• The Countries Committing The Most Of Their GDP To Ukraine Aid
  The Countries Committing The Most Of Their GDP To Ukraine Aid

  While not directly intervening in the war in Ukraine so far, countries in Europe and the United States have been contributing to the defence of Ukraine via financial, humanitarian and military aid. In absolute terms, the largest supporter as of March 27 was the United States, with a total of €7.6 billion made up of €3.2 billion in humanitarian aid and €4.4 billion in military aid.

  But as Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, using Kiel Institute for the World Economy data, when it comes to a country’s commitment in relative terms, no country came close to Estonia in the first four weeks of the war – its contribution of €0.22 billion in military aid equates to 0.8 percent of the country’s GDP.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The United States’ financial input up to this point was equivalent to 0.04 percent of its economic output.

  Worth noting is that the indirect aid sent by countries such as Germany, France and Italy via the EU is not taken into account for these individual assessments. The source states that EU institutions have contributed €1.4 billion and a further €2 billion is attributed to the European Investment Bank.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/02/2022 – 02:45

• Decentralized And Neutral
  Decentralized And Neutral

  Authored by Hans-Hermann Hoppe via The Mises Institute,

  States, regardless of their constitution, are not economic enterprises. In contrast to the latter, states do not finance themselves by selling products and services to customers who voluntarily pay, but by compulsory levies: taxes collected through the threat and use of violence (and through the paper money they literally create out of thin air). Significantly, economists have therefore referred to governments—i.e., the holders of state power—as stationary bandits.

  Governments and everyone on their payroll live off the loot stolen from other people. They lead a parasitic existence at the expense of a subdued and “host” populace.

  

  A number of further insights emerge from this.

  Naturally, stationary bandits prefer larger loot to smaller loot. This means that states will always try to increase their tax revenue and further increase their spending by issuing more paper money. The larger the loot, the more favors they can do for themselves, their employees, and their supporters. But there are natural limits to this activity.

  On the one hand, the bandits have to be careful not to burden their “host,” whose work and performance make their parasitic existence possible, so much that the latter stops working. On the other hand, they have to fear that their “hosts”—and especially the most productive among them—will migrate from their dominion (territory) and settle elsewhere.

  Against this background, a number of historical tendencies and processes become understandable.

  • First of all, it becomes understandable why there is a tendency towards territorial expansion and political centralization: with this, states succeed in bringing more and more “hosts” under their control and making it more difficult for them to emigrate to foreign territories. This is expected to result in a larger amount of loot. And it becomes clear why the end point of this process, the establishment of a world state, would by no means be a blessing for all mankind, as is often claimed. Because one cannot emigrate from a world state, and in this respect there is no possibility of escaping state looting by emigration. It is therefore to be expected that with the establishment of a world state, the scope and extent of state exploitation—indicated, among other things, by the level of state income and expenditure, by monetary inflation, the number and volume of so-called public goods and persons employed in the “public service”—will continue to increase beyond any previously known level. And that is certainly not a blessing for the “host population” that has to fund this state superstructure!

  • Secondly, a central reason for the rise of the “West” to become the world’s leading economic, scientific, and cultural region becomes understandable. In contrast to China in particular, Europe was characterized by a high degree of political decentralization, with hundreds or even thousands of independent dominions from the early Middle Ages up until the recent past. Some historians have described this state of affairs as “orderly political anarchy.” And it is now common among economic historians to see in this quasi-anarchic state a key reason for the so-called European miracle. Because in an environment with a large variety of independent, small-scale territories in the immediate vicinity of each other, it is comparatively easy for the subjects to vote with their feet and escape the robberies of state rulers by emigration. To avert this danger and to keep local producers in line, these rulers are constantly under great pressure to moderate their exploitation. And this moderation, in turn, promotes economic entrepreneurship, scientific curiosity, and cultural creativity.

  • Finally, in the light of the above considerations, a well-founded historical classification and assessment of the European Union (EU) is possible.

  The EU is a prime example of the aforementioned tendency towards territorial expansion and political centralization, with the resulting consequences: an increase in exploitative state measures and a corresponding growth in the parasitic state superstructure (keyword: Brussels).

  More concretely: the EU and the European Central Bank (ECB) are the first step towards the establishment of a European superstate, which should eventually merge into a one-world government dominated by the USA and its central bank, the Federal Reserve. Contrary to euphonious political pronouncements, the EU and the ECB have never been about free international trade and competition. You don’t need thousands and thousands of pages of paper for this, full of ordinances and regulations! Rather, it was always and above all a matter of harmonization of the tax, legal, and regulatory provisions of all member states in order to reduce or eliminate all economic location competition in this way. Because if the tax rates and state regulations are the same everywhere or are increasingly being aligned, then there are fewer and fewer economic reasons for productive people to relocate their activities to another location, and the stationary bandits can be all the more undisturbed and therefore continue in their activity of taking and distributing booty.

  In addition, the current EU, as a cartel of various governments, only holds together as long as the wealthier bandits, who can draw on a more productive “host population,” above all the German governments, are willing and able to support their needier counterparts in the south and east, with their less productive “hosts,” on a permanent and large scale. And all at the expense of local producers!

  In sum, the EU and the ECB are moral and economic monstrosities. You cannot consistently penalize productivity and economic success while rewarding parasitism, waste, and economic failure without causing disaster. The EU will tumble from one economic crisis to the next and eventually disintegrate.

  In view of this, it seems urgent to gain a clear idea of ​​possible alternatives to the current course of increasing political centralization. And the memory of the aforementioned “European miracle” should point the way to proceed. Radical decentralization is required for Europe to thrive. Instead of the EU and the ECB, what is needed is a Europe made up of thousands of Liechtensteins and Swiss cantons, linked by free trade and an international gold standard and competing to keep and attract productive people with attractive locational conditions.

  However, in order to make this situation not only conceivable, but feasible, it is necessary that states and politicians are no longer regarded as what they claim to be, but as what they actually are: stationary bandits, gangsters and crooks. Until recently, this insight was unthinkable for the overwhelming majority of the population. But the coronavirus regime over the last two years, with its arbitrary and absurd bans on going out, contact, and assembly, and its constantly changing test, certificate, and vaccination regulations, including compulsory vaccinations, has meanwhile caused a great many politicians to be regarded as heavily armed and unscrupulous violent criminals.

  *  *  *

  PS: Do the current military events in Ukraine require a revision or correction of the above analyses? 

  On the contrary.

  First of all, it is not the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Germans, or the Americans who cause wars, but the bandit gangs that rule Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and America and who can pass on the costs of a war to the civilian population in question.

  Then, small states or bandit gangs only wage small wars against small opponents. Large states, on the other hand, which emerged from successful earlier small wars, are generally more warlike and wage not only small but also larger wars against large opponents. And the largest and most powerful of all states, the USA, and its vassal states assembled in NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), is the most keen on war and expansion. That alone is a reason for small states and decentralization.

  Finally, when a smaller state is faced with the expansionist drive and threat of a larger one, it basically has two options: It can submit. Or it can try to maintain its independence. And in order to achieve this goal and avoid war or minimize the risk of war, there is only one promising recipe: neutrality. One does not interfere in the internal affairs of the great power, and one does not threaten or provoke it. Even a great power cannot simply invade another country. For this always requires justification to its own population, which has to bear the burden of a war. And the smaller a state, the more difficult it is to portray its behavior as a threat or a provocation. (Who feels threatened by Liechtenstein?!) And this imperative of neutrality applies all the more when, as in the case of Ukraine, you are faced with two major powers with rival claims at the same time and taking the side of one means an additional threat for the other. The current war is the result of multiple violations of this rule by the government of Ukraine. If the government that came to power in a US-orchestrated coup in 2014 had expressly refrained from joining NATO and the EU, like Switzerland did, and the two then breakaway Russian-speaking provinces in the east of the country would have been let go instead of bullied and terrorized, the potential threat to Russia would have been reduced and the present catastrophe would almost certainly not have occurred. Under sustained US pressure, combined with their own audacity, the Ukrainian ruling clique did nothing of the sort and continued to demand NATO membership. This would have extended the US military presence right up to the borders of greater Russia, which had been declared an enemy state. Therefore, no one could doubt that the behavior of the Ukrainian government would be perceived by the Russian side as a tremendous provocation and a serious threat. The actual result of this provocation, which is now available, was not foreseeable, but it was quite foreseeable that one’s own behavior would also make a Russian reaction like the one that actually took place more likely. In the war in Ukraine, as so often in history, Putin does not have just one father, but several. The completely one-sided anti-Russia hysteria and agitation that is currently widespread in the West is therefore not only factually incorrect, but is primarily intended to distract from the West’s own role in the current drama. And it is meant to make us forget that the United States and its NATO vassals have been responsible for far more war casualties and war damage over the past thirty years than Russia has since the collapse of the Soviet Union and currently in Ukraine.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/02/2022 – 02:00

• Gordon Chang: What To Do About China
  Gordon Chang: What To Do About China

  Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

  • Since about 2018, Chinese officials have been talking about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory, part of the People’s Republic of China. This means that China considers those heavenly bodies to be like the South China Sea. This also means that China will exclude other nations from going to the moon and Mars if they have the capability to do so. We do not have to speculate about that: Chinese officials say this is what they are going to do.

  • [W]hen Biden says, “Oh, the Chinese just want to compete with us,” he is wrong. They do not want to “compete” within the international system. They do not even want to change that system… They want to overthrow it altogether, period.

  • Is Xi Jinping really that bold… to start another war? … First, China considers the United States to be its enemy. Second the United States is no longer deterring China. China feels it has a big green light to do whatever it wants.

  • We Americans don’t pay attention to propaganda… After all, these are just words. At this particular time, these words… [suggest] to me that China is laying the justification for a strike on the United States. We keep ignoring what Beijing is saying. We kept ignoring what Osama bin Laden was saying.

  • We have to remember that the Chinese regime, unlike the Japanese, always warn its adversaries about what it is going to do

  • The second reason war is coming is that America’s deterrence of China is breaking down.

  • Di’s message was that with cash, China can do anything it wants, and that all Americans would take cash. He mentioned two words in this regard: Hunter Biden.

  • In February, [Biden] had a two‑hour phone call with Xi Jinping. By Biden’s own admission, he didn’t raise the issue of the origins of COVID‑19 even once. If you are Xi Jinping, after you put down the receiver, your first thought is, “I just got away with killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

  • We have news that China is building something like 345 missile silos in three locations: in Gansu, Xinjiang, and in Inner Mongolia. These silos are clearly built to accommodate the DF‑41. The DF‑41 has a range of about 9,300 miles, which means that it can reach any part of the United States. The DF‑41 carries 10 warheads. This means that China could, in about two years…, have a bigger arsenal than ours. …we have to assume the worst because Chinese leaders and Chinese generals, on occasion, unprovoked, have made threats to nuke American cities.

  • In July, 2021 China tested a hypersonic glide warhead, which circled the world. This signals China intends to violate the Outer Space Treaty, to which China is a party.

  • As of today, more than eight million people have died outside China. What happened? No one imposed costs on China.

