it instills in students fosters an environment of academic hostility. But it is often most damaging for first-generation low-income (FLI) students — students who also often belong to racial minorities.“

  Students in violation of the Honor Code – which includes “tampering with a graded exam” , “claiming another’s work to be one’s own” , and obtaining exam materials before test dates – may be reprimanded, suspended, placed on probation or expelled, the Daily Caller reports, citing the school’s website.

  By Santos’ logic, students who are suspended for a semester lose financial aid for the repeated semester, which harms FLI students disproportionately.

  “FLI students, like many students, are often afraid of disappointing family and friends,” reads the op-ed. “A lack of community support in these situations also puts FLI students at a disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers, whose communities often include people who are college-educated and have been exposed to academic integrity systems similar to Princeton’s Honor Code, and may understand the process better.”

  A student at Princeton University writes that the school’s rule against plagiarism “unfairly targets” minorities, just like the criminal justice system. It is therefore racist and should be “dismantled” in the name of creating a “more equitable society.”https://t.co/XvRtCQtXw1

  — Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 31, 2023

  More via the Daily Caller;

  Students who are accused of violating the Honor Code are given a hearing and may appeal the Honor Committee’s decision, according to the university website. Santos argued the process mirrors the criminal justice system by “mimicking processes of questioning, evidence gathering [and] witness depositions” and said that the ruling could overshadow the student’s accomplishments at the university, similar to how “a criminal record haunts previous convicts.”

  “Princeton, as an institution that aims to educate world leaders and brands itself with social justice discourse, must first address the existing parallels between the [criminal justice system] and these smaller-scale systems we subscribe to,” Santos continues. “Specifically, we must re-examine the role of the Honor Code and Honor Committee in our community. The University should lead by example by dismantling the Honor Code system, which acts as a barrier to social mobility and a more equitable society. Only once such internal injustices are addressed can we make real-world changes.”

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

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 17:30

• Ohio Man Who Identifies As Female Faces Charges For Being Naked In Locker Room While Young Girls Were Present
  Ohio Man Who Identifies As Female Faces Charges For Being Naked In Locker Room While Young Girls Were Present

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  A man who identifies as a female has been charged with public indecency for allegedly being naked while in the presence of young girls, in the women’s locker room of a YMCA in Ohio.

  

  The man, Darren C. Glines, 31, of Fairborn, was charged with three counts of indecent exposure for three separate incidents spanning 2021–2022 that were reported by three different people.

  Glines has not had gender reassignment surgery. He identifies as transgender and uses the name Rachel, local station WHIO reported.

  Under Ohio law, public indecency is a misdemeanor of the fourth degree.

  The three incidents occurred on Sept. 26, 2021, Nov. 7, 2022, and between Nov. 30, 2021, and Nov. 30, 2022, according to the complaint (pdf) obtained by the Daily Caller.

  In the third incident, the person who filed the complaint reported that “at least three female juveniles were present when the naked man was in their vicinity.”

  Glines “was identified by the reporting persons and the Xenia police were able to identify the identification via their investigation,” according to the court document.

  The president of the Xenia City Council, Williams Urshcel, shared at a recent public gathering that one of the women that complained was told by the front desk at the YMCA facility that Glines “is actually a woman, and that you shouldn’t be disturbed by this.”

  But a spokesperson for the city said Urshel’s comments were not authorized by or on behalf of the rest of the City Council, the city mayor, the city manager, and the law director.

  The city’s law department doesn’t plan to bring charges against the YMCA over the matter, the spokesperson added.

  The YMCA of Greater Dayton told WHIO in a statement that it will comply with legal mandates but also continue to protect the privacy and safety of its members.

  “Under no circumstance will we investigate an individual’s birth identity and then assign individuals to locker rooms,” the statement reads.

  “That would be counter to the law, counter to respect for all people and it is not who or what we are as an organization.”

  The YMCA of Greater Dayton told Dayton Daily News that non-discrimination laws in Ohio allow people to use facilities that align with their gender identity.

  It added that locker room guidelines in its facilities ask people to “remain properly covered while in public areas of the locker room.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 17:10

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• Escobar: A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia "An Offer It Can't Refuse"
  Escobar: A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia “An Offer It Can’t Refuse”

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?

  

  Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.

  Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.

  So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.

  As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.

  The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.

  In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).

  The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.

  Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.

  ‘Please don’t go on the offensive’

  The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”

  The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.

  Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”

  What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.

  The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.

  The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”

  Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.

  There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.

  This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.

  Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.

  What the Deep State really wants

  Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.

  The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.

  And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.

  It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”

  From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”

  Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”

  The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.

  The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.

  Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 00:05

• Chinese Companies Dominate Among Global AI Patents
  Chinese Companies Dominate Among Global AI Patents

  Chinese enterprises increased patent filings for artificial intelligence products rapidly in the past couple of years.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the companies holding the most active AI and machine learning patent families are now tech giant Tencent and search engine provider Baidu, ahead of U.S. firm IBM, South Korea’s Samsung, Chinese insurance provider Ping An and former AI patent leader Microsoft.

  The latter company has been seeing one of its major AI investments come to fruition recently, as conversational AI bot ChatGPT by Microsoft partner OpenAI has been making waves. Microsoft swiftly announced another round of funding for OpenAI, rumored to be to the tune of $10 billion.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As this chart based on the LexisNexis PatentSight directory shows, Tencent and Baidu became the largest patent owners in machine learning and AI in 2021, each holding more than 9,000 active patent families. A family is a set of patents covering the same technical content. IBM owed more than 7,000 families that same year, while Microsoft held just under 6,000 – rank six. Between 2012 and 2019, it was Microsoft which owned the most AI patents, according to LexisNexis.

  Even bigger than the rise in filings by Tencent and Baidu was the AI patent frenzy unleashed by Chinese insurance and banking giant Ping An. The number of patent families it owns grew from fewer than 50 to more than 6,000 just in the past five years. years. Among the AI tools recently developed by the company is software for analyzing facial micro-expressions (i.e. eye blinks, involuntary twitches), which Ping An uses to assess insurance claims its policyholders send in by video.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 23:45

• UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don't Follow COVID-19 Narrative
  UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don’t Follow COVID-19 Narrative

  Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Nicole Sirotek is a registered nurse in Nevada with over a decade of experience working in some of the harshest conditions. When a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico, Sirotek and the organization she founded, American Frontline Nurses (AFLN), were there and gave out over 500 pounds of medical equipment and supplies.

  

  She hasn’t hesitated to be the first in when an emergency hits and medical professionals are needed. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s woken up on a cot in the middle of nowhere, boots still strapped to her feet, and ready to go.

  But in tears during an interview with The Epoch Times, she detailed her ordeal with harassment and doxing over the past year and how she’s contemplated suicide due to crippling anxiety and depression.

  “It took such a toll on my mental health. I wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t eating,” Sirotek said.

  To regain her mental health, she decided to step back from the group she started. But even that decision brought pain.

  “I said after I left New York, I’d do everything that I can to make sure it didn’t happen again,” Sirotek said, recalling the death she witnessed when she volunteered in New York as a nurse at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, for me to step back and take a break just makes me feel like I failed!”

  

  Sirotek is the victim of ongoing harassment. She’s received pictures of her children posed in slaughterhouses and hanging from a noose, drive-by photos of her house, and letters with white powder that exploded upon opening.

  The Nevada State Board of Nursing was inundated with calls for Sirotek’s professional demise and flooded with anonymous complaints.

  These complaints trace back to Team Halo, a social media influencer campaign formed as part of the United Nations Verified initiative and the Vaccine Confidence Project.

  In response, Sirotek filed a police report. Her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter. The Epoch Times reviewed the documents.

  The reply from the cease-and-desist letter? The client was acting within his First Amendment rights.

  The Harassment Begins

  In February 2022, Sirotek, as the face of AFLN, a patient advocacy network that boasts 22,000 nurses, appeared before Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and testified about the harm patients were experiencing when they sought treatment for COVID-19.

  She said she didn’t witness patients dying from the novel virus when she volunteered to work the front lines in New York at the start of the pandemic.

  Instead, in her opinion, as a medical professional with multiple master’s degrees, patients were dying from “negligence” and “medical malfeasance.”

  Sirotek detailed the withholding by higher-ups of steroids and Ibuprofen and the prescribing of remdesivir. Additionally, there was zero willingness to consider possible early intervention treatments like ivermectin.

  As the pandemic continued, such practices only escalated, Sirotek said.

  Sirotek’s testimony resulted in cheers, widespread attention, and a target on her back.

  

  “[The harassment] all started the day we got back from DC,” Sirotek said.

  At first, the attacks started with the typical “you’re transphobic, you’re anti-LGBTQ. I mean, they even called me racist,” Sirotek, who is Hispanic, recalled.

  And as more patients sought AFLN’s help, the attacks increased in frequency and force.

  At first, Sirotek said the attacks appeared to come from random people. But as the attacks continued, the terms “Project Halo,” “Team Halo,” and “#TeamHalo” continually cropped up. Especially on TikTok and from two accounts, “@jesss2019” and “@thatsassynp.”

  “[@thatsassynp] just kept on saying how I was spreading misinformation, [that] ivermectin doesn’t work,” Sirotek said. “He kept targeting the Nevada State Board of Nursing because I was on the Practice Act Committee, and he did not feel like that was acceptable.”

  Craig Perry, a lawyer representing nurses, including Sirotek, before the Nevada State Board of Nursing, confirmed Sirotek’s account. The executive director of the Nevada State Board of Nursing, Cathy Dinauer, declined to provide details on complaints or investigations, stating to The Epoch Times via email that they are “confidential.”

  Sirotek said the complaints overwhelmed her ability to defend her nursing license.

  “Untimely, they were filing so many complaints against me that [the Nevada State Board of Nursing] had to start filtering them as to what was applicable and not applicable. And [the complaints] just buried my nursing license to the point that we couldn’t even defend it,” Sirotek said.

  Attacks Transition to Threats

  Whenever Sirotek, or AFLN, tried to set up a community outreach webinar, hateful comments flooded their videos.

  Julia McCabe, a registered nurse and the director of advocacy services for AFLN, told The Epoch Times that initially, they tried kicking the trolls out of the outreach videos. But they couldn’t keep up with the overwhelming numbers and had to shut the videos down, usually after only 10 minutes, she said.

  To address the swarms, as McCabe labeled them, AFLN started charging an entrance fee for their webinars. But, McCabe said, they’d send out an email with a free access code to all of their subscribers before the webinar started. It helped, but not enough. The swarms kept coming. And the attacks escalated.

  On June 5, 2022, @thatsassynp posted a video on TikTok calling for a “serious public uprising,” because the Nevada State Board of Nursing and other regulatory agencies weren’t disciplining nurses for spreading “disinformation.”

  It became one of many such videos in the ensuing days. In the comments of one, he stated, “Also, stay tuned as [@jesss2019] will be addressing this as well. We are teaming up (as per usual) to raise awareness and demand action on this issue.” @jesss2019 responded, “Yes!!!! We will get this taken care of.”

  Jess and Tyler Kuhk of @thatsassynp have “teamed up” on several occasions, targeting healthcare workers who question the COVID-19 narrative. Team Halo doesn’t officially list Kuhk on its site, but Kuhk posts with the #teamhalo.

  In another video, he states, “If you’re new to this series, PLEASE watch the videos in my playlist ‘Nevada board of nursing.’ This started in Feb of this year.” His video has almost 35,000 “loves.”

  On June 7, 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video on TikTok accusing Sirotek of spreading misinformation. It included a link to @thatsassynp, and his complaints about Sirotek to the Nevada State Board of Nursing and calls to remove her from the Practice Act Committee. She implored TikTok to boost the message. It, too, became one of many videos attacking Sirotek.

  Specifically, @jesss2019 and @thatsassynp took issue with videos and posts from Sirotek, and AFLN, advocating for ivermectin and highlighting possible issues with remdesivir and the COVID-19 vaccines.

  @jess2019 removed all of the above videos after The Epoch Times sought comment. The Epoch Times retains copies.

  Sirotek says she received the first death threat against herself and her children around the same time, in June 2022.

  “They cut off the pictures of my children’s faces from our family photos, where we take them every year on our front porch—we’ve got 11 years of those photos—and they cut them out and put them on the bodies of those little boys that have been sexually abused. And that’s what would get sent to my house. And I gave the police that,” Sirotek said.

  In response to a request for comment from The Epoch Times, Sen. Johnson defended Sirotek.

  “The COVID Cartel continues to frighten and silence those who tell the truth and challenge their failed response to COVID,” Johnson said. “It is simply wrong for Ms. Sirotek to be smeared and attacked like so many others who have had the courage and compassion to successfully treat COVID patients.”

  As the threats continued and escalated, Sirotek also asked Perry to send a cease-and-desist letter to Tyler Kuhk on Aug. 1, 2022.

  Kuhk, a nurse practitioner, is the person posting on TikTok under the pseudonym @thatsassynp.

  

  The letter sent to Kuhk alleges that on at least 10 different occasions, @thatsassynp encouraged a “public uprising” against Sirotek. It also details that his videos attacking Sirotek garnered over 400,000 views.

  In response, McLetchie Law, a “boutique law firm serving prominent and emerging … media entities” responded to Perry by stating in a letter dated Aug. 16, 2022, “Both Nevada law and the First Amendment provide robust protections for our client’s (and others’) rights to criticize Ms. Sirotek’s dangerous views and practices—and to advocate for her removal from the Nursing Practice Advisory Committee of the Nevada State Board of Nursing.”

  It also warned that any attempt to deter Kuhk from his chosen path would “backfire” and could result in a “negative financial impact.” Neither Kuhk nor McLetchie Law responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

  Unable to confirm the real name behind the TikTok account @jesss2019, and thus, unable to send her a legal letter, Sirotek posted some of the threats she’d received on Facebook, pleading for @jesss2019 to cease targeting her, and recognize the possible real-world harm.

  In desperation, Sirotek asked Perry to file a legal name change, which he did on Sep. 15, 2022, hoping that would thwart people’s ability to look up Sirotek’s information. Perry told The Epoch Times, “Usually, when you do a name change, it’s a public record. But under extenuating circumstances, you can have that sealed.”

  In Sirotek’s case, the court recognized the threat to her and her family’s safety, waived the publication requirement, granted the change, and sealed her record on Oct. 4, 2022.

  Sirotek, at the behest of Perry, filed a police report detailing the harassment on Oct. 17, 2022.

  In December 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video to TikTok doxing Sirotek by revealing her name change. The Epoch Times sought comment from @jesss2019 but has not received a response. After the request for comment, the user removed the video.

  Team Halo and Social Media

  On Dec. 17, 2020, Theo Bertram, a director at TikTok; Iain Bundred, the head of public policy at YouTube; and Rebecca Stimson, the UK head of public policy for Facebook, appeared before the UK’s House of Commons to explain what their social media sites were doing to combat “anti-vaccination disinformation.”

  All three stated their companies employed a “two-pronged approach.” Specifically, “tackle disinformation and promote trusted content.”

  Bundred stated that from the beginning of the year to November 2020, YouTube had removed 750,000 videos that promoted “Covid disinformation.”

  

  Stimson stated that between March and October 2020, “12 million pieces of content were removed from [Facebook],” and it had labeled 167 million pieces with a warning.

  Bertram stated that for the first six months of 2020, TikTok removed 1,500 accounts for “Covid violation” and had recently increased that activity. “In the last two months, we took action against 1,380 accounts, so you can see the level of action is increasing,” Bertram said.

  “In October, we began work with Team Halo,” Bertram added. “I do not know if you are familiar with Team Halo. It is run by the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is about getting reliable, trusted scientists and doctors on to social media to spread trusted information.”

  Team Halo’s Origins

  On Sep. 20, 2022, Melissa Fleming, the under-secretary-general for global communications at the United Nations, appeared at the World Economic Forum to discuss how the United Nations was “Tackling Disinformation” regarding “health guidance” as well as the “safety and efficacy of the vaccine” for COVID-19.

  “A key strategy that we had was to deploy influencers,” Fleming stated. “Influencers who were really keen, who had huge followings, but really keen to help carry messages that were going to serve their communities.”

  Fleming also explained that the United Nations knew its messaging wouldn’t resonate as well as influencers, so they developed Team Halo.

  “We had another trusted messenger project, which was called Team Halo, where we trained scientists around the world, and some doctors, on TikTok. We had TikTok working with us,” Fleming said. “It was a layered deployment of ideas and tactics.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 23:25

• Will ATF Perform "Compliance Checks" With An Expanded Registry?
  Will ATF Perform “Compliance Checks” With An Expanded Registry?

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  The Biden Administration’s so-called “Ghost Gun” rule released last year provided everything ATF now needs to confiscate millions of pistols equipped with stabilizing braces.

  With the gun registry expansion rule enacted, the Biden Administration has created a complete national gun registry of every commercial firearm transaction in the last twenty years. This illegal gun registry can easily be used by ATF to enforce compliance with their pistol brace ban.

  President Biden has initiated a pistol brace ban via executive action—formally an ATF rule entitled “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces'”—because ATF is in its strongest position yet to begin systematically confiscating firearms from gun owners.

  The ATF’s draconian Pistol Brace Rule just hit the federal register. Your 120 day clock starts now.

  GOA is prepared to fight this by:
  ✅Working with Congress to pass a Joint Resolution of Disapproval
  ✅Filing a lawsuit
  ✅Passing the SHORT ACT
  ✅Defunding the ATF

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) January 31, 2023

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

  This rule regulates pistols equipped with stabilizing braces, which ATF approved previously and were designed and intended to allow disabled shooters to hold certain firearms with one hand.

  Even though these guns were acquired lawfully and with prior ATF approval, these pistol owners will now face a choice: reconfigure their pistols at personal cost, register them with the federal government as short-barreled rifles (SBRs), turn them in, or destroy them.

  The ATF has referred to this program as Biden’s “Amnesty Registration of Pistol Brace Weapons” plan. All of these so-called “options” infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

  The Biden Administration is using the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) as established by the antiquated National Firearms Act of 1934 to formally register these pistols with the federal government. But an illegal gun registry of Firearm Transaction Records will help ATF enforce this new ban with disturbing precision and legal consequences for gun owners.

  As mentioned earlier, the Biden Administration’s “Ghost Gun” rule also empowers the ATF to use Forms 4473 or Firearm Transaction Records, kept by FFLs after gun sales, to create a complete gun registry.

  Now, the ATF has guaranteed that there is a complete record of every firearm transferred since at least August 24th, 2002, including firearms equipped with stabilizing braces which first hit the markets in the last decade.

  This means all ATF-approved and commercially-sold pistol braced firearms have a paper registration trail for the ATF to trace at local gun stores or are already present in ATF’s digital and searchable out-of-business records gun registry, which had nearly a billion records even prior to its expansion by Biden’s ATF.

  While ATF will not be able to use its gun registry to find those who purchased a stabilizing brace and attached it to their firearms at home, the same cannot be said for the millions of gun owners who commercially purchased or transferred many of these brace-equipped pistols.

  ATF’s gun registry includes an extraordinary amount of information about each firearm an individual has purchased. ATF’s out-of-business registry is, in fact, searchable by make, model, serial number, and weapon type. Therefore, the ATF can efficiently create a list of all gun owners’ AR-15 pistols to create a door-to-door confiscation list, complete with home addresses and firearm serial numbers.

  GOA already caught the Biden Administration using commercial sales records to go door-to-door to enforce the “Ghost Gun” rule’s solvent trap provision last year.

  Gun owners also found ATF going door-to-door, asking gun owners to verify the serial numbers on their recent gun purchases without a warrant. ATF surely plans to do the same for President Biden’s pistol brace ban.

  

  In fact, there is little more the Biden Administration could do to make the ATF’s illegal gun registry more useful than it already is for confiscating pistol AR-15s and other such firearms.

  The implementation of the ATF’s gun registry and “ghost gun” crackdown was strategically implemented to make sure that Biden’s Pistol Ban would be as successful as possible. Gun owners should beware that this unconstitutional database of all their commercial firearm transactions is ready to be used against them to confiscate their lawfully acquired pistols.

  Watch: Will ATF Perform Brace “Compliance Checks” With It’s Expanded Registry?

  *   *   *  

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 23:05

• Florida's Gov. DeSantis Declares Financial War On 'Woke' Universities In State
  Florida’s Gov. DeSantis Declares Financial War On ‘Woke’ Universities In State

  Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threw down the gauntlet on fixing higher education on Jan. 31, vowing to eliminate all funding for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) throughout the state.

  

  Public universities should not be in the business of using taxpayer money to offer degrees in “zombie” studies but should embrace academic excellence and truth, and allow students to think for themselves, DeSantis said.

  “Our institutions will be graduating students with degrees that will actually be useful,” he said. “We will be eliminating all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in Florida. It will wither on the vine.”

  DeSantis offered a series of legislative proposals to flush political ideologies out of universities, including allowing university presidents and the university board of trustees to hold a post-tenure review on professors as needed.

  He also wants to shift hiring authority to the university president that had been ceded to faculty.

  

  DeSantis says he wants to ban the campus hiring committees’ use of DEI oaths that certify candidates will adhere to ideologies. One of them is Critical Race Theory—a Marxist ideology that divides people into oppressors and victims based on race or gender.

  Currently, candidates who reject social justice ideology and embrace the belief of equality and a color-blind society get points deducted during the hiring process designed to weed out those who disagree, he said.

  DeSantis said DEI bureaucracies had become a component of the administration within universities that are imposing a political agenda and ideologies such as implicit bias, which embraces the idea that America is systemically racist.

  “These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom, and really they constitute a drain on resources,” he said.

  DeSantis said he rejects the dominant view in academia around the country that higher education should impose ideological conformity to provoke political activism.

  He proposed that higher education curriculums should require a course on the history and philosophy of Western Civilization.

  The governor said that DEI bureaucracies have “metastasized,” adding they mandate training on political ideology. He pointed out that the state’s Stop Woke Act passed last year gives employees, particularly of private businesses, the right to opt out of CRT or DEI training.

  He praised the Florida College System (FCS) presidents who on  Jan. 18 publicly supported his vision of higher education as one free from indoctrination and open to truth and intellectual freedom. FCS is made up of community colleges and state colleges.

  

  The Stop Woke Act is currently being challenged in the court system, but DeSantis said he is confident the law will survive.

  The act addresses “wokeness” to historic injustices surrounding race or gender that may have created a false sense of guilt among those who were not responsible for them, such as the idea of systemic racism.

  It outlaws “indoctrination” practices in education or the workplace that label people as inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, based on their skin color, sex, or national origin, consciously or unconsciously.

  The law allows the state university system’s Board of Governors to require tenured professors to undergo a “comprehensive post-tenure” review every five years.

  DeSantis’ announcement is his latest assault on the “woke” ideology that he says is running rampant on college campuses in Florida and elsewhere.

  ​​The governor also mandated that public universities report their expenditures for CRT and DEI programs.

  The Dec. 28 order from DeSantis came four days after The Epoch Times documented the experiences of six conservative students attending a major Florida university.

  They described difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American culture.

  At the DeSantis press conference, a conservative University of Florida student described experiences of being attacked for her beliefs that mirrored what students have told The Epoch Times.

  “My university has fallen corrupt to the woke ideal that is being taught by leftist professors in the classroom,” said Emily Sturge, a sophomore at UF.

  She said professors tell her that America is the most racist nation and that women have no rights. She said that professors lecture on the importance of the Covid vaccine instead of teaching content.

  Sturge said she received a failing grade for writing a paper on how empowering it was for women to get their concealed carry licenses. But when she tactically wrote about the virtues of Marxism, she got an A.

  Sturge said she had a “target on her back” for being a pro-American Christian and had been called “every name in the book” by fellow students.

  In January, DeSantis again struck a blow to “woke” culture in the university system by appointing six conservatives to the board of trustees for the failing New College.

  These included Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow who has exposed CRT in schools nationwide.

  Rufo, who also spoke at the press conference, talked about how the Left was manipulating public perception by using terms such as DEI, which sounds great on the surface but is a dark concept.

  “It is an Orwellian misuse of language that manipulates you into feeling that this is a good thing while under the surface. It’s something quite different,” he said.

  Rufo said DEI is the same thing as CRT, which divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Professors train students, faculty, and staff members that certain people are oppressors and others are oppressed.

  He said the entire board of New College was scheduled to meet after the press conference. He and trustee Eddie Speir, who toured New College last week, was met with resistance from students and faculty.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 22:45

• "Worst Payouts Since The Financial Crisis": Asia's Investment Bankers See Pay Cuts Up To 70%
  “Worst Payouts Since The Financial Crisis”: Asia’s Investment Bankers See Pay Cuts Up To 70%

  It’s a story we have been covering since before last year’s holidays. After a tough 2022 for dealmaking, banker pay continues to get cut. The rollbacks continued this week with some top investment bankers in Asia ex-Japan are “having their worst payouts since the financial crisis”, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

  The report says that managing directors at banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. will see their total compensation fall by 40% to 50%. Payouts for senior managing directors will total between $800,000 to $1.5 million. First year MDs will see bonuses of $600,000 to $1 million, the report says. 

  High performers may only see cuts of 20% or less, with some of them still taking home about $2 million, the report says. But those who underperformed are seeing cuts of up to 60% to 70%. Some are also being “left out altogether” from bonus pools. 

  Banking in China was hit particularly hard in 2022 thanks to Beijing’s prior stance on Covid, which kept a majority of the country locked down. Deals slumped 88% after the government limited the ability by domestic companies to sell shares overseas, the report says. Investment banking revenue was down about 50% at the largest banks last year. 

  

  Recall just days ago we reported that Bank of America had cut bonuses for its dealmakers by about 30% this year. Bonuses were also cut in equity capital markets and leveraged finance, with some bonuses down by as much as 50%, the report says.

  We also noted last week that Deutsche was the latest to cut its investment banking bonuses by 40%. 

  Credit Suisse Group AG Chairman Axel Lehmann also made a statement last week warning about lower bonuses after what he called a “horrifying year”. Recall we wrote days ago that the bank had come out and was considering a large cut to its bonus pool. It was considering a 50% cut to its bonus pool, Bloomberg reported last week. 

  Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan join a number of Wall Street banks who laid off employees, cut bonuses or both after a torrid 2022. Goldman Sachs, for example, is set to lay off up to 4,000 employees, we noted last month. The bank was also “considering shrinking the bonus pool for its more than 3,000 investment bankers by at least 40 per cent this year”.

  Also in mid-December, we wrote that Ernst and Young would be cutting its bonuses entirely. The company held an “all hands” meeting two weeks ago where it delivered the news to its employees. The company is in the midst of splitting its audit business from a tax and advisory business heading into 2023. Morgan Stanley’s Asia banker bonuses were also at risk by as much as 50%, we wrote days before that. In December, we also noted that Jefferies was considering slashing bonuses. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 22:25

• Two Insurance Companies Stop Providing Coverage For Hyundai And Kia Car Models
  Two Insurance Companies Stop Providing Coverage For Hyundai And Kia Car Models

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Top insurers State Farm and Progressive are refusing to provide insurance coverage for certain models made by South Korean car firms Kia and Hyundai, with reports claiming that the vehicles are easier to steal due to a lack of proper anti-theft technology like electronic immobilizers.

  “State Farm has temporarily stopped writing new business in some states for certain model years and trim levels of Hyundai and Kia vehicles because theft losses for these vehicles have increased dramatically,” the insurer said in a statement to CNN. “This is a serious problem impacting our customers and the entire auto insurance industry.”

  

  Meanwhile, Progressive claimed that certain car models of the brands have seen theft rates more than triple in the past year. “In some markets, these vehicles are almost 20 times more likely to be stolen than other vehicles,” the insurance company said in a statement to the outlet.

  Due to the “explosive increase” in theft of these cars, Progressive finds it “extremely challenging” to offer insurance to such vehicles. As such, the company has raised insurance rates and restricted the sale of insurance policies in some regions for certain Hyundai and Kia models.

  To individuals of these cars who have already taken a policy at the company, Progressive is continuing to provide insurance. Neither firm has revealed which states or cities have been affected by their policy decisions.

  The Epoch Times has reached out to State Farm and Progressive for comment.

  Hyundai, Kia Theft

  According to an analysis of 2021 insurance claims by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), a few models of Hyundai and Kia were found to be the top targets. Among 2015–19 model-year vehicles, the chances of theft claims were twice as common when compared to other manufacturers, HLDI found.

  “Car theft spiked during the pandemic,” said HLDI senior vice president Matt Moore, according to a Sept. 22nd post by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). “These numbers tell us that some vehicles may be targeted because they’re fast or worth a lot of money and others because they’re easy to steal.”

  “Our earlier studies show that vehicle theft losses plunged after immobilizers were introduced … Unfortunately, Hyundai and Kia have lagged behind other automakers in making them standard equipment.”

  Electronic immobilizers prevent criminals from easily breaking in and bypassing a car’s ignition. In 2015, immobilizers were found to be a standard feature among 96 percent of car manufacturers, except for Hyundai and Kia. Among the two brands, only 26 percent of the models were found to have immobilizers.