  • For at least a half‑decade, maybe a little bit longer, Chinese military researchers have been openly writing about a new type of biological warfare….They talk about a new type of biological warfare of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” In other words, pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune but sicken and kill everybody else, which means that the next disease from China can be a civilization killer.

  • A lot of military analysts talk about how the first seconds of a war with China are going to be fought in outer space. They are going to blind our satellites, take them down, do all sorts of stuff. Those statements are wrong. The first day of war against the United States occurs about six months earlier, when they release pathogens in the United States. Then we are going to have that day in space. The war starts here, with a pathogen ‑‑ a virus, a microbe, a bug of some kind. That is where it begins.

  • The One‑China policy is something many people misunderstand. Probably because Beijing uses propaganda to try to fuzzy up the issue…. China has a One‑China principle: that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China, full stop. We have a One‑China policy…, that the status of Taiwan is unresolved…. that the resolution of the status of Taiwan must be with the consent of people on both sides of the Strait.

  • We need a policy of “strategic clarity,” where we tell China that we will defend Taiwan. We also say we will extend a mutual defense treaty to Taiwan if it wants it, and we will put American troops on the island as a tripwire.

  • We are Americans. We naturally assume that there are solutions, and good solutions, to every problem. After three decades of truly misguided China policy, there are no … solutions that are “undangerous.” …The current trend of policy is unsustainable. There will be no American republic if we continue to do what we are currently doing and if we continue to allow China to do what it does. I do not think that enforcing a trade deal will start World War III.

  • China has not met its obligations. As of a few months ago, China had met about 62% of its commitments….. We should be increasing the tariffs that President Trump imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Remember, those tariffs are meant to be a remedy for the theft of US intellectual property. China has continued to steal US IP. As matter of fact, it has gotten worse…

  • I do not think that we should be trying to foster integration of Wall Street into China’s markets…. Do not take it from me, just look at their failure to comply with very simple, easy‑to‑comply-with requirements. It was a mistake.

  • The best response would be if we hit them with everything at once because China right now is weak. If we were going to pick the number one thing to do, I would think trade.

  • China now has a debt crisis, so they are not going to invest their way out of this crisis, which means the only way they can save their economy is net exports. We should stop buying their stuff.

  • China has bought the political establishment in the Solomon Islands, except for one brave man named David Suidani. Recently, somebody got the bright idea of publishing all of the specific payments that Beijing has made to Solomon Islands politicians…. We should be doing this with payments to American politicians, we should be doing this across the board.

  • What bothers me is that, although their assumptions about China have demonstrably been proven wrong, American policymakers still continue with the same policies. There is, in some people’s mind, an unbreakable view that we have to cooperate with China…. This is what people learn in international relations school when they go to Georgetown, and they become totally stupid.

  • Clearly, Nike and Apple and other companies are now, at this very moment, trying to prevent Congress from enacting toughened rules on the importation of forced‑labor products into our country.

  • Moreover, the Chinese regime is even more casualty‑averse than we are. Even if Beijing thinks it can take Taiwan by force, it is probably not going to invade because it knows an invasion would be unpopular with most people in China. It is not going to risk hundreds of thousands of casualties that would result from an invasion.

  • Unfortunately…, we taught the Chinese that they can without cost engage in these dangerous maneuvers of intercepting our planes and our ships. That is the problem: because as we have taught the Chinese to be more aggressive, they have been.

  • [W]e should have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that they cannot kill Americans without cost. Hundreds of thousands Americans have been killed by a disease that China deliberately spread. From October 2020 to October 2021, more than 105,000 Americans died from fentanyl — which China has purposefully, as a matter of state and Communist Party policy — sold to Americans… we have to change course.

  • I would close China’s four remaining consulates. I would also strip the Chinese embassy down to the ambassador and his personal staff. The thousands who are in Washington, DC, they would be out.

  • I would also raise tariffs to 3,600%, or whatever. This is a good time to do it. We have supply chain disruptions. We are not getting products from China anyway. We can actually start to do this sort of stuff.

  • I would… just hammer those guys all the time verbally. People may think, “Those are just words.” For communists, words are really important, because they are an insecure regime where propaganda is absolutely critical.

  • I would be going after the Communists on human rights, I would be going after them on occupying the South China Sea, on Taiwan, unrelentingly — because I would want to show the world that the United States is no longer afraid of China…. State Department people, they are frightened. We need to say to the Chinese regime, like Dulles, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m going after you, and I’m going to win.”

  Is Xi Jinping really that bold… to start another war?…

  • First, China considers the United States to be its enemy.

  • Second the United States is no longer deterring China.

  China feels it has a big green light to do whatever it wants.

  

  All the conditions for history’s next great war are in place. Jim Holmes, the Wiley Professor at the Naval War College, actually talks about this period as being 1937.

  1937 was the year in which if you were in Europe or America, you could sense the trouble. If you were in Asia in 1937, you would be even more worried, because that year saw Japan’s second invasion of China that decade.

  No matter where you lived, however, you could not be sure that the worst would happen, that great armies and navies around the world would clash. There was still hope that the situation could be managed. As we now know, the worst did happen. In fact, what happened was worse than what anyone thought at the time.

  We are now, thanks to China, back to 1937.

  We will begin our discussion in Afghanistan. Beijing has had long‑standing relations with the Afghan Taliban, going back before 9/11, and continuing through that event.

  After the US drove the Taliban from power and while it was conducting an insurgency, China was selling the group arms, including anti‑aircraft missiles, that were used to kill American and NATO forces.

  China’s support for killing Americans has continued to today. In December 2020, Indian Intelligence was instrumental, in Afghanistan, in breaking up a ring of Chinese spies and members of the Haqqani Network. The Trump administration believed that the Chinese portion of that ring was actually paying cash for killing Americans.

  What can happen next? We should not be surprised if China gives the Taliban an atomic weapon to be used against an American city. Would they be that vicious?

  We have to remember that China purposefully, over the course of decades, proliferated its nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and then helped Pakistan sell that Chinese technology around the world to regimes such as Iran’s and North Korea’s.

  Today, China supports the Taliban. We know this because China has kept open its embassy in Kabul. China is also running interference for the Taliban in the United Nations Security Council. It is urging countries to support that insurgent group with aid. It looks as if the Taliban’s main financial backers these days are the Chinese.

  Beijing is hoping to cash in on its relationship in Central Asia. Unfortunately, there is a man named Biden, who is helping them.

  In early August, Biden issued an executive order setting a goal that by 2030, half of all American vehicles should be electric‑powered. To be electric‑powered, we need rare earth minerals, we need lithium. As many people have said, Afghanistan is the Saudi Arabia of rare earths and lithium.

  If Beijing can mine this, it makes the United States even more dependent on China. It certainly helps the Taliban immeasurably.

  Unfortunately, Beijing has more than just Afghanistan in mind. The Chinese want to take away our sovereignty, and that of other nations, and rule the world. They actually even want to rule the near parts of the solar system. Yes, that does sound far‑fetched, but, no, I’m not exaggerating. Chinese President Xi Jinping would like to end the current international system.

  On July 1, in a landmark speech, in connection with the centennial of China’s ruling organization, he said this: “The Communist Party of China and the Chinese people, with their bravery and tenacity, solemnly proclaim to the world that the Chinese people are not only good at taking down the old world, but also good in building a new one.”

  By that, China’s leader means ending the international system, the Westphalian international system. It means he wants to impose China’s imperial‑era notions of governance, where Chinese emperors believed they not only had the Mandate of Heaven over tianxia, or all under Heaven, but that Heaven actually compelled the Chinese to rule the entire world.

  Xi Jinping has been using tianxia themes for decades, and so have his subordinates, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who in September 2017 wrote an article in Study Times, the Central Party School’s influential newspaper.

  In that article, Wang Yi wrote that Xi Jinping’s thought on diplomacy ‑‑ a “thought” in Communist Party lingo is an important body of ideological work ‑‑ Wang Yi wrote that Xi Jinping’s thought on diplomacy made innovations on and transcended the traditional theories of Western international relations of the past 300 years.

  Take 2017, subtract 300 years, and you almost get to 1648, which means that Wang Yi, with his time reference, was pointing to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which established the current system of sovereign states.

  When Wang Yi writes that Xi Jinping wants to transcend that system, he is really telling us that China’s leader does not want sovereign states, or at least no more of them than China. This means that when Biden says, “Oh, the Chinese just want to compete with us,” he is wrong. They do not want to “compete” within the international system. They do not even want to change that system so it is more to their liking. They want to overthrow it altogether, period.

  China is also revolutionary with regard to the solar system. Since about 2018, Chinese officials have been talking about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory. In other words, as part of the People’s Republic of China. This means that China considers those heavenly bodies to be like the South China Sea: theirs and theirs alone.

  This also means that China will exclude other nations from going to the moon and Mars if they have the capability to do so. We do not have to speculate about that: Chinese officials say this is what they are going to do.

  Let us return to April 2021. Beijing announced the name of its Mars rover. “We are naming the Mars rover Zhurong,” the Chinese said, “because Zhurong was the god of fire in Chinese mythology, ” How nice. Yes, Zhurong is the god of fire. What Beijing did not tell us is that Zhurong is also the god of war—and the god of the South China Sea.

  Is Xi Jinping really that bold or that desperate to start another war? Two points. First, China considers the United States to be its enemy. The second point is that the United States is no longer deterring China. China feels it has a big green light to do whatever it wants.

  On the first point, about our enemy status, we have to go back to May 2019. People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, actually carried a piece that declared a “people’s war” on the US. This was not just some isolated thought.

  On August 29th 2021, People’s Daily came out with a landmark piece that accused the United States of committing “barbaric” acts against China. Again, this was during a month of hostile propaganda blasts from China.

  On the August 29th, Global Times, which is controlled by People’s Daily, came right out and also said that the United States was an enemy or like an enemy.

  We Americans don’t pay attention to propaganda. The question is, should we be concerned about what China is saying? After all, these are just words.

  At this particular time, these words are significant. The strident anti‑Americanism suggests to me that China is laying the justification for a strike on the United States. We keep ignoring what Beijing is saying. We kept ignoring what Osama bin Laden was saying.

  We have to remember that the Chinese regime, unlike the Japanese, always warn its adversaries about what it is going to do. Jim Lilley, our great ambassador to Beijing during the Tiananmen Massacre, actually said that China always telegraphs its punches. At this moment, China is telegraphing a punch.

  That hostility, unfortunately, is not something we can do very much about. The Chinese Communist regime inherently idealizes struggle, and it demands that others show subservience to it.

  The second reason war is coming is that America’s deterrence of China is breaking down. That is evident from what the Chinese are saying.

  In March of 2021, China sent its top two diplomats, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, to Anchorage to meet our top officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Yang, in chilling words, said the US could no longer talk to China “from a position of strength.”

  We saw the same theme during the fall of Kabul. China then was saying, “Look, those Americans, they can’t deal with the insurgent Taliban. How can they hope to counter us magnificent Chinese?” Global Times actually came out with a piece referring to Americans: “They can’t win wars anymore.”

  We also saw propaganda at that same time directed at Taiwan. Global Times was saying, again, in an editorial, an important signal of official Chinese thinking, “When we decide to invade, Taiwan will fall within hours and the US will not come to help.”

  It is probably no coincidence that this propaganda came at the time of incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone.

  We need to be concerned with more than just the intensity and with the frequency of these flights, however. We have to be concerned that China was sending H‑6K bombers; they are nuclear‑capable.

  Something is wrong. Global Times recently came out with an editorial with the title, “Time to warn Taiwan secessionists and their fomenters: war is real.”

  Beijing is at this moment saying things heard before history’s great conflicts. The Chinese regime right now seems to be feeling incredibly arrogant. We heard this on November 28th in 2020, when Di Dongsheng, an academic in Beijing, gave a lecture live-streamed to China.

  Di showed the arrogance of the Chinese elite. More importantly, he was showing that the Chinese elite no longer wanted to hide how they felt. Di, for instance, openly stated that China could determine outcomes at the highest levels of the American political system.

  Di’s message was that with cash, China can do anything it wants, and that all Americans would take cash. He mentioned two words in this regard: Hunter Biden.

  Unfortunately, President Joe Biden is reinforcing this notion. China, for instance, has so far killed nearly one million Americans with a disease that it deliberately spread beyond its borders. Yet, what happened? Nothing.

  We know that China was able to spread this disease with its close relationship with the World Health Organization. President Trump, in July of 2020, took us out of the WHO. What did Biden do? In his first hours in office, on January 20th, 2021, he put us back into the WHO.

  In February, he had a two‑hour phone call with Xi Jinping. By Biden’s own admission, he didn’t raise the issue of the origins of COVID‑19 even once. If you are Xi Jinping, after you put down the receiver, your first thought is, “I just got away with killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

  Then there’s somebody named John Kerry. Our republic is not safe when John Kerry carries a diplomatic passport, as he now does. He is willing to make almost any deal to get China to sign an enhanced climate arrangement.

  Kerry gave a revealing interview to David Westin of Bloomberg on September 22, 2021. Westin asked him, “What is the process by which one trades off climate against human rights?” Climate against human rights?

  Kerry came back and said, “Well, life is always full of tough choices in the relationship between nations.” Tough choices? We Americans need to ask, “What is Kerry willing to give up to get his climate deal?”

  Democracies tend to deal with each other in the way that Kerry says. If we are nice to a democracy, that will lead to warm relations; warm relations will lead to deals, long‑standing ties. Kerry thinks that the Chinese communists think that way. Unfortunately, they do not.

  We know this because Kerry’s successor as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in February 2009, said in public, “I’m not going to press the Chinese on human rights because I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” She then went to Beijing a day after saying that and got no cooperation from the Chinese.

  Even worse, just weeks after that, China felt so bold that it attacked an unarmed US Navy reconnaissance vessel in the South China Sea. The attack was so serious that it constituted an act of war. The Chinese simply do not think the way that Kerry believes they do.

  All of this, when you put it together, means that the risk of war is much higher than we tend to think. Conflict with today’s aggressor is going to be more destructive than it was in the 1930s. We have news that China is building something like 345 missile silos in three locations: in Gansu, Xinjiang, and in Inner Mongolia.

  These silos are clearly built to accommodate the DF‑41. The DF‑41 has a range of about 9,300 miles, which means that it can reach any part of the United States. The DF‑41 carries 10 warheads. This means that China could, in about two years, as some experts think, have a bigger arsenal than ours.

  China has built decoy silos before. We are not sure they are going to put all 345 missiles into these facilities, but we have to assume the worst because Chinese leaders and Chinese generals, on occasion, unprovoked, have made threats to nuke American cities.

  This, of course, calls into question their official no‑first‑use policy, and also a lot of other things. China will not talk to us about arms control. We have to be concerned that China and Russia, which already are coordinating their military activities, would gang up against us with their arsenals.

  In July, 2021 China tested a hypersonic glide warhead, which circled the world. This signals China intends to violate the Outer Space Treaty, to which China is a party. It also shows that in hypersonic technology, which was developed by Americans, China is now at least a decade ahead of us in fielding a weapon.

  Why is China doing all this now? The country is coming apart at the seams. There is, for instance, a debt crisis. Evergrande and other property developers have started to default. It is more than just a crisis of companies. China is basically now having its 2008.

  Even more important than that, they have an economy that is stumbling and a food crisis that is worsening year to year. They know their environment is exhausted. Of course, they also are suffering from a continuing COVID‑19 epidemic.

  To make matters worse, all of this is occurring while China is on the edge of the steepest demographic decline in history in the absence of war or disease.

  Two Chinese demographers recently stated that China’s population will probably halve in 45 years. If you run out those projections, it means that by the end of the century, China will be about a third of its current size, basically about the same number of people as the United States.

  These developments are roiling the political system. Xi Jinping is being blamed for these debacles. We know he has a low threshold of risk. Xi now has all the incentive in the world to deflect popular and regime discontent by lashing out.

  In 1966, Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic, was sidelined in Beijing. What did he do? He started the Cultural Revolution. He tried to use the Chinese people against his political enemies. That created a decade of chaos.

  Xi Jinping is trying to do the same thing with his “common prosperity” program. The difference is that Mao did not have the means to plunge the world into war. Xi, with his shiny new military, clearly does have that ability.

  So here is a 1930s scenario to consider. The next time China starts a conflict, whether accidentally or on purpose, we could see that China’s friends — Russia, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan — either in coordination with China or just taking advantage of the situation, move against their enemies.

  That would be Ukraine in the case of Russia, South Korea in the case of North Korea, Israel in the case of Iran, India in the case of Pakistan, and Morocco in the case of Algeria. We could see crises at both ends of the European landmass and in Africa at the same time.

  This is how world wars start.

  *  *  *

  Question: Why do you believe China attacked the world with coronavirus?

  Chang: I believe that SARS‑CoV‑2, the pathogen that causes COVID‑19, is not natural. There are, for example, unnatural arrangements of amino acids, like the double‑CGG sequence, that do not occur in nature.

  We do not have a hundred percent assurance on where this pathogen came from. We do, however, have a hundred percent assurance on something else: that for about five weeks, maybe even five months, Chinese leaders knew that this disease was highly transmissible, from one human to the next, but they told the world that it was not.

  At the same time as they were locking down their own country ‑‑ Xi Jinping by locking down was indicating that he thought this was an effective way of stopping the disease — he was pressuring other countries not to impose travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China. It was those arrivals from China that turned what should have been an epidemic confined to the central part of China, into a global pandemic. As of today, more than eight million people have died outside China. What happened? No one imposed costs on China.

  For at least a half‑decade, maybe a little bit longer, Chinese military researchers have been openly writing about a new type of biological warfare. This was, for instance, in the 2017 edition of “The Science of Military Strategy,” the authoritative publication of China’s National Defense University.

  They talk about a new type of biological warfare of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” In other words, pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune but sicken and kill everybody else, which means that the next disease from China can be a civilization killer.

  Remember, Xi Jinping must be thinking, “I just got away with killing eight million people. Why wouldn’t I unleash a biological attack on the United States? Look what the virus has done not only to kill Americans but also to divide American society.”

  A lot of military analysts talk about how the first seconds of a war with China are going to be fought in outer space. They are going to blind our satellites, take them down, do all sorts of stuff. Those statements are wrong.

  The first day of war against the United States occurs about six months earlier, when they release pathogens in the United States. Then we are going to have that day in space. The war starts here, with a pathogen ‑‑ a virus, a microbe, a bug of some kind. That is where it begins.

  Question: You mentioned 1939. Taiwan is the Poland of today. We get mixed signals: Biden invites the Taiwanese foreign minister to his inauguration, but then we hear Ned Price, his State Department spokesman, say that America will always respect the One‑China policy. Meaning, we’re sidelining defending Taiwan?

  Chang: The One‑China policy is something many people misunderstand. Probably because Beijing uses propaganda to try to fuzzy up the issue. China has a One‑China principle: that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China, full stop.

  We have a One‑China policy, which is different. We recognize Beijing as the legitimate government of China. We also say that the status of Taiwan is unresolved. Then, the third part of our One‑China policy is that the resolution of the status of Taiwan must be with the consent of people on both sides of the Strait. In other words, that is code for peace, a peaceful resolution.

  Our policies are defined by the One‑China policy, the Three Communiques, Reagan’s Six Assurances, and the Taiwan Relations Act.

  Our policy is difficult for someone named Joe Biden to articulate, because he came back from a campaign trip to Michigan, and he was asked by a reporter about Taiwan, and Biden said, “Don’t worry about this. We got it covered. I had a phone call with Xi Jinping and he agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement.”

  In official US discourse, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan agreement.” Some reporter then asked Ned Price what did Biden mean by the Taiwan agreement. Ned Price said, “The Taiwan agreement means the Three Communiques the Six Assurances, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the One‑China policy.”

  Ned Price could not have been telling the truth because Xi Jinping did not agree to America’s position on Taiwan. That is clear. There is complete fuzziness or outright lying in the Biden administration about this.

  Biden’s policies on Taiwan are not horrible, but they are also not appropriate for this time. decades, we have had this policy of “strategic ambiguity,” where we do not tell either side what we would do in the face of imminent conflict. That worked in a benign period. We are no longer in a benign period. We are in one of the most dangerous periods in history.

  We need a policy of “strategic clarity,” where we tell China that we will defend Taiwan. We also say we will extend a mutual defense treaty to Taiwan if it wants it, and we will put American troops on the island as a tripwire.

  Question: You think he is not saying that because he has no intention of actually doing it, so in a way, he is telling the truth?

  Chang: The mind of Biden is difficult to understand. We do not know what the administration would do. We have never known, after Allen Dulles, what any administration would do, with regard to Taiwan. We knew what Dulles would have done. We have got to be really concerned because there are voices in the administration that would give Taiwan, and give other parts of the world, to China. It would probably start with John Kerry; that is only a guess.

  Question: You mentioned earlier the growing Chinese economic problems. Would you use taking action on the enormous trade deficits we run with China to contribute to that problem?

  Chang: Yes, we should absolutely do that. Go back to a day which, in my mind, lives in infamy, which is January 15th, 2020, when President Trump signed the Phase One trade deal, which I think was a mistake. In that Phase One trade deal, it was very easy for China to comply, because there were specific targets that China had to meet in buying US goods and services. This was “managed trade.”

  China has not met its obligations. As of a few months ago, China had met about 62% of its commitments. That means, they have dishonored this deal in a material and significant way. If nothing else, China has failed to meet its Phase One trade deal commitments.

  We should be increasing the tariffs that President Trump imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Remember, those tariffs are meant to be a remedy for the theft of US intellectual property. China has continued to steal US IP. As matter of fact, it has gotten worse: for instance, these Chinese anti‑lawsuit injunctions, which they have started to institute.

  We need to do something: China steals somewhere between $300 to $600 billion worth of US intellectual property each year. That is a grievous wound on the US economy, it is a grievous wound on our society in general. We need to do something about it.