  Wisconsin was one of the worst affected states when it came to the theft of Hyundai and Kia vehicles. In 2021, the amount paid on theft claims per insured vehicle year jumped to over 30 times compared to 2019, according to IIHS.

  Insured vehicle year refers to one vehicle insured for a period of one year, two vehicles insured for a period of six months, and so on.

  Lawsuits, Company Responses

  Both Hyundai and Kia are battling multiple lawsuits for the security failure of their models. Last week, Seattle city attorney Ann Davison filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers at a federal court for failing to install “anti-theft technology” in some of their vehicles, according to a news release on Jan. 25.

  “Kia and Hyundai chose to cut corners and cut costs at the expense of their customers and the public. As a result, our police force has had to tackle a huge rise in vehicle theft and related problems with already stretched resources,” said Davison, according to the release.

  “Now Seattle taxpayers must shoulder the burden of the increase in theft … Kia and Hyundai need to take responsibility for the public safety hazard that they created.”

  In September, MLG Attorneys at Law filed a national class-action lawsuit against Hyundai and Kia, alleging that cars manufactured between 2011 and 2021 by the firms came without an “engine immobilizer,” according to a press release on Sept. 21, 2022.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 22:05

• Visualizing The Scale Of Global Fossil Fuel Production
  Visualizing The Scale Of Global Fossil Fuel Production

  Fossil fuels have been our predominant source of energy for over a century, and the world still extracts and consumes a colossal amount of coal, oil, and gas every year.

  This infographic below by Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada visualizes the volume of global fossil fuel production in 2021 using data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

  

  The Facts on Fossil Fuels

  In 2021, the world produced around 8 billion tonnes of coal, 4 billion tonnes of oil, and over 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

  Most of the coal is used to generate electricity for our homes and offices and has a key role in steel production. Similarly, natural gas is a large source of electricity and heat for industries and buildings. Oil is primarily used by the transportation sector, in addition to petrochemical manufacturing, heating, and other end uses.

  Here’s a full breakdown of coal, oil, and gas production by country in 2021.

  Coal Production

  If all the coal produced in 2021 were arranged in a cube, it would measure 2,141 meters (2.1km) on each side—more than 2.5 times the height of the world’s tallest building.

  China produced 50% or more than four billion tonnes of the world’s coal in 2021. It’s also the largest consumer of coal, accounting for 54% of coal consumption in 2021.

  

  India is both the second largest producer and consumer of coal. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the world’s largest coal exporter, followed by Australia.

  In the West, U.S. coal production was down 47% as compared to 2011 levels, and the descent is likely to continue with the clean energy transition.

  Oil Production

  In 2021, the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia were the three largest crude oil producers, respectively.

  

  OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia, made up the largest share of production at 35% or 1.5 billion tonnes of oil.

  U.S. oil production has seen significant growth since 2010. In 2021, the U.S. extracted 711 million tonnes of oil, more than double the 333 million tonnes produced in 2010.

  Natural Gas Production

  The world produced 4,036 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2021. The above graphic converts that into an equivalent of seven billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to visualize it on the same scale as oil and gas.

  Here are the top 10 producers of natural gas in 2021:

  

  The U.S. was the largest producer, with Texas and Pennsylvania accounting for 47% of its gas production. The U.S. electric power and industrial sectors account for around one-third of domestic natural gas consumption.

  Russia, the next-largest producer, was the biggest exporter of gas in 2021. It exported an estimated 210 billion cubic meters of natural gas via pipelines to Europe and China. Around 80% of Russian natural gas comes from operations in the Arctic region.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 21:45

• Why Is There A COVID Vaccine Mandate For Students?
  Why Is There A COVID Vaccine Mandate For Students?

  Authored by Margaret Anna Alice via ‘Through The Looking Glass’ Substack,

  Letter to the Stanford Daily: Why Is There a COVID Vaccine Mandate for Students?

  “Not to know is bad. Not to wish to know is worse.”

  —African proverb

  I can’t figure out why Stanford is mandating the COVID vaccine for students.

  1. Is it to protect students from the virus, hospitalization, or death?

  2. Is it to protect them from other students?

  3. Is it to protect the Stanford community members from the students? 

  

  If it’s to protect the students from catching COVID, that doesn’t make sense because the CDC says it “no longer differentiate[s] based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.”

  The CDC also acknowledges natural immunity, noting that “persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.”

  It appears Stanford didn’t get the memo because Maxwell Meyer—a double-jabbed, COVID-recovered alum who was nearly prohibited from graduating for choosing not to get boosted—was informed by an administrator that the booster mandate is “not predicated on history of infection or physical location.”

  Despite living 2,000 miles away from campus and not being enrolled in coursework for his final term, Maxwell was told Stanford was “uniformly enforc[ing]” the mandate “regardless of student location.” Does that sound like a rational policy?

  Fortunately, a different administrator intervened and granted Maxwell an exemption, but few Stanford students are so lucky. Almost everyone else simply follows the rules without realizing they’ve volunteered for vaccine roulette.

  A Cleveland Clinic study of the bivalent vaccines involving 51,011 participants found the risk of getting COVID-19 increased “with the number of vaccine doses previously received”—much to the authors’ surprise.

  

  They were stumped as to why “those who chose not to follow the CDC’s recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination” had a lower risk of catching COVID than “those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses.”

  So if the vaccines don’t keep you from getting COVID, maybe they at least protect you from hospitalization?

  That doesn’t wash, either, because according to data from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET), hospitalization rates for 18–64-year-olds have increased 11 percent since the vaccine rollout. Worse, kids under 18 have suffered a shocking 74 percent spike in hospitalizations.

  An observational study conducted at Germany’s University Hospital Wuerzburg found:

  “The rate of adverse reactions for the second booster dose was significantly higher among participants receiving the bivalent 84.6% (95% CI 70.3%–92.8%; 33/39) compared to the monovalent 51.4% (95% CI 35.9–66.6%; 19/37) vaccine (p=0.0028). Also, there was a trend towards an increased rate of inability to work and intake of PRN medication following bivalent vaccination.”

  A new paper published in Science titled Class Switch Towards Non-Inflammatory, Spike-Specific IgG4 Antibodies after Repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination even has Eric Topol concerned:

  Late after mRNA Covid vaccines, or with booster or breakthrough infections, there is a shift to IgG4 antibodies, not seen with adenovirus vector vaccines. The clinical significance is not knownhttps://t.co/5thLxRwemm @SciImmunology @UniFAU pic.twitter.com/YozSLVjVLd

  — Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 22, 2022

  If you don’t know what that means, Dr. Syed Haider spells it out in this tweet. He explains that the shots “train your immune system to ignore the allergen by repeated exposure,” the end result being that “Your immune system is shifted to see the virus as a harmless allergen” and the “virus runs amok.”

  Latest IgG4 COVID vax study

  Think allergy shots. They train your immune system to ignore the allergen by repeated exposure.

  That’s what repeated shots with the vax are doing.

  Your immune system is shifted to see the virus as a harmless allergen.

  Which means: virus runs amok.

  — Dr. Syed Haider (@DrSyedHaider) December 28, 2022

  Viral immunologist and computational virologist Dr. Jessica Rose breaks down the serious implications—including cancer, fatal fibrosis, and organ destruction—of these findings.

  Well, then does the vaccine at least prevent people from dying of COVID?

  Nope. According to the Washington Post, “Vaccinated people now make up a majority of COVID deaths.”

  

  At Senator Ron Johnson’s December 7, 2022, roundtable discussion on COVID-19 Vaccines, former number-one–ranked Wall Street insurance analyst Josh Stirling reported that, according to UK government data:

  “The people in the UK who took the vaccine have a 26% higher mortality rate. The people who are under the age of 50 who took the vaccine now have a 49% higher mortality rate.”

  Obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to KBV (the association representing physicians who receive insurance in Germany), “the most important dataset of the pandemic” shows fatalities starting to spike in 2021.

  Data analyst Tom Lausen assessed the ICD-10 disease codes in this dataset, and the findings are startling. His presentation includes the following chart documenting fatalities per quarter from 2016 to 2022:

  

  This parallels the skyrocketing fatality rates seen in VAERS:

  

  The vaccinated are more likely to contract, become hospitalized from, and die of COVID. If the vaccine fails on all of those counts, does it at least prevent its transmission to other students and community members?

  The obvious answer is no since we already know it doesn’t prevent you from getting COVID, but this CDC study drives the point home, showing that during a COVID outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, “three quarters (346; 74%) of cases occurred in fully vaccinated persons.”

  Maybe Stanford can tell us why they feel the mandate is necessary. Their booster requirement reads:

  “Why does Stanford have a student booster shot requirement? Our booster requirement is intended to support sustained immunity against COVID-19 and is consistent with the advice of county and federal public health leaders. Booster shots enhance immunity, providing additional protection to individuals and reducing the possibility of being hospitalized for COVID. In addition, booster shots prevent infection in many individuals, thereby slowing the spread of the virus. A heavily boosted campus community reduces the possibility of widespread disruptions that could impact the student experience, especially in terms of in-person classes and activities and congregate housing.”

  The claim that “booster shots enhance immunity” links to a January 2022 New York Times article. It seems Stanford has failed to keep up with the science because the very source they cite as authoritative is now reporting, “The newer variants, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading quickly, and boosters seem to do little to prevent infections with these viruses.”

  Speaking of not keeping up, that same article says the new bivalent boosters target “the original version of the coronavirus and the Omicron variants circulating earlier this year, BA.4 and BA.5.”

  It then goes on to quote Head of Beth Israel Deaconess’s Center for Virology & Vaccine Research Dan Barouch, who says, “It’s not likely that any of the vaccines or boosters, no matter how many you get, will provide substantial and sustained protection against acquisition of infection.”

  In other words, Stanford’s rationale for requiring the boosters is obsolete according to the authority they cite in their justification.

  If Stanford is genuinely concerned about “reduc[ing] the possibility of widespread disruptions that could impact the student experience,” then it should not only stop mandating the vaccine but advise against it.

  Some nations have suspended or recommended against COVID shots for younger populations due to the considerable risks of adverse events such as pulmonary embolism and myocarditis—from Denmark (under 50) to Norway (under 45) to Australia (under 50) to the United Kingdom (seasonal boosters for under 50).

  The Danish Health Authority explains why people under 50 are “not to be re-vaccinated”:

  “People aged under 50 are generally not at particularly higher risk of becoming severely ill from covid-19. In addition, younger people aged under 50 are well protected against becoming severely ill from covid-19, as a very large number of them have already been vaccinated and have previously been infected with covid-19, and there is consequently good immunity among this part of the population.”

  Here’s what a Norwegian physician and health official had to say:

  “Especially the youngest should consider potential side effects against the benefits of taking this dose.”
  —Ingrid Bjerring, Chief Doctor at Lier Municipality

  “We did not find sufficient evidence to recommend that this part of the population [younger age bracket] should take a new dose now.… Each vaccine comes with the risk for side effects. Is it then responsible to offer this, when we know that the individual health benefit of a booster likely is low?”
  —Are Stuwitz Berg, Department Director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health

  A new Nordic cohort study of 8.9 million participants supports these concerns, finding a nearly nine-fold increase in myocarditis among males aged 12–39 within 28 days of receiving the Moderna COVID-19 booster over those who stopped after two doses.

  This mirrors my own findings that myocarditis rates are up 10 times among the vaccinated according to a public healthcare worker survey.

  Coauthored by MIT professor and risk management expert Retsef Levi, the Nature article Increased Emergency Cardiovascular Events Among Under-40 Population in Israel During Vaccine Rollout and Third COVID-19 Wave reveals a 25 percent increase in cardiac emergency calls for 16–39-year-olds from January to May 2021 as compared with the previous two years.

  The paper cites a study by Israel’s Ministry of Health that “assesses the risk of myocarditis after receiving the 2nd vaccine dose to be between 1 in 3000 to 1 in 6000 in men of age 16–24 and 1 in 120,000 in men under 30.”

  A Thai study published in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease found cardiovascular manifestations in 29.24 percent of the adolescent cohort—including myopericarditis and tachycardia.

  Even Dr. Leana Wen, formerly an aggressive promoter of the COVID vaccine, admitted in a recent Washington Post op-ed:

  “[W]e need to be upfront that nearly every intervention has some risk, and the coronavirus vaccine is no different. The most significant risk is myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, which is most common in young men. The CDC cites a rate of 39 myocarditis cases per 1 million second doses given in males 18 to 24. Some studies found a much higher rate; a large Canadian database reported that among men ages 18 to 29 who received the second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the rate of myocarditis was 22 for every 100,000 doses.”

  All over the world, prominent physicians, scientists, politicians, and professors are asking pointed questions about illogical mandates; the safety and efficacy of the vaccines; and the dangers posed by the mRNA technology, spike protein, and lipid nanoparticles—including in the UK, Japan, Australia, Europe, and the US.

  Formerly pro-vaxx cardiologists such as Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Dr. Dean Patterson, and Dr. Ross Walker are all saying the COVID vaccines should be immediately stopped due to the significant increase in cardiac diseases, adverse events, and excess mortality observed since their rollout, noting that, “until proven otherwise, these vaccines are not safe.”

  Dear Prime Minister @RishiSunak,

  YOU have the power to stop the ongoing unnecessary harm that is devastating individuals and families. @Keir_Starmer the Labour Party also lost one of its most decorated doctors @KailashChandOBE to this mRNA product. Please stop this roll out NOW https://t.co/SECbfK9joz

  — Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) December 18, 2022

  @DrAseemMalhotra @DrJBhattacharya @JohnBoweActor @PierreKory pic.twitter.com/lw7jdtzNl4

  — Dr Dean Patterson 🇾🇪 (@mottomeneki) December 10, 2022

  President of the International Society for Vascular Surgery Serif Sultan and Consultant Surgeon Ahmad Malik are also demanding that we #StopTheShotsNow.

  BREAKING:

  President of the international vascular society raises concerns about covid vaccines in relation to cardiovascular problems.

  ‘It would be great if someone can show us the light of where to go from here’

  We must pause the mRNA jab now to stop more unnecessary harm pic.twitter.com/gIZr19SVl8

  — Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) December 16, 2022

  And now, perhaps most notably, Dr. John Campbell has performed a 180-degree turn on his previous position and is saying it is time to pause the mass vaccination program “due to the risks associated with the vaccines”:

  A Rasmussen poll published on December 7, 2022, found 7 percent of vaccinated respondents have suffered major side effects—a percentage that echoes the 7.7 percent of V-Safe users who sought medical care as well as my own polling data.

  Add the 34 percent who reported experiencing minor side effects, and you have nearly 72 million adults who’ve been hit with side effects from the vaccine.

  Rasmussen Head Pollster Mark Mitchell explains:

  “With 7% having a major side effect, that means over 12 million adults in the US have experienced a self-described major side effect that they attribute to the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s over 11 times the reported COVID death numbers. And also note that anyone who may have died from the vaccine obviously can’t tell us that in the poll.”

  According to British Medical Journal Senior Editor Dr. Peter Doshi, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s own trial data found 1 in 800 vaccinated people experienced serious adverse events:

  “The Pfizer and Moderna trials are both showing a clear signal of increased risk of serious adverse events among the vaccinated.…

  “The trial data are indicating that we’re seeing about an elevated risk of these serious adverse events of around 1 in 800 people vaccinated.… That is much, much more common than what you see for other vaccines, where the reported rates are in the range of 1 or 2 per million vaccinees. In these trials, we’re seeing 1 in every 800. And this is a rate that in past years has had vaccines taken off the market.…

  “We’re talking about randomized trials … which are widely considered the highest-quality evidence, and we’re talking about the trials that were submitted by Pfizer and Moderna that supported the regulators’ authorization.”

  Dr Peter Doshi senior editor of the BMJ wants to know why we haven’t already #StoptheShots when 1 in 800 are seriously harmed, yet previous vaccines were suspended for harming ‘only’ 1 in 100’000.
  Beats me too! pic.twitter.com/llT4JwL5WQ

  — Porridge2022 (@porridge2022) December 16, 2022

  And this is the same Pfizer data the FDA tried to keep hidden from the public for 75 years.

  Nothing to see here … except 1,223 deaths, 158,000 adverse events, and 1,291 side effects reported in the first 90 days according to the 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports—and those numbers are likely underreported by a factor of at least 10 (my conservative calculations show an underreporting factor (URF) of 41 for VAERS).

  Stanford is asking students to risk a 1 in 800 chance of serious adverse events—meaning the kind of events that can land you in the hospital, disable you, and kill you. And for what?

  Anyone who knows how to perform a cost-benefit analysis can see this is all cost and zero benefit.

  Stanford’s own Dr. John Ioannidis—professor of medicine, epidemiology & population health, statistics, and biomedical data science—demonstrated that college students are at a near-zero risk of dying from COVID-19 in his “Age-Stratified Infection Fatality Rate of COVID-19 in the Non-Elderly Population.”

  One of the six most-cited scientists in the world, Ioannidis found the median IFR was 0.0003 percent for those under 20 and 0.002 percent for twenty-somethings, concluding the fatalities “are lower than pre-pandemic years when only the younger age strata are considered” and that “the IFR in non-elderly individuals was much lower than previously thought.”

  And yet Ioannidis’s employer is mandating an experimental product with extensively documented risks of severe harm.

  What if a Stanford student dies and the coroner determines it was caused by the vaccine? That happened with George Watts Jr., a 24-year-old college student whose cause of death Chief Deputy Coroner Timothy Cahill Jr. attributed to “COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.” Cahill says, “The vaccine caused the heart to go into failure.”

  Notorious for mandating a booster not yet tested on humans (just like Stanford), Ontario’s Western University dropped its mandate on November 29, 2022, stating:

  “We are revoking our vaccination policy and will no longer require students, employees, and visitors to be vaccinated to come to campus.”

  That was the same day this article reported that 21-year-old Western University student and TikTok influencer Megha Thakur “suddenly and unexpectedly passed away” on November 24.

  

  The timing is interesting, don’t you think? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence—even though this Clinical Research in Cardiology paper determined vaccine-induced myocardial inflammation was the cause of death in “five persons who have died unexpectedly within seven days following anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination.” In that analysis, the authors “establish the histological phenotype of lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.”

  Coincidences notwithstanding, Stanford may want to revoke the mandate before anything like that happens to one of its students … if it hasn’t already.

  And if that’s not incentive enough, Stanford should consider the legal ramifications of mandating an experimental product. As this JAMA article warns:

  “Mandating COVID-19 vaccines under an EUA is legally and ethically problematic. The act authorizing the FDA to issue EUAs requires the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to specify whether individuals may refuse the vaccine and the consequences for refusal. Vaccine mandates are unjustified because an EUA requires less safety and efficacy data than full Biologics License Application (BLA) approval.”

  Dr. Naomi Wolf delivered an impassioned speech to her alma mater, Yale, in which she called their booster mandate “a serious crime. It is deeply illegal. Certainly, it violates Title IX.” She explains:

  “Title IX commits the university to not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender in getting an equal education.… I oversee a project in which 3,500 experts review the Pfizer documents released under court order by a lawsuit. In that document, there is catastrophic harm to women! And especially to young women! And especially to their reproductive health.… 72% of those with adverse events in the Pfizer documents are women!”

  Other universities are currently facing lawsuits for mandating the COVID vaccine in violation of state laws, including one against Ohio University, University of Cincinnati, Bowling Green State University, and Miami University of Ohio.

  Let’s recap.

  Abundant evidence proves the vaccines FAIL to:

  • stop transmission

  • prevent contraction of COVID

  • lower hospitalization rates

  • reduce mortality

  By the same token, this evidence shows the vaccines are ASSOCIATED with:

  • heightened transmission levels

  • greater chances of catching COVID

  • increased hospitalization rates

  • higher excess mortality

  • disproportionate injuries to women

  Why is Stanford mandating these unsafe and ineffective products, again?

  If logic, peer-reviewed studies, and legal concerns such as the violation of Title IX don’t convince Stanford to rescind the mandate, then what about its stated ethical commitment to upholding its Code of Conduct?

  BMJ’s Journal of Medical Ethics recently published COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk Benefit Assessment and Ethical Analysis of Mandate Policies at Universities. In this paper, eminent researchers from Harvard, Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and UC San Francisco (among other institutions) present five reasons university mandates are unethical.

  They argue that the vaccines:

  “(1) are not based on an updated (Omicron era) stratified risk-benefit assessment for this age group; (2) may result in a net harm to healthy young adults; (3) are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; (4) violate the reciprocity principle because serious vaccine-related harms are not reliably compensated due to gaps in vaccine injury schemes; and (5) may result in wider social harms.” (emphases mine here and below)

  They calculate that:

  “To prevent one COVID-19 hospitalisation over a 6-month period, we estimate that 31,207–42,836 young adults aged 18–29 years must receive a third mRNA vaccine.”

  The authors conclude that:

  “university COVID-19 vaccine mandates are likely to cause net expected harms to young healthy adults—for each hospitalisation averted we estimate approximately 18.5 SAEs and 1,430–4,626 disruptions of daily activities.… these severe infringements of individual liberty and human rights are ethically unjustifiable.”

  This builds on a previously published BMJ Global Health article by some of the same authors titled, “The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Restrictions May Cause More Harm Than Good.”

  In this paper, the authors contend that COVID-19 vaccine mandates “have unintended harmful consequences and may not be ethical, scientifically justified, and effective” and “may prove to be both counterproductive and damaging to public health.”

  Over the course of history, countless products once thought to be safe—from DDT to cigarettes to thalidomide for pregnant women to Vioxx—were eventually discovered to be dangerous and even lethal. Responsible governments, agencies, and companies pull those products from the market when the scientific data proves harm—and institutions that care about their community members certainly don’t mandate those products when evidence of risk becomes obvious, as is the case now for the experimental COVID vaccines.

  Mahatma Gandhi once stated:

  “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.”

  The truth is clear to anyone who’s willing to look.

  Will Stanford stop following the propaganda and start following the science—the real science and not the politicized science?

  Will it stand up for the lives and health of its students—or will it wait until tragedy strikes another George Watts Jr. or Megha Thakur?

  This is a historic opportunity for Stanford to prove its allegiance to people, scientific data, and critical thought over pharmaceutical donors, political pressures, and conformist thinking.

  The stakes could not be higher.

  *  *  *

  For 16.4 cents/day (annual) or 19.7 cents/day (monthly), you can help Margaret fight tyranny while enjoying access to premium content like Memes by Themes, “rolling” interviews, podcasts, Behind the Scenes, and other bonus content:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 21:25

• Hamburger Prices Might Continue To Rise As US Cattle Herd Shrinks
  Hamburger Prices Might Continue To Rise As US Cattle Herd Shrinks

  Consumers grappling with elevated food inflation might be in for another surprise: A shrinking US cattle herd indicates tight livestock supplies for years. 

  A decline in cattle herds and high production expenses will translate into higher beef prices at the grocery store. We documented this trend last fall (read: “Dwindling US Cattle Herd Implies Supermarket Beef Prices May Rise Even More“). 

  Bloomberg explained the reason for the drop: 

  Years-long drought in the US Plains has withered pastures and squeezed supplies of feeds including hay and corn. The result: ranchers have liquidated some animals to cut costs, depressing breeding.

  The latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture cattle-inventory report on Tuesday showed 89.3 million cattle as of Jan. 1, down 3% from a year ago. The decline wasn’t unexpected and was in line with a Bloomberg survey. 

  However, a much more significant decline in beef production could be nearing. If not this year, perhaps between 2024-26. 

  “With fewer cattle supplies becoming available, beef production is expected to undergo a sizable decline over the next few years,” said Courtney Shum, a livestock-market reporter at Urner Barry, an industry publication.

  What’s alarming is the shrinking herd of beef replacement cows has fallen to 1962 levels. 

  

  Don Roose, founder of US Commodities, a grain and livestock investment and management firm, warned:

  “We’re still in the contraction phase.

  “It takes a long time to build a herd back up again.”

  Meaning beef prices at the supermarket might go higher until demand destruction hits. 

  

  Soon, beef and eggs will be a delicacy for only the rich while everyone else ingests protein-rich insects

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 21:05

• The Four Worst Ways To Attack Bitcoin
  The Four Worst Ways To Attack Bitcoin

  Authored by Joakim Book via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  In his latest book, Nouriel Roubini demonstrates the worst ways to try and attack Bitcoin…

  

  Finding fault with Bitcoin and Bitcoiners is easy. Every schmuck, stick, know-it-all pundit, wise-ass and establishment elite has a handful of complaints readily available.

  Bitcoin uses too much electricity; its fixed money supply schedule makes interventions from a benevolent central bank impossible; it doesn’t have enough inflation for a growing economy; it is used by pesky criminals; and its mean, technobabbling users hurt my brittle feelings.

  The objections get tiresome about as quickly as they get recycled.

  One fantastic example is the doomspeaker economist Nouriel Roubini, known for his bombastic and bearish declarations — frequently nicknamed “Dr. Doom” by the financial press. In his own mind, he is merely “realistic,” which every madman would say about himself when queried. In his latest book, “Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How To Survive Them,” he insists that most people overlook something about this infamous nickname:

  “Those who label me Dr. Doom fail to see that I examine the upside with as much rigor as the downside. Optimists and pessimists both call me contrarian. If I could choose my nickname, Dr. Realist sounds right.” 

  The Bitcoin obituaries site 99bitcoins.com lists our beloved economist hater 12 times, but Googling finds plenty more Bitcoin denouncements from this outspoken character — in every outlet that’ll have him, it seems, from Twitter to the Financial Times.

  To Roubini, bitcoin was a bubble in 2013, a “Ponzi game” and “not a currency” in 2014, a “gigantic speculative bubble” in 2017, almost all transactions were fake in 2019 and, most tastefully, in 2020 a little bit of everything:

  Bitcoin is NOT a currency: it is not a unit of account, it is not a single numeraire, it is not a scalable means of payments, it is not backed by any asset, it is not legal tender, its price is highly manipulated & thus its partial store of value function is based on nothing.

  — Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 9, 2020

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

  What his new book does so well is outline the world’s many macroeconomic troubles. For five mesmerizing chapters, he describes the debt problems, the demographic impossibility that is the bankrupt Ponzi (sorry, “pension”) schemes of Western nations, the easy money disaster and the boom-bust cycle that it gives rise to. Stagflation in the 2020s did not come as a surprise to him, and he locates the blame precisely where it should be: “We poured massive amounts of money and fiscal stimulus into a financial and economic system already awash in cash and credit.” With a short-term view and politically-captured central banks, we get disastrously easy money because “that is what voters want and leveraged markets need to avoid crashing.”

  He even comes down on the correct side of the 2022 blunder to use the dollar payment rails to sanction a G8 economy: “This sort of weaponizing of currency for the pursuit of national security goals is the latest frontier of the mission creep of central banks, starting with the Fed” (ignoring that the Federal Reserve doesn’t make sanction decisions).

  As a rule, whatever Bitcoin’s flaws are — as a money, as a protocol, as a usable tool, as a community — it gets better, relatively speaking, when the incumbent monetary system gets worse. Whatever your position on Bitcoin was three, five or 10 years ago, you must look at it more favorably today: the monetary system in place has gotten so much worse, with inflation, anti-money-laundering bureaucracy, clown-world behavior and frozen accounts being just the worst offenders. All is not well in the world of money; that makes Bitcoin a more tempting prospect, all things equal.

  So, is Roubini a Bitcoiner now? Has the ultimate Bitcoin bear, diligently at it for a decade, finally come around? Seeing clearly the monetary madness of the world, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing for Dr. Doom to at last tone down his criticism of Bitcoin.

  Instead, we got Groundhog Day.

  The single chapter dedicated to financial instability spends a dozen or so pages on Bitcoin, unbelievably dedicating most of them to “crypto,” “DeFi,” “stablecoins” and central bank digital currencies. Sigh.

  Still, even here we had potential: The rise of crypto, explains Roubini, “exposes our collective wilting faith in the ability of governments to back the money they issue.” Hear, hear.

  QUEEN TAYLOR CALLED

  “Ugh, so he calls me up and he’s like ‘I still love youuu’, and I’m like ‘I just… I mean, this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever.’”

  –Bitcoin philosopher Taylor Swift

  If you are to critique Bitcoin — something you certainly, certainly can do — here are some things you should do:

  First, get your monetary attributes in order.

  There are three — store of value, unit of account, medium of exchange — not five. You can’t invent new ones and duplicating previous ones isn’t useful. Roubini introduces “single numeraire,” which is exactly the same thing as a unit of account, and splits store of value into stable value against “market value” and against “an index of the price of goods and services.” Try carving out a difference. This is silly word play.

  Second, make sure your criticism is levied against Bitcoin, not “crypto.”