  Question: As a follow‑up on that, Japan commenced World War II because of the tariffs Roosevelt was strapping on oil imports into Japan, do you think that might well have the same effect on China, where we do begin to impose stiffer tariffs on American imports?

  Chang: That is a really important question, to which nobody has an answer. I do not think that China would start a war over tariffs. Let me answer this question in a different way. We are Americans. We naturally assume that there are solutions, and good solutions, to every problem. After three decades of truly misguided China policy, there are no good solutions. There are no solutions that are “undangerous.”

  Every solution, going forward, carries great risk. The current trend of policy is unsustainable. There will be no American republic if we continue to do what we are currently doing and if we continue to allow China to do what it does.

  I do not think that enforcing a trade deal will start World War III. The point is, we have no choice right now. First, I don’t think the Chinese were ever going to honor the Phase One agreement . This was not a deal where there were some fuzzy requirements. This deal was very clear: China buys these amounts of agricultural products by such and such date, China buys so many manufactured products by such and such date. This was not rocket science. China purposefully decided not to honor it.

  There are also other issues regarding the trade deal do not think that we should be trying to foster integration of Wall Street into China’s markets, which is what the Phase One deal also contemplated. Goldman Sachs ran away like a bandit on that. There are lot of objections to it. I do not think we should be trading with China, for a lot of reasons. The Phase One trade deal, in my mind, was a great mistake. Do not take it from me, just look at their failure to comply with very simple, easy‑to‑comply-with requirements. It was a mistake.

  Question: Concerning cybersecurity, as we saw in the recent departure of a Pentagon official, ringing the alarm on how we are completely vulnerable to China’s cyberattacks. From your perspective, what would an attack look like on China that would hurt them? What particular institutions would be the most vulnerable? Is it exposing their secrets? Is it something on their financial system? Is it something on their medical system or critical infrastructure? What does the best way look like to damage them?

  Also, regarding what you mentioned about Afghanistan, we know that China has been making inroads into Pakistan as a check on American hegemony in relationships with India and Afghanistan.

  Now that the Afghanistan domino is down, what do you see in the future for Pakistan’s nuclear capability, in conjunction with Chinese backing, to move ever further westward towards Afghanistan, and endangering Middle East security?

  Chang: Right now, India has been disheartened by what happened, because India was one of the main backers of the Afghan government. What we did in New Delhi was delegitimize our friends, so that now the pro‑Russian, the pro‑Chinese elements in the Indian national security establishment are basically setting the tone. This is terrible.

  What has happened, though, in Pakistan itself, is not an unmitigated disaster for us, because China has suffered blowback there. There is an Afghan Taliban, and there is a Pakistani Taliban. They have diametrically‑opposed policies on China. The Afghan Taliban is an ally of China; the Pakistani Taliban kill Chinese.

  They do that because they want to destabilize Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Beijing supports Islamabad. The calculation on part of the Pakistani Taliban is, “We kill Chinese, we destabilize Islamabad, we then get to set up the caliphate in Pakistan.” What has happened is, with this incredible success of the Afghan Taliban, that the Pakistani Taliban has been re‑energized — not good news for China.

  China has something called the China‑Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of their Belt and Road Initiative. Ultimately that is going to be something like $62 billion of investment into Pakistani roads, airports, electric power plants, utilities, all the rest of it.

  I am very happy that China is in Pakistan, because they are now dealing with a situation that they have no solutions to. It’s like Winston Churchill on Italy, “It’s now your turn.”

  We should never have had good relations with Pakistan. That was always a short‑term compromise that, even in the short term, undermined American interests. The point is that China is now having troubles in Pakistan because of their success in Afghanistan.

  Pakistan is important to China for a number of reasons. One of them is, they want it as an outlet to the Indian Ocean that bypasses the Malacca Strait — a choke point that the US Navy ‑‑ in their view ‑‑ could easily close off, which is correct.

  They want to bypass that, but their port in Gwadar is a failure in many respects. Gwadar is in Pakistan’s Baluchistan. The Baluchs are one of the most oppressed minorities on earth. They have now taken to violence against the Chinese, and they have been effective. Pakistan is a failure for China.

  The best response would be if we hit them with everything at once because China right now is weak. If we were going to pick the number one thing to do, I would think trade.

  Trade is really what they need right now. Their economy is stalling. There are three parts to the Chinese economy, as there are to all economies: consumption, investment, and net exports. Their consumption right now is extremely weak from indicators that we have. The question is can they invest?

  China now has a debt crisis, so they are not going to invest their way out of this crisis, which means the only way they can save their economy is net exports. We should stop buying their stuff.

  We have extraordinary supply chain disruptions right now. It should be pretty easy for us to make the case that we must become self‑sufficient on a number of items. Hit them on trade. Hit them on investment, publicize the bank account details of Chinese leaders. All these things that we do, we do it all at the same time. We can maybe get rid of these guys.

  Question: In the Solomon Islands, they published China’s under-the-table payments to political figures. Should we do the same thing with China’s leaders?

  Chang: Yes. There is now a contest for the Solomon Islands, which includes Guadalcanal. China has bought the political establishment in the Solomon Islands, except for one brave man named David Suidani. Recently, somebody got the bright idea of publishing all of the specific payments that Beijing has made to Solomon Islands politicians. This was really good news. We should be doing this with payments to American politicians, we should be doing this across the board.

  Why don’t we publish their payments to politicians around the world? Let’s expose these guys, let’s go after them. Let’s root out Chinese influence, because they are subverting our political system.

  Similarly, we should also be publishing the bank account details of all these Chinese leaders, because they are corrupt as hell.

  Question: Could you comment, please, on what you think is the nature of the personal relationships between Hunter Biden, his father, and Chinese financial institutions. How has it, if at all, affected American foreign policy towards China, and how will it affect that policy?

  Chang: There are two things here. There are the financial ties. Hunter Biden has connections with Chinese institutions, which you cannot explain in the absence of corruption.

  For instance, he has a relationship with Bohai Harvest Partners, BHR. China puts a lot of money into the care of foreign investment managers. The two billion, or whatever the number is, is not that large, but they only put money with people who have a track record in managing investments. Hunter Biden only has a track record of being the son of Joe Biden.

  There are three investigations of Hunter Biden right now. There is the Wilmington US Attorney’s Office, the FBI — I don’t place very much hope in either of these – but the third one might actually bear some fruit: the IRS investigation of Hunter Biden.

  Let us say, for the moment, that Biden is able to corrupt all three of these investigations. Yet money always leaves a trail. We are going to find out one way or another. Peter Schweizer, for instance, is working on a book on the Biden cash. Eventually, we are going to know about that.

  What worries me is not so much the money trail — and of course, there’s the art sales, a subject in itself, because we will find out.

  What worries me is that Hunter Biden, by his own admission, is a troubled individual.

  He has been to China a number of times. He has probably committed some embarrassing act there, which means that the Ministry of State Security has audio and video recordings of this. Those are the things that can be used for blackmail. We Americans would never know about it, because blackmail does not necessarily leave a trail. This is what we should be most concerned about.

  Biden has now had two long phone calls with Xi Jinping. The February call, plus also one a few months ago. We do not know what was said. I would be very worried that when Xi Jinping wants to say something, there will be a phone call to Biden, and it would be Xi doing the talking without note takers.

  Question: Please tell us about the China desk over the 30 years, the influence of the bureaucracy on politics; what can they affect?

  Chang: I do not agree with our China policy establishment in Washington, in general, and specifically the State Department and NSC.

  This a complicated issue. First, there is this notion after the end of the Cold War, that the nature of governments did not matter. You could trade with them, you could strengthen them, and it would not have national security implications. That was wrong for a number of reasons, as we are now seeing.

  What bothers me is that, although their assumptions about China have demonstrably been proven wrong, American policymakers still continue with the same policies. There is, in some people’s mind, an unbreakable view that we have to cooperate with China.

  You hear this from Blinken all the time: “We’ve got to cooperate where we can.” It is this formulation which is tired, and which has not produced the types of policies that are necessary to defend our republic. That is the unfortunate thing.

  This is what people learn in international relations school when they go to Georgetown, and they become totally stupid. We Americans should be upset because we have a political class that is not defending us. They are not defending us because they have these notions of China. George Kennan understood the nature of the Soviet Union. I do not understand why we cannot understand the true nature of the Chinese regime.

  Part of it is because we have Wall Street, we have Walmart, and they carry China’s water. There are more of us than there are of them in this country. We have to exercise our vote to make sure that we implement China policies that actually protect us.

  Policies that protect us are going to be drastic and they will be extreme, but absolutely, we have now dug ourselves into such a hole after three decades of truly misguided views on China, that I don’t know what else to say. This is not some partisan complaint. Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, all have truly misguided China policies.

  I do not know what it takes to break this view, except maybe for the deaths of American servicemen and women.

  Question: Is the big obstacle American businesses which, in donations to Biden, are the ones stopping decoupling of commerce, and saying, “Do not have war; we would rather earn money”?

  Chang: It is. You have, for instance, Nike. There are a number of different companies, but Nike comes to mind right now, because they love to lecture us about racism.

  For years they were operating a factory in Qingdao, in the northeastern part of China, that resembled a concentration camp. The laborers were Uighur and Kazakh women, brought there on cattle cars and forced to work.

  This factory, technically, was operated by a South Korean sub‑contractor, but that contractor had a three‑decade relationship with Nike. Nike had to know what was going on. This was forced labor, perhaps even slave labor.

  Clearly, Nike and Apple and other companies are now, at this very moment, trying to prevent Congress from enacting toughened rules on the importation of forced‑labor products into our country.

  One of the good things Trump did was, towards the end of his four years, he started to vigorously enforce the statutes that are already on the books, about products that are made with forced and slave labor. Biden, to his credit, has continued tougher enforcement.

  Right now, the big struggle is not the enforcement, but enhancing those rules. Apple and all of these companies are now very much trying to prevent amendment of those laws. It’s business, but it’s also immoral.

  Question: It is not just big Wall Street firms. There are companies that print the Bible. Most Bibles are now printed in China.

  When President Trump imposed the tariffs, a lot of the Bible printers who depended on China actually went to Trump and said, “You cannot put those tariffs in because then the cost of Bibles will go up.”

  Chang: Most everyone lobbies for China. We have to take away their incentive to do so.

  Question: What are the chances that China’s going to invade Taiwan?

  Chang: There is no clear answer.

  There are a number of factors that promote stability. One of them is that, for China to invade Taiwan, Xi Jinping has to give some general or admiral basically total control over the Chinese military. That makes this flag officer the most powerful person in China. Xi is not about to do that.

  Moreover, the Chinese regime is even more casualty‑adverse than we are. Even if Beijing thinks it can take Taiwan by force, it is probably not going to invade because it knows an invasion would be unpopular with most people in China. It is not going to risk hundreds of thousands of casualties that would result from an invasion.

  The reason we have to be concerned is because it is not just a question of Xi Jinping waking up one morning and saying, “I want to invade Taiwan.” The danger is the risk of accidental contact, in the skies or on the seas, around Taiwan.