  Most people think of bitcoin as merely the first “cryptocurrency,” the most famous among tens of thousands of scammy shitcoins. It’s not. What holds and happens in the la-la land of vaporware tokens rarely has anything to do with Bitcoin: Sam Bankman-Fried’s shenanigans, Terra’s implosion or the Cryptoqueen scam do in no way detract from Bitcoin’s core, its principles or operations. When Roubini cites “BaconCoin,” quotes LoanSnap’s founder or reports negative comments by DogeCoin’s creator, he does not undermine Bitcoin’s promise.

  Bitcoin is a one-off monetary invention, separated from every other money or “crypto” by a Great Wall of categories and concepts: it doesn’t have a company or founder running it, like every other shitcoin does; it doesn’t have counterparty risk nor is it subject to censorship like every other fiat currency. Bitcoin has no CEO and no marketing department; it has the strongest Lindy and the highest hash rate.

  Third — and this is a hard one — make sure your points haven’t already been debunked, answered and relegated to the dustbin of unimpressive, erroneous jabs at Bitcoin.

  Repeating an outdated accusation makes you look stupid, not Bitcoin. Roubini goes for the vast wealth inequality in Bitcoinland, believing it to be “worse than that of North Korea.” It’s not, and as flawed as these investigations are, UTXO ownership seems to become less and less unequal over time — as you’d expect for an emerging money that gets distributed in use.

  Unsurprisingly, it uses too much energy, as much as a small country and therefore “will blunt urgent climate initiatives to slow down global warming.” It doesn’t and it won’t: if anything, Bitcoin unlocks stranded energy, contributes to balancing the grid and miners are more renewable than most major economies.

  Fourth, make sure that the property of Bitcoin that you’re attacking isn’t worse in the legacy system.

  Warren Buffet often makes this error, thinking that hacks, fees or the fact that bitcoin doesn’t generate “yield” dooms it to failure. Nevermind that paper money doesn’t either (unless you count seigniorage to the central bank); nevermind that his ridiculing of bitcoin as a Ponzi applies equally well to apartments or Uncle Sam’s pension schemes.

  The most absurd accusation arrives with Roubini’s silly soda shitcoins: If you need Coke coins to buy Coke and Pepsi coins to buy Pepsi, how could you ever establish (relative) value?! How could you ever know what either of them are worth?

  Makes you wonder how Americans could ever buy things when they’re abroad, how pound-based customers (i.e., British residents) can ever acquire anything sold in euros or spend their melting currency on Fifth Avenue. There’s a publicly-displayed market price for you to “convert” value into the monetary system that you’re familiar with; and there’s a publicly-traded market that the banks on either side of your and your vendor’s transaction can trade and settle such that international trade works.

  Fascinating.

  His currency risk examples are illustrative — and disingenuous. Apparently vendors can’t “price” goods in bitcoin since “an overnight fall in value might wipe out the [seller’s] profit margins.” That’s true as far as it goes, but holds equally so for any cross-currency transaction in the legacy world: imports or export or any supply chain more complicated than your local currency area. Besides, if you worry about the currency exposure in your sales, there is a liquid market that provides hedges for you. Many stores that accept bitcoin through various third-party solutions instantly exchange them for dollars, thus mitigating the risk.

  In the very next sentence, Roubini considers the downside of the opposite risk:

  “Were someone to write a mortgage with principal and interest in bitcoin, a spike in the value of bitcoin would cause the real value of the mortgage to skyrocket. If default then likely occurs, the lender loses money, and the borrower loses her house.” 

  I suppose no American therefore owns property in New Zealand or Mexico, no European has debt contracts in USD-dollars. These are not novel risks, but ordinary financial risks that firms and households deal with already.

  What’s so fascinating is Roubini’s lack of symmetry: If margins can get obliterated by an overnight drop, then margins can also be doubled by an equal overnight rise. Symmetric risk. If bitcoin’s exchange rate for dollars falls — which Roubini is so certain it will — a bitcoin-denominated mortgage will wipe out itself by becoming easily repayable with appreciating dollars. This isn’t to say that he’s wrong to point out these risks, but that they’re reduced to what economists call “risk aversion.” Unhedged bitcoin transactions or debt contracts are bad if households worry about the downside more than the upside — which, in the real world, seems to be true only to some extent.

  The honest conclusion isn’t Roubini’s “bitcoin is incapable of being money,” since many established currencies with volatile values between one another can serve that function, but that an emerging bitcoin economy would have this added, minor layer of business risk.

  It’s like Roubini went out of his way to be up to date on all his other macro worries, only to lay forth criticism of Bitcoin that was outdated by the time he first voiced it in the mid-2010s.

  Most devastatingly of all: Can anyone really be taken seriously when they slap a plural “s” on the uncountable noun “bitcoin”?

  The better you understand the faults of the current way of doing monetary things, the better Bitcoin looks.

  When you look at the many macro ills that Bitcoiners are so well attuned to, the pit of your stomach should churn in anxiety. When you look at the debts (public and private) that rampage the system, you should be feeling nauseous. All of this Roubini captures expertly, and much of his writing could even have been featured on these pages. Our beloved economist hater gets the problem, better and more vocally than most. Still, no dice.

  It’s unfathomable that someone so attuned to the world’s catastrophic macro problems as Roubini cannot see the master-key solution that is Bitcoin.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 20:45

• Generative AI Explained… By AI
  Generative AI Explained… By AI

  After years of research, it appears that artificial intelligence (AI) is reaching a sort of tipping point, capturing the imaginations of everyone from students saving time on their essay writing to leaders at the world’s largest tech companies. Excitement is building around the possibilities that AI tools unlock, but what exactly these tools are capable of and how they work is still not widely understood.

  We could write about this in detail, but given how advanced tools like ChatGPT have become, it only seems right to see what generative AI has to say about itself.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley explains, everything in the infographic above – from illustrations and icons to the text descriptions⁠—was created using generative AI tools such as Midjourney.

  Everything that follows in this article was generated using ChatGPT based on specific prompts.

  Without further ado, generative AI as explained by generative AI.

  

  Generative AI: An Introduction

  Generative AI refers to a category of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that generate new outputs based on the data they have been trained on. Unlike traditional AI systems that are designed to recognize patterns and make predictions, generative AI creates new content in the form of images, text, audio, and more.

  Generative AI uses a type of deep learning called generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create new content. A GAN consists of two neural networks: a generator that creates new data and a discriminator that evaluates the data. The generator and discriminator work together, with the generator improving its outputs based on the feedback it receives from the discriminator until it generates content that is indistinguishable from real data.

  Generative AI has a wide range of applications, including:

  • Images: Generative AI can create new images based on existing ones, such as creating a new portrait based on a person’s face or a new landscape based on existing scenery

  • Text: Generative AI can be used to write news articles, poetry, and even scripts. It can also be used to translate text from one language to another

  • Audio: Generative AI can generate new music tracks, sound effects, and even voice acting

  Disrupting Industries

  People have concerns that generative AI and automation will lead to job displacement and unemployment, as machines become capable of performing tasks that were previously done by humans. They worry that the increasing use of AI will lead to a shrinking job market, particularly in industries such as manufacturing, customer service, and data entry.

  Generative AI has the potential to disrupt several industries, including:

  • Advertising: Generative AI can create new advertisements based on existing ones, making it easier for companies to reach new audiences

  • Art and Design: Generative AI can help artists and designers create new works by generating new ideas and concepts

  • Entertainment: Generative AI can create new video games, movies, and TV shows, making it easier for content creators to reach new audiences

  Overall, while there are valid concerns about the impact of AI on the job market, there are also many potential benefits that could positively impact workers and the economy.

  In the short term, generative AI tools can have positive impacts on the job market as well. For example, AI can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, and help humans make faster and more informed decisions by processing and analyzing large amounts of data. AI tools can free up time for humans to focus on more creative and value-adding work.

  How This Article Was Created

  This article was created using a language model AI trained by OpenAI. The AI was trained on a large dataset of text and was able to generate a new article based on the prompt given. In simple terms, the AI was fed information about what to write about and then generated the article based on that information.

  In conclusion, generative AI is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize several industries. With its ability to create new content based on existing data, generative AI has the potential to change the way we create and consume content in the future.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 20:25

• India Set To Crank Up Coal Power To Meet Soaring Demand
  India Set To Crank Up Coal Power To Meet Soaring Demand

  Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

  India will see its power generation from coal increase in the coming year as authorities plan to have coal-fired units maximize electricity production from imported coal to meet rising demand, government sources told Reuters on Monday.

  

  The government of India, where coal still generates around 70% of electricity, plans to use an emergency law to have more coal-fired power generation this summer, expecting record demand, according to Reuters’ sources.

  Indian coal power plants that have relied on imported coal have not run at full capacity recently because they cannot compete with those using cheaper domestic coal supply. Last year, coal prices globally surged to a record as the EU banned Russian coal imports in August, and the coal trade flows changed, while energy security has been a priority over climate pledges for many developing nations.

  India’s government expects coal-fired power plants to use 8% more coal in the next financial year between March 2023 and March 2024, as demand is set to continue rising thanks to growing economic activity and unpredictable weather, according to Reuters.

  The emergency law is being invoked after Maharashtra and Gujarat, the western Indian states that host the majority of the industry, asked for emergency measures to ensure power supply, Reuters’ sources say.

  Last June, the largest power-generating company in India, state giant NTPC Ltd, said it could increase its coal-generation capacity as it prioritizes energy security after power outages in the spring.

  The coal phase-out in India is “going to take 2-3 decades, if not more,” NTPC’s chairman Gurdeep Singh said at the time.

  India’s coal minister said at the end of 2022 that the country has no intention of ditching coal from its energy mix any time soon. Addressing a parliamentary committee, Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi said that coal would continue to play an important role in India until at least 2040, referring to the fuel as an affordable source of energy for which demand has yet to peak in India.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 20:05

• Best And Worst States For Summer Internships For Gen-Zers
  Best And Worst States For Summer Internships For Gen-Zers

  US tech giants are slashing headcount almost every week. Some of these companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, Salesforce, and many more, overhired during the last several years are cutting staff to drive profitability amid the Federal Reserve-induced economic storm. 

  For Gen-Z youth (aged 18 to 24), fresh out of school or in the latter years of college, searching for an internship in today’s challenging job environment could be tricky. Cutting through all the nonsense is a study from CashNetUSA revealing the best and worst states and industries for the upcoming summer internship season. 

  CashNetUSA analyzed over 50,000 vacancies on Chegg Internships and found the best-paid internships are in the state of Washington, California, and Connecticut — paying an average of $20 an hour or more. 

  

  On the flip side, the states with the lowest-paid internships were Wyoming, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Alabama. Wyoming had an average pay of around $11.92 per hour. 

  Meanwhile, in President Biden’s home state, Delaware, a third of the interns are unpaid.

  

  Despite the tech layoffs, interns can expect the technology industry to pay the highest average hourly rate of $19.77. Finance is second at $18.10.

  

  Also, finance has the highest amount of unpaid interns at nearly 31%. 

  

  So for Gen-Z youth preparing for internships, use this study wisely to pick region and industry carefully. Perhaps avoid firms with unpaid internships so you can cover your bar tab this summer. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 19:45

• The End Of Monetary Hedonism
  The End Of Monetary Hedonism

  Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

  Does cheap money and credit make us richer? Does more money and credit create more stuff, or better stuff? Do they make us happier and more productive? Or do these twin forces actually distort the economy, misallocate resources, and degrade us as people?

  

  These are fundamental questions in an age of monetary hedonism. It is time we began to ask and answer them. Millions of people across the West increasingly recognize the limits of monetary policy, understanding that more money and credit in society do not magically create more goods and services. Production precedes consumption. Capital accumulation is made possible only through profit, which is generated by higher productivity, thanks to earlier capital investment. At the heart of all of it is hard work and human ingenuity. We don’t get rich by legislative edict.

  How we lost sight of these simple truths is complex. But we can begin to understand it by listening to someone smarter! The great financial writer James Grant probably knows more about interest rates than anyone on the planet. So we should pay attention when he suggests America’s four-decade experiment in rates that only go down, down, and down appears to be over.

  The striking thing about the bond market and interest rates is that they tend to rise and fall in generation-length intervals. No other financial security that I know of exhibits that same characteristic. But interest rates have done that going back to the Civil War period, when they fell persistently from 1865 to 1900. They then rose from 1900 to 1920, fell from 1920 or so to 1946, and then rose from 1946 to 1981—and did they ever rise in the last five or 10 years of that 35-year period. Then they fell again from 1981 to 2019–20.

  So each of these cycles was very long-lived. This current one has been, let’s say, 40 years. That’s one-and-a-half successful Wall Street careers. You could be working in this business for a long time and never have seen a bear market in bonds. And I think that that muscle memory has deadened the perception of financial forces that would conspire to lead to higher rates.

  —James Grant, speaking to the Octavian Report

  Do the brilliant young Ivy League quants working at central banks and investment houses really understand this history? Why should they? The baseline cost of capital has been less than 3 percent throughout their careers. Cheap credit and rising stock markets are all they know. Lots of projects make sense when funded with debt rather than equity; or as we might say, with other people’s money. And when those projects go public, the numbers go up!

  Until they don’t.

  One fears our under-forty financiers really have little understanding of the basic function of interest rates, a function Mises explained so clearly more than one hundred years ago. Interest rates should act as “prices,” as Mr. Grant states, or more precisely, as exchange ratios. They bring together borrowers and savers, thus performing a critical function of capital markets and allocating resources to their best and highest uses.

  Yet, in 2022, interest rates are widely viewed as policy tools. They are economic controls, determined and tinkered with by technocratic central bankers when the economy overheats or chills. We expect central banks to “set” interest rates, an impossibility in the long run but also a perverse goal in a supposedly free economy.

  What other prices do we want centrally planned? Food, energy, housing? Should the Fed direct how many cars GM produces in 2022, the price of a bushel of wheat, or the hourly wage for an Amazon warehouse employee? Is this the Soviet Union?

  Of course not. But those who view money as a political creation are once again prone to fundamental errors. They don’t understand money qua money. They certainly cannot imagine a world without “monetary policy,” which is plainly a form of central planning.

  Austrian economists like Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises illustrated how money can arise on the market as simply the most tradeable commodity, with the most desired features of “moneyness.” We don’t need state treasuries or public banks to issue it. And we should care about the quality of money, much as we care about the quality of the goods and services we exchanged for it.

  But in fiat land, that quality goes down, down, and down. Everything politics touches gets worse; why would we expect money to be an exception?

  This four-decade experiment in price fixing of interest rates, described as cyclical by Mr. Grant, not surprisingly corresponds with a dramatic rise in the US M1 money supply. In January 1982, the Fed’s “narrow money” was less than $450 billion. In January 2022, it was more than $20 trillion—roughly forty-four times bigger!

  We can call this monetary hedonism: a combination of low rates and ever-growing money supply designed to create an illusion of real wealth. Monetary hedonism is an arrangement which encourages our whole society to live beyond its means, using monetary policy rather than direct tax-and-spend policy. It directly benefits both the Beltway and the banking classes, who enjoy an exorbitant political privilege due to their proximity to newly created cheap money. After all, Congress can service $30 trillion+ of debt with interest payments of less than $400 billion—thanks to a weighted average interest rate of only about 1.6 percent on that debt. And it’s awfully nice for spendy politicians to know the Fed stands ready to create an instant market for Treasurys owned by commercial banks.

  To be sure, cheap money and low rates benefit all of us in a shortsighted sense. They make the cost of doing business lower and enable corporations to carry more (tax-deductible) debt. They make house payments and mortgages more affordable. They make college and cars and dinners and vacations purchased on credit cheaper. They make it easy and fun to spend.

  Yet there is always a price to be paid for unearned profligacy. The hangover follows the party. We all sense it. A reckoning is coming for the inflationary US dollar. That reckoning will come for entitlements, for congressional spending, for deranged US foreign policy, and for Treasury holders.

  But this economic reckoning is not the full story. We must also consider the incalculable but rarely considered social and cultural costs.

  What happens to society when spending is encouraged and saving is for chumps?

  Our grandparents understood the power of compound interest rates. They could save 10 percent of their income at, say, 10 percent interest rates, and their nest egg doubled roughly every seven years. They could get ahead simply, if not easily, through sheer thrift. They could follow the most human of compulsions, the deep-rooted desire to put money away for a rainy day. They could leave something for future generations. Even when consumer inflation approached 10 percent in the 1970s and ’80s, they could get 14 percent on a simple CD or money market account!

  Compare their experience to that of a hapless young person today, attempting to save up a 20 percent down payment on a modest $300,000 house. In 2022, with inflation at least 6 points above simple savings rates, this seems like a pipe dream.

  This is the perversity of our times: with inflation rates higher than savings rates, the overwhelming incentive is to spend and borrow rather than produce and save.

  Bitcoiners already understand the problem. The simple economic concept of time preference explains so much: some people are more than willing to forego consumption today to reap a larger reward later—even if that “later” is beyond their lifetimes. Time preference is the only way to make sense of interest rates and their critical function in society; interest rates reflect the relative preferences of borrowers and savers. Manipulation of interest rates by central banks severs this critical mechanism, allowing bubbles to occur in the form of new credit without new saving.

  Without interest rates determined by time preference, society’s signals become mixed up. We all understand, axiomatically, why humans prefer something today (certain) over something in the future (uncertain). We may die unexpectedly, our financial positions could change radically due to unforeseen events, or external conditions could influence our desires. We all understand borrowing money to buy a dream home at age forty instead of paying cash at age ninety. We all understand why lenders, given the uncertainty and forbearance that goes with lending, want to be paid interest for their risk.

  It is a matter of time.

  Everything we do in this corporeal world has a temporal element. When governments or central banks interfere with money and interest rates, they distort the vital information provided by real people’s relative time preferences.

  Hans Hoppe, in his infamous Democracy: The God That Failed, goes further—describing time preference as the essential civilizing or decivilizing element in society.

  The saver-investor initiates a “process of civilization.” In generating a tendency toward a fall in the rate of time preference, he—and everyone directly or indirectly connected to him through a network of exchanges—matures from childhood to adulthood and from barbarism to civilization.

  When lots of people save and invest, across society, we call it capital accumulation. And as Hoppe posits, this is not just economic—it is cultural and civilizational. Thrifty people like our grandparents, generation after generation, bequeathed to us an almost unimaginable world of affordable food, water, habitation, transportation, communication, medicine, and material goods of every kind. They did this out of love and sacrifice, but they also did it because the monetary system rewarded saving.

  Today, the opposite is true. Monetary policy across the West is an agent of decivilization. It upends the natural, innate human impulse to save for a rainy day and leave our children better off. It encourages consumption over production, profligacy over thrift, and political promises today that will be paid for by savers and taxpayers tomorrow. Monetary policy degrades and deforms the economy, but ultimately its corrosive effects impact the broader culture.

  In short, it makes us worse people.

  Does bitcoin fix this? Maybe. In the eyes of many maxis (or “bitcoin realists,” per Cory Klippsten), certainly. But time is running short. We face a toxic mix of high–time preference junkie politicians and central bankers who are only too willing to provide the fix. We are depleting capital and borrowing against the future. We consistently display high time preference, both as individuals and as a society. This cannot end well for our children and grandchildren.

  It is past time for all of us to demand better money, not better monetary “policy.” It is time for money to comport with human nature and reward the saving impulse. It is time for us to reconsider our bequest to future generations and make their lives better and more prosperous than ours.

  Monetary hedonism, in the form of low interest rates, is coming to an end. The hangover will not be pretty. Readers would be well served to prepare themselves and act accordingly. Politicians and bankers are unlikely to do this for us.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 19:25

• Poll Shows More Americans Believe 'Too Much' Aid Going To Ukraine
  Poll Shows More Americans Believe ‘Too Much’ Aid Going To Ukraine

  Earlier we quoted former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth who posed in a recent television interview: “Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine?  It’s highly unlikely…”

  Opinion polls are continuing to show waning public support for the West’s deepening involvement in the Ukrainians’ fight against Russia, given the obvious fears of sliding toward nuclear confrontation. While the opening months of the invasion last year resulted in 24/7 headlines, and a frenzy of social media posts displaying the Ukrainian flag and pledges of support, this trend has waned, and what many have dubbed “Ukraine fatigue” has long set in.

  

  As billions in US weaponry is being shipped to eastern Europe at unprecedented pace, an increasing number of Americans see the support at taxpayer expense as now ‘too much’.

  “About a quarter of Americans, 26 percent, think the U.S. support of Ukraine is too strong, according to a new Pew Research Center poll,” The Hill reports this week. “It is a percentage of people that has steadily grown since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year and has jumped 6 points since September.”

  And in particular more and more Republicans are souring on the record-setting support levels to Ukraine…

  “the poll of 5,152 people, with a margin of error of 1.7 percent, found that Republican voters are following along. A total of 40 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think the U.S. is providing too much support, according to the poll. That is up from 32 percent in September and from nine percent directly after the invasion.”

  Further, as The Hill reports of the Pew survey, “In March 2022, Republicans were more likely to see the invasion as a direct threat to the U.S., but now Democrats are more likely to hold that opinion, with 43 percent holding that belief.”

  Ukraine news fatigue began setting in by the end of the first two months of war…

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Pew also details that it remains mainly Democrats who support Biden’s handling of the invasion: “In the Center’s new survey, about four-in-ten U.S. adults (43%) say they approve of the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while about a third (34%) disapprove. About two-in-ten (22%) say they are not sure. Views of the Biden administration’s response have changed little since May 2022, the last time this question was asked.”

  Pew finds that “Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans (61% vs. 27%) to approve of the Biden administration’s response to the Russia invasion.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 19:05

• Tennessee Population Grows As Residents Leave More Liberal States
  Tennessee Population Grows As Residents Leave More Liberal States

  Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Peace and quiet is still a major draw for people moving to smaller-yet-growing states such as Tennessee from more crowded ones such as New York, but lower taxes, great personal freedom, and conservative politics have been bringing even more people in recent years.

  

  Tennessee surpassed 7 million residents in 2022 for the first time, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, making it the seventh-fastest-growing state in the United States by population last year.

  States such as Tennessee have become attractive to individuals beyond the natural environment, mountains, and rivers. Those interviewed by The Epoch Times who moved from Illinois and New York said lower property taxes, low or no state income tax, and more conservative populations have become attractive reasons to move to the southeast.

  According to the bureau, the Southeastern United States is the most populated region of the country, with nearly 129 million residents, and it was the largest-gaining region in 2022, growing by 1.1 percent, or 1.3 million people. Most of the increase in population came from other U.S. states (867,935) while a smaller percentage came from international migration (414,740).

  The West was the only region to also increase in population, with an annual increase of 0.2 percent. The Northeast and Midwest both lost residents overall to other regions.

  Corporate World to Homesteading

  “We wanted to be out in the middle of nowhere,” said Matt Moreno, who moved to Spring City, Tennessee, with his wife, Marla, from the Chicago area in 2020. “We were tipped off about the property and came here fresh out of the corporate world in Chicago. We thought at first it might just be a temporary move, not permanent, and we could maybe make an Air BnB out of it and move back up north once COVID was over.”

  The Morenos, both in their 30s, grew up in an area of northern Illinois about an hour north of Chicago and less than a half-hour south of Kenosha, Wisconsin—where riots and looting dominated the public psyche just around the time the Morenos were packing up to head south.

  Matt Moreno works in real estate, while Marla Moreno sells herbal medicine products. While the natural environment and ability to become more homesteaders than city-dwellers were attractive, so were statistics such as lower crime, lower taxes, and conservative politics.

  “You see a lot of people here with guns on their side, but we feel safer here,” Matt Moreno said.

  The move wasn’t the easiest decision to make, he said, noting that he wasn’t good with his hands or “mechanically inclined” coming from the corporate world.

  

  “The thing about the area that surprised me the most was the sense of community,” he said. “In Illinois, people will run you over and flick you off in the street. When we came here, neighbors came together to help us get established.”

  Moreno got into the real estate world in Tennessee quickly after moving and said now he has been able to help other couples and families wanting to move to the area from similar situations he was in.

  Aside from the natural beauty and culture, he said the political climate was another major reason for their move.

  “Tennessee is a very conservative state with conservative values, and to be honest, that attracted me,” he said. “Illinois had an extremely liberal workforce, and I like being here among like-minded thinkers.”

  Other positives for Moreno include the lack of state income tax in Tennessee, which is why a number of people have told him they’re moving to the state, too.

  Moreno said they had some learning experiences, such as learning that the mountain they lived on was quite windy and the tents they put up to store his wife’s products for her herbal medicine line wouldn’t hold up.

  They also got into homesteading, starting with a goat they found for sale on Craigslist. They quickly discovered goats are social animals, so they bought a second and then a third. Then came chickens and ducks.

  “We felt people were rude and only cared about money where we were,” he said. “It’s peaceful here. We have trails to access and hike. It’s just a very different world.”

  In his work as a real estate agent, one of the main questions people have is about any restrictions on building on land for sale. They’re usually surprised to learn that there are none and are really excited about that fact, he said.

  Living in a rural area comes with some inconveniences, such as driving longer distances for shopping or eating, but Moreno said he wouldn’t trade the location.

  From Upstate New York to Southeast Tennessee

  The Morenos’ sentiment was shared by Lynne Jornov, a nurse who moved south with her husband, Gary, in 2018. At first, they moved to Soddy-Daisy, but relocated to the small town of Dunlap after about two years.

  Lynne Jornov’s job as a nurse allows her to work anywhere, while her husband’s work as a trucker gives him flexibility as well. The two said the main reasons for their move were taxes and conservative values.

  “The cost of running a small business in New York was … pretty much unmanageable,” she said. “That, together with property taxes, [made us realize that] we could retire and own our own home outright and still have to pay $10,000 a year in property taxes just to stay there. That was a little eye-opening, along with the political insanity up there. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.”

  She said that although their families are still in New York, she and her husband “had to do something” and move. They also wanted to get into agriculture, with a few cows, to become more self-sufficient.

  “It was a tough decision,” she said. “[New York] was very beautiful, we had all four seasons. Of course, my parents are getting older and I would love to be there all the time, but we wouldn’t be able to live anywhere near as comfortably as we do here.”

  She said the couple has grown children, so that wasn’t a factor in their decision, but they would have had a tough time raising their kids in New York’s current political climate.

  Gary Jornov added that toll roads called “choice lanes,” which are currently being proposed by Tennessee legislators, aren’t something he would want to see.

  “This state needs to be conservative, that’s why we came here,” he said in an interview. “We want to keep conservative clause and not be taxed to death. Hopefully that doesn’t change here and stays the way it is.”

  Lynne Jornov said she understands the concerns of Tennessee natives who may not want people from states with different cultural backgrounds to bring their values with them, but that’s not what they want anyway.

  “We could’ve stayed in New York for that,” she said. “Tennessee is more of what we were looking for. Thank God we don’t have small kids because I wouldn’t want to raise a child in any of those places. Things they are doing and allowing are absolutely insane.”

  Southward Move Followed by Millions

  Jae Gillispie, who moved from a suburban area in Illinois, has documented her move with her husband to Pikeville, Tennessee, on social media for tens of thousands of viewers.

  She said she left her job of 21 years, and her husband left his job of 25 years.

  “We downsized,” she said. “No traffic. We love our little home. It’s just beautiful out here. I am so glad we did this. It was a huge risk, because we are not retired. We made decent money, good money, and now we make less than half of what we did, but it’s worth every penny.”

  The couple moved to a rural area around 2 1/2 miles from Fall Creek Falls State Park, the largest and most visited state park in Tennessee, and around 14 miles from the small town of Pikeville.

  “If you’re thinking about moving out here, which a lot of people are, this state is going crazy. Everything has doubled and tripled in price because this is such a hot state right now,” she said, adding that they moved in 2020, just as the pandemic began. “It’s not cheap anymore, it’s definitely going up in price, but it’s the best move we ever made.”

  She said that after 48 years in Illinois, they decided to leave for a variety of reasons, including taxes.

  “The freedoms down here, you can’t beat that,” she said. “So just to set some of the people straight that care about transplants coming down—we’re not here to change anything, we’re pretty darn conservative.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 18:45

• Orange Juice Futures Hit New Record High Amid Supply Squeeze
  Orange Juice Futures Hit New Record High Amid Supply Squeeze

  OJ futures have hit a new high, surging 10 cents or 4.56% to $2.292/lb, surpassing the 2016 record of $2.2585, due to limited supply.

  

  The USDA predicts Florida’s citrus production will reach 44.5 million boxes this year, which could result in the state’s smallest orange harvest since 1945. This is due to “greening disease” and hurricane damage in Florida’s citrus groves.

  Recall we have closely followed the squeeze in supplies:

  • Orange Juice Prices Could “Increase Substantially” As Hurricane Pummels Florida’s Top Citrus Grow Region
  • Orange Juice Futures Limit Up On Global Supply Squeeze

  The domestic shortage has led domestic companies to seek out new supplies in Mexico and Brazil. WSJ reported a gallon of orange juice has risen above $6 in some US supermarkets.

  Besides orange juice, egg prices are also soaring. People aren’t thrilled about rapid food inflation. 

  I almost put the Orange Juice back at Walmart today. These prices are out of hand. #DoBestByEveryBody #Inflation

  — Darryl R Ware II (@DarrylRWareII) January 31, 2023

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

  It’s 5.00 for orange juice, 3.50 for eggs. Let’s focus on the important issues, not the fantasy that America will be “all electric” anywhere in our lifetimes. But good job on other stuff you’re doing. Keep up the support for Ukraine and reducing gas prices.

  — Corey (@elbrynncanticle) January 30, 2023

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

  Maybe is a Republican strategy to put you down let’s say there is around 10 people dead at day because weapons rights
  prices of food eggs $10:00
  Bread $6:00
  Coffee cream $9:00
  Milk $$7:00
  Frozen orange juice $ $8:00
  Please we don’t want to mention the prince of chicken,fish,Beef

  — ALICIA M Blay Casal Franco Rivero (@ALICIAMBlayCas1) January 29, 2023

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 18:25

• Missing Radioactive Capsule In Western Australia Found
  Missing Radioactive Capsule In Western Australia Found

  Authored by Nina Nguyen via The Epoch Times,

  Australian authorities have found and secured a radioactive capsule missing in the outback of Western Australia (WA) after a frantic one-week hunt.

  

  The capsule, which is filled with Caesium-147 which emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour, was located two meters off the Great Northern Highway near Newman on Wednesday morning local time.

  “I do want to emphasize this is an extraordinary result,” WA Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson said at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

  “The search crews have quite literally found the needle in the haystack.”

  A crew from Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services found the silver-colored capsule using radiation survey meters to detect the gamma rays and radiation levels to locate the capsule.

  It has been placed in a lead container and is being transported to Newman for secure storage overnight before being taken to a WA Health Facility in Perth on Thursday.

  

  A supplied image obtained on Jan. 27, 2023, of a small round and silver capsule containing radioactive Caesium-137 that went missing in transportation between a mine site north of Newman and the north-eastern parts of Perth between Jan. 10-16. (AAP Image/Supplied by Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA)

  The device has been put in a 20-meter “hot zone” to make sure the public is not in contact with the radiation from the substance.

  “This fantastic result in just seven days in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is a testament to the close collaboration of all the agencies who came together to ensure the safety of WA,” said the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) WA, the lead agency in charge of the search.

  “Thank you to the community for heeding the safety advice, sending suggestions and reporting any info they thought may aid the search efforts.”

  The potentially dangerous radioactive capsule, just 6mm wide and 8mm long, is believed to have fallen from a truck that travelled from the Rio Tinto mine in WA north to a storage facility in Perth, an 870-mile journey.

  “It is extremely rare for a source to be lost,” Western Australia Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson said in a statement. 

  Potentially Harmful Tiny Capsule

  Authorities had warned the public to stay at least five meters away from the silver capsule as exposure could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness, though experts have said driving past the capsule would be relatively low risk, akin to taking an X-ray.

  “It emits both beta and gamma rays, so if you have contact or close to you, you could either end up with skin damage, including skin burns … and if you have it long near you it could cause acute radiation sickness,” Robertson said.

  

  Western Australian Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson at a press conference at Dumas House in Perth, Australia, on Feb. 4, 2021. (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)

  “Our concern is someone will pick it up, not knowing what it is, think this is something interesting [and] keep it … not knowing what they are actually dealing with.”

  The capsule cannot be weaponized or broken to spread the radioactive material, however, it can cause cancer, Robertson warned.

  Rio Tinto’s Statement

  The capsule left the Rio Tinto’s mine site on Jan. 12 and was reported to be missing on Jan. 25. The gauge was found broken apart and missing a screw and a bolt, which are believed to have come loose due to vibrations from the truck. Inspectors believed the capsule then fell through a hole and then out of the truck.

  The public received an alert about the missing capsule about two days later. The package was in accordance with radiation safety regulations.

  Rio Tinto said it recognized the disappearance is “clearly very concerning” and apologized for the alarm it has caused in the Western Australian community.

  “Rio Tinto engaged a third-party contractor, with appropriate expertise and certification, to safely package the device in preparation for transport off-site ahead of receipt at their facility in Perth,” Simon Trott, Rio Tinto’s iron ore division chief, said in a statement on Monday.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 18:05

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• Ivermectin: Could Population-Wide Distribution Have Prevented China's Recent Mass COVID Outbreak?
  Ivermectin: Could Population-Wide Distribution Have Prevented China’s Recent Mass COVID Outbreak?

  Authored by Dr. Sean Lin and Mingjia Jacky Guan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  China’s state-run medicare program recently failed to reach an agreement with Pfizer to import more Paxlovid, claiming the COVID-19 treatment drug is too expensive. This is despite the drug being offered to the state at a reduced rate in comparison with that offered to other developed countries. Lack of Paxlovid will leave only Azvudine, an anti-HIV drug the Chinese communist regime rushed through development and re-branded as an anti-COVID drug, as a treatment option.

  

  Given the recent explosive spread of COVID and the resulting skyrocketing rates of hospitalization, finding viable treatment options is paramount.

  Ivermectin in India and Peru

  When the Delta variant broke out in 2021 across India, many states offered ivermectin population-wide. The efficacy of ivermectin in treating early and mild COVID-19 infections was confirmed in large states such as Uttar Pradesh—home to 241 million residents—where the use of the prophylactic dramatically reduced both the infection rate and the death toll.

  

  Even among frontline health care workers, ivermectin proved to be an effective prophylactic against COVID-19. One study with 3,532 frontline health care workers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar found that two doses of oral ivermectin (300 μg/kg given 72 hours apart) as chemoprophylaxis among health care workers reduced the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83 percent in the following month.

  In Peru, mass ivermectin treatments were conducted through a broad-scale effort called Mega-Operación Tayta, or MOT for short. Operation MOT was led by the Peruvian army and involved 10 states, where the excess death rate saw a sharp decline with an average of 74 percent over 30 days. In 14 states where ivermectin was administered locally, the mean reduction in excess deaths over 30 days compared with deaths was 53 percent.

  Lima, the capital of Peru, where the distribution of ivermectin was restricted, saw only a 25 percent reduction in excess deaths. The findings of researchers, detailed in the diagram below, show infection numbers, deaths, and fatalities across Peruvian states which implemented ivermectin (blue) and those which did not (red). The conclusion is that a reduction in deaths correlated with the distribution of ivermectin with a statistically significant p-value of less than 0.002.

  

  Ivermectin–The Wonder Drug

  Ivermectin was discovered in Japan during the late 70s as a derivative of Avermectin, produced from a single organism isolated at the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo. Since then, ivermectin has played an immeasurable role in improving the lives of billions with its humble beginnings as an anti-parasitic drug.

  Ivermectin, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and deployed worldwide since 1987, has made major inroads against two devastating tropical diseases—onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis. In addition, some topical forms of ivermectin are approved to treat external parasites like head lice and skin conditions such as rosacea.

  

  In addition to its anti-parasitic effects, a 2022 study published in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry Reports found that ivermectin has a strong potency at low concentrations against many DNA and RNA viruses, including HIV-1, yellow fever, malaria, West Nile virus, Zika, dengue fever, etc.

  According to the study, ivermectin has an amazing inhibitory effect across multiple species and can interrupt motility and reproduction in both arthropods (such as insects) and nematodes (such as roundworms). This explains why ivermectin is prescribed for parasite infections, and also sheds light on its potential as a prophylactic against vector-borne diseases. In insects and other arthropods specifically, it can interrupt the transmission of disease.

  Ivermectin’s Potential Mechanisms Against COVID

  SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that takes over host cells to multiply in the body. To enter the host cells, the virus binds to the ACE-2 receptor on the surface of cells which grants them entry. Ivermectin prevents the bonding process by interfering with the virus’s spike proteins—this is the same mechanism the vaccines use.

  If the virus slips past the cell membrane, its top priority is to infiltrate the brain of the cell—the DNA-containing nucleus—to start mass-producing itself. SARS-CoV-2 latches itself onto a special class of transport proteins called IMPs that have enough security clearance to enter the nucleus. In the case of a viral infection, ivermectin binds to these transport proteins and halts the interaction.

  

  Ivermectin also inhibits the nuclear transport mechanism mediated by the KPNA-1 protein, which has a similar effect when compared with IMPs. Both proteins can enter the nucleus and ivermectin can effectively stop the virus from getting to the nucleus. In the event that the virus does manage to invade the nucleus—ivermectin also has a backup plan.

  For example, when the virus has taken over and initialized self-replication, it does so through a protein called RdRp, which is at the centerpiece of viral replication—and is directly inhibited by ivermectin with very high efficacy.

  Ivermectin Could Reduce Severe Lung Damage in COVID Patients

  Once COVID-19 reaches later stages, it may require intensive care for recovery. For example, white lung syndrome (a hallmark symptom of acute respiratory distress syndrome) now occurring in severe COVID infections in China, is a sign that the virus has deeply infected the lungs and may have caused cytokine storms (a severe immune reaction in the body) in patients.

  Other complications that arise from COVID-19 involving the lungs are conditions such as pulmonary fibrosis and hypoxia. Hypoxia occurs when the virus infects lung tissue to the extent that the alveoli, tiny sacs of air at the end of lung branches responsible for oxygen exchange, become scarred causing a severe loss of oxygen in the body.

  Cytokines and chemokines are responsible for inflammation, a natural immune system response to foreign invaders. However, a large number of cytokines released into the body all at once can cause a “cytokine storm,” wherein the body is flooded with armies of white blood cells that harm the body.

  A cytokine storm can be triggered through the TLR-4 pathway by the virus. The same pathway also triggers the release of nitric oxide, causing fluid leaks, dilating blood vessels, or even sepsis and fluid buildup in the lungs.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 23:40

• "It's Going To Be Spicy": UPS Faces Upcoming Union Fight, Spike In Labor Costs
  “It’s Going To Be Spicy”: UPS Faces Upcoming Union Fight, Spike In Labor Costs

  United Parcel Service (UPS) is facing a spike in labor costs after a union contract expires in July, along with a possible strike which would throw package delivery into chaos if the company isn’t willing to meet the new demands.

  

  The Teamsters union, which represents 340,000 UPS employees, says the company needs to boost wages for part-time workers to over $20 an hour and eliminate a controversial two-tiered wage system, Bloomberg reports. Employees are also demanding air conditioning in vehicles as well as blocking inward-facing cameras that monitor drivers.

  “We’ve got some great arguments on why these folks should be paid,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who has promised members a hard fight. “We’ve got a great argument just on how much money the company’s been making.”

  In short, UPS CEO Carol Tomé has quite the problem on her hands. The company delivers 20 million packages a day in the US alone – making it  the second-largest ground courier behind the US Postal Service. An employee strike would make it likely impossible for USPS and rival FedEx to make up for the volume from UPS customers – particularly Amazon.

  A Bloomberg notes, a strike would have a much greater impact than it did in 1997, when UPS workers walked out for 15 days.

  “It’s pretty clear that it’s going to be spicy,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker, who has an underweight rating on the stock. Shanker has predicted UPS may increase compensation as much as 10% a year.

  Under the current contract set to expire in June, UPS had been benefiting from predictable labor costs, which shielded the company from wage spikes which have hurt FedEx – and which gave UPS a temporary advantage during the pandemic, when the demand for home-delivery surged.

  UPS is hopeful (or at least spinning it that way) that they can come to a speedy agreement with the Teamsters.

  “We have more alignment on key issues with the Teamsters than not. That’s especially true with respect to maintaining industry-leading pay and benefits, and delivering the best service in the industry with the best safety record,” said a spokesperson to Bloomberg in an emailed statement.

  UPS argues that it already pays its workers, especially drivers, much more than competitors. The average wage for a delivery driver with at least four years on the job is $42 an hour, not counting pension and health benefits, the company says. A typical wage for an experienced driver at rival FedEx Ground, depending on the region, is $20 an hour and usually comes with no benefits. The company also added 72,000 Teamsters jobs in three years through August 2021, which is more than was pledged under the current contract. UPS has about another 100,000 US workers who aren’t unionized.  -Bloomberg

  That said, the company’s ratio of compensation to sales is the lowest it’s been in at least 25 years.

  

  According to O’Brien, the starting wage for part-time workers should jump from $15.50 per hour to $20, in order to attract more part-time workers. He also has a broader goal of organizing more warehouse workers, including at Amazon, and intends to showcase the upcoming UPS contract as a shining example of the leverage organized labor has over employers.

  “We’re going to use the UPS agreement as a template to basically say, this is what you get when you work for a unionized carrier,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 23:20

• Ukraine Proves We Learned Nothing From The Vietnam War
  Ukraine Proves We Learned Nothing From The Vietnam War

  Authored by James W. Carden via American Committee For US-Russia Accord,

  Days ago marked 50 years since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords which effectively ended American participation in the Vietnam war. One of the consequences, according to Georgetown University international affairs scholar Charles Kupchan, was that an “isolationist impulse” made a “significant comeback in response to the Vietnam War, which severely strained the liberal internationalist consensus.”

  As the Cold War historian John Lamberton Harper points out, President Jimmy Carter’s hawkish Polish-born national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, scorned his intra-administration rival, the cautious, gentlemanly secretary of state Cyrus Vance as “a nice man but burned by Vietnam.” Indeed, Vance and a number of his generation carried with them a profound disillusionment in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. And for a short time, the “Vietnam Syndrome,” (shorthand for a wariness and suspicion of unnecessary and unsupportable foreign interventions) occasionally informed American policy at the highest levels and manifested itself in the promulgations of the Wienberger and Powell Doctrines which, in theory anyway, represented a kind of resistance on the part of the Pentagon to unnecessary military adventures.

  

  But such resistance didn’t last long. Only hours after the successful conclusion of the First Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush declared, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” And kick it Bush did: In the decades following his 1991 pronouncement, the United States has been at war in one form or another (either as a belligerent or unofficial co-belligerent—as is the case with our involvement in Saudi Arabia’s grotesque war on Yemen) for all but two of the 32 years that have followed.

  Yet the atmosphere that now prevails in Washington makes it exceedingly difficult to believe such a thing as a “Vietnam Syndrome” ever existed. Indeed, President Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine has been met with rapturous approval from the Washington establishment, winning plaudits from all the usual suspects.

  But can the Biden policy truly be credited as a success when the entire ordeal might have been avoided by judicious diplomatic engagement? Are we really to believe that the war which so far has resulted in 8 million refugees and roughly 200,000 battlefield deaths has been worth a promise of NATO membership for Ukraine?

  While the war has seemingly ground to a stalemate, the legacy media and various and sundry think-tank-talking-heads have been busy issuing regular assurances of regime change in Moscow and steady progress in the field with victory soon to come:

  • Writing in the Journal of Democracy this past September, political scientist and author of The End of History and The Last Man Francis Fukuyama exulted: “Ukraine will win. Slava Ukraini!”
  • Washington Post reporter Liz Sly told readers in early January that “If 2023 continues as it began, there is a good chance Ukraine will be able to fulfill President Volodymyr Zelensky’s New Year’s pledge to retake all of Ukraine by the end of the year—or at least enough territory to definitively end Russia’s threat, Western officials and analysts say.”
  • Also in early January, the former head of the U.S. Army in Europe, Lt. General Ben Hodges told the Euromaidan Press that, “The decisive phase of the campaign…will be the liberation of Crimea. Ukrainian forces are going to spend a lot of time knocking out or disrupting the logistical networks that are important for Crimea…That is going to be a critical part that leads or sets the conditions for the liberation of Crimea, which I expect will be finished by the end of August.”
  • Newsweek, reporting in October 2022, informed readers by way of activist Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of the Russian parliament, that “Russia is not yet on the brink of revolution…but is not far off.”
  • Rutgers University professor Alexander J. Motyl agrees. In a January 2023 article for Foreign Policy magazine titled ‘It’s High Time to Prepare for Russia’s Collapse’ Motyl decried as “stunning” what he believes is a “near-total absence of any discussion among politicians, policymakers, analysts, and journalists of the consequences of defeat for Russia…considering the potential for Russia’s collapse and disintegration.”
  • And this week comes word, courtesy of Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the once realist National Interest magazine, that “The German decision to send tanks to Ukraine is a turning point. It is now clear that Vladimir Putin signed the death warrant of his regime in invading Ukraine.”

  As Gore Vidal once quipped: “There is little respite for a people so routinely—so fiercely—disinformed.”

  Conspicuous by its absence in what passes for foreign policy discourse in the American capital is the question of American interests: How does the allocation of vast sums to a wondrously corrupt regime in Kiev in any way materially benefit everyday Americans? Does the imposition of a narrow, sectarian Galician nationalism over the whole of Ukraine truly constitute a core American interest? Does the prolongation of a proxy war between NATO and Russia further European and American security interests? If so, how?

  RAND Corporation identifies chief “impediment” to ending the Ukraine war: “The centrality of Western assistance”

  Causing misperceptions similar to what prolonged World War I, they say

  An amazing acknowledgment from the Pentagon’s in-house Think Tank, but will be largely ignored pic.twitter.com/xk0aO42hnx

  — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 29, 2023

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

  In truth, the lessons of Vietnam were forgotten long ago. The generation that now populates the ranks of the Washington media and political establishment came of age when Vietnam was already in the rearview mirror. The unabashed liberal interventionists who staff the Biden administration cut their teeth in the 1990s when it was commonly believed that the U.S. didn’t act often enough, notably in Bosnia and in Rwanda. As such, and almost without exception, the current crop of foreign policy hands now in power have supported every American mis-adventure abroad since 9/11.

  The caution which, albeit all-too-temporarily, stemmed from the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ is today utterly absent from the corridors of power in Joe Biden’s Washington. 

  The Vietnam Syndrome is indeed kicked: Dead and buried.

  But we may soon come to regret its passing.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 23:00

• Bill Gates Addresses Jeffrey Epstein Connection In Uncomfortable New Interview
  Bill Gates Addresses Jeffrey Epstein Connection In Uncomfortable New Interview

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates again responded to questions about his relationship with sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein, saying that “there was never any relationship.”

  “I had dinner with him and that’s all,” Gates said in response to a question from an Australia Broadcasting Corporation reporter. When pressed further, Gates said that “there never was any relationship of any kind” after being asked if there is a connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation.

  

  The reporter, Sarah Ferguson, asked if he regretted the relationship, saying that it went against the wishes of his ex-wife, Melinda. “You’re going way back in time. But yeah, I will say for the, you know, over [the] hundredth time that I shouldn’t have had dinners with him,” Gates said in the interview, published Jan. 30.

  Ferguson noted that Epstein was involved in “sexually compromising people” and asked whether his ex-wife warned him about that. “No,” Gates said.

  Tucker drops shocking new footage of Bill Gates in PANIC after Jeffrey Epstein relationship called out on LIVE TV pic.twitter.com/VVy4qzdhbc

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 31, 2023

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

  Gates, one of the wealthiest people in the world, was asked in 2021 by PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff about whether he had a connection to Epstein or not. Gates at the time provided similar answers but stated that he had “dinners” with Epstein, whereas in Australian TV interview, he said that he had “dinner” with him.

  “What did you know about him when you were meeting with him, as you said yourself, in the hopes of raising money?” Woodruff asked Gates

  “You know, I had dinners with him. I regret doing that,” he replied. “He had relationships with people he said, you know, would give to global health, which is an interest I have. You know, not nearly enough philanthropy goes in that direction.”

  Gates conceded at the time that “those meetings were a mistake.”

  “You know, that goes back a long time ago now, so there’s nothing new on that,” Gates added.

  Pressed further by Woodruff, the Microsoft mogul asserted: “You know, I’ve said I regretted having those dinner, and there’s nothing … absolutely nothing new on that.”

  Melinda French Gates, his former wife, told CBS in 2022 that she wasn’t happy that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. “I wanted to see who this man was, and I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door,” she said at the time. “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards. My heart breaks for these young women.”

  Before the CBS interview aired, Bill Gates told news outlets that his meeting with Epstein “was a mistake that I regret deeply” and was “a substantial error in judgment.”

  Gates told The Times of London in May that those dinners were a part of efforts to fundraise but “didn’t result in what he purported, and I cut them off.” He added, “At the time, I didn’t realize that by having those meetings it would be seen as giving him credibility. You’re almost saying, ‘I forgive that type of behavior,’ or something.”

  Epstein Details

  Epstein, who was convicted in 2008 after pleading guilty to soliciting a prostitute who was a minor, died in August 2019 while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Officials found him hanged inside his Manhattan jail cell, triggering widespread speculation about his cause of death.

  

  The New York City Medical Examiner’s office at the time ruled that Epstein, 66, committed suicide by hanging himself with his bedsheets. But in early 2020, Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist who previously worked for the same medical examiner’s office, alleged Epstein’s death was “more indicative of homicide” after graphic photos of his death were made public.

  A former associate and girlfriend of Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, was found guilty in 2021 of child sex trafficking in connection to the former financier. She was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison and is currently serving time in Florida’s low-security FCI Tallahassee prison.

  During a recent phone interview with a British television show, Maxwell suggested that Epstein didn’t kill himself.

  “I believe that he was murdered,” Maxwell said in a Talk TV interview published on Jan. 23. “I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened because as far as I was concerned, he was going to—I was sure he was going to appeal.”

  Over the years, Epstein was reportedly known to have powerful friends and acquaintances, including politicians, business magnates, celebrities, and high-powered lawyers—further adding to the speculation around his jailhouse death.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 22:20

• Biden Promotes EV Hummer That Pollutes More Than Gas-Powered Sedan
  Biden Promotes EV Hummer That Pollutes More Than Gas-Powered Sedan

  President Biden’s 70-person social media team tweeted a photo of the president in the new Hummer EV. They celebrated the president’s push to ‘electrify and greenify’ America.

  On my watch, the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified.

  And now, through a tax credit, you can get up to $7,500 on a new electric vehicle. pic.twitter.com/n3iZ9etL4A

  — President Biden (@POTUS) January 30, 2023

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

  The president has signed an Executive Order that sets a new target to make about half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles. The main idea behind the EV push is to “cut emissions,” according to the Executive Order. 

  Though there’s a dirty side to clean energy, one of these inconvenient truths is the very EV the president is sitting in pollutes more than a typical gasoline-powered sedan, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). 

  ACEEE revealed the inconvenient truth about the Hummer EV in a report last year: 

  Emissions per mile driven are lower for EVs than for similarly sized gasoline-powered cars, but they are not zero. The Chevy Bolt EV is responsible for about 92 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per mile when accounting for emissions from the electric grid. (The CO2 calculations are based on the national average, but electric grid emissions vary considerably across the country.) The gasoline-powered Chevy Malibu causes over 320 grams per mile. Comparing larger vehicles, the original Hummer H1 emits 889 grams of CO2 per mile and the new Hummer EV causes 341 grams, demonstrating that behemoth EVs can still be worse for the environment than smaller, conventional vehicles.

  ACEEE continued:

  The environmental impact of EVs isn’t just about the electricity generated to power each mile. The manufacturing process also causes the release of greenhouse gases at several stages, known as the embodied emissions of the vehicle. EVs in particular—with heavy battery packs—use minerals that need to be mined, processed, and turned into batteries.

  The pursuit of greater driving range and larger vehicles require increasing battery size, also increasing embodied emissions. Mining the minerals used for batteries has a significant impact on the environment and can have negative social impacts, including the well-documented human rights abuses surrounding the mining of cobalt, an important mineral for many EV batteries. More-efficient EVs need less battery to have the same range, which means fewer emissions and fewer of the problems associated with mining the minerals.

  Perhaps the people in power aren’t that bright after all … there’s an inconvenient truth to EVs, especially larger ones, such as the Hummer.

  And by the way, there’s a lot of disconnect between what the average working-class person can afford. Most folks can’t afford a $100k EV. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 22:02

• Russia's "Sanction-Proof" Trade Corridor To India Frustrates The Neocons
  Russia’s “Sanction-Proof” Trade Corridor To India Frustrates The Neocons

  Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

  Russia, Iran, and India are speeding up efforts to complete a new transport corridor that would largely cut Europe, its sanctions, and any other threats out of the picture. 

  The International North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) is a land-and sea-based 7,200-km long network comprising rail, road and water routes that are aimed at reducing costs and travel time for freight transport in a bid to boost trade between Russia, Iran, Central Asia, India.

  

  For Russia, the “sanction-proof” corridor provides a major export channel to South Asia without needing to go through Europe. But Brussels and Washington, frustrated by their losing in Ukraine and inability to put much of a dent in the Russian economy, could lead them to take more desperate measures.

  Read MoreLately, Estonia, which has a population smaller than Russia’s armed forces, has been making noise about causing problems in the Gulf of Finland, Estonian Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur is talking about how Helsinki and Tallinn will integrate their coastal missile defense, which he says would allow the countries to close the Gulf of Finland to Russian warships if necessary. Estonia is also floating the possibility of trying to inspect Russian ships. From Asia Times:

   It is unlikely Estonia can carry out any inspections given that it only has two patrol vessels (EML-Roland and EML-Risto) and no other warships except some mine layers. But if Estonia even tried, it would create another friction point that Russia could exploit if it chose.

  There is also a strategic element. With Finland joining NATO and already a de facto member, the Gulf of Finland becomes significantly more hostile for Russia and there will be growing pressure on Russian political leaders to take action against a rising threat to Russian security.

  While Ukraine is far away, the Russians see NATO’s “ganging up” on Russia as a key issue for Russian security and stability. This brings the Baltic region into sharper focus because Russians see NATO trying to surround them and undercut their economic and military advantages.

  It’s hard to take Estonia’s bluster seriously but equally difficult to put anything past the neocons in Washington and their adherents in the Baltics. Regardless, Russia would prefer a trade route with India that saves time and money and avoids Europe.

  

  ©Peter Hermes Furian

  While NATO’s war against Russia has sped up the cooperation between Moscow, Tehran, and New Delhi, India and Iran are coming under various types of pressure that could delay full implementation of the corridor. And Azerbaijan, a key nexus in the INSTC, is a wildcard as it grows increasingly confrontational with both Iran and Armenia.

  First the recent developments on the INSTC:

  • India is helping to develop the Shahid Beheshti Terminal at Iran’s Chabahar Port in cooperation with the Iranian government.

  • Iran and Russia recently signed a contract for Russia to build a cargo vessel for Iran to be used at the Caspian port of Solyanka, which is being developed jointly by the two nations as part of efforts to strengthen the Caspian Sea transportation network.

  • RZD Logistics, a subsidiary of Russian railway monopoly RZD, has begun regular container train services from Moscow to Iran to serve growing trade with India by transloading.

  • Rezaul Hasan Laskar, the foreign affairs editor at Hindustan Times, says the strategic Chabahar Port in  southeastern Iran has “become more important following its growing use” but that “it needs to be connected to Iran’s railway network.” Iran has accelerated that project, and with an investment boost from Russia, is speeding up the completion of the Astara-Rasht-Qazvin railway, another transport corridor that will connect existing railways of Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran to the INSTC.

  In the meantime, most of the goods that Russia normally transported across the Baltic Sea to reach the North Sea port of Rotterdam now sail instead to India. Oilprice reports:

  Russian crude oil loadings from Baltic ports are on track for a 50% hike from December to January, Reuters reports, citing its own data combined with trader insights.

  Russian Urals and KEBCO crude oil loadings specifically from the ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga will experience the increase, Reuters said, adding that the bulk of those loadings (some 70%) will head to India.

  In December, Russia loaded 4.7 million tonnes of Urals and KEBCO from the Baltic ports, Reuters said, citing Refinitiv data.Russia now accounts for approximately 25% of India’s crude purchases, while some sources put it closer to 30%.

  The increased trade with Russia is a primary driver bringing New Delhi and Tehran closer together – largely a result of Europe severing itself from Russia. According to Reuters, at the end of November Moscow sent India a list of more than 500 products it wants India exporting to Russia, “including parts for cars, aircraft and trains.” The report added:

  Indian imports from Russia have grown nearly five times to $29 billion between Feb. 24 and Nov. 20 compared with $6 billion in the same period a year ago. Exports, meanwhile, have fallen to $1.9 billion from $2.4 billion, the source said. India is hoping to boost its exports to nearly $10 billion over coming months with Russia’s list of requests, according to the government source.

  And with all the increased trade, New Delhi and Moscow are looking for more efficient supply lines. A study, conducted by the Federation of Freight Forwarders’ Associations in India, showed that INSTC will be 30 percent cheaper and 40 percent shorter than the existing routes. And according to the Russian Journal for Economics, freight traffic on the NSTC could reach 25 million tons by 2030, a 20-fold increase. For these reasons the NSTC is of vital importance to Russia, as well as a source of frustration for the neocons in DC and their foot soldiers in Europe.