  We know that China has been engaging in hostile conduct, and this is not just the incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. There are also dangerous intercepts of the US Navy and the US Air Force in the global commons. One of those accidents could spiral out of control.

  We saw this on April 1st, 2001, with the EP‑3, where a Chinese jet clipped the wing of that slow‑moving propeller plane of the US Navy. The only reason we got through it was that George W. Bush, to his eternal shame, paid China a sum that was essentially a ransom.

  He allowed our crew to be held for 11 days. He allowed the Chinese to strip that plane. This was wrong. This was the worst incident in US diplomatic history, but Bush’s craven response did get us through it. Unfortunately, by getting through it we taught the Chinese that they can without cost engage in these dangerous maneuvers of intercepting our planes and our ships.

  That is the problem: because as we have taught the Chinese to be more aggressive, they have been. One of these incidents will go wrong. The law of averages says that. Then we have to really worry.

  Question: You don’t think Xi thinks, “Oh well, we can sacrifice a few million Chinese”?

  Chang: On the night of June 15th, 2020, there was a clash between Chinese and Indian soldiers in Ladakh, in the Galwan Valley. That was a Chinese sneak attack on Indian-controlled territory. That night, 20 Indian soldiers were killed. China did not admit to any casualties. The Indians were saying that they killed about 45 Chinese soldiers that night.

  Remember, this was June 15th of 2020. It took until February of 2021 for China to admit that four Chinese soldiers died. TASS, the Russian news agency, recently issued a story reporting that 45 Chinese soldiers actually died that night.

  This incident shows you how risk‑averse and casualty‑averse the Chinese Communist Party is. They are willing to intimidate, they are willing to do all sorts of things. They are, however, loath to fight sustained engagements. Remember, that the number one goal of Chinese foreign policy is not to take over Taiwan. The number one goal of Chinese foreign policy is to preserve Communist Party rule.

  If the Communist Party feels that the Chinese people are not on board with an invasion of Taiwan, they will not do it even if they think they will be successful. Right now, the Chinese people are not in any mood for a full‑scale invasion of Taiwan.

  On the other hand, Xi Jinping has a very low threshold of risk.

  He took a consensual political system where no Chinese leader got too much blame or too much credit, because everybody shared in decisions, and Xi took power from everybody, which means, he ended up with full accountability, which means — he is now fully responsible.

  In 2017, when everything was going China’s way, this was great for Xi Jinping because he got all the credit. Now in 2021, where things are not going China’s way, he is getting all the blame.

  The other thing, is that Xi has raised the cost of losing a political struggle in China. In the Deng Xiaoping era, Deng reduced the cost of losing a struggle. In the Maoist era, if you lost a struggle, you potentially lost your life. In Deng’s era, if you lost a struggle, you got a nice house, a comfortable life.

  Xi Jinping has reversed that. Now the cost of losing a political struggle in China is very high. So there is now a combination of these two developments. Xi has full accountability. He knows that if he is thrown out of power, he loses not just power. He loses his freedom, his assets, potentially his life.

  If he has nothing to lose, however, it means that he can start a war, either “accidentally” or on purpose. He could be thinking, “I’m dying anyway, so why don’t I just roll the dice and see if I can get out of this?”

  That is the reason why this moment is so exceedingly risky. When you look at the internal dynamics inside China right now, we are dealing with a system in crisis.

  Question: China has a conference coming up in a year or so. What does Chairman Xi want to do to make sure he gets through that conference with triumph?

  Chang: The Communist Party has recently been holding its National Congresses once every five years. If the pattern follows — and that is an if — the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party will be held either October or November of next year.

  This is an important Congress, more so than most of them because Xi Jinping is looking for an unprecedented third term as general secretary of the Communist Party.

  If you go back six months ago, maybe a year, everyone was saying, “Oh, Xi Jinping. No problem. He’s president for life. He’s going to get his third term. He will get his fourth term. He will get his fifth term, as long as he lives. This guy is there forever.” Right now, that assumption is no longer valid. We do not know what’s going to happen because he is being blamed for everything.

  Remember, as we get close to the 20th National Congress, Xi Jinping knows he has to show “success.” Showing “success” could very well mean killing some more Indians or killing Americans or killing Japanese or something. We just don’t know what is going to happen.

  Prior to the National Congress, there is the sixth plenum of the 19th Congress. Who knows what is going to happen there. The Communist Party calendar, as you point out, does dictate the way Xi Jinping interacts with the world.

  Question: Going back to the wing-clip incident, what should Bush have done?

  Chang: What Bush should have done is immediately demand the return of that plane. What he should have done was to impose trade sanctions, investment sanctions, whatever, to get our plane back.

  We were fortunate, in the sense that our aviators were returned, but they were returned in a way that has made relations with China worse, because we taught the Chinese regime to be more aggressive and more belligerent. We created the problems of today and of tomorrow.

  I would have imposed sanction after sanction after sanction, and just demand that they return the plane and the pilots. Remember, that at some point, it was in China’s interests to return our aviators. The costs would have been too high for the Chinese to keep them. We did not use that leverage on them.

  While we are on this topic, we should have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that they cannot kill Americans without cost. Hundreds of thousands Americans have been killed by a disease that China deliberately spread.

  In one year, from 2020 to 2021, nearly 80,000 Americans died from fentanyl, which China has purposefully, as a matter of state and Communist Party policy — sold to Americans. China is killing us. We have to do something different. I’m not saying that we have good solutions; we don’t. But we have to change course.

  Question: Biden is continuing this hostage thing with Huawei, returning the CFO of Huawei in exchange for two Canadians. Have we taught the Chinese that they can grab more hostages?

  Chang: President Trump was right to seek the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies. Biden, in a deal, released her. She did not even have to plead guilty to any Federal crime. She signed a statement, which I hope we’ll be able to use against Huawei.

  As soon as Meng was released, China released the “two Michaels,” the two Canadians who were grabbed within days of our seeking extradition of Meng Wanzhou. In other words, the two Michaels were hostages.

  We have taught China that any time that we try to enforce our own laws, they can just grab Americans. They have grabbed Americans as hostages before, but this case is high profile. They grabbed Americans, and then they grabbed Canadians, and they got away with it. They are going to do it again.

  We are creating the incentives for Beijing to act even more dangerously and lawlessly and criminally in the future. This has to stop.

  Question: On the off-chance that the current leader does not maintain his position, what are your thoughts on the leaders that we should keep an eye on?

  Chang: There is no one who stands out among the members of the Politburo Standing Committee. That is purposeful. Xi Jinping has made sure that there is nobody who can be considered a successor; that is the last thing he wants.

  If there is a change in leadership, the new leader probably will come from Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai Gang faction. Jiang was China’s leader before Hu Jintao, and Hu came before Xi Jinping.

  There is now a lot of factional infighting. Most of the reporting shows that Jiang has been trying to unseat Xi Jinping because Xi has been putting Jiang’s allies in jail.

  Remember, the Communist Party is not a monolith. It has a lot of factions. Jiang’s faction is not the only one. There is something called the Communist Youth League of Hu Jintao. It could, therefore, be anybody.

  Question: Double question: You did not talk about Hong Kong. Is Hong Kong lost forever to the Chinese Communist Party? Second question, if you could, what are the three policies that you would change right away?

  Chang: Hong Kong is not lost forever. In Hong Kong, there is an insurgency. We know from the history of insurgencies that they die away — and they come back. We have seen this in Hong Kong. The big protests in Hong Kong, remember, 2003, 2014, 2019. In those interim periods, everyone said, “Oh, the protest movement is gone.” It wasn’t.

  China has been very effective with its national security law, but there is still resistance in Hong Kong. There is still a lot of fight there. It may not manifest itself for quite some time, but this struggle is not over, especially if the United States stands behind the people there. Biden, although he campaigned on helping Hong Kong, has done nothing.

  On the second question, I would close China’s four remaining consulates. I would also strip the Chinese embassy down to the ambassador and his personal staff. The thousands who are in Washington, DC, they would be out.

  I would also raise tariffs to 3,600%, or whatever. This is a good time to do it. We have supply chain disruptions. We are not getting products from China anyway. We can actually start to do this sort of stuff.

  The third thing, I would do what Pompeo did, just hammer those guys all the time verbally. People may think, “Those are just words.” For communists, words are really important, because they are an insecure regime where propaganda is absolutely critical.

  I would be going after the Communists on human rights, I would be going after them on occupying the South China Sea, on Taiwan, unrelentingly — because I would want to show the world that the United States is no longer afraid of China.

  We have taught the world that we are afraid of dealing with the Chinese. State Department people, they are frightened. We need to say to the Chinese regime, like Dulles, “I’m not afraid of you. I’m going after you, and I’m going to win.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 23:20

• DoD Sends "Phoenix Ghost" Kamikaze Drones To Ukraine 
  DoD Sends “Phoenix Ghost” Kamikaze Drones To Ukraine 

  The Department of Defense announced it was sending “121 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems” to Ukraine. The never-before-seen kamikaze drone is a brand-new weapon system designed for ambushing Russian tanks.

  As reported by Breaking Defense, the Phoenix Ghost tactical drone is similar to the Switchblade drone already fielded in Ukraine. 

  Ok a bit more from a DoD official, who is loathe to detail the requirements that differentiate Phoenix Ghost from a Switchblade. Its a “one way drone” that “delivers a punch” — likely meaning that it’s a kamikaze drone similar to Switchblade.

  — Valerie Insinna (@ValerieInsinna) April 21, 2022

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

  Not much is known about the new drone. The DoD described it as a “one-way” drone that will “deliver a punch” and said it would operate similar to the Switchblade drone system. 

  

  The War Zone reported that Pentagon Press Secretary Jack Kirby said the Phoenix Ghost’s capabilities differ from Switchblades. 

  “I’m gonna be loath to get into much more detail about the system at this point for classification purposes, but you can safely assume that, in general, it works,” Kirby said. “It provides the same sort of tactical capability that a Switchblade does. Switchblade is a one-way drone if you will, and it clearly is designed to deliver a punch. It’s a tactical UAS, and Phoenix ghost is of that same category.”

  California-based AEVEX Aerospace is the defense company that designed and manufactured Phoenix Ghost. The company markets itself as “a recognized leader in full-spectrum airborne intelligence solutions.” 

  The new drone is part of the latest U.S. arms package to Ukraine. Here’s what’s included:

  • Over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems;
  • Over 5,500 Javelin anti-armor systems;
  • Over 14,000 other anti-armor systems;
  • Over 700 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
  • 90 155mm Howitzers and 183,000 155mm artillery rounds;
  • 72 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm Howitzers;
  • 16 Mi-17 helicopters;
  • Hundreds of Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
  • 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
  • Over 7,000 small arms;
  • Over 50,000,000 rounds of ammunition;
  • 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets;
  • 121 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
  • Laser-guided rocket systems;
  • Puma Unmanned Aerial Systems;
  • Unmanned Coastal Defense Vessels;
  • 14 counter-artillery radars;
  • Four counter-mortar radars;
  • Two air surveillance radars;
  • M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
  • C-4 explosives and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing;
  • Tactical secure communications systems;
  • Night vision devices, thermal imagery systems, optics, and laser rangefinders;
  • Commercial satellite imagery services;
  • Explosive ordnance disposal protective gear;
  • Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
  • Medical supplies to include first aid kits.

  Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, accused Biden of pumping Ukraine with weapons:

  “The U.S. authorities do not seem to be interested in a ceasefire. What matters for John Kirby and his colleagues is that the American military-industrial complex receives additional income by getting rid of obsolete weapons from their warehouses,” Antonov said.

  So far, the Biden administration has committed more than $4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine and has just requested a whopping $33 billion more. The massive request includes billions of dollars for economic and humanitarian aid. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 22:45

• Food Shortages In Six Months – The Globalists Are Telling Us What Happens Next
  Food Shortages In Six Months – The Globalists Are Telling Us What Happens Next

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  In mid 2007 the Bank for International Settlements (The central bank of central banks) released a statement predicting an impending “Great Depression” caused by a credit market implosion. That same year the International Monetary Fund also published warnings of “subprime woes” leading to wider economic strife. I started writing alternative economic analysis only a year earlier in 2006 and I immediately thought it was strange that these massive globalist institutions with far reaching influence on the financial world were suddenly starting to sound a lot like those of us in the liberty movement.

  This was 16 years ago, so many people reading this might not even remember, but in 2007 the alternative media had already been warning about an impending deflationary crash in US markets and housing for some time. And, not surprisingly, the mainstream media was always there to deny all of our concerns as “doom mongering” and “conspiracy theory.” Less than a year later the first companies awash in derivatives began to announce they were on the verge of bankruptcy and everything tanked.

  The media response? They made two very bizarre claims simultaneously: “No one could have seen it coming” and “We saw this coming a mile away.” Mainstream journalists scrambled to position themselves as the soothsayers of the day as if they said all along that the crash was imminent, yet, there were only a handful of people who actually did call it and none of them were in the MSM. Also ignored was the fact that the BIS and IMF had published their own “predictions” well before the crash; the media pretended as if they did not exist.

  In the alternative media we watch the statements and open admissions of the globalists VERY carefully because they are not in the business of threat analysis; rather, they are in the business of threat synthesis. That is to say, if something goes very wrong in the world economically, central bankers and money elites with aspirations of a single centralized economic authority for the world are ALWAYS found to have a hand in that disaster.

  For some reason, they like to tell us what they are about to do before they do it.

  The idea that globalists artificially create economic collapse events will of course be criticized as “conspiracy theory,” but it is a FACT. For more information on the reality of deliberate financial sabotage and the “order out of chaos” ideology of globalists please read my articles ‘Fed One Meeting Away From Creating A Doomsday Sinkhole’ and ‘What Is The Great Reset And What Do The Globalists Actually Want?’

  The Great Reset agenda proposed by WEF head Klaus Schwab is just one example of the many discussions hidden in plain sight by globalists concerning their plans to use economic and social decline as an “opportunity” to quickly establish a new one world system based on socialism and technocracy.

  The primary problem with discerning what the globalists are planning is not in uncovering secret agendas – They tend to openly discuss their agendas if you know where to look. No, the problem is in separating the admissions from the disinformation, the lies from the truth. This requires matching up globalist white papers and statements to the facts and evidence at hand in the real world.

  

  Let’s look specifically at the food shortage problem in detail…

  Food Shortages In Six Months

  A week ago there was a torrent of press releases from global institutions all mentioning the same exact same concern: Food shortages within the next 3 to 6 months. These statements line up very closely with my own estimates, as I have been warning regularly about impending dangers of inflation leading to food rationing and supply chain disruptions.

  The IMF, the BIS, World Bank, The UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum, Bank of America and even Biden himself are all predicting a major food crisis in the near term, and it is not a coincidence that the policies of these very institutions and the actions of puppet politicians that work with them are causing the crisis they are now predicting. That is to say, it’s easy to predict a disaster when you created the disaster.

  The claim is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the primary cause, but this is a distraction from the real issue. Yes, sanctions against Russia will eventually lead to less food supply, but the globalists and the media are purposely ignoring the bigger threat, which is currency devaluation and price inflation created by central banks pumping out tens of trillions of dollars in stimulus packages to prop up “too big to fail” corporate partners.

  In 2020 alone, the Fed created over $6 trillion from nothing and air dropped it into the economy through covid welfare programs. Add that to the many trillions of dollars that the Fed has printed since the credit crash in 2008 – It has been a nonstop dollar destruction party and now the public is starting to feel the consequences. Lucky for the central bankers that covid struck and Russia invaded Ukraine, because now they can deflect all the blame for the inflationary calamity they have engineered onto the pandemic and onto Putin.

  Inflation hit 40 year highs in the US well before Russia invaded Ukraine, but let’s consider the ramifications of that war and how it affects the food supply.

  The Russian invasion certainly disrupts Ukrainian grain production, which makes up around 11% of the total world wheat market. Russia also maintains a 17% share and together these two nations feed a large swath of third world nations and parts of Europe with 30% of wheat and barley exports, 19% of corn exports, 23% of canola exports, and 78% of sunflower exports.

  It is the sanctions on Russia that are a problem well beyond Ukraine, however, as Russia also produces around 20% of global ammonia and 20% of global potash supplies. These are key ingredients to fertilizers used in large scale industrial farming. Farmers are estimating an overall price spike of around 10% in food markets, but I believe this is very conservative. I am already seeing overall price increases of at least 20% from six months ago, and I expect there to be another 30% in price hikes before this year is over. In other words, we are looking at 50% in average increases in 2022.

  Official government inflation data and CPI cannot be trusted. Double whatever numbers they give and you will be much closer to the truth. The inflation rate used by Shadowstats.com, calculated using methods once applied by the US government in the 1980s before they “adjusted” their models to hide the data, supports my position so far.

  The expectation among US agricultural experts is that China will fill the void where Russian supplies disappear, but it’s a mistake to make this assumption.

  Something Weird Is Going On In China

  China’s crackdown on covid infections has reached levels so bizarre I have to ask the question: Are their lockdowns really about covid, or are they hiding something else?

  The death rate of covid in China is impossible to calculate accurately because they have never released proper data that can be confirmed. However, almost everywhere else in the world we see a median infection fatality rate of 0.27% for covid; meaning, over 99.7% of people in the world on average have nothing to fear in terms of dying from the virus. But in China, the CCP is acting as if they are dealing with the Black Plague. Why?

  Lockdowns have resulted in food shortages across the country as supply chains become strained and manufacturing remains shut in many cases. The story many westerners are not hearing much about, though, is the fact that Chinese exports have essentially been frozen. This is very important so I think it needs emphasis – Over 1 IN 5 container ships IN THE WORLD are now backed up in Chinese ports due to their covid lockdowns. This is incredible.

  Why would China do this over a virus we all know is not dangerous to the vast majority of people? Why institute the worst lockdown in the country so far and starve their own people when the majority of Western governments have now given up on their pandemic fear mongering and the forced vaccination agenda?

  I would suggest the possibility that China might already be engaging in an economic war that many Americans and Europeans don’t even realize is going on. This may be a beta test for a shut down of exports to the US and Europe, or it is an incremental shutdown that is meant to become permanent. The bottleneck on trade may also be a precursor to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

  Taiwan is actually more dependent and intertwined with China’s economy than many people know. China is the biggest buyer of Taiwan’s exports and those exports account for 10% of Taiwan’s GDP. Taiwan has hundreds of thousands of workers and businessmen that travel regularly to China to work, another economic factor that is now strained by lockdowns. Furthermore, Taiwan has multiple corporations that operate their factories on mainland China, all of which could be closed due to covid lockdowns.

  All I’m saying is, if I was China planning on invading Taiwan in the near future, I might consider using covid as a cover for damaging their economy first and disrupting their export model. Communists see the population as a utility that can be sacrificed if necessary, and China is perfectly willing to cause short term suffering to their people if it means long term gains for the party. Beyond that, if I was going to engage in economic warfare with the west covertly, what better way than to tie up 20% of the world’s cargo ships and disrupt supply chains in the name of protecting the country form a “pandemic?”

  The bottom line? Don’t rely on China to fill export needs for fertilizer ingredients or anything else as sanctions on Russia continue.

  Inflation vs. Supply vs. Control

  It’s not just globalist organizations talking about incoming food shortages; the CEO of international food corporation Goya has also recently warned we are on the precipice of a food crisis. As I have noted in the past, inflation leads to government price controls, price controls lead to lack of production incentives (profits), lack of profits leads to loss of production, loss of production leads to shortages, and shortages lead to government rationing (control over all large food sources).

  As we have seen with almost every authoritarian regime in modern history, control over the food supply is key to controlling the population. It is only surpassed as a strategic concern by control over energy (which we will also see shortages of soon as Europe sanctions Russian oil and gas and starts eating up supplies from other exporters). The food issue hits closest to home because we can see the effects immediately on our wallets and on our families. There is nothing worse for many parents than the prospect of their children going hungry.

  The mainstream media is once again ignoring any potential economic threat, specifically they are denying the notion of food shortages as something to be worried about. I say, why listen to a group of people that are always wrong on these types of events? If anything, I would at least take the words of the globalists seriously when it comes to economic collapse; they benefit the most from such disasters after all, and they also have the most influence when it comes to triggering crisis.

  Preparedness today costs nothing tomorrow. Lack of preparedness today costs EVERYTHING tomorrow. The choice for anyone with a brain is simple – Get prepared for the end of affordable and easily available food before this year is out.

  *  *  *

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

  You can also follow me at – Parler: @AltMarket Gettr:  @Altmarket1

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 22:10

• US Cities With Hottest Inflation May Cause Pain For Democrats 
  US Cities With Hottest Inflation May Cause Pain For Democrats 

  Inflation doesn’t strike the whole economy evenly. Some metropolitan areas across the U.S. recorded hotter inflation than others. Democratic lawmakers in these regions, up for re-election, could be in jeopardy come midterms. 

  Bloomberg found the four top metro areas where consumer prices cracked above the 10% barrier in February. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona, had the highest inflation of any urban region at 10.9%. 

  Inflation is so rampant in the metro area that Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly’s re-election bid could be at risk as the high cost of living has crushed residents. 

  Evangelina Diaz, 56, drives about an hour from Maricopa, Arizona, to her job in central Phoenix. Gasoline prices hit particularly hard in the state, where workers drive further and more often than the average American. She says filling her tank now costs up to $50. 

  “We’re working to put gas in our car,” Diaz said. “It’s real ridiculous.”

  

  Stan Barnes, a former Arizona state senator and GOP political consultant, said Kelly is a “likable person who’s married to one of the most important and admired people in Arizona [Gabby Giffords]. But this time, he needs to carry Joe Biden around like a sack of bricks and somehow explain his record.” 

  Biden’s presidency depends on campaigns like Kelly’s. Republicans are expected to win a majority in the U.S. House in November. 

  “It’s one of the most critical races,” said Jennifer Duffy, Senate editor of the Cook Political Report. “If Democrats lose him [Kelly], they’re on very shaky ground.”