  Strangely enough, even if they found a way to sever the Russia-India link, Europe would have to find a new seller of oil. For months India has been getting Russian oil at a discount and selling it to the EU at substantial profits. According to Michael Tran, global energy strategist at RBC Capital Markets:

  India is buying record amounts of severely discounted Russian crude, running its refiners above nameplate capacity, and capturing the economic rent of sky-high crack spreads and exporting gasoline and diesel to Europe. In short, the EU policy of tightening the screws on Russia is a policy win, but the unintended consequence is that Europe is effectively importing inflation to its own citizens. This is not only an economic boon for India, but it also serves as an accelerator for India’s place in the new geopolitically rewritten oil trade map. What we mean is that the EU policy effectively makes India an increasingly vital energy source for Europe. This was historically never the case, and it is why Indian product exports have been clocking in at all-time-high levels over recent months.

  It’s not hard to see why India has steadfastly refused to join the sanctions parade on Russia despite pressure from the west and continues to pursue the NSTC.

  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now dealing with a major infrastructure crisis, however.

  The Adani conglomerate, which is led by Asia’s richest man who has very close ties to the Modi government, has lost billions in recent days following a report from New York City-based Hindenburg Research, which specializes in short-selling overhyped stocks. Adani owns everything from ports to coal mines and is heavily involved in all types of Indian infrastructure, which means the fallout could affect all corners of the economy – and Modi. Adam Tooze writes at Chartbook:

  But what if the biggest promoter-political-capitalist of all were to come under unsustainable pressure? It is not only inequality and power imbalances that are at stake, but the financial stability of the Indian economy. …

  Were Adani to find itself in real trouble, there can be little doubt that the real anchor would be the state. Adani’s rise and the fortunes of Modi and the BJP are closely tied. ..

  A more serious risk is that the panic spreads from Adani throughout the financial markets, forcing the Modi administration to make painful choices. As Bloomberg reports the shock and anxiety is catching especially amongst global investors who may swiftly reevaluate their weighting of Indian assets.

  It wasn’t exactly a secret that the Adani conglomerate was on shaky ground. As Tooze notes, Credit Suisse warned all the way back in a 2015 “House of Debt” report that “the Adani Group was one of 10 conglomerates under ‘severe stress’ that accounted for 12 percent of banking sector loans. Yet the Adani Group has been able to keep raising funds, in part by borrowing from overseas lenders and pivoting to green energy. ”

  The widely cited Hindenburg investigation doesn’t just go after Adani, but it also argues his success is tied to the government (and Modi) supporting him nearly every step of the way. Modi is already dealing with the headache of the recently-released BBC documentary about the 2002 Gujarat riots that highlights a previously unpublished, two-decades-old British Foreign Office report claiming Modi was “directly responsible” for that communal riot during his tenure as Gujarat’s chief minister. Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based political analyst believes the documentary is part of efforts to pressure Modi and writes: 

  It’s suspicious that the previously unpublished British Foreign Office report was highlighted by state-run BBC over two decades after it was written, shortly after the New York Times (NYT) implied that externally exacerbating communal tensions will be the West’s Hybrid War means of punishing India for [defying the West on their anti-Russian sanctions], and around the time that India secured its rise as a globally significant Great Power. These observations suggest that the documentary’s timing wasn’t coincidental.

  Modi remains highly popular, and a weak and divided opposition isn’t considered much of a threat, but the fallout from the Adani affair could change that. Just two weeks ago Adani was enjoying Davos and having discussions with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev about petrochemical and mining projects in Azerbaijan. The West has also recently taken a great deal of interest in Azerbaijan’s energy future. From The Cradle:

  On 7 December, 2022, the World Bank released a report titled “Azerbaijan: Towards Green Growth” in which the authors stated that the:

  “Global transition towards a low-emissions economic model offers opportunities for Azerbaijan to be globally and regionally competitive. To make the best of it, Azerbaijan needs to focus on decarbonizing and diversifying the economy, bolstering innovation, and natural and human capital development.”

  From this Green New Deal agenda, Azerbaijan would certainly receive funding, but in doing so, it would be handicapped from developing its vast resources or playing a positive role in either the Middle Corridor or the INSTC.

  Five days later, the World Bank agenda was re-emphasized by USAID at a conference co-sponsored with the Azerbaijan-US Chamber of Commerce, the White House, and the Embassy of Azerbaijan.

  Azerbaijan, which is a key nexus of the NSTC, is threatening to throw a wrench in the plans as relations between Baku and Tehran deteriorate.

  On Jan. 27, an attack by a gunman carried out at Baku’s embassy in the Iranian capital left the head of the embassy’s security services dead and two security guards injured. Azerbaijan has now evacuated the diplomatic post. The next day, just as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was beginning a visit to Israel and after CIA William J. Burns director just concluded a visit,  Israel launched a drone attack on Iran. Aside from its other implications, the Israeli attack will further strain Azeri-Iranian relations due to Baku’s close military relationship with Israel.

  A more than month-long Azerbaijani blockade of ethnic Armenian-controlled territory is also causing concern in Tehran and Moscow as another conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan would be a major headache for the NSTC – although Russian-Iranian maritime connectivity across the Caspian Sea could bypass Azerbaijan.

  Both Iran and Azerbaijan have held major military exercises on the countries’ border in recent months. During recent protests in Iran, Tehran blamed Baku for using ethnic Azerbaijanis in Iran to destabilize the situation, which is something the neocons have long written about doing. The Middle East Media Research Institute, which is run by Israeli and American spooks, wrote as recently as November about using Azerbaijanis in Iran to further their goal of regime change:

  In order to bring about regime change at home and contain Iranian expansionism abroad, Iran needs to be weakened from within. The international community therefore must engage Iran more effectively inside its borders through pursuing a “periphery strategy,” i.e., supporting the ethnic minorities found in its border regions. This will achieve two goals. First, ethnic minorities would finally enjoy the freedom and human rights they have been deprived of since the early 20th century. Second, this would deprive Iran of human and natural resources it needs to perpetrate its malign expansionism in the Middle East.

  An array of democratic ethno-nations in the periphery of Iran would create a “great wall” around the country. This “wall” would stretch from the Kurdish areas of Northern Khurasan to the Persian gulf in the west including Azerbaijan, Kurdistan and Khuzistan as well as Balochistan in the southeast and would limit Iran’s access to the outside world and consequently end its geostrategic importance regionally and internationally.

  For some idea of how this is playing out and the consequences, Responsible Statecraft writes:

  The Iranian angle is certainly one of the key reasons behind the hawks’ enthusiasm for Azerbaijan. During the war in 2020, they cherished the dream that Azerbaijan’s military success would galvanize Iran’s sizable Azeri community against the government in Tehran. That naïve hope failed to materialize as Iranian Azeris are part and parcel of Iranian society. However, the anti-Iranian irredentist narratives gained popular currency within Azerbaijan to a degree not seen since the early 1990s. Websites with close links to the regime’s security apparatus and defense ministry issued open calls for “southern Azerbaijanis” to secede from Iran.

  That was done in response to some outlandish anti-Azerbaijani remarks allegedly uttered by a retired Iranian diplomat and leaked to a Turkish newspaper. The diplomat in question, however, in no way represented the official position of the Islamic Republic. What followed — a seemingly coordinated incitement of anti-Iranian separatism in Azeri pro-regime media outlets — certainly looked like a massive over-reaction.

  Pro-Azerbaijan hawks in Washington may thrive on fomenting such tensions, yet that in no way serves U.S. interests. A military conflict between Azerbaijan and Iran would suck in other countries, such as NATO ally Turkey, which would back Azerbaijan. It would most likely also involve Israel as Baku’s close ties with Jerusalem are seen as a serious threat in Tehran. Israeli officials occasionally behave as if they are keen to add fuel to the fire. The Israeli ambassador in Azerbaijan recently posed with a book of “fairy tales of Tabriz.” Given that Tabriz is the unofficial capital of Iranian Azerbaijan, many Iranians perceived this gesture as an endorsement of the Azeri separatist agenda. A regional vortex involving Iran and Israel would increase pressure from Congress on any U.S. administration to intervene on behalf of Israel.

  Baku is closely aligned with Israel and Türkiye, but also maintains strong ties with Russia. Azerbaijan and Türkiye want a direct link across southern Armenia, which alarms Iran. This “Zangezur corridor” that Baku and Ankara want would connect Azerbaijan’s mainland territory to its Nakhichvan exclave that borders Armenia, Iran and Türkiye.

  Such a corridor is a red line for Tehran as it would cut off Iran from Armenia and encircle northern parts of Iran by Türkiye and Azerbaijan, which scares Tehran because there are roughly 25 million Azeri-speakers in Northern Iran that might get some pan-Turkic ideas. Iran would also lose its land route through Armenia to the Caucuses.

  Therefore, anytime there is fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which many observers think is on the verge of starting again, it threatens a wider war if Azerbaijan and Türkiye try to form their corridor, if Iran comes to the defense of Armenia, or if outside actors use it as an opportunity to pursue other goals.

  Russia used to exert a calming influence on the region, but its preoccupation with Ukraine has diminished its willingness to intervene.  According to the Middle East Institute, the pressure on Iran’s government from inside and outside the country is helping lead to Baku and Tehran seeing each other’s actions as a threat and responding with quickly escalating countermeasures:

  This self-reinforcing dynamic has created a spiral-like situation and increased the likelihood of conflict. A potential armed clash between Azerbaijan and Iran could have far-reaching consequences for the wider region that would likely draw in other powers, such as Turkey and Russia. It remains to be seen if cooler heads can prevail.

  As former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar wrote, “Azerbaijan is destined to play a key role in the great game in the period ahead.” It remains to be seen what that role will be. The neocons, who are quite good at manipulating others into quixotic wars, have dreams of using Azerbaijan to help topple the Iranian government, and unfortunately, Azerbaijan’s president has been compared to Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 21:40

• Start Of Bankruptcy Wave? Large Firm Filings Surge To 2010 Levels
  Start Of Bankruptcy Wave? Large Firm Filings Surge To 2010 Levels

  The US has transitioned from more than a decade of quantitative easing to more recent quantitative tightening. QT will remain until the Federal Reserve is finished squashing inflation. However, such a massive paradigm shift in markets might result in a period of deleveraging among highly levered firms that were able to flourish during the QE era. 

  New Bloomberg data shows large companies (at least $50 million of liabilities) filing for bankruptcy topped 20 this month, the highest in any other January dating back to 2010. Back then, 25 filings were seen as the economy was still reeling from the aftermath of the GFC.

  

  There is no doubt after more than a decade of the Fed unleashing trillions of dollars of credit into the economy via QE, a generation of zombie companies is in the midst of a painful deleveraging event as credit is harder to come by in QT. 

  QE has been one of the “biggest distortions came from keeping companies alive on life support that otherwise would have disappeared into insolvency,” research firm Porter & Co. wrote on our contributor blog (read: “The Hidden Debt Bubble You Didn’t See Coming”). 

  This month’s surge in large firm bankruptcies is set to continue, according to Damian Schaible, co-chair of the restructuring group at law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, who spoke with Bloomberg. He said:

  “I think we’re going to see continued increased filings in 2023.

  “From a broader market perspective, it’s pretty simple: We have a market filled with companies with historically high leverage — thanks to the easy money policies of the past decade — and a not-insignificant portion of that debt is floating rate.”

  This year, some of the most notable bankruptcy filings have been festive retailer Party City Holdco Inc, mattress maker Serta Simmons Bedding LLC, and cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Holdco. 

  There could be turmoil in the lowest-rated — CCC-rated credit space and hidden risks if a bankruptcy wave takes off from here. As shown below, distress debt is piling up. 

  

  Even though some investors don’t believe a hard landing is in the cards this year. The latest surge in large firm bankruptcies is an ominous sign of trouble ahead. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 21:20

• Hedge Funds Push Chinese Holdings Close to Record
  Hedge Funds Push Chinese Holdings Close to Record

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

  Despite the world-beating rally in Chinese assets, positioning data show a clear dichotomy among investors’ views on the nation.

  While hedge funds have boosted their exposure to Chinese stocks to near an all-time high again, mutual funds – which tend to have a longer-term investment horizon — remain significantly underweight, according to Goldman Sachs. Such a divergence shows that Chinese assets are viewed only as a three-month “trade,” rather than a three-year “investment.”

  China’s manufacturing and services survey data Tuesday confirmed that the economy is bouncing back. The International Monetary Fund also raised China’s growth forecast this year by 0.8 percentage point to 5.2%, making it one of few major economies that may see growth accelerate this year.

  With the economy healing, it’s not surprising that foreign investors are scooping up Chinese stocks hand over fist. The inflow into equities via the stock connect in January reached a record $21 billion, already exceeding the influx for the whole year of 2022.

  But a closer look under the hood suggests a deep split between different types of investors. Hedge funds, who tend to be nimble, have increased their net exposure to Chinese stocks to 13%, from about 7% late last year, according to data from Goldman Sachs’s Prime Services unit. That isn’t far away from a peak of 15% in 2020, just before Beijing started cracking down on tech companies.

  

  In comparison, while global mutual funds’ holding of Chinese stocks has increased to 8% from 6%, they still are  underweight China by 420 basis points relative to their benchmarks, as of December. The current position ranks in the 19th percentile over the past decade, analysts including Sunil Koul wrote in a note.

  

  There’s also a divergence between investors in different regions: the further away from China, the more cautious they are.

  

  The divergence, perhaps, comes down to cyclical versus structural views. After all, China can only “re-open” once. It’s a nice trade that fast money is willing to chase. But as life returns to normal, Beijing needs to grapple with the same long-term problems, including a bloated real estate industry, a shrinking population and increasing geopolitical tensions.

  On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has halted direct investing in private assets in China. Separately, the Biden administration is considering cutting off Huawei Technologies from all of its American suppliers.

  Hedge funds are enjoying the reopening party, for now. For deep-pocketed, long-term investors, though, China remains “uninvestable.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 21:00

• China Plans To Sell Lethal Blowfish Drones To Taliban: Report
  China Plans To Sell Lethal Blowfish Drones To Taliban: Report

  Following two major recent terrorist attacks which targeted Chinese nationals in Kabul, the Chinese government is desperately appealing to the Taliban to provide better security protection for its citizens in Afghanistan. The past week has seen multiple reports emerge saying that Beijing is even offering the Taliban advanced weaponry in order to bolster counter-terror efforts in the capital. 

  The US national security website 19fortyfive writes that “Rather than subsidize education or develop the country, it now appears that the Taliban will use its limited cash to purchase or otherwise acquire Blowfish drones from China.”

  

  The source describes the China-produced drones as follows: 

  The Blowfish is a potentially devastating platform. The mini-helicopter can fire machine guns, launch mortars, and throw grenades. Artificial Intelligence imbues them with the ability to determine who lives and who dies on the battlefield with minimal human input. The Pentagon has already expressed fears that Blowfish exported to the Middle East could end up in the wrong hands. 

  China is also said to be concerned about the security situation as it has its eye on expanding Belt and Road initiative projects in the AfPak region:

  Chinese officials also fear for the security of projects related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which have faced several attacks in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan in Pakistan.

  Both these provinces are adjacent to Afghanistan and officials in Pakistan have alleged that Baloch groups fighting for the freedom of Balochistan and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) operate from bases across the Durand Line with the active co-operation of the Afghan Taliban.

  In a fresh Tuesday report, Newsmax also writes that China is “planning to fortify its economic position in Afghanistan by providing lethal drones to the Taliban.”

  Demonstration of the Blowfish copter drone dropping small bombs from the Chinese manufacturer: 

  Other sources, including the Jamestown Foundation, have alleged a China-Taliban security ‘quid pro quo’ based on drone and other weapons sales; however, there’s been nothing in the way of official statements from either side, or clear confirmation.

  Likely, Beijing would view publicizing such a deal as somewhat embarrassing given both the radical Islamic nature of the Taliban regime, as well as its current inability to provide adequate security protection to Chinese businessmen and diplomats in Kabul.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 20:40

• "Approaching A Near-Term Ceiling" – SpotGamma On Market Positioning Into The FOMC
  “Approaching A Near-Term Ceiling” – SpotGamma On Market Positioning Into The FOMC

  By SpotGamma

  Summary:

  Into the FOMC meeting and minutes Feb 1st, we believe the market is approaching a near term ceiling and downside opportunity exists in individual names which have recently been high performing or speculative (by buying put spreads).

  Rationale for ceiling:

  • We believe the market has front-run a policy shift by the Fed
  • We have near term resistance at 4100 at our Call Wall with peak resistance at 4200
  • With current IV levels being low, and also under equivalent measures of realized vol, there is reduced fuel for a squeeze

  Full note on implied volatility compression here.

  Downside opportunity:

  • Specific names like ARKK and TSLA have had very strong recent runs
  • The entire QQQ complex is up 10% in January, fueled by short-covering and 0DTE options

  Additional Context:

  Implied volatility compression (1 month IV < 30 day Realized Vol) in the SPX has been a signal that has marked equity market tops over the past year. This IV compression is in play now after huge rallies in equities, particularly in “speculative” names like ARKK (+29% in January) and in tech (QQQ +10% in January). We believe that much of the force behind this rally was driven by the combination of short covering and ultra-short dated trading activity like 0DTE.

  Along with sharp moves higher in tech, we’d also highlight that “value” stocks are back to all time highs.

  

  Last week, IV further compressed as strong treasury auctions led to the MOVE index collapsing, which likely persuaded the VIX to touch 1 year lows of 18 on Friday. Note, too,  the MOVE Index is now at 100 – the same level it was into the August highs. It was then at Jackson Hole wherein a hawkish Powell marked a major interim high.

  

  Linked to this, its clear that put demand is reflecting a much more sanguine environment ahead.

  Our conclusion here is that if markets want higher out of FOMC, there may be a fairly limited rally due to the sharp moves already made YTD. At the end of the day, interest rates are ~4% higher than 1 year ago which should reduce equity valuations year over year, making upside over 4300 uncompelling.

  We also believe that traders are positioned to expect this bullish impulse out of FOMC, which can drain upside momentum.  We therefore think that the best risk/reward positioning here into FOMC is to own puts/put spreads in the speculative/tech names which have rallied the most YTD. Any neutral to negative sentiment from the FOMC would likely hit those names asymmetrically.

  More from Spotgamma here

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 20:20

• 'We Found No Misuse Of US Funds In Ukraine', US Treasury Says (With Straight Face)
  ‘We Found No Misuse Of US Funds In Ukraine’, US Treasury Says (With Straight Face)

  And now for some Tuesday humor, brought to you by the US Treasury Department, which sees no indication whatsoever that US funds have been misused in Ukraine, following last week’s massive political shake-up wherein some dozen top Ukrainian officials were booted from their posts amid persistent corruption, embezzlement and fraud allegations so glaring it even shocked the Ukrainians.

  “We have no indication that U.S. funds have been misused in Ukraine,” Treasury spokesperson Megan Apper said in Treasury’s first comments since the ‘shock’ resignations. 

  In the official statement given to Reuters, the US government also hailed the supposed “safeguards” which the Ukrainians have put in place, though without actually specifying any: “We welcome the ongoing efforts by the Ukrainian authorities to work with us to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place so that U.S assistance reaches those for whom it is intended,” Apper said.

  

  The statement fails to detail precisely how US authorities are tracking disbursement of the some tens of billions in funds that go from American Joe taxpayer, and into the pockets of the Zelensky government to dole out (other than referencing a digital system which supposedly monitors funds)…

  Apper said the Treasury would continue to work closely with the World Bank on tracking U.S. disbursements “to confirm that they are used as intended, as well as with Ukraine and other partners to tackle corruption.”

  Apparently totally unaware of the extreme irony, Reuters chooses to add the following facts for some further context and color to its report… and it’s perhaps all you need to know: 

  “Ukraine ranks 116 out of 180 countries on the annual Corruption Perceptions Index released Tuesday by Transparency International, up one ranking from last year.

  “Its score on the index was 33 on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean.”

  (…and note that Treasury Dept’s statement was issued on very day that the new corruption rankings came out… the “rise” on the index means Ukraine is supposedly ever-so-slightly less corrupt.)

  

  But again, don’t worry – nothing to see here – the US Treasury is assuring that when it comes to the well over $100 billion in defense and other foreign aid pledged as well as the many billions distributed so far, Ukraine is “very clean”. 

  See our viral report from last week for a review of the high-ranking Ukrainian officials who were forced to resign–Ukraine Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign: Sports Cars, Mansions & Luxury Vacations As People Suffered.

  As but one example, no less than the #2 defense minister was brought down. He had a direct hand in handling some of the very billions in US aid which the Treasury is now claiming was never misused. As we pointed out earlier…

  According to AFP, “the defense ministry had earlier announced the resignation of deputy minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who was in charge of the army’s logistical support, on the heels of accusations it was signing food contracts at inflated prices.” 

  “Ukrainian safeguards” pic.twitter.com/5evt1sgBuV

  — Marmot XI (@MarmotXi) January 31, 2023

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

  In the case regarding the food contracts, Shapovalov is accused of signing a deal with an unknown, shady firm. In his role as deputy defense minister, his is the most notable and visible resignation. Crucially he had no small part in overseeing the billions of dollars flowing from the pockets of US and European taxpayers as authorized defense aid.

  Zelensky staff can be seen wearing Rolexes while in field uniforms. Just sayin. pic.twitter.com/vW87JdAMPw

  — UncleBuck_10k (@UncleBuck_10k) January 31, 2023

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

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 20:00

• "It's Time For The Scientific Community To Admit We Were Wrong About COVID & It Cost Lives"
  “It’s Time For The Scientific Community To Admit We Were Wrong About COVID & It Cost Lives”

  Real “mea culpa”, ongoing and rapid revision of history, or further narrative management with regard ‘amnesty’ over what “the others” did to those who thought for themselves over the last few years…

  

  You decide…

  In no less a liberal rag than Newsweek, Kevin Bass (MS MD/PHD Student, Medical School) has penned a quite surprising (and ‘brave’) op-ed saying that “it’s time for the scientific community to admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives…”

  [ZH: emphasis ours]

  As a medical student and researcher, I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19.

  I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters.

  I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.

  I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.

  But perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was, and continues to be. It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths.

  What we did not properly appreciate is that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences might be—indeed, our preferences were—very different from many of the people that we serve. We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil.

  We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and “they” responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.

  We excluded important parts of the population from policy development and castigated critics, which meant that we deployed a monolithic response across an exceptionally diverse nation, forged a society more fractured than ever, and exacerbated longstanding heath and economic disparities.

  A students adjusts her facemask at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, California on November 16, 2020, where pre-kindergarten to Second Grade students in need of special services returned to the classroom today for in-person instruction. – The campus is the second Catholic school in Los Angeles County to receive a waiver approval to reopen as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. The US surpassed 11 million coronavirus cases Sunday, adding one million new cases in less than a week, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP

  Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience.

  Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.

  When former President Trump pointed out the downsides of intervention, he was dismissed publicly as a buffoon. And when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong.

  Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.

  And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream. Labeling this speech “misinformation” and blaming it on “scientific illiteracy” and “ignorance,” the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government’s opponents.

  And this despite the fact that pandemic policy was created by a razor-thin sliver of American society who anointed themselves to preside over the working class—members of academia, government, medicine, journalism, tech, and public health, who are highly educated and privileged. From the comfort of their privilege, this elite prizes paternalism, as opposed to average Americans who laud self-reliance and whose daily lives routinely demand that they reckon with risk. That many of our leaders neglected to consider the lived experience of those across the class divide is unconscionable.

  Incomprehensible to us due to this class divide, we severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We dismissed as “grifters” those who represented their interests. We believed “misinformation” energized the ignorant, and we refused to accept that such people simply had a different, valid point of view.

  We crafted policy for the people without consulting them. If our public health officials had led with less hubris, the course of the pandemic in the United States might have had a very different outcome, with far fewer lost lives.

  Instead, we have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system; a massive concentration in wealth by already wealthy elites; a rise in suicides and gun violence especially among the poor; a near-doubling of the rate of depression and anxiety disorders especially among the young; a catastrophic loss of educational attainment among already disadvantaged children; and among those most vulnerable, a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly.

  My motivation for writing this is simple:

  It’s clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better.

  It’s OK to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That’s a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink—and too afraid to publicly take responsibility—to do this.

  Solving these problems in the long term requires a greater commitment to pluralism and tolerance in our institutions, including the inclusion of critical if unpopular voices.

  Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

  The problem was not people’s ignorance of the facts, it was the organized antagonism and censorship against anyone presenting data that was contradictory to the mandate agenda. This is setting aside proclamations like those from the LA Times, which argued that mocking the deaths of “anti-vaxxers” might be necessary and justified.  After two years of this type of arrogant nonsense it’s hard to imagine people will be willing to pretend as if all is well.

  The active effort to shut down any opposing data is the root crime, though, and no, it can never be forgotten or forgiven.

  People are still livid…

  One cannot help but notice that the timing of the Atlantic’s appeal for passive forgetfulness and now this op-ed mea culpa coincides with the swiftly approaching end of the COVID emergency declarations, amid a growing political backlash to the last two years of meaningless lockdowns and mandates, and Democrats were instrumental in the implementation of both.  A large swath of the population sees one party as the cause of much of their covid era strife.  

  Perhaps the mainstream media is suddenly realizing that they may have to face some payback for their covid zealotry?  “We didn’t know! We were just following orders!”  It all sounds rather familiar.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 19:44

• The Inconvenient Truth About Solyndra
  The Inconvenient Truth About Solyndra

  Authored by David Hill & Jeffrey Kupfer via RealClear Wire,

  When Republicans in Washington talk about energy policy, one word often comes up: Solyndra.  Before the recent elections, headlines blared about this defaulted government loan guarantee – “Republicans look for the next Solyndra.”  

  

  With Republicans now controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, should they actually “look for the next Solyndra”?  What are the real lessons from it for both Congressional Republicans and the Biden Administration?  

  We believe there are lessons, and here’s what they are: (1) rigorous underwriting and continual oversight are necessary for government financial support programs – and that’s particularly important now, with billions of dollars in spending newly authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act; (2) loan guarantee decisions must be made solely on technological and financial merit – not politics; (3)  defaults may happen with the DOE loan guarantee program – its whole purpose is to take risk.  But that never excuses imprudent or politically-motivated risk-taking.

  We served as senior officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in the George W. Bush Administration, including after Congress authorized the DOE loan guarantee program for innovative energy projects in 2005.  We helped write the program’s regulations and stand up the loan programs office (LPO).  We were there when DOE started considering Solyndra’s loan guarantee application – though not when DOE approved and issued the guarantee in 2009.

  Solyndra, a California solar panel manufacturing company, had requested a loan guarantee for more than $500 million.  Near the end of the Bush Administration, the DOE credit committee, which we had created and which consisted entirely of career officials empowered to do a thorough, nonpartisan review of projects, concluded the Solyndra application was, in essence, not ready for prime time.  

  Despite the pressure DOE was under to issue a loan guarantee, our boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman never even considered overruling that committee.  As a result, the Bush Administration did not issue a loan guarantee to Solyndra – or anyone else. 

  In 2009 however, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act armed the loan guarantee program with millions in taxpayer dollars and the new Administration wanted to show it could do what the former one hadn’t.  Late that year DOE issued Solyndra a $530 million loan guarantee.  President Barack Obama even visited the company to tout the program.

  It took Solyndra only 24 months to burn through the DOE money and declare bankruptcy.  The federal government took a massive financial loss.  

  Critics argue Solyndra demonstrates all the worst things about government action and federal financial support.  They point out the huge financial cost to taxpayers.  They cite the political pressure from the highest levels of government.  They point to DOE’s legally questionable and ultimately unsuccessful actions to save the project from default and the Obama Administration from embarrassment.  

  The program’s defenders say sometimes things just go wrong and projects default – it happens in the private sector too.  They say the loan guarantee program was created to take risks; and even so, it regularly turns a profit and has a good overall loss experience.  They argue Solyndra officials weren’t truthful and that the current LPO office is better staffed and more diligent.   

  So who’s right?

  The DOE loan guarantee program was created to advance innovative technologies, enable new types of energy projects, and improve environmental performance.  It was to do that for projects the private financial sector might not be willing or able to support.

  With such a program, it is inevitable some projects won’t perform as well as expected.  Technology also may develop in unpredictable ways, and economic, market or political trends may unexpectedly change.  Defaults may happen, even with a perfectly run program.

  That said, the purpose of the DOE program is NOT to take risks only a sucker would take.  Political motivations or insufficient diligence can lead to imprudent risk-taking.  To avoid that, rigorous and transparent underwriting and oversight are important – particularly right now. 

  A loan guarantee default that costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars is never a good thing and can never just be waived off.  DOE must ensure that if defaults happen, they are not because the underwriting process was short-circuited, program standards were compromised to score political points, special interests were favored, or DOE had focused on financing marquis “signature” projects to score political points.     