  Vulnerable Democrats in other metro areas where inflation is running hot could also be in trouble.

  The other cities, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, Georgia; Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Florida; and Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Maryland, have hit 10% or are close to double-digit inflation.

  

  When it comes time to vote in the upcoming midterms, many people will be voting with their depleted wallets, which could be a “biblical disaster” for Democrats. Perhaps that’s why the Biden adminstration created a “Disinformation Governance Board” to control narratives combat whatever they deem ‘misinformation’ before the 2022 midterms and beyond. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 21:35

• Hedge Fund CIO: Can A Modern Nation Pull Off A Debt Jubilee Without Full Monetary Collapse?
  Hedge Fund CIO: Can A Modern Nation Pull Off A Debt Jubilee Without Full Monetary Collapse?

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “While central banks in the U.S. and Europe are moving toward monetary tightening or rate increases, the Japanese economy is still on the road to recovery,” said the Bank of Japan Governor. “It is most important to support economic recovery by patiently continuing monetary easing,” added Kuroda-san.

  The Bank of Japan first cut interest rates to zero 23yrs ago, and ignoring a couple aborted attempts to briefly normalize policy they have remained at zero or lower ever since.

  Government debt exploded in that time, with annual deficits and stimulus packages becoming so commonplace they lost their effectiveness.  The central bank bought nearly half the 1.4 quadrillion Yen of government debt that mounted, a stunning 260% of GDP. And yet, through it all, core prices in Japan’s economy remain almost identical today as they were when its zero-interest-rate experiment began.

  For decades, it seemed everyone lost money trading Japanese bonds, which moved in counter-intuitive ways. They called the inexorable government bond rally the “Widow-Maker.” Traders with the highest IQs tend to have the least-disciplined risk management, so they suffered most profoundly.

  In the years preceding the pandemic, economists claimed they definitively understood how and why Japan’s disinflation developed, persisted, and then manifested in other nations. Secular Stagnation.

  Perhaps they did actually figure it out. But no sooner had the economists named their magnificent mental model then the world started to change — which of course is the only durable model in all of economics. There are others that tend to work too. Like when major central banks are tightening, while others are easing, volatility rises until something breaks badly, at which point policy makers panic (for more on this topic, see “The Biggest Story No-One Is Talking About”: Why Albert Edwards Expects “Something In The Market Is About To Snap“).

  

  Another model that seems to hold is that highly intelligent economists and central bankers generally believe they understand inflation, as if it is a mathematical equation. And even though inflation appears when they least expect it, and fails to manifest when they most anticipate it, they remain remarkably confident in their ability to predict it.

  Anecdote:

  The more you think about money, the less it makes sense. That is why the topic is so alluring for the masochists amongst us, attempting to solve the unsolvable, climb the unclimbable, conquer the unconquerable.

  We engineer thought experiments and mental models in the hope of gaining a glimpse of some truth, the scent of something real, a money-making opportunity. Japan provides an enigma to explore. It once had a bubble so big the Emperor’s Palace was worth more than the state of California. Unreal. Impossible. But so it was.

  When that bubble burst, real estate and equity prices utterly collapsed. The Yen strengthened for decades. It remains stronger today than back then. Japan’s exporters carried on, managing costs lower, maintaining competitiveness. The government supported the system, running persistent deficits and in each recession announced a special stimulus.

  The central bank stimulated too. In 1999 the Bank of Japan reduced rates to zero, unsuccessfully lifted them a couple times, and in 2015 cut them to -0.10% where they remain. The level of government debt expanded in ways that almost everyone agreed would lead to an inflationary collapse. It did not. The Bank of Japan bought bonds, and now owns roughly 130% of GDP worth of government debt, which is half of the 260% outstanding.

  It also pledged yield curve control, bidding for an unlimited quantity of 10yr government bonds at a 0.25% yield. Could the central bank create money, buy all the outstanding bonds, and simply burn them? Execute a modern version of an Old Testament debt jubilee? The currency of a nation that chooses this path should weaken, as it is now doing in Japan.

  But might it be possible for a country to pull off such a feat without full monetary collapse? We don’t know, yet. What seems certain though, is that if you were to attempt such a bold maneuver, you would absolutely want to be the first nation to try. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 21:00

• Texas Gov. Threatens To Declare 'Invasion' As Illegal Immigration Expected To Skyrocket
  Texas Gov. Threatens To Declare ‘Invasion’ As Illegal Immigration Expected To Skyrocket

  Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) is considering invoking war powers to expand the state’s authority to manage the southern border by officially declaring an “invasion” – verbiage which would comply with a clause in the US Constitution that says states are prohibited from engaging in war except when “actually invaded.”

  

  Top lawyers for Mr. Abbott and for the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, met this month to debate the move, which would put the state in a head-on collision with the federal government by allowing state police to arrest and deport migrants, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Abbott says he remains open to the approach, but he has expressed concern about unintended consequences. -NYT

  “If we do use this strategy, it could expose law enforcement in the state of Texas to being prosecuted,” said Abbott during a recent press converence. “Is it something we’re looking into? Yes,” he added.

  Abbott has already mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to patrol the border, and ordered safety inspections of incoming trucks from Mexico – a short-lived program after it caused massive gridlock and disrupted international trade. He’s also overseen the construction of around 20 miles of new border fencing at key ares. What’s more, Abbott repurposed several state prisons to hold migrants charged with trespassing.

  Perhaps most famously, Abbott recently began busing migrants from Texas to Washington DC.

  The New York Times echoes the Biden administration, which has framed Abbott’s immigration policy as nothing more than a political stunt, writing that his “aggressive posture has done little to stem the tide and also exposed him to fierce criticism that he is using his authority to meddle in a policy area that belongs to the federal government,” however they acknowledge that his attempts to tighten border security along the state’s 1,254 mile border have helped him hold off political challengers.

  Federal agents recorded nearly 129,000 crossings into Texas in March, about 11,000 more than during the same month last year, when Mr. Abbott began the effort known as Operation Lone Star. The biggest increase occurred in an area of the border that includes Eagle Pass, a sun-faded city of 28,000 people, numerous stray cats and dogs and few resources to spare.

  Costs have been mounting. Just maintaining the National Guard deployment through the summer will require another $531 million, state officials said this month. A 22-year-old soldier assigned to the mission drowned last week while attempting to rescue two migrants in swift water. -NYT

  INCOMING

  While immigration levels have been out of control in recent years, Texas officials are bracing for an even larger influx of illegal immigrants when the Biden administration ends a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 – which used the pandemic to justify turning back hordes of asylum seekers.

  The current surge in migrants kicked off with the election of President Biden, which was taken as a virtual green light to flood into the country without the same level of border security as former President Donald Trump employed.

  Now, Abbott is under pressure to do more as Biden pull back.

  “Lone Star hasn’t moved the needle one iota for the simple reason that they’re not returning people to Mexico,” said former Trump DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, a vocal proponent of declaring an invasion.

  The White House has pushed back against Texas, with Press Secretary Jen Psaki saying that the state “does not need to replace C.B.P. at the southern border,” referring to the federal Customs and Border Protection Agency.

  We wonder which political party the immigrants will support, should they be granted amnesty at some point in the future?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 20:25

• Morgan Stanley: "In Hindsight, 2022 Is Kind Of Simple, It's Not Exactly Fermat's Last Theorem"
  Morgan Stanley: “In Hindsight, 2022 Is Kind Of Simple, It’s Not Exactly Fermat’s Last Theorem”

  By Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley

  It’s a funny year. Returns are awful, with significant losses in almost every asset class not labelled ‘commodities’. Investors still face wide-ranging uncertainties, from how fast the Fed tightens, to whether Europe sees an energy crisis, to how China addresses Covid, to the ongoing fall of the yen. Cross-asset performance feels confused, with defensive equities unusually strong while government bonds are unusually weak.

  But step back a bit, and 2022, in hindsight, is also kind of simple. Valuations were high and policy is tightening and growth is slowing…and prices have fallen. Cheaper stocks are (finally) outperforming more expensive ones. Bond yields were very low and are (finally) rising. Credit and MBS spreads were tight, and have widened. The UK has weak growth, a large current account deficit and world-beating negative real yields, and has seen its currency weaken substantially. It’s not exactly Fermat’s Last Theorem.

  So what should investors do, given a complex set of challenges, but also signs of underlying rationality? This can be a good time to step back and look at what rules-based indicators are telling us.

  Let’s start by focusing on what these indicators say about where we are in the cycle, and what that means for investment strategy. Our cycle indicator looks at a range of economic indicators and tries to map them to historical patterns of cross-asset performance.

  Our indicator sees the data as highly extended versus trend. We call this ‘late cycle’ because, historically, readings sharply above trend have often (but not always) occurred later in an economic expansion. This statement is not about predicting a recession, necessarily, but our economists are convicted that we are seeing a meaningful deceleration. And thinking probabilistically, that type of deceleration almost surely increases the chances of a downturn. Whether the contraction materializes or not, it will affect cross-asset performance today.

  At present, the late-cycle indicator is consistent with underperformance of high yield credit relative to both equities and bonds, the outperformance of defensive equities, a flatter curve and fewer headwinds to long-end duration.

  Of course, our cycle indicator isn’t alone in flagging caution. With the risks to the market so obvious, sentiment is negative. Which brings us to the next question – despite the macro challenges, is sentiment now extreme enough to boost markets?

  It’s possible. But our best attempts to statistically quantify a sentiment signal say ‘not yet’. In a recent report led by my colleague Naomi Poole, we explored the efficacy of different measures of ‘sentiment’ and turning them into a signal. We think that using a composite of sentiment indicators is most powerful, and that level and trend of sentiment matter for creating a signal with good returns and hit rates over time. Our indicator is not yet extreme, and has not yet turned (it is ‘neutral’). We are watching it closely.

  Given the swirling mix of storylines and volatility, a third related question is what would a fully rules-based cross-asset strategy do today? For that, we turn to CAST, our Cross-Asset Systematic Trading strategy, developed by my colleague Phani Naraparaju. CAST is the most powerful quantitative instrument in our cross-asset toolkit, evaluating ~1,500 factors across ~150 global assets. For all that complexity, it asks a simple question – what looks most attractive today based on what some of those factors (different measures of carry, valuation, momentum and fundamentals) have meant in the past?

  CAST has helped our process so far this year. While it has certainly gotten things wrong, it has gotten more things right, especially a positive view on commodities, a defensive skew in US equities and a negative view on JPY, GBP and global 2yr rates. It has been most successful with cross-asset relative value, while struggling more with directional views, a not-so-subtle hint that this is a better market for alpha than beta. And while CAST is a completely rules-based tool, we pay special attention where its views align with the bottom-up, fundamental calls of our strategy colleagues. A few things stand out.

  CAST is dialling back its beta, especially in commodities, where it has become more negative on copper (but still likes energy). Second, CAST is giving the same signals as our Asia macro strategists, who expect CNY weakness and like receiving CNY rates. And similar to views in equity strategy, it is positive on the Nikkei (FX-hedged) and Healthcare, and negative on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000. CAST has also unwound a large credit compression trade it had been running post-Covid, which lines up with the decompression and dispersion theme our credit strategists expect to be more prominent.