  The country is undergoing an energy transition; accelerating new types of clean energy projects is an important part of that effort.  With unprecedented resources and a broad mandate, the DOE loan guarantee program can play a critical role.  However, that will only happen if DOE applies careful scrutiny, proceeds with transparency and without political favoritism, and ensures only high quality projects receive guarantees.  And both DOE and Congress must conduct vigorous oversight.  Failure to do all of these things jeopardizes the loan guarantee program and the clean energy transition itself.

  David Hill is a former general counsel of the Department of Energy and an adjunct senior research scholar at the Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy;

  Jeffrey Kupfer is a former acting Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy, an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School and the president of ConservAmerica.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 19:40

• US Job Openings Far Lower Than Reported By Department Of Labor, UBS Finds
  US Job Openings Far Lower Than Reported By Department Of Labor, UBS Finds

  When it comes to labor market data (or rather “data”), Biden’s labor department is a study in contrasts (and pats on shoulders). One day we get a contraction in PMI employment (both manufacturing and services), the other we get a major beat in employment. Then, one day the Household survey shows a plunge in employment (in fact, there has almost been no employment gain in the past 9 months) and a record in multiple jobholders and part-time workers, and the same day the Establishment Survey signals a spike in payrolls (mostly among waiters and bartenders). Or the day the JOLTS report shows an unexpected jump in job openings even as actual hiring slides to a two year low. Or the straw the breaks the latest trend in the labor market’s back, is when the jobs report finally cracks and shows the fewest jobs added in over a year, and yet initial jobless claims tumble and reverse all recent increases despite daily news of mass layoffs across all tech companies, as the relentless barrage of conflicting data out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which is the principal “fact-finding” agency for the Biden Administration and a core pillar of the Dept of Labor) just won’t stop, almost as if to make a very political point.

  But while one can certainly appreciate Biden’s desire to paint the glass of US jobs as always half full, reality is starting to make a mockery of the president’s gaslighting ambitions, as one by one core pillars of the administration’s “strong jobs” fabulation collapse. First it was the Philadelphia Fed shockingly stating that contrary to the BLS “goalseeking” of 1.1 million jobs in Q2 2022, the US actually only added a paltry 10,000 jobs (just as the Fed unleashed an unprecedented spree of 75bps rate hikes).

  Then, it was Goldman’s turn to make a mockery of the “curiously” low initial jobless claims, by comparing them to directly reported state-level WARN notices (mandatory under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act) which no low-level bureaucrat and Biden lackey can “seasonally adjust” because there they are: cold, hard, fact, immutable and truly representative of the underlying economic truth, and what they show is that – as the Goldman chart below confirms – layoffs are rising far faster than what the DOL’s Initial Claims indicates.

  

  

  More importantly, Goldman also found that WARN notices also track the JOLTS layoff rate: WARN notice counts remained elevated in late 2020 even as the layoff rate declined, but this likely reflects unusual reporting delays during the pandemic and the exclusion of layoffs at closing establishments in the JOLTS survey, which WARN notices capture provided firms remain in business. Not surprisingly, Goldman’s tracking estimate based on December and January WARN notices for the large states covered not only shows that the recent drop in initial claims is unlikely, but that it is also consistent with a layoff rate of around 1.1%, higher than the 0.9% in the November JOLTS report.

  

  And now, another core pillar of the US labor market is being dismantled, and it has to do with the Fed’s favorite labor market indicator: the JOLTS report of job openings.

  As UBS economist Pablo Villaneuva writes in a recent report by the bank’s Evidence Lab group, Job openings in the JOLTS survey have not declined much since the March peak. Indeed, the BLS reports that openings were only 12% below the March 2022 peak in November and remain 48% above the pre-pandemic, 2019 average. This slight move downward has, as we noted recently, led to only a small decline in the vacancies-to-unemployment ratio, from 1.99 in March to 1.74 in November, still well above the 2019 average of 1.19.

  

  Of course, such a high level of job openings is alarming to the Fed for the simple reason that it means Powell has failed at his mission at cooling off what appears to be a red hot jobs market; no wonder the Fed Chair has frequently flagged the high level of job openings as a sign of ongoing strength in the labor market. The bottom line, as UBS notes, is that “the BLS measure, although it has declined, remains historically high.”

  However, as in the abovementioned case of unexpectedly low jobless claims, there may be more here than meets the eye. According to Villanueva, “a range of other measures of job openings suggest normalization in the labor market—softening much more convincingly, often to pre-pandemic levels” – translation: whether on purpose or accidentally, the BLS is fabricating data. Also, the UBS economist flags, job openings are not a great indicator of current labor market conditions—they lagged the last two downturns in the labor market.

  So what’s the real story?

  Well, as usual there is BLS “data” and everyone else… and as UBS cautions, other measures of openings tell a very different story: “Our UBS Evidence Lab data on job listings is weekly and more timely than the BLS series. The last datapoint is for the week of December 31. It shows openings down 30% from the March 2022 peak and only 25% higher than the 2019 average.”

  

  While BLS bureaucrats and Biden sycophants can argue UBS data is inaccurate, other longer dated series also indicate weaker openings. Take for example the NFIB Small Business Survey includes labor market measures that have correlated strongly with the JOLTS data over time but have weakened more sharply than the JOLTS measure in recent months. The percentage of small firms unable to fill open positions has a correlation of 0.95 with JOLTS openings since 2000. This series has declined 20% relative to the peak in May 2022 and is only 13% above the 2019 average. The NFIB series on percentage of firms with few or no qualified applicants tells a similar story.

  

  Finally, the “Opportunity Insights” measure of openings (see here) is also below pre-pandemic levels.

  

  So what’s going on here?

  As the UBS economist puts it, “in short, other surveys of job openings generally suggest that the BLS measure may be overstating labor market tightness. One reason to think the accuracy of the JOLTS data may have declined is that the sample shrank noticeably at the start of the pandemic. In 2019, the survey response rate was 60%. In December, it was 30%.“

  

  Or perhaps it’s not gross BLS incompetence (or propaganda): maybe it’s just a data quirk at key economic inflection points. As UBS observed in August, job openings tend to lag other labor market indicators. Ahead of the 2001 recession, the private sector job openings rate was still rising as private employment peaked and started printing negative. Again in 2007, as job openings were peaking, payroll employment in the revised data had slowed considerably, and job openings remained near their peak as employment was beginning to contract outright.

  

  Whatever the reason for the discrepancy in this latest labor series, the bigger picture is getting troubling.

  1. We already knew that the employment as measured by the Household survey has been flat since March even as the Establishment survey signaled 2.7 million job gains since then. Shortly thereafter the Philadelphia Fed found that contrary to the BLS “goalseeking” of 1.1 million jobs in Q2 2022, the US actually only added a paltry 10,000 jobs in the second quarter of 2022. As such, the validity and credibility of the US nonfarm payrolls report is suspect at best.
  2. A few weeks ago, Goldman also put the credibility of DOL’s weekly jobless claims report under question, when it found that initial claims as measured at the state level without seasonal adjustments or other “fudge factors” were running far higher than what the DOL reports every week.
  3. And now, we can also stick a fork in the JOLTS report, whose accuracy has just been steamrolled by UBS with its finding that job openings – a critical component of the US labor market and the Fed’s preferred labor market indiator – are far lower than what the Dept of Labor suggests.

  Bottom line: while it is obvious why the Biden admin would try hard to put as much lipstick as it can on US jobs data, the same data when measured with alternative measures shows a far uglier picture, one of a US labor market on the verge of cracking and hardly one meriting consistent rate hikes by the Fed.

  Which, considering that in less than 24 hours the Fed will hike rates by another 25 bps, is extremely important, and we wish that we weren’t the only media outlet to lay out the facts as the negative impact of continued policy error and tightening by the Fed will impact tens of millions Americans, not to mention the continued errors – whether premeditated or accidental – by the US Department of Labor. Alas, as so often happens, since nobody else in the “independent US press” is willing to touch the story of manipulated jobs data with a ten foot pole, it is again up to us to explain what is really going on.

  The full UBS report available to pro subs.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 19:24

• After Surge In Auto Thefts, Seattle Sues Hyundai And Kia For Failing To Install Anti-Theft Technology
  After Surge In Auto Thefts, Seattle Sues Hyundai And Kia For Failing To Install Anti-Theft Technology

  The “blame everyone but the criminals” strategy being employed in most major U.S. cities – and contributing to the increase in crime while emboldening future criminals – doesn’t show signs of stopping anytime soon. 

  Case in point? The auto thefts in Seattle have gotten so bad that city attorneys in the liberal-run utopia are hilariously suing the manufacturers of Hyundai and Kia for failing to install anti-theft technology on their vehicles.

  Talk about missing the point.

  As Axios pointed out, auto thefts across the country have been on a surge over the last few years. In Seattle, Hyundai and Kia thefts were 620% higher than other auto brands. Perhaps this is what has motivated Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison to sue the manufacturers. 

  Most thefts have taken place in Northgate, Capitol Hill, Central District and Beacon Hill, the report says. “The city is seeking unspecified damages and asking the car manufacturers to fix the problem,” Axios wrote. 

  

  The suit claims that “Hyundai and Kia failed to use immobilizer technology that ensured car ignitions could not be started without their keys long after other carmakers had adopted the same technology”. This made the two brands of vehicles “easier to steal”, the report says.

  It also blames YouTube videos that “showed how to steal car models simply by removing a plastic piece under the steering wheel and using a USB cord and turning it like a key”. 

  This, of course, takes the focus away from the rise in criminals attempting to get into property that isn’t theirs to begin with. Perhaps someone should inform that the first thing someone needs to do to steal a car, is break and enter into property that isn’t theirs. Maybe that’ll help realign expectations before this suit is hastily thrown out of court. 

  Hyundai rightfully dismissed the lawsuit as “improper and unnecessary”, telling Axios that “Hyundai Motor America has made engine immobilizers standard on all vehicles produced as of November 2021.” They also said that “Owners of past models can also bring their vehicles to a local Hyundai dealer for the purchase and installation of a customized security kit…”

  And, of course, this is why we expect the exodus from cities like Seattle, and those of its ilk, to continue. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 19:20

• Iran, Russia Integrate Banking Systems To Bypass Sanctions
  Iran, Russia Integrate Banking Systems To Bypass Sanctions

  Via The Cradle,

  A top Iranian official announced this week that Iran and Russia had integrated their interbank communication and transfer systems to help enhance trade and financial operations in an effort to bypass strict economic sanctions on their financial infrastructure.

  With the signing of the agreement, 52 Iranian and 106 Russian banks are connected through the Russian Financial Message Transfer System, which will facilitate economic relations between the two countries, said Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Mohsen Karimi.

  

  “This system is immune to sanctions as it is based on the infrastructures of both countries,” Karimi said, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.

  The global consortium SWIFT, the world leader in secure financial messaging services, excluded Iranian banks from its system following the reimposition of economic sanctions by the United States on Iran in 2018.

  As a result of that suspension of services, the Iranian banking system is disconnected from the international one, making banking transactions with other countries difficult. Russia was partially excluded from SWIFT last year due to its invasion of Ukraine.

  While economic relations between the two countries have grown to 4 billion in recent years, Tehran has sold drones to Russia, which it has used in its invasion of Ukraine.

  Official trips between the two countries have also multiplied in recent months, with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visiting Russia in January 2022 and Iranian Foreign Minister Hosein Amir Abdolahian making two trips to the Russian capital in less than a year.

  “In today’s world, a country’s status is largely related to its economic power … We need economic growth to maintain our regional and global position,” Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said in a televised speech.

  Additionally, deputy governor of Iran’s Central Bank, Mohsen Karimi, announced: “Iranian banks no longer need to use SWIFT… with Russian banks, which can be for the opening of Letters of Credit and transfers or warranties.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 19:00

• Big-Tech, Bitcoin, & Bullion Best January In Decades; Yield Curve Crashes To Record Inversion
  Big-Tech, Bitcoin, & Bullion Best January In Decades; Yield Curve Crashes To Record Inversion

  January saw the return of the “QE trade”… or more appropriately, a de-hawking of The Fed as the narrative rapidly shifted from hyped-inflation and growth scares to ‘soft landing’ and Fed-Pause/Pivot… and everything’s awesome.

  Overall January saw macro surprise data flat in January as ‘soft’ survey data tumbled (along with weaker ‘hard’ industrial data) but offset by a number of questionably strong labor market indications…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  However, despite the narrative shift, January saw rate expectations barely budge… terminal rate dropped around 4bps while rate-cut exp fell 3bps…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The market is locked-and-loaded for a 25bps hike tomorrow by The Fed, it also prices an 83% chance of a 25bps hike in March and 42% odds of a 25bps hike in April…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  But that never stopped stocks from fully embracing the dovish hope, with Nasdaq soaring over 10% in January. The Dow lagged with a meager 2.4% return…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Stocks melted up into today’s month-end close (on a massive MOC buy), erasing all of yesterday’s selling pressure from the open…

  

  Nasdaq soared to its best January since 2001…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Who could have seen that coming!!??

  NASDAQ’S PERCENTAGE GAIN FOR JANUARY IS ITS BIGGEST JANUARY ADVANCE SINCE 2001, ITS BIGGEST MONTHLY ADVANCE SINCE JULY 2022

  From Jan 9
  “We Are Setting Up For A Tech-led Squeeze Higher As Shorting Gets Extreme”https://t.co/cfs4fYCasa

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 31, 2023

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

  The January shift in the growth and inflation outlooks have helped support a laggards-to-leaders (dash for trash) trade within the S&P 500…

  

  At the stock level, 9 of the 10 best performing stocks in January also underperformed the S&P 500 over the last 12 months – also highlighting a laggard-to-leaders trade.

  And if you needed more evidence of the ‘quality’ of the rally, “most shorted” stocks soared 19% in January – the biggest monthly short squeeze since January 2021 – which marked the record high in stocks…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And all that exuberance pushed financial conditions to their loosest since June (when Fed Funds were 350bps lower)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  That is the 3rd month of ‘easing’ financial conditions in the last four, after financial conditions reached their tightest since 2016…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Is that the “unwarranted easing” that The Fed warned about in its latest Minutes?

  Treasury yields ended the month of January significantly lower with the short-end lagging (2Y -22bps) and the belly outperforming (5Y -37bps)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  That is the second biggest monthly drop in the 5Y yield since March 2020 (the peak of Fed intervention amid the COVID lockdowns)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The yield curve collapsed further in January with Fed Chair Powell’s favorite signals (3m spot – 18m fwd 3m bill yield spread) crashing to its most inverted ever right as the dot-com boom busted…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The dollar fell for the 4th straight month in January, with the greenback sparking a ‘death cross’…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  …with one of the largest 3mo declines in the world’s reserve currency in history…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Gold surged for the 3rd straight month in a row, back above $1900 (to its highest since April 2022 and notably above the 2011 highs)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  …up 18%, its best such move since August 2011…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bear in mind that gold has dramatically decoupled from the resurgence in real yields…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bitcoin saw its best start to a year since 2013, up almost 40% in January…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bitcoin is back above $23,000, erasing all the losses from the FTX FUD, now testing back to the Terra-LUNA / 3AC / Voyager collapse chaos…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Solana (hammered hard during the FTX debacle) was the massive outperformer though in crypto and we note that Bitcoin outperformed Ethereum (which still had a stellar 33% gain on the month)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Oil prices had a quiet January ending marginally lower (WTI rangebound between $78 and $82), which followed a quiet December (which ended practically unchanged in a narrow range)…

  

  January saw the biggest drop in NatGas prices since January 2001, with Henry Hub crashing to its lowest since April 2021, back below $3.00

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Finally, circling back to the start, the last time the Nasdaq soared as much as this in January, it didn’t end well…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  This time is obviously different though… because inflation remains extremely high, govt debt is exponentially higher, and The Fed balance sheet remains ridiculously high.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 18:45

• 3,000 Flight Disruptions Hit US As Ice Storm Sweeps Southern States
  3,000 Flight Disruptions Hit US As Ice Storm Sweeps Southern States

  Winter storm warnings and weather advisories stretched from the US Southwest to the Southeast on Tuesday as snow, sleet, and freezing rain canceled and or delayed at least 3,000 flights. 

  According to FlightAware’s flight tracking website, 1,300 flights had been canceled, and an additional 2,000 were delayed as of Tuesday morning. 

  Dallas-Fort Worth International, Austin-Bergstrom International, and Dallas Love Field were three Texas airports experiencing the most flight disruptions as an ice storm slammed the state. Cancellations and delays were also seen across the country. 

  

  The National Weather Service in Fort Worth said a winter storm warning was in effect in north and western central Texas until Wednesday afternoon. 

  On Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s Division of Emergency Management to prepare for adverse weather conditions. 

  “The State of Texas is working tirelessly to ensure Texans and their communities have the resources, assistance, and support needed to respond to winter weather impacts across the state,” Gov. Abbott said in a press release.

  The ice storm will also impact Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee through Wednesday. NWS Memphis said areas could expect ice accumulations of a quarter to one-half inch or more. 

  

  After a mild January, a blast of cold air is pouring into the Midwest through this weekend. 

  

  A cold shot is expected for the Mid-Atlantic region, but temperatures could return to average levels by Sunday or early next week. 

  

  The Northeast will also see a brief chill. 

  

  On Thursday, Punxsutawney Phil will come out of his burrow in the ground and let the US know if an early spring is ahead or six more weeks of winter. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 18:40

• Heart, Vein Disease Deaths High In 25-To-44-Year-Olds
  Heart, Vein Disease Deaths High In 25-To-44-Year-Olds

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Diseases of the heart and veins claimed more lives over the past several years among American aged 25 to 44 than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with the pandemic waning, such deaths remain elevated.

  

  In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, deaths caused by circulatory diseases increased by about 15 percent in the 25 to 44 age group compared to the year before, according to death certificate data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

  In 2021, such deaths increased by more than 20 percent compared to 2019.

  That means nearly 6,500 more deaths.

  (ZH: Related)

  During the 3rd Quarter of 2021 the 25-44 age (millennials) holders of Group Life Policies experienced an 84% excess mortality ramp from Q2 2021’s 33% excess. The rate of change was an event.

  Can anyone explain this event other than mandates & vaccines? Give it a shot 😏 pic.twitter.com/jTyTHBmN4B

  — Ed ☯️Free Thinker & Oracle (@DowdEdward) January 17, 2023

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

  It appears that the increase may have been caused by multiple factors.

  COVID-19 sometimes causes complications in the circulatory system. It’s likely that some deaths, especially early on in the pandemic, were caused by COVID-19 but were misclassified on the death certificate.

  Also, many people were likely diagnosed too late or not at all because they were afraid to go to a doctor during the pandemic.

  However, diseases of the circulatory system continued to claim lives at a higher rate in this age group even in 2022, when the pandemic receded. In the first half of the year, such deaths were still more than 13 percent above the death toll for the first half of 2019, according to the CDC’s preliminary data.

  In the 45 to 54 age group, such deaths increased in 2020–21 but seem to have since receded back to pre-pandemic levels.

  In the 15 to 24 age group, such deaths have barely budged over the past five years.

  A growing number of experts and studies have associated the COVID-19 vaccines with serious, even fatal conditions, including heart inflammation, or myocarditis. They suggest that the spike protein produced through the vaccination can cause blood clotting and inflammation.

  “All cardiovascular conditions have gotten worse because of the vaccine and anything and everything that can go wrong with the heart has gone wrong with the heart as a result of these mRNA vaccines. There’s no doubt about it,” said Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has researched extensively the associations between the COVID-19 vaccines and heart issues.

  Malhotra has argued that such issues should be presumed to be associated with the vaccines until proven otherwise. He initially supported the vaccines but changed his mind after his father’s cardiac arrest six months after vaccination.

  Dr. Peter McCullough, a highly published American cardiologist, independently reached a similar conclusion.

  “When people are in a study or it’s in a post-marketing period in a brand-new drug, when someone dies within a few days, or certainly within 30 days of any new drug or injection, it is that drug until proven otherwise,” he told Epoch TV’s Jan Jekielek last month.

  “If this was in a regulatory dossier, it could even be something that’s seemingly disconnected. Believe it or not, in clinical trials, if someone’s taking a drug and they have a car accident, it’s attributed to the drug, because the drug may have made them dizzy or foggy or what have you.”

  The rollout of the vaccines also correlates with significant increases in other conditions, including eye problems, immune system issues, and, in some data, cancer, according to Josh Stirling, an insurance research analyst.

  Overall, the vaccination correlates with increased mortality, according to Stirling.

  “The more doses on average you have in a region within the United States, the bigger increase in mortality that region has had in 2022 when compared to 2021,” he recently told Jekielek in an interview for “American Thought Leaders.”

  Stirling has argued that if the vaccine’s adverse effects are properly identified, they could be mitigated.

  “If we were actually just screening for these people, the vast majority of these health issues, before they become catastrophic, could very easily be managed—not necessarily solved, but certainly managed with amazing medical advances and simple things like blood thinners, or changes in lifestyle,” he said.

  Mortality in prime-age adults aged 18 to 64 substantially increased in 2020 and onward, even with COVID-19 deaths excluded, according to a Dec. 15, 2022, paper that attempted to account for COVID-19 deaths misclassified on death certificates.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/31/2023 – 18:20

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• Victor Davis Hanson: The Radical Left Is The Establishment
  Victor Davis Hanson: The Radical Left Is The Establishment

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

  Anarchy, American-Style

  The Left runs Oceania, and we work for their various bureaus…

  

  The 1960s revolution was both anarchic and nihilist. But it was waged against—not from—the establishment. Hippies and the Left either attacked institutions or, in Timothy Leary fashion, chose to “turn on, tune in, drop out” from them.

  The current revolution is much different—and far more dangerous—for at least three reasons.

  The Establishment Is the Revolution

  The current Left has no intention of “dropping out.” Why would it? 

  It now controls the very institutions of America that it once mocked and attacked—corporate boardrooms, Wall Street, state and local prosecuting attorneys, most big-city governments, the media, the Pentagon, network and most of cable news, professional sports, Hollywood, music, television, K-12 education, and academia. 

  In other words, the greatest levers of influence and power—money, education, entertainment, government, the news, and popular culture—are in the hands of the Left. They have transformed legitimate debate over gay marriage into a hate crime. Transgenderism went from a modern manifestation of ancient transvestism or gender dysphoria to a veritable litmus test of whether one was good or evil.

  Students have no need to jam administrators’ offices because the latter, themselves, are as radical as the protestors and often lead them on in a top-down fashion. Had they not long ago demonstrated they were perfectly willing to subvert meritocracy, free expression, and equality under the law, they would not be occupying their present positions.

  Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech companies are not 1980s and 1990s “alternative” media geeks and hipsters creating neat gadgets for the people. They are not Steve Jobs and his pugnacious Apple battling the evil Microsoft or IBM, or the Macintosh commercial of 1984 depicting a maverick throwing a hammer into Big Brother’s screen. They are the Orwellian screen.

  The current generation of techies is effectively Stalinist. Big Tech now colludes with the FBI, the Democratic Party, and the bureaucratic state to suppress free expression, warp balloting, and serve as contractors of government surveillance. Currently, the most totalitarian people in America are likely to wear flip flops, have a nose ring or pink hair, and disguise their fascism with ’60s-retread costumes.

  There are no “armies of the night” marching on the Pentagon. Would-be demonstrators see no need, since radical identity politics, and gay, woke, and transgendered agendas are fast-tracked by the Department of Defense. 

  There are no protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau or the “La Migra” anymore by advocates of illegal immigration, because the Left owns the border. And it has utterly destroyed it. There is no border, no border enforcement, and no meaningful immigration law. As many as 6 million illegal entries during the first two years of the Biden Administration are proof enough of that. 

  There are no cutting-edge Lenny Bruces or Mort Sahls fighting state censorship because entertainers accept that 1) there are no impediments to vulgarity or pornographic expression, but 2) no comic or commentator dares to take on the diversity, equity, and inclusion woke industry because he assumes he would be crushed, and his career ruined. 

  Question the woke status quo, and one is not canonized in Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone as a fighter against the “uptight establishment” or “the man” as in the past, but now demonized as a racist purveyor of “hate speech” and enemy of the people.

  The Left does not despise the FBI. It lauds it. And the bureau is no longer consumed with tracking down violent criminals and terrorists. Instead, it has become an enemy of parents worried about school indoctrination, or a retrieval service for lost first-family classified papers, laptops and diaries, or a Washington, D.C., cadre knee-deep in big money politics. 

  FBI agents are praised on left–wing media—given they have been activist conspirators who sought to destroy conservative candidates, deleted subpoenaed data, lied to federal investigators or committees while under oath, colluded with Russian oligarchs, doctored court evidence, and paid foreign nationals to compile campaign dirt on American citizens.

  There are no longer calls for a “three strikes” solution to violent crime as in the past, or talk of adopting the successful, time-tried “broken windows” theories of law enforcement, because there is no enforcement to modulate. The debate is no longer over enforcing the law, because de facto there is no law.

  The new legal establishment has replaced the old by simply nuking centuries of jurisprudence. Violent repeat criminal offenders injure and maim innocents in the morning and are released by noon to prey again—themselves baffled that the state is even crazier than they are.

  Note in the 2020-2021 riots, almost no one temporarily arrested was tried, despite $2 billion in damages, upwards of 40 violent deaths, the 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, and the torching of a courthouse, police precinct, and historic Washington, D.C., church. Instead, they were lauded by a mayor as participants in a “summer of love.” Seattle and Washington simply ceded city property to the violent protestors as if they occupied it by right of their superior morality.

  The summation of the entire sordid summer was the CNN chyron assuring America that the protests on their screens were “mostly peaceful” as flames shot up to the sky in the background. In the 1960s, rioters forced social welfare concessions—or else!—on the establishment. Today the establishment welcomes urban unrest as an excuse to implement agendas that in normal times would be unpalatable.

  In sum, we are living in anarchy, as institutions themselves have become nihilistic and weapons of the revolution. The Left, in viral fashion, took over the DNA of America’s institutions, and used them to help destroy their creators.

  If we are bewildered why Harvard law-graduate prosecutors let out violent criminals just hours after their arrests; or why hyper-rich, pampered athletes who live in near-apartheid enclaves  insult the flag, ignore the National Anthem, and sloganeer woke platitudes, it is because they were taught to undermine the status quo by fundamentally becoming it. 

  In our present anarchy, $7 a dozen eggs are affordable. Unaffordable gas prices become merely necessary “transitions” to fossil fuels. A “secure” border means there is none. Natural gas must be banned because it supposedly causes asthma. Tens of thousands of homeless defecate, urinate, inject, and fornicate in the increasingly vacant downtowns of Los Angeles and San Francisco, as the Golden Bear state, California, discusses reintroducing Grizzly bears. 

  Cars and yards are evil, elevators, high-rises, and buses sacred. There are 81 genders (and counting), with even more names for them. “Racist” is our exclamation point, fillip, a mere add-on emphatic. Everything from SAT tests to obesity to working out is racist. When little is racist, then everything must become racist.

  Batter someone to a pulp and you are out of jail in six hours; claim an election was suspicious and you can be in there for six months or more. Proven merit is a pejorative. Grades are deemed useless by those who could never earn As. Boilerplate equity oaths are the best guide to hiring, retention, and admission. The ACLU or the Anti-Defamation League exist only to spot the incorrect kind of censorship and the wrong kind of antisemitism.

  Macintosh Becomes MacBeth

  The second contribution to the present anarchy is big tech, which speeds up the revolution and spreads it broadly. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was predicated not just on the Sovietization of the state, but the electronically ubiquitous and near instantaneous means by which the apparat ensures its dominance. One of the strangest things about the Left is that it no longer warns of 1984 but emulates it.

  How the Left became synonymous with the Internet, social media, mobile phones, pads, and laptops is a long story. But let it be said the Left, and not conservatives, have mastered them all. It has manipulated high tech to change the way we vote, access information, communicate, consume the news, buy, and sell, and express ourselves. In sum, they run Oceania and we work for their various bureaus.

  Our tech complex has combined the ethos of the 19th-century monopoly with the Chinese Communist system of mass ideological manipulation. The result is that the old Twitter or Facebook mob can ruin a career in a nanosecond. Google can manipulate the order of search results to render you a clueless Winston Smith bewildered by the alternate “reality” that pops up on your computer screen. 

  Wikipedia is pseudo-official falsification. Trotskization relied on scissors and paste; cancel culture can end you by a split-second use of the delete button—and erase you to 7 billion on the planet.

  Big Money, Big Woke 

  Globalization hollowed out the red-state interior and enriched the blue bicoastal elite. Wealth in mining, farming, construction, manufacturing, and assembly became dwarfed by riches of investment, high tech, social media, law, insurance, and real estate. The former were the up-by-the boot straps conservatives, the latter one day rich and the next moment through hype, investment, and venture capital, richer than anyone in the history of civilization.

  The wealthiest ZIP codes and congressional districts are blue, not red. Most of the Fortune 400 billionaires are left-wing. So, there is no ’60s-style talk about the evils of corporations and the supposedly idle rich, none of the old conspiracy theories about Anaconda Copper, ITT, or the Rockefellers. 

  The corporations are the Left and in service to it. Disney, American Airlines, and Nike are revolutionary icons, always ready to divest, cancel, fire, hire, and propagandize in service to woke commissars. That they are terrified by tiny bullies who have no constituencies is true, but then a Robespierre, Lenin, and Mao had initially no broad support either—at least before each mastered the use of terror and fright.

  In our anarchy, “dark money” like Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million cash infusion into the 2020 balloting processes is now suddenly good, given it is almost all leftwing. Democrats outraise Republicans in campaign contributions by anywhere from three- to five-to-one. Bundling is noble.

  Netflix can buy the brand name of the Obamas for $100 million; George Soros can spend his pocket change of $40 million to elect district attorneys to destroy the law and empower criminals. Jimmy Carter used to be the poor-man idol of the old Democratic Party. Today, there is hardly a Democratic president, ex-president, or presidential candidate who is not a multi-multimillionaire—most by leveraging their heightened political profile.

  What anarchy we live in when the richest among us are the most radical and wish to destroy for all others what they enjoy. 

  John Kerry lectures us on climate change from his private jet. Your leaf blower, not his Gulfstream GIV-SP, is the global threat. Al Gore screams about the evils of carbon emissions—after pocketing $100 million by selling his failed and worthless cable station to smoky and sooty Qatar, fronting for the antisemitic Al Jazeera. 

  The Clintons feel the pain of the poor all the way to their $100 million fortune from shakedown lectures, Wall Street, “consulting,” and “foundation” contributions. Van Jones, CNN expert, the object of Valerie Jarrett’s oohing and awing, famous for his “whitelash” exegeses, and recipient of a $100 million Bezos award, now lectures us that the five rogue black policemen in Memphis, who beat to death a black suspect, are still proof of white racism that accounts for blacks belittling the lives of blacks. 

  In our present anarchy, we take seriously the lectures on microaggressions from the Duchess of Montecito. The Obamas weigh in on the dangers of climate change and rising seas from their seaside, multimillion-dollar Martha’s Vineyard estate, or Hawaii beachfront mansion that apparently has an invisible climate-change barrier on its beach. Kamala Harris is our border czar who assures us it is “secure,” defined by 5 million illegal entries since she took office.

  Nancy Pelosi works for the “children” and, after a life in politics, that selflessness ends up worth $100 million from her husband’s insider real estate deals and stock tips. It is almost as if socialist Bernie Sanders owned three homes, or anti-capitalist Elizabeth Warren was once a house flipper.

  So, the current revolution is anarchy, utter confusion, pure chaos. 

  Every time one turns on a computer, there will be someone or something somewhere ideologically warping its use. Your vote means nothing when California cannot account for 10 million automatically, computer-guided mailed-out ballots. That state is still in a drought, defined by releasing most of the water to the ocean that the wettest winter in memory produced. 

  Stanford students talk revolution, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter, and want to forbid the use of “American.” But from the look of their parking lots, they cannot decide whether Lexus, BMW, or Mercedes should be the most preferred campus car. Oprah and Whoopi suffer terribly from white supremacy. Jussie the foot soldier heroically took on one MAGA thug for each of his foot kicks.  

  “Don’t take off your mask” at a California McDonald’s means the man who ordered that edict is maskless at the French Laundry. “Don’t get your hair done during the lockdown” means the architect of that fiat sneaks around her salon, which she has all to herself.

  The common denominator to the anarchy? The hardcore Left is your FBI, CIA, and Justice Department all in one. It is Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is our era’s J. P. Morgan. 

  No wonder we are confused by the establishment anarchists and the anarchy they produce.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 23:40

• China PMIs Soar Back Into Expansion, Celebrating End Of Covid Zero
  China PMIs Soar Back Into Expansion, Celebrating End Of Covid Zero

  China is done with Covid Zero and wants the world to know it.

  Two weeks after Beijing’s amazing goalseek-o-tron reported blowout economic data, including beats across the board in retail sales, GDP, industrial production and fixed investment, moments ago the National Bureau of Statistics (which in recent years has been competing with the US BLS who can come up with the most outrageously manipulated “data”), reported that in January (which is still not over but who cares) manufacturing PMI roared back (just barely) into expansion, printing 50.1 from a contractionary 47.0 in December and matching estimates, on resumption of production and ongoing recovery in demand (in the manufacturing PMI survey, both the output sub-index and the new orders sub-index rose by more than 5 points). Even more remarkable, the non-manufacturing PMI exploded to 54.4 in January from 41.6 in December, smashing expectations of a 52.0 print and showing improvements in both the construction and services sectors.

  

  Putting the non-Mfg PMI move in context, this was the second biggest increase on record, trailing only the March 2020 post-covid record when China shock-therapied its economy into kickstarting with the help of trillions in new debt.

  

  Some additional commentary courtesy of Goldman:

  The China NBS purchasing managers’ indexes (PMIs) survey suggested manufacturing activity increased in January on resumption of production and ongoing recovery in demand. The NBS manufacturing PMI headline index rose significantly to 50.1 in January from 47.0 in December. The improvements are broad-based among all five major sub-indexes: the output sub-index rose to 49.8 from 44.6, the new orders sub-index increased to 50.9 from 43.9 and the employment sub-index rebounded to 47.7 from 44.8.

  

  What is of biggest interest here may be the suppliers’ delivery times sub-index, which rose notably to 47.6 in January from 40.1 in December, implying faster supplier deliveries as NBS indicated that the labor shortage issues (due to large number of workers falling sick in December during the Covid “exit wave”) were eased. NBS commented that the improvement of manufacturing activity was mainly linked to acceleration in both demand and production and the LNY holiday impacted the production to some degree. The sharp improvement in supplier delivery times will serve to further alleviate any residual inflationary bottlenecks, a legacy of China’s lockdown days, as traffic to the US – inasmuch as anyone ordered inventory amid this reverse bullwhip period – arrives faster than expected.

  On the trade-related sub-indexes, the new export order sub-index increased to 46.1 in January (vs. 44.2 in December) but remained below 50, pointing to still weak external demand. The import sub-index rose to 46.7 in January (vs.43.7 in December). The raw material inventories sub-index rose to 49.6 from 47.1, and the finished goods inventories sub-index rose to 47.2 from 46.6.

  By enterprise size, the PMIs of large/medium/small enterprises increased to 52.3/48.6/47.2 in January (vs. 48.3/46.4/44.7 in December). Price indicators in the NBS manufacturing survey suggest inflationary pressure for producer and consumer diverged in January. The input cost sub-index increased to 52.2 (vs. 51.6 in December) while the output prices sub-index declined slightly to 48.7 (vs. 49.0 in December).

  The official non-manufacturing PMI (comprised of the services and construction sectors) soared to 54.4 in January (vs. 41.6 in December), thanks to a sharp acceleration in both construction and services sectors. The services PMI rebounded sharply to 54.0 (vs. 39.4 in December). According to the survey, the PMIs of transport service industries such as postal, airline and road transport services were above 60 in January. Meanwhile, the PMIs of close-contact service industries such as retail sales, hotel and catering services rose more than 24 points from December. That said, NBS indicated that the PMIs of property related sectors were still below 50. The construction PMI rose in January to 56.4 (vs.54.4 in December). NBS noted that the expansionary pace of the construction sector (presumably infrastructure-related) remained fast.

  

  Looking at the market’s response, Bloomberg’s Mark Cranfield writes that “the CSI 300 index is ending January slightly below recent highs but its upward momentum is set to extend into February, looking past a report of the US considering cutting off Huawei from suppliers… which won’t be much of a surprise to traders, especially after the US agreed with the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of some advanced chipmaking machinery to China.”

  That said, while the China PMI data is encouraging for equity bulls, notably the 54.4 print for services, and adds to the positive impulse from high frequency data over the Lunar New Year break, it took won’t be much of a surprise following the mid-January data dump which beat expectations in every category. However, the pristine data – fake as it may be – will certainly encourage continued foreign inflows into China’s stock market, which in January exceeded the whole of 2022!

  

  Bottom line, while the CSI 300 – which recently tipped into a bull market – may need a little bit longer to consolidate after the steep advance this month, BBG concludes that “the outlook for the rest of the first quarter is bright.”

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 23:20

• Fear Of Trump Paralyzes GOP's Potential Candidates
  Fear Of Trump Paralyzes GOP’s Potential Candidates

  Authored by Bill Scher via RealClear Wire,

  A lot of Republicans are reportedly interested in running for president, yet no one besides Donald Trump has been brave enough to start running. According to Politico, the hesitation is mainly because everyone wants “someone else” to be the “early Trump foil.” An adviser to a potential candidate has even shopped the idea of “multiple candidates announcing around the same time.” One anonymous Republican told Politico, “I think they think a group launch … provides them protection from Trump.”

  

  Every one of these candidates should be embarrassed. At the risk of being cliché, if these wannabe presidents can’t stand up to Donald Trump, how can you expect them to stand up to – well, insert your preferred boogeyman here.

  By the first day of February 2019, Democrats Cory Booker, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Marriane Williamson, and Andrew Yang had either formally announced their 2020 bids or formed exploratory committees. In January 2015, Republicans Jeb Bush and Scott Walker established political action committees that were precursors to their campaign launches, and Mike Huckabee quit his Fox News show in preparation for his bid.

  Granted, none of those people won their primaries; after all, most presidential candidates lose. But if someone starts with minimal national support and mostly regional name recognition – and that describes most of the potential Republican presidential field – every day not in the race is a lost day. Precisely because the battle is decidedly uphill, second-tier candidates should be eager to get in the race and create opportunities for themselves so they can climb into the first tier (which in the 2020 Democratic primary, Warren was able to do, even though she was unable to stay there for long.)

  I’ll cut some slack for the sitting governors who might run – including Greg Abbott, Brian Kemp, Kristi Noem, Chris Sununu, and Glenn Youngkin – and even Ron DeSantis, who may be in a position to choose his timing. They may want to notch some wins in their 2023 legislative sessions and avoid any humiliating defeats before hitting the campaign trail later in the spring or summer.

  Members of Congress believed considering a run are Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom have run before, and probably Tim Scott. So what are they waiting for? With House and Senate control divided between the two parties, little legislation of significance is expected to pass. In other words, they are not bogged down with heavy responsibilities at the moment.

  Everyone else supposedly in the mix – John Bolton, Liz Cheney, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Larry Hogan, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo – is a “former” officeholder with plenty of free time, and no time to lose.

  Scattered throughout the Politico story are weird rationalizations for the proto-candidates’ collective fear. “Trump’s best when he’s got an opponent, so don’t give him one,” said one anonymous operative. How does this plan work? Trump doesn’t do his best without an opponent, so he withdraws, and then all the other candidates announce? “As soon as someone pops their head up,” said Abbott adviser Dave Carney, “Trump will be whacking on them.” So? That’s a great way for second-tier candidates to get into the first-tier, by getting into a public scrap with the frontrunner and proving their mettle.

  No Republican seems to have learned any lessons from the 2016 primary. You can’t beat Trump unless you take the fight to Trump, forcefully and consistently – and early. The 2016 field can at least plead they were caught off-guard by Trump’s willingness to savage fellow Republicans, and his ability to do so without being penalized by Republican voters. Today, there are no excuses. Everyone knows who they are up against, and they have had years to formulate a strategy to deal with him. Will it be hard? Of course. But so is being president of the United States.

  At a November address to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Christie said, “It is time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on and this country on.” He’s right. Let’s see if he, or anyone else, can live up to those words.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 23:00

• The Top Google Searches Related To Investing In 2022
  The Top Google Searches Related To Investing In 2022

  It was a turbulent year for the markets in 2022, with geopolitical conflict, rising prices, and the labor market playing key roles. Which stories captured investors’ attention the most? 

  As Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross notes, this infographic from New York Life Investments outlines the top Google searches related to investing in 2022, and offers a closer look at some of the trends.

  

  

  Top Google Searches: Year in Review

  We picked some of the top economic and investing stories that saw peak search interest in the U.S. each month, according to Google Trends.

  

  Data based on exact searches in the U.S. from December 26, 2021 to December 18, 2022.

  Let’s look at each quarter in more detail, to see how these top Google searches were related to activity in the economy and investors’ portfolios.

  Q1 2022

  The start of the year was marked by U.S. workers quitting their jobs in record numbers, and the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war. For instance, the price of crude oil skyrocketed after the war caused supply uncertainties. Early March’s peak of $125 per barrel was a 13-year high.

  

  While crude oil lost nearly all its gains by year-end, the energy sector in general performed well. In fact, the S&P 500 Energy Index gained 57% over the year compared to the S&P 500’s 19% loss.

  Q2 2022

  The second quarter of 2022 saw abnormal house price growth, renewed interest in value investing, and a bitcoin crash. In particular, value investing performed much better than growth investing over the course of the year.

  

  Value stocks have typically outperformed during periods of rising rates, and 2022 was no exception.

  Q3 2022

  The third quarter was defined by worries about a recession and inflation, along with interest in the rising U.S. dollar. In fact, the U.S. dollar gained against nearly every major currency.

  

  Higher interest rates made the U.S. dollar more attractive to investors, since it meant they would get a higher return on their fixed income investments.

  Q4 2022

  The end of the year was dominated by OPEC cutting oil production, high layoffs in the tech sector, and curiosity about the future of interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s December 2022 economic projections offer clues about the trajectory of the policy rate.

  

  The Federal Reserve expects interest rates to peak in 2023, with rates to remain elevated above pre-pandemic levels for the foreseeable future.

  The Top Google Searches to Come

  After a year of volatility across asset classes, economic uncertainty remains. Which themes will become investors’ top Google searches in 2023?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 22:40

• Top Lawmaker Responds To General's Memo On 2025 War With China: "I Think He's Right"
  Top Lawmaker Responds To General’s Memo On 2025 War With China: “I Think He’s Right”

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that he believes a prediction made by four-star Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan that the United States will go to war with China in 2025 is correct.

  

  A memo issued by the general, according to NBC News, said that “I hope I am wrong .. my gut tells me we will fight in 2025″ about the potential conflict. He added that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be looking closely at Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election that might prompt leader Xi Jinping to escalate military aggression against the region.

  “Xi secured his third term [as CCP general secretary] and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason,” Minihan wrote. The 2024 U.S. presidential elections would also create a “distracted America” that could benefit the Chinese regime, he said.

  “Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025,” the general reportedly said. Copies of his memo circulated online over the weekend, and The Epoch Times has contacted the Air Force for comment.

  On Sunday, McCaul, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News that he believes the general’s prediction is accurate. “I hope he’s wrong,” McCaul told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think he’s right though, unfortunately.”

  McCaul said that the CCP wants to take control over Taiwan, which he suggested could take place via influencing the island nation’s elections early next year. Adding further, he claimed that the current administration is “projecting weakness” that will create an avenue for the CCP to take military action.

  “But if they don’t win in that one they are going to look at a military invasion, in my judgment,” he said. “We have to be prepared for this.”

  

  However, a top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee disagreed with both McCaul and Minihan’s assessment about a potential war with China in the near term.

  “I want to be completely clear. It’s not only not inevitable, it’s highly unlikely,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told Fox News on Sunday, noting that “anything is possible” and that “generals should be cautious.”

  Response

  Writing in response to the memo, retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, wrote on Twitter that he doesn’t believe a war with China will happen soon.

  “The job of the military is always to be ready to fight, but in my view, odds of a war with China are decreasing not increasing at the moment. The reason? President Xi is watching the Russian debacle in Ukraine and will likely be more cautious as a result,” he wrote.

  A spokesperson for the Air Mobility Command, which Minihan commands, told news outlets on Jan. 27 that the memo about a war with China is real.

  “This is an authentic internal memo from General Minihan addressed to his subordinate command teams. His order builds on last year’s foundational efforts by Air Mobility Command to ready the Mobility Air Forces for future conflict, should deterrence fail,” the spokesperson said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 22:20

• Biden To End COVID-19 Emergency Declarations On May 11, Also Ends Title 42 Policy At Border
  Biden To End COVID-19 Emergency Declarations On May 11, Also Ends Title 42 Policy At Border

  By Mimi Nguyen Ly, of Epoch Times

  

  The Biden administration has informed Congress it plans to end national COVID-19 emergency declarations on May 11.

  The move would shift the U.S. government’s response for managing COVID-19 back to the normal authorities given to federal agencies, with the virus to be considered as endemic.

  The COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency at the start of the outbreak by then-President Donald Trump on March 13, 2020. President Joe Biden has repeatedly extended the emergency declarations since.

  The White House noted on Monday that the COVID-19 national emergency and the public health emergency (PHE) are currently set to expire on March 1 and April 11.

  “At present, the Administration’s plan is to extend the emergency declarations to May 11, and then end both emergencies on that date,” the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stated in an administration policy statement (pdf).

  “This wind-down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the PHE.”

  “To be clear, continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-19,” the administration policy statement reads. “They do not impose mask mandates or vaccine mandates. They do not restrict school or business operations. They do not require the use of any medicines or tests in response to cases of COVID-19.”

  Under the PHE declaration, the federal government has been funding COVID-19 vaccines, as well as some tests and treatments. When this ends, the costs will be transferred to private insurance and government health plans.

  Costs of COVID-19 vaccines are expected to surge once the federal government stops buying them. Pfizer has said it will charge about $110–$130 per dose.

  Meanwhile, the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Biden in 2022 contains a provision that will eliminate Medicaid coverage protection from PHE, meaning that states can start removing people who do not meet Medicaid criteria beginning on April 1.

  The OMB in a separate administration policy statement on Monday (pdf) said it opposed H.R. 497, a measure to eliminate COVID-19 vaccine mandates for health care providers under certain federal health care programs. It said that Biden would veto the bill if Congress were to pass it.

  Calls to End Emergency Powers

  The statement of administration comes amid increasing calls from congressional lawmakers and lawmakers across the country to end the COVID-19 emergency powers. The administration policy statement itself was to signal opposition to two Republican-backed measures, H.R. 382 and H.J. Res. 7, seeking to immediately end the emergencies.

  Lawmakers in Congress have refused the Biden administration’s request for billions more dollars to continue funding COVID-19 vaccines and testing.

  Back in December 2022, about two-dozen Republican governors had called on the Biden administration to end (pdf) the COVID-19 emergency, because it places undue financial strain on the tax payer due to its expansion of Medicaid coverage.

  In pushing against the Republican bill and joint resolution, the Biden administration argued on Monday that ending the emergency declarations suddenly “would have two highly significant impacts on our nation’s health system and government operations.” This includes disrupting the health care system and creating circumstances conducive to an influx of migrants in to the country from the southern border, it said.

  The end of the PHE will also end the Title 42 policy at the border. The Biden administration said that while it has tried to terminate the policy, it currently remains in place due to court orders. Ending the PHE would “lift Title 42 immediately, and result in a substantial additional inflow of migrants at the Southwest border,” the Biden administration said.

  Continue reading at Epoch Times

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 22:00

• IRS Says Millions Of Americans Don't Realize They're Eligible For Tax Credit
  IRS Says Millions Of Americans Don’t Realize They’re Eligible For Tax Credit

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The IRS has issued a reminder that millions of Americans are eligible for a tax credit that last year averaged more than $2,000, but 20 percent of those entitled to the money don’t claim it.

  “This is an extremely important tax credit that helps millions of hard-working people every year,” IRS Acting Commissioner Doug O’Donnell said in a Jan. 27 statement. “But each year, many people miss out on the credit because they don’t know about it or don’t realize they’re eligible.”

  

  The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) was first approved by Congress in 1975, in part to offset the burden of Social Security taxes and to provide an employment incentive.

  The tax credit is administered by the IRS, which stated that in 2022, roughly 31 million eligible Americans received about $64 billion in EITC payments. The tax credit amounted to more than $2,000 per eligible person on average.

  The IRS estimates that about 20 percent of eligible taxpayers don’t claim the EITC. People particularly prone to overlooking the tax credit include those living in nontraditional homes (such as a grandparent raising a grandchild), those whose earnings declined or whose marital or parental status changed, people living in rural areas, veterans, the self-employed, and those with earnings below the tax return filing requirement.

  “In particular, people who have experienced a major life change in the past year—in their job, marital status, a new child or other factors—may qualify for the first time,” O’Donnell said. “The IRS urges people to carefully … review this important credit; we don’t want people to miss out.”

  EITC Eligibility

  The EITC is considered a tax credit for lower-income filers, although there are a number of variations of income, filing status, and the number of dependents that have an impact on eligibility.

  The EITC is for workers whose income didn’t exceed the following limits in 2022:

  • $53,057 ($59,187 if married filing jointly) with three or more qualifying children who have valid Social Security numbers (SSNs).
  • $49,399 ($55,529 if married filing jointly) with two qualifying children who have valid SSNs.
  • $43,492 ($49,622 if married filing jointly) with one qualifying child who has a valid SSN.
  • $16,480 ($22,610 if married filing jointly) with no qualifying children who have valid SSNs.
  • Investment income must be $10,300 or less.

  Taxpayers who meet the income requirements and have qualifying children can receive a maximum of $6,935.

  For taxpayers with no dependents, the maximum EITC is $560.

  Married but separated spouses who don’t file a joint tax return may also be eligible if they meet certain qualifications.

  In order to qualify, people who don’t earn enough to be obligated to file a tax return must file one in order to claim the credit.

  In order to navigate EITC eligibility, the IRS has a tool called the EITC Assistant that people can use to check if they qualify and how much they can expect to receive.

  Other Updates

  The IRS recently cautioned that many taxpayers should expect a smaller refund this tax season because of tax law changes. This includes the expiration of pandemic-related stimulus payments and changes to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) that would otherwise have boosted refund balances.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 21:40

• Australian Health Authorities Call For More COVID Boosters… But The Public Says No
  Australian Health Authorities Call For More COVID Boosters… But The Public Says No

  Australia and New Zealand suffered some of the worst pandemic mandate conditions of any country in the western world, crossing the line into totalitarianism on a number of occasions.  Australian authorities restricted residents of larger cities to near house arrest, with people not being allowed to go more than 3 miles from their homes.  Citizens were given curfew hours between 9pm and 5am.   They were banned from public parks and beaches without a mask, even though it is nearly impossible to transmit a virus outdoors and UV light from the sun acts as a natural disinfectant. 

  In the worst examples, Australian citizens received visits from police and government officials for posting critical opinions about the mandates on social media.  Some were even arrested for calling for protests against the lockdowns. In Australia and New Zealand, covid camps were built to detain people infected with covid.  Some facilities were meant for those who had recently traveled, others were meant for anyone who stepped out of line.

  

  As the fears over covid wane and the populace realizes that the true Infection Fatality Rate of the virus is incredibly small, restrictions are being abandoned and things seems to be going back to normal.  It’s important, however, to never forget what happened and how many countries faced potentially permanent authoritarianism under the shadow of vaccine passports.  If the passports rules had been successfully enforced, we would be living in a very different world today in the west.

  Luckily, the passports were never implemented widely.  Australian health authorities are once again calling for the public to take a fourth covid booster shot, but with very little response.  Only 40% of citizens took the third booster, and new polling data shows that 30% are taking the fourth booster. 

  A large amount of Australians are still not getting their COVID-19 booster shot, despite calls from health authorities to roll up our sleeves for a fifth dose.@eddy_meyer explains. #9News pic.twitter.com/rsjfi4xrFA

  — 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) January 30, 2023

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

  With an astonishing rise in excess deaths by heart failure in Australia coinciding exactly with the introduction of the covid mRNA vaccines, perhaps people are deciding to finally er on the side of caution.  Why take the risk of an experimental vaccine over a virus that 99.8% of the population will easily survive? 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 21:20

• Rep. Maxine Waters Calls GOP House Members "Domestic Terrorists"
  Rep. Maxine Waters Calls GOP House Members “Domestic Terrorists”

  Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

  Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has characterized Republican lawmakers as “domestic terrorists” and “extremists,” insisting that she hopes people won’t continue to elect them, a statement that attracted criticism from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

  Waters was asked about the prospect of police reform in Congress during an interview for “Ayman” on MSNBC on Saturday.

  “It’s the Marjorie Taylor Greene Republican Caucus. And so I don’t expect anything from them,”@RepMaxineWaters says on why she’s not optimistic about police reform on a federal level. pic.twitter.com/pUXLUNT7xo

  — AYMAN (@AymanMSNBC) January 29, 2023

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

  She called GOP members of Congress the “Marjorie Taylor Greene Republican caucus” and insisted that she doesn’t expect any police reform on the federal level.

  “We have these right-wing conservatives who are, you know… we have domestic terrorists in the House of Representatives. These people are extremists,” she said.

  “So I am not optimistic that that is the way that it is going to happen until the people of this country really decide that they do not want it, and they are not going to elect people who act in the fashion that they act.”

  In March of last year, Waters was one of three Democrats who sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking for a review of how “domestic violent extremists” and “homegrown violent extremists” fund their activities.

  Boebert criticized Waters for her comments.

  “Maxine Waters says that we have House Republicans who are domestic terrorists,” Boebert posted on Twitter on Monday. “Interesting, as I don’t remember anyone in the House who has called for more violence than Maxine Waters.”

  In April 2021, Waters told protesters to “get more confrontational” and “make sure that they know that we mean business” if the officer accused of killing of George Floyd in 2020 was acquitted.

  Constructing a Threat of Domestic Terrorism

  Since Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorism has been pushed by the mainstream media as a widespread threat facing the United States.

  In September, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) revealed information from an FBI whistleblower who alleged that the FBI was “manipulating” case files related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach to make it seem like America has a bigger domestic terrorism problem than it actually does.

  “The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics,” the whistleblower alleged, according to Jordan.

  “Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from a single, black swan incident at the Capitol, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.”

  According to the whistleblower, a Washington task force identifies “potential subjects” related to the Jan. 6 case and possible locations where they might reside. The task force then sends “information packets” to several local field offices around the country, asking them to open investigations.

  As a result, even though the multiple field offices are only investigating a single incident, it creates the illusion that these threats are present in jurisdictions across the nation, Jordan said.

  In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in July, Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen admitted that the rising domestic terrorism cases over the previous two years can mostly be traced to a single incident—the Jan. 6 breach.

  “That number does include the Jan. 6 cases, and there, of course, we have over 800 arrests of individuals—not all of them are characterized as domestic violent extremists, to be clear, but many are,” Olsen said. “Those do account for at least a significant portion of that jump over the past two years in the number of investigations.”

  Left-Wing Domestic Terrorism Push

  In March 2022, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) touted the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 as necessary to combat “white supremacists.”

  The push to link conservatism with domestic terrorism is penetrating schools as well. In September 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) wrote a letter to the Department of Justice calling for an investigation into parents under domestic terrorism laws.

  The parents had attended school board meetings to object to school policies like COVID-19 restrictions and the teaching of critical race theory, which the NSBA equated with “domestic terrorism.”

  The letter argued that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat.”

  The organization subsequently apologized for the letter.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 21:00

• Tesla Model S "Spontaneously" Erupts In Flames On California Highway
  Tesla Model S “Spontaneously” Erupts In Flames On California Highway

  President Biden’s green new world of more electric vehicles on US highways might result in increasing lithium fires — if that’s because of a crash or perhaps a ‘spontaneous’ battery fire.

  The latest incident occurred on Saturday when a Model S “spontaneously” burst into flames on a California freeway. 

  On Saturday, the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District tweeted footage of a Tesla Model S engulfed in flames. 

  Crews arrived to a Tesla Model S engulfed in flames, nothing unusual prior. 2 Fire Engines, a water tender, and a ladder truck were requested to assist. Crews used jacks to access the underside to extinguish and cool the battery. Thousands of gallons were used in extinguishment. pic.twitter.com/5dIXxo9hP5

  — Metro Fire of Sacramento (@metrofirepio) January 29, 2023

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

  “The fire was extinguished with approx 6,000 gallons of water, as the battery cells continued to combust,” the fire department said. 

  The vehicle battery compartment spontaneously caught fire while it was traveling freeway speeds on EB Hwy 50. The fire was extinguished with approx 6,000 gallons of water, as the battery cells continued to combust. Thankfully no injuries were reported. pic.twitter.com/PRmlWzQdXS

  — Metro Fire of Sacramento (@metrofirepio) January 29, 2023

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

  Several years ago, we pointed out one Tesla fire took at least 20 tons of water to extinguish. For some context, it only takes 3 tons of water to put out a gasoline car fire. 

  Traditional fire extinguishers, such as foam and water, are ineffective at extinguishing lithium fires. A class-D dry powder extinguisher is certified for combating battery fires, though many fire departments across the country are not prepared to fight battery fires. 

  Tesla states in a firefighting manual that “large amounts of water” are needed to extinguish a car battery fire. It even said these fires could last as long as 24 hours. 

  

  Someone might need to explain to Biden and his administration that the shift to EVs isn’t as ‘ESG-friendly’ as it’s perceived to be.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 20:40

• Unvaccinated Kidney And Heart Patients Denied Transplants Get Day In Court With Michigan Hospital
  Unvaccinated Kidney And Heart Patients Denied Transplants Get Day In Court With Michigan Hospital

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  A Michigan judge will soon decide if 73-year-old Ross Barranco can be denied a donated kidney because he won’t take the COVID-19 vaccine.

  “I just don’t see the logic of it,” stated Barranco in an interview with The Epoch Times. “Everybody knows an organ transplant procedure requires the nearly complete suppression of a recipient’s immune system so the body won’t reject it.

  “Then why do I need to be immunized against COVID before the operation?”

  When asked if he thought the vaccine would make any difference in his prognosis, he replied, “Yeah, the vax can kill me.

  “To qualify for a transplant both of my kidneys have to be functioning at 20 percent or less. What if the vax destroys the remaining function before the operation? If it does, I’m done.

  “The jab does absolutely nothing beneficial for a transplant patient,” he said.

  Given the current COVID-19 testing capability, it remains unclear why transplant patients cannot be tested for COVID-19 before the operation. A negative result could then green-light the procedure.

  It is also unclear why, given the data showing numerous fully vaccinated people have come down with COVID-19 multiple times, the shot is still being regarded by some hospitals as an immunization.

  Barranco’s legal team made reference to a 2021 survey of 200 transplant centers across the country.

  Of the 140 that responded to the survey, only half required transplant candidates to take a COVID-19 vaccine regimen.

  “The vax can hardly be deemed medically necessary if half of the responding transplant centers are not requiring it,” said Deborah Catalono of the Liberty Counsel, a researcher tracking hospital transplant policies and a lawyer familiar with many similar cases to that of Barranco and Shier.

  The Liberty Counsel is a non-profit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to upholding religious liberty and Christian values.

  Medical questions and safety concerns aside, Barranco, a Roman Catholic, actually refused the vaccine on religious grounds.

  He said his faith and conscience do not permit him to receive a shot that he is convinced was developed using body parts obtained from aborted babies and has fetal tissue in its ingredients.

  Vax-up or Else

  On Feb. 1, 2022, Barranco received what he perceived as an “ultimatum” from the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor.

  “There’s an active list and a holding list for patients awaiting a transplant. At the time, I was on the holding list.

  “That’s when the hospital gave me three months to get three COVID shots, or they would throw me off the list entirely,” said Barranco.

  “I refused, and they threw me off. That’s when I contacted an attorney.”

  Mary Clare Fischer, a public relations representative with the University of Michigan Health Transplant Center in Ann Arbor, outlined the hospital’s position in an email to The Epoch Times.

  

  “[Our] policy aims to protect transplant recipients from complications of COVID-19 infection, which has had devastating effects in our patient population.

  “Immunocompromised solid organ transplant recipients have among the highest risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 infection.

  “At present, all of the nearly 1,000 adult patients active on our waiting list are vaccinated against COVID-19 infection.

  “As is true of all of our Transplant Center policies and processes, this policy is a critical step in partnering with our patients to maximize the safety of our transplant recipients and provide them the best opportunity to regain their health and quality of life through the gift of transplantation,” she said.

  Fischer stated that the transplant center is one of a “significant number” of American hospitals that require the COVID-19 vaccination for adult heart, lung, liver, pancreas, and kidney transplant patients on their active lists.

  The University of Michigan Hospital policy exempts critically ill patients who may not have time to complete the three-phase vaccine protocol, as well as patients with prior vaccine allergies.

  Why Not Katie?

  Katie Shier, Barranco’s co-plaintiff in the case, is an unvaccinated 35-year-old mother of five who is a candidate for a heart transplant.

  

  She is being kept alive by a ventricular assist device that has developed an infection, according to the plaintiffs’ attorney, David Peters of the Pacific Justice Institute.

  The Pacific Justice Institute is a non-profit legal defense organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties.

  The Institute is representing Shier and Barannco free of charge.

  Shier, a Roman Catholic, objects to taking the COVID-19 vaccination on religious grounds.

  On June 29, 2021, Shier was granted placement on the transplant waiting list.

  U of M Hospital’s subsequently adopted mandatory vaccination policy now precludes her from undergoing the heart transplant necessary to save her life.

  Peters told The Epoch Times that, due to the low functioning of Shier’s heart, at any time she could slip into “imminent or immediate danger and be rushed to the hospital” and maybe qualify for a transplant under the hospital’s vaccination exemption for the critically ill.

  “Sadly, it looks like that is something the court will have to order. We have emergency motions ready to go,” said Peters.

  Shier told The Epoch Times in a phone interview on Jan. 27, 2023, “I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had much time to think about my situation.

  “It is in God’s hands. All I want to do is do God’s will. After much prayer, the Lord led me not to give in, but to file the lawsuit.

  “I’m fighting for three things.

  “The doctors said I have an infection that can only be cured by a heart transplant.

  “I believe it’s wrong to require someone to take a dangerous vaccine, so I want to see an end to the mandates.

  “And, most importantly, I do not want to take any vaccine or medication that has been tainted by abortion.

  “Two of the major pharmaceutical companies making the vaccine developed it from the HEK-293 fetal cell line.

  “Some vaccines are known to have fetal tissue in them, and some tests are being conducted on still-living fetuses without anesthesia,” she alleged.

  “I’m fighting for a person’s right to refuse any vaccine that is associated with abortion,” she added.

  Peters told The Epoch Times that some people misconstrue the case as a medical malpractice suit against U of M Hospital.

  “It is not about malpractice. It is about due process rights.

  “Both Ross and Katie regard UMH as one of the best hospitals in the world.

  “For that reason, Katie won’t go elsewhere. She wants her new heart to come from UMH.”

  Barranco told The Epoch Times that he checked out another transplant center, but he prefers UMH.

  A ‘Rollercoaster’ Ordeal

  Barranco, a petroleum geological engineer for 46 six years, has battled high blood pressure and diabetes for decades—the things he says caused his kidney dysfunction.

  In September 2020, he was told to start investigating the various types of dialysis.

  “I began talking to U of M in 2021.

  “Eventually, they called me in for an in-person exam. They found both of my kidneys were not working right.

  “The doctors do not want to remove a partially functioning kidney while it is still contributing, so the plan was to add a third kidney.

  “Soon, I was approved to be on their holding list,” Barranco said.

  His hopes for relief plummeted when a blood test revealed he had contracted an autoimmune disease that attacked his lungs and kidneys.

  His transplant was sidetracked, and Barranco was placed on chemotherapy.

  The chemo worked, and he recovered.

  “That happened before I could begin dialysis.

  “My plan always has been to skip dialysis if I could, because when it fails, as it eventually always does, that’s the end of the line,” he said.

  After his recovery, Barranco’s hopes soared again when U of M Hospital officially put him on its active list.

  Concern for Others

  When his kidneys amazingly began to improve in response to some lifestyle changes, Barranco requested that the hospital drop him back down to the holding list, “so others more in immediate need of a transplant could take my place on the active list,” he said.

  He also insisted, against the hospital’s recommendation, that he wait for a cadaver donor rather than a living donor.

  “I figured a living donor would be reduced to one good kidney. He or she could possibly die on the operating table or die from post-op complications. It is a risky operation.

  “Or, what if later in life the living donor developed high blood pressure or diabetes with only one kidney?

  “There I’d be, doing just fine, but the person that helped me would be suffering. What about him or her?” said Barranco.

  Barranco told The Epoch Times his goal is to have no more COVID-19 vaccine mandates, “so that future patients won’t have to go through what I have gone through.”

  Political or Medical?

  President Joe Biden issued an order through the Occupational Health and Safety Administration in November 2021 that would eventually result in the denial of organ transplants to unvaccinated patients like Barranco and Shier.

  The federal order mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for health care workers and those professionally associated with them was narrowly permitted to stand by the United States Supreme Court in late January 2022.

  Just prior to that decision, on Jan. 13, 2022, the High Court struck down the Biden-ordered Occupational Safety and Health Administration Emergency Temporary Standard mandating that private employers with more than 100 employees require that their workers receive the COVID-19 vaccines.

  It was that February that Barranco received notice from U of M Hospital that he had three months to get all three shots or be completely disqualified for a kidney transplant.

  “We jumped through all their hoops, and the hospital changed the rules in the middle of the game. They threw us off the active list.

  “For people like Katie Shier and me, the message was clear—get vaccinated or die,” said Barranco.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 20:20

• Vail Resorts Record An Abundance Of Snow Despite Mild US Winter
  Vail Resorts Record An Abundance Of Snow Despite Mild US Winter

  So far this year, winter has been very mild. Millions of Americans are scratching their heads, asking ‘where is the snow’? 

  Last week, New York City was slated for snow but received rain instead. This led the metro area to break a half-century-old record of the longest period without accumulating snow. 

  But not all areas of the Lower 48 are missing out on winter—more than a dozen mountainous ski resort areas tracked by Bank of America recorded above-average snowfall. 

  BofA analyst Shaun Kelley wrote in a note to clients Monday that 16 Vail Resorts they track have snowfall that is +30% year-over-year for this time of year and 51% over a two-year average. 

  “Snowfall is healthy across the board, led by Tahoe, Park City, and Colorado. Tahoe and Park City have already surpassed their full-season long-term historical snowfall average, and there are still 2+ months left in the season,” Kelley wrote. 

  He pointed out that even in the Northeast, where resorts have lacked snowfall, Vermont resorts received much-needed 2 feet of powder last week, while Hunter Mountain received a foot. Whistler was the only resort that has so far recorded below-trend snowfall. 

  

  This season’s snowfall for Vail resorts is well above last season’s and the long-term average. 

  

  The good news for ski resorts is winter is roaring back in early February. 

  

  “Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are forecasted across the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest through early this week,” the Climate Prediction Center said. Colder weather is great news for Vail Resorts. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 20:00

• DOJ Is 'Boxed In' In Handling Of Biden, Trump Document Probes: Experts
  DOJ Is ‘Boxed In’ In Handling Of Biden, Trump Document Probes: Experts

  Authored by John Ransom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Department of Justice and the FBI may have little room to move in their handling of the Biden classified documents case, according to experts and GOP figures, who were skeptical of the agencies’ ability to recapture the confidence of a sizeable segment of the population who had lost trust in them. 

  

  With the appointment of special counsel Robert Hur to investigate the revelations that Biden kept classified documents in various locations including his Delaware home, the spotlight has also turned brighter on the treatment of former president Donald Trump by the U.S. government’s justice apparatus over Trump’s possession of classified documents, the experts said.

  “The American people have lost trust in Joe Biden’s corrupt DOJ and FBI after witnessing these agencies fully weaponized against Joe Biden’s number one political enemy by raiding Donald Trump’s house, but continue to cover up for the Biden Crime family,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Epoch Times.

  The alleged cover-up Stefanik was referring to is the yearslong investigations into Hunter Biden by the DOJ that have reportedly yielded “voluminous evidence,” but produced neither indictments nor dismissals by the federal agency.

  As such, it will be difficult for the DOJ to credibly prosecute Trump while exonerating Biden for similar actions, yet prosecuting both Biden and Trump would be terrible and painful for the country, the expert said. 

  On the other hand, finding both men innocent of an actual crime would deal a big blow to the DOJ and the FBI, tending to suggest that the treatment of Trump was just a political stunt by overly-partisan federal law enforcement agencies, they said.

  And each of the experts couldn’t conceive of investigations that would find Biden guilty of a crime, yet Trump innocent.

  

  Justice ‘Boxed In’

  “I think the framing of the [justice] establishment being boxed in is right,” Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, told The Epoch Times.

  “The reason that [U.S. Attorney General Merrick] Garland appointed a special prosecutor so quickly, was because it was readily apparent that given that he called for one with Trump, he had to with Biden,” added Shapiro.

  In November, Garland appointed former career Justice Department prosecutor and former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, Jack Smith, as special counsel in the investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified documents.

  Shapiro said that while the outcomes of the two cases won’t be exactly similar, he doubts it will result in a conviction for either Trump or Biden. 

  “Whatever that outcome is, it’s not going to be both of them sitting in the federal penitentiary,” said Shapiro.

  “I don’t know if Biden is going to pardon Trump and then self-pardon? We had that debate over the self-pardoning power two years ago. Is that going to be a thing again? Or is there going to be some sort of slap on the wrist for both of them and fine of several tens of thousands of dollars? I don’t know. But I do think that the cases are going to run in parallel,” he added. 

  A Lose-Lose Situation

  But even the appointment of a special prosecutor meant to quell distrust in the case of Biden raises more questions now than it does settle doubt about the fairmindedness of the DOJ, according to Paul Kamenar, chief counsel of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative watchdog group.

  “While it appears that Special Counsel Robert Hur has the necessary credentials to be appointed by Merrick Garland, NLPC is seeking documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on the vetting process that was used to ensure his impartiality,” Kamenar told The Epoch Times. 

  The FOIA request from NLPC asked the DOJ to provide a release of all documents relating to the vetting of Robert Hur prior to the announcement of his appointment including any information regarding any conflicts of interest that Hur may have had in the case.

  Under the federal Code of Regulation, NLPC requested the documents be produced in 10 days as a “matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist possible questions about the government’s integrity that affect public confidence.”

  Former congressman Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told The Epoch Times that as a former prosecutor, he thinks that the only way for people to really evaluate potential bias by either a Trump or Biden prosecutor is to look at their work product once the investigations are complete, which means waiting both lengthy investigations to finish.

  “Equal justice for all means that no matter your wealth, social status, or political power, the Department of Justice should treat every suspect and defendant the same,” said Brooks.

  “I pray the Department of Justice will do that in this matter. Evaluate the evidence and turn a blind eye to the politics,” he added.

  The waiting game for the work to be completed is likely to exact a toll on the DOJ and FBI.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 19:40

• Texas Oil And Gas Industry Braces For Severe Winter Weather
  Texas Oil And Gas Industry Braces For Severe Winter Weather

  By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

  Oil and gas operators in Texas should be prepared for severe winter weather this week, the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) said on Sunday, as snow and ice conditions are expected in parts of the biggest U.S. oil-producing state, including in parts of the Permian basin.

  

  The RRC advised all operators under its jurisdiction in areas of potential impact to heed all watches, warnings, and orders issued by local emergency officials, and secure all personnel, equipment, and facilities to prevent injury or damage. Operators were also advised to monitor and prepare operations for potential impacts, as safety permits.  

  Severe winter weather with low temperatures could lead to freeze-offs of oil- and gas-producing equipment and frozen pipeline valves and other infrastructure.

  Winter Weather Advisories and Winter Storm Watches are in effect across parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas for winter weather and hazardous travel starting Monday, the National Weather Service said on Sunday.

  The Midland chapter of the NWS said that a Winter Weather Advisory is in effect on Monday morning for the eastern Permian Basin, where a light glaze of ice is expected. On Tuesday and Wednesday, A Winter Storm Watch is in effect for the eastern Permian Basin for potential ice accumulations up to 0.25″.

  Early on Monday, freezing drizzle continued to spread across the Permian Basin, with visibility lowered in Hobbs and Midland/Odessa.

  The previous severe winter event occurred just before Christmas when Winter Storm Elliott exposed the vulnerability of the energy system as natural gas and power supplies were strained, wells froze off, and utilities vastly underestimated the power demand during the huge storm.

  Back then, Texas managed to avoid rolling blackouts, but power providers in other states implemented planned interruptions to manage the surge in power demand during the storm. While the Texas power grid managed to avoid catastrophic failures during the storm, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) underestimated the surge in power demand.  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 19:00

• Finland Suggests Quran-Burning Is Kremlin Plot To Sabotage Sweden's NATO Bid
  Finland Suggests Quran-Burning Is Kremlin Plot To Sabotage Sweden’s NATO Bid

  From Politico to Vice to various news agencies, mainstream media is busy echoing the conspiracy theories and wild speculations of some Western officials – with the latest being based on allegations by Finland’s foreign minister…

  “Finland’s foreign minister hinted that Russia may have been involved in last week’s Koran-burning protest that threatens to derail Sweden’s accession to NATO,” Bloomberg writes.

  FM Pekka Haavisto said over the weekend that the episode “raises the question of whether some third party is seeking to stir the pot — for example Russia — or some other party opposing the NATO membership and looking to provoke to achieve that. This is unforgivable.”

  

  Here’s what Politico also wrote on Saturday: “Unfortunately, various activists in Sweden, some Kremlin linked, then decided to exploit this highly fraught situation, and by aggravating Erdoğan and Turkey, they’ve now helped turn the country’s NATO accession from virtually guaranteed to one that’s now in serious jeopardy — and other countries should learn from this mess.”

  Turkey has suspended all high-level talks with Sweden related to its NATO application, and more recently suggested that Finland could be accepted alone, without its Scandinavian partner.

  President Erdogan and his top officials expressed outrage that the Quran-burning activist Rasmus Paludan, who is leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line, has had police protection during what are at this point multiple Quran-burning demonstrations over the past week-and-a-half.

  Finland has still voiced that it wants to stick by Sweden in their joint NATO bids, and hopes to receive approval to join the military alliance by July, according to Monday statements. Turkey has remained the big veto standing in the way.

  

  One key and obvious problem in presenting Paludan’s latest Quran-burnings as part of some high level Kremlin sponsored plot to derail Sweden’s NATO bid is that he’s been well-known going back years as holding highly controversial, anti-Islam demonstrations featuring Koran-burnings.

  This has actually happened in multiple northern European countries, to the point that some have imposed temporary bans on his entering their borders. In past decades, similar incidents have provoked fury and media attention in the United States as well, for example in the case of Florida pastor Terry Jones. This hugely controversial phenomenon, part of some fringe far-right movements, hardly needs ‘Russian influence’ for it to be a thing.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 18:40

• Court Rejects Johnson & Johnson Bankruptcy Strategy For 1000s Of Baby-Powder Lawsuits
  Court Rejects Johnson & Johnson Bankruptcy Strategy For 1000s Of Baby-Powder Lawsuits

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  A U.S. court on Monday rejected pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson’s bankruptcy strategy to resolve billions of dollars in lawsuits that alleged the firm’s talc products cause cancer.

  

  A decision handed down by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia dismissed a Chapter 11 petition filed by a recently created J&J subsidiary LTL Management in October to address more than 38,000 lawsuits from plaintiffs alleging the company’s baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

  Before the bankruptcy filing, J&J faced costs from $3.5 billion in verdicts and settlements, including one in which 22 women were eventually awarded a judgment of more than $2 billion, according to court records.

  “Applied here, while LTL faces substantial future talc liability, its funding backstop plainly mitigates any financial distress foreseen on its petition date,” wrote a three-judge panel on Monday.

  They noted that “good intentions” like protecting the “J&J brand or comprehensively resolve litigation … do not suffice alone,” they wrote.

  A spokesperson for the company, which manufactures Tylenol as well as a widely used COVID-19 vaccine, said J&J will appeal the decision. The spokesperson maintained that the company’s talc products are safe and don’t cause cancer.

  “As we have said from the beginning of this process, resolving this matter as quickly and efficiently as possible is in the best interests of claimants and all stakeholders,” J&J spokeswoman Allison Fennell told news outlets in response to Monday’s ruling.

  “We continue to stand behind the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder, which is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.”

  The decision throws into doubt J&J’s long-planned strategy for disposing of talc litigation after it lost a bid to reverse a watershed verdict that eventually awarded more than $2 billion to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on baby powder and other talc products.

  

  Bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby powder line a drugstore shelf in New York, on Oct. 15, 2015. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

  Attorneys for people who claim J&J’s products caused their cancers welcomed Monday’s ruling.

  “The Third Circuit’s decision is a point-by-point rejection of J&J’s attempt to pervert the bankruptcy system and trample the constitutional right to a jury trial of all Americans harmed by deadly products,” Jon Ruckdeschel, a lawyer representing victims of mesothelioma, said in a statement to the Financial Times. 

  “Bankruptcy courts are for honest companies in financial distress, not billionaire mega-corporations like J&J, 3M, and Koch Industries that seek to close courthouse doors to their victims.”

  Last September, attorneys representing some 7,000 talc personal-injury claimants wrote (pdf) that “bankruptcy court relied on unsupported speculation and improper evidence” and “used unfounded estimates.”

  A legal scholar with the University of Richmond told the paper that J&J will now have to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The only prospect left for J&J is an appeal to the Supreme Court,” Carl Tobias said, “which grants review in a minuscule percentage of appeals.”

  A jury in Missouri ordered the New Jersey-based company to pay some $4.7 billion in damages to dozens of women who asserted their cancer was caused by the company’s talc products. The company appealed to cut the payout in half, but it has still paid more than $2 billion in damages.

  More than 1,500 talc lawsuits have been dismissed without J&J having to pay anything, and the majority of cases that have gone to trial have resulted in defense verdicts, mistrials, or judgments for the company on appeal, according to the J&J subsidiary’s court filings.

  Since the lawsuits prevailed, J&J has stopped selling its talc baby powder in the United States and Canada. It will phase out sales of those products around the world in 2023.

  As of Monday’s close, J&J’s stock price was down nearly 4 percent on extremely high volume…

  

  …it’s largest drop since June 2020.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 18:20

• Japan Intercepts Armed Chinese Flotilla Near Disputed Islands
  Japan Intercepts Armed Chinese Flotilla Near Disputed Islands

  The Japanese government has lashed out at Beijing, condemning an incident wherein a flotilla of Chinese government vessels breached Japan-claimed waters around the around the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.

  Tokyo has lodged a formal diplomatic complaint after a Japanese-registered private vessel operating within Japanese-controlled waters was approached by four Chinese Coast Guard ships in the early morning hours of Monday. Tokyo says its coast guard patrols forced the Chinese ships to depart the area.

  

  The encounter was tense, based on the description given to US military news outlet Stars & Stripes, which recounted that “The first Chinese ship approached Minamikojima from the southeast and entered the 12-mile limit at 2:47 a.m., according to the coast guard spokesman. He said the vessel appeared to be armed with a deck-mounted machine-gun.”

  Three more Chinese ships followed the first armed patrol, after which “A contingent of Japan Coast Guard vessels positioned themselves between the Chinese and Japanese ships and warned the Chinese vessels to leave the area,” according to Japanese officials. “The first Chinese vessel departed the waters south of Uotsurijima at 12:35 p.m.”

  As for the Chinese side, which doesn’t recognize Japanese sovereignty over the islands or the surrounding waters, its Marine Police spokesperson Gan Yu said it responded to multiple Japanese ships “illegally” entering the waters of the the Diaoyu islands (China’s recognized name for the Senkakus).

  “We urge the Japanese side to immediately stop all illegal activities in these waters and ensure that similar incidents will not happen again,” Gan said.

  

  The Chinse incursion near the islands was the second this year, after a Jan.10 incident. The longtime dispute has helped to worse Japan-China relations, also at a moment Tokyo’s deepened military cooperation with Washington has angered Beijing.

  Starting last year the US began pledging military support to Japan in the event of a Chinese attack on the Senkakus. The Biden White House position, recently reaffirmed to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, is that the islands fall under Article V of the Japan-US Security Treaty, which is the basis for mutual defense.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 18:00

• Ron Paul: The Real Disinformation Was The "Russia Disinformation" Hoax
  Ron Paul: The Real Disinformation Was The “Russia Disinformation” Hoax

  Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  Thanks to the latest release of the “Twitter Files,” we now know without a doubt that the entire “Russia disinformation” racket was a massive disinformation campaign to undermine US elections and perhaps even push “regime change” inside the United States after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.

  

  Here is some background. In November, 2016, just after the election, the Washington Post published an article titled, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.”

  The purpose of the article was to delegitimize the Trump presidency as a product of a Russian “disinformation” campaign.

  “There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in US democracy and its leaders,” wrote Craig Timberg.

  The implication was clear: a Russian operation elected Donald Trump, not the American people.

  Among the “experts” it cited were an anonymous organization called “Prop Or Not,” which in its own words claimed to identify “more than 200 websites as peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans.”

  The organization’s report was so preposterous that the Washington Post was later forced to issue a clarification, even though the Post provided a link to the report which falsely accused independent news outlets like Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and even my Ron Paul Institute as “Russian disinformation.”

  The 2016 Washington Post article also featured “expert” Clint Watts, a former FBI counterintelligence officer who went on to found another outfit claiming to be hunting “Russian disinformation” in the US, the “Hamilton 68” project. That project was launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a very well-funded organization containing a who’s who of top neocons like William Kristol, John Podesta, Michael McFaul, and many more.

  Thanks to the latest release of the “Twitter Files,” Matt Taibbi reveals that the Hamilton 68 project, which claimed to monitor 600 “Russian disinformation” Twitter accounts, was a total hoax. While they refused to reveal which accounts they monitored and would not reveal their methodology, Twitter was able to use reverse-engineering to determine the 600-odd “Russian-connected” accounts. Twitter found that despite Hamilton’s claims, the vast majority of these “Russian” accounts were English-speaking. Of the Russian registered accounts – numbering just 36 out of 644 – most were employees of the Russian news outlet RT.

  It was all a lie and the latest Twitter Files release confirms that even the “woke” pre-Musk Twitter employees could smell a rat. But the hoax served an important purpose. Hiding behind anonymity, this neocon organization was able to generate hundreds of media stories slandering and libeling perfectly legitimate organizations and individuals as “Russian agents.”

  It provided a very convenient way to demonize anyone who did not go along with the approved neocon narrative.

  Twitter’s new owner, who has given us a look behind the curtain, put it best in a Tweet over the weekend: “An American group made false claims about Russian election interference to interfere with American elections.”

  The whole “Russia disinformation” hoax was a shocking return to the McCarthyism of the 1950s and in some ways even worse.

  Making lists of American individuals and non-profits to be targeted and “cancelled” as being in the pay of foreigners is despicable.

  Such fraudulent actions have caused real-life damages that need to be addressed.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 17:40

• Bolsonaro Seeking Tourist Visa To Extend US Stay As Criminal Cases Pile Up In Brazil
  Bolsonaro Seeking Tourist Visa To Extend US Stay As Criminal Cases Pile Up In Brazil

  Former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro has been residing near Orlando, Florida while in the US on an A-1 visa, only issued to diplomats and heads of state, ever since losing to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested presidential election last fall. Pressure regarding his legal status in the country has grown, particularly after the early January unrest in Brazil’s capital which saw his supporters storm government buildings, decrying an unfair and ‘stolen’ election. Very quickly Lula’s government branded pro-Bolsonaro protesters as “rioters” and “terrorists” – and blamed the former president himself for fueling the unrest. But now his A-1 visa status is in question, and his options for staying in the US are growing narrower by the day.

  In the US, a group of progressive Democratic lawmakers ran with the rhetoric coming out of Brazil’s new far left government, and demanded that Bolsonaro be booted from the US. With his situation perilous due to the firestorm of controversy within his home country, and now facing multiple criminal investigations, the clock is ticking given also he may now technically be residing in the US on an expired visa.

  He entered the United States on Dec.30 on the A-1 visa. But now, formally out of official government office and just a private Brazilian citizen, his 30-day A-1 visa ‘grace period’ has come to an end. The State Department’s Ned Price explained to reporters earlier this month, “If an A visa holder is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of their government, it is incumbent on that visa holder to depart the U.S. or to request a change to another immigration status within 30 days.”

  

  FT reports Monday that he’s seeking to extend his stay via a tourist visa. FT writes that he submitted application for a six-month visitor visa and that it was “received by US authorities on Friday, according to his lawyer, Felipe Alexandre, who has advised the former president not to leave the country while it is being processed — a period that could last several months.” 

  FT cites an immigration lawyer to paint a picture of a political and legal status limbo of sorts: 

  “I think Florida will be his temporary home away from home,” said Alexandre, founder of AG Immigration. “Right now, with his situation, I think he needs a little stability.” Bolsonaro is facing multiple investigations in Brazil — both for alleged wrongdoing during his four-year presidential term and to determine whether he was to blame for an insurrection in Brasília earlier this month launched by supporters who have rejected his electoral defeat.

  But a group of 41 Democratic members of Congress have sent a letter to the Biden White House demanding action against the former Brazilian president.

  “We must not allow Mr Bolsonaro or any other former Brazilian officials to take refuge in the United States to escape justice for any crimes they may have committed when in office,” the lawmakers wrote.

  The Washington Post summarizes his legal predicament back home under the Lula government, and amid an ongoing crackdown on pro-Bolsonaro officials who stand accused of fueling violent protests:  “The 16 electoral cases against him are being investigated under Brazil’s electoral court. Six criminal cases are being investigated by the Supreme Court,”

  Oh no, they got Jair Bolsonaro with the fried chicken https://t.co/HVmA20qou5 pic.twitter.com/jaJKbDVG1J

  — Andy (@andy_eastfield) January 9, 2023

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

  The Post notes that “The electoral court is led by the crusading Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has sought for years to check Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic impulses.” Interestingly, anti-Bolsonaro protests have even sprung up outside the resort community in which Bolsonaro is residing. He’s expected to lie low for at least the next couple months while his tourist visa application is being decided.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/30/2023 – 17:20