  

  Rules-based tools help in markets that are volatile, emotional and present more storylines than a reasonable investor can process. For the moment, they suggest that cross-asset performance continues to follow the late-cycle playbook, sentiment has not yet given a conclusive tactical signal, and following historical factor-based patterns is helping to trade relative value. They won’t solve everything, but given the challenges of 2022 so far, every little bit helps.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 19:50

• Building Balanced Exposure To The Blockchain Economy
  Building Balanced Exposure To The Blockchain Economy

  Blockchain technology extends far beyond Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other popular cryptocurrencies, as it provides a foundation for verifiable financial systems and proof of ownership for digital goods and assets.

  From privacy concerns to anti-trust issues, big tech has eaten away at the world’s trust in the technology sector. And, as Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte details below, as people search for better and more trustless solutions for their financial services, the blockchain economy is flourishing to meet their needs.

  This infographic from MSCI outlines how quickly decentralized solutions and services have grown, and how investors can be a part of this exciting new sector.

  

  The Three Key Trends of Blockchain Adoption

  By cutting out the need for a centralized middleman that facilitates transactions, blockchains can provide more efficient systems to power three key trends of the fintech future:

  • Digital hard money and assets

  • Decentralized finance (DeFi)

  • Digital goods and collectibles

  As the first cryptocurrency and deflationary monetary asset, Bitcoin is the ambassador for digital hard money. By having a fixed supply of 21 million bitcoin set in code and a decentralized network powering transactions on the network, Bitcoin provides anyone access to a deflationary digital asset that they can transfer in minutes without having to trust centralized intermediaries.

  While Bitcoin pioneered the blockchain revolution over the past decade, further functionality built on blockchain technology is enabling digital goods and collectibles with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) along with more equitable and trustless financial systems through decentralized finance.

  Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Makes Financial Services Accessible

  Along with seeking decentralized hard money assets in the form of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the world is looking for trustless financial services through which they can borrow, lend, and perform other essential financial services.

  Decentralized finance (DeFi) enables these services through decentralized applications (Dapps) powered by smart contracts. Today, more than $260 billion is currently “locked” or engaged with some form of smart contract in a DeFi application.

  Below are the 10 largest DeFi applications by the amount of value currently “locked” or engaged with the applications’ smart contracts.

  

   

  Source: DeFi Llama
  As of Jan 2022

   

  From staking tokens within a protocol in exchange for governance votes to providing market liquidity by locking tokens up in exchange for a portion of trading fees, DeFi is providing functionality and incentives for participants in the blockchain economy.

  What is the MSCI Blockchain Index?

  The MSCI Blockchain Index was developed in collaboration with ARK Invest with the aim of representing the performance of a set of companies associated with the development of products and services for the blockchain economy.

  From providing payments services for cryptocurrencies to the actual hardware products used for verifying blockchains, these companies fall into five core segments of the digital blockchain sector:

  1. Developers of tech and protocols of decentralized finance like Dapps and smart contracts

  2. Products and services for the infrastructure of digital markets like cryptocurrency exchanges and payment gateways

  3. Providers of blockchain solutions and services through corporations

  4. Hardware and software providers for the verification of blockchains

  5. Buyers and sellers of cryptocurrency providing liquidity and facilitating payments

  With a broad variety of industries contributing to the blockchain economy, companies like AMD, Visa, and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) are among the top constituents of the index.

  As decentralized finance and other technologies bring about a trustless revolution for financial systems and the ownership of digital goods, the MSCI Blockchain Index ensures you aren’t left behind.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 19:15

• Bad To The Bone
  Bad To The Bone

  Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,

  If last Friday’s price action was ugly, this Friday’s can only be described as mega-ugly!

  This weekend’s T-Report follows in the footsteps of The Not So Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Welcome to Thunderdome!!! Sadly, there is a theme emerging in the tone of these T-Reports and the markets – decidedly negative.

  On Thursday, we asked the question Is The Worst Behind Us? We decided it was not, which seemed like a horrid decision as stocks skyrocketed ahead of Thursday’s earnings, but hasn’t looked so bad since 3:25pm on Thursday when stocks resumed their downward decent.

  Today, we try to figure out where markets and the economy head next and try and identify a bottom!

  Geopolitics

  Academy published Around the World on Thursday night. This month’s topics include:

  • Update on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

  • China’s Solomon Islands Partnership and Influence in the Region.

  • Israeli / Palestinian Violence Escalates.

  • Protests in Peru Over Inflation Crisis.

  General Spider Marks also discussed the latest on the war on CNN with Wolf Blitzer.

  Bad to the Bone

  With so much going on, we are going to try to address what’s next by focusing on:

  • Markets themselves. Price action and the alleged “capitulation” so many are talking about.

  • Earnings. What I think is playing out with earnings.

  • Bad Actors Behaving Badly. This will touch on Russia, but go beyond that as we examine risks (that are still a low probability), but are things we should be thinking about.

  • Inflation. This section will be brief, which is not actually the case with inflation. Food and Energy.

  • The Fed. We get the FOMC announcement and press conference on Wednesday. This will be the first opportunity for the Fed to address the market volatility and the last FOMC meeting set the stage for a strong rally!

  What Are Markets Telling Us?

  One thing the markets are certainly telling us is that they are as illiquid as heck! The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.5% on Monday, fell almost 4% on Tuesday, started Wednesday up 2%, back to slightly negative then back to up almost 2%, only to finish the day wildly unchanged. On Thursday, it was up 4.25% and finished up 3.5%, only to finish down 4.5% the next day.

  It is concerning when the weekly drop of 3.7% doesn’t do justice to just how volatile and crazy the week was.

  This “chaotic” trading occurred in almost every market I watch. I picked the Nasdaq 100 because a few of the juggernauts in that index reported earnings this week, but you name a market and “crazy” trading patterns were evident.

  CDX IG had some vicious trading and closed the week at 84 bps, the highest since June 2020 (the Bloomberg Corporate Bond OAS isn’t back to mid-March levels, but a lack of liquidity is evident in credit trading as well based on all the reports I’m getting from customers).

  These wild oscillations bring back memories of watching the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in some elementary school class. Will the market’s oscillations resolve themselves in the same way as they did with the bridge? I hope not, but that seems to be a non-zero risk. I also must be cautious about getting too bearish as the lack of liquidity is evident in both directions! Rallies like Thursday’s will be just as sharp and vicious as the declines.

  Last Week’s Chart – Updated

  

  We have now broken through the 12,570 line I had on the chart. We had broken it on Tuesday and stayed below on Wednesday and made a valiant attempt to bounce on Thursday, but are now below that, and are at the lowest close on the Nasdaq composite since December 2020! I am concerned that we have to fall to the next rough level of support, which is below 11,000 (just over 10% further to fall).

  PARA

  Bill Hwang was arrested this week so I felt it was appropriate to bring out this chart of PARA, which traded under a different ticker during the time that was highlighted.

  

  Based on the allegations made around the arrest, I think we can assume that at least some part of the rise can be attributed to “flows” (him buying more and more, because he could) and a substantial portion of the fall can also be attributed to “flows” (stop losses, triggering selling). In full disclosure, I own some of this right around current levels (it had been a nice contrarian dip buy for me until the recent plunge started about 2 weeks ago).

  The point of this chart is to really hammer home the point about how important flows are, and how illiquid things can become, as that is an important part of my current view on where markets are headed.

  I would like the “capitulation” story to be a little more obvious!

  Speculative Fund Flows

  

  I am closely watching 3 funds:

  • The $13 billion TQQQ, which is a triple leveraged ETF on the Nasdaq 100 (so it represents over $40 billion of “QQQ” purchasing power).

  • SQQQ, which is only $3 billion, but is a 3x short fund.

  • ARKK, which is just under $9 billion and is invested in “disruptive” companies.

  Due to the leverage in the two funds and the volatility of the ARKK fund, I think these give some good insight into whether we are seeing “capitulation” or not.

  ARKK, which is down 50% YTD and down 29% in April, had inflows. I appreciate the buy the dip mentality and a lot of the companies in the ETF have interesting valuations here (for full disclosure I am flat as of the close on Friday and am tempted to buy). But, regarding signs of “capitulation,” I just don’t see it.

  But the TQQQ story is even more interesting because it got significant inflows last week! Even as the market has been selling off and getting more volatile, money poured into this triple leveraged fund, which was down 12% on the week, down 37% on the month, and down 56% year to date. From a “traditional” view where returns correlate with flows, these things wouldn’t happen. As a contrarian, I’m impressed that they are happening, but I cannot help but wonder if we aren’t nearing a breaking point? Every dollar that has come into TQQQ (and ARKK) this year is underwater, often by significant amounts. If we’d seen “real” capitulation, I would expect fund outflows, rather than inflows last week.

  The SQQQ finally got some inflows late last week, so that at least is a sign that we are seeing some hedges.

  Yes, there are all sorts of ways to determine positioning, and this sample set is really much more retail focused, but the lesson is:

  • Capitulation may be getting talked about a lot more than it is actually occurring.

  • In general, the bearish discussions do not seem to be getting backed up by fully bearish positioning (90% of my conversations are about dip buying and finding the bottom).

  The Non-Virtuous Cycle

  I am going to try and tie the previous charts and stories into a simple narrative. There was a group of people out there who had this happen to them during the pandemic:

  • They worked at fun, interesting, disruptive firms and had stock prices soar or were even able to participate in their companies’ IPOs.

  • That wealth was heavily tied to their company.

  • When they could access this wealth, they “diversified” into:

    • Other disruptive companies because they loved the disruptive mindset and they could relate to it, and the excitement was palpable.

    • Big buyers of crypto. Crypto met the “disruptive” and “change the world” feelings that were often pervasive during the wild rebound post pandemic. Bitcoin hit $60k in March 2021 and then again in November, but is languishing around $40k right now.

  I would argue that you had a “virtuous” cycle that started after Covid and has been running out of steam. This “cycle” theory helps explain why crypto is so correlated to some volatile tech sectors (they are owned by the same people).

  I cannot tell if this “group” (which I completely believe exists) has managed to properly diversify themselves, or if we have another leg down?

  Maybe I’ve picked my charts too narrowly, but I am not getting a good “vibe” from the market itself. And I didn’t even bring up, at least not too much, that the cost of credit is rising and will be a drag on earnings.

  Earnings and Multiples

  I spend very little time on earnings, but this week was as good as any to pay attention to. What I think about earnings season, especially right now, is that:

  • It is not so much about what was made, but what will be made.

  • It is far more about the multiple the market is willing to pay, than about the earnings or even the outlook.

  Going back to January of this year, we discussed the Valuation Evaluation. This earnings season is still more about what multiple we will pay for future earnings, rather than about the future earnings themselves. We are about to embark on balance sheet reduction and that is influencing what investors will pay for future earnings.

  When I look at price action post-earnings, the bigger moves are related to this valuation evaluation, rather than the prospects of future earnings (though that plays a role given the global uncertainty and higher rates). So far earnings haven’t been a help for stocks (though I’d argue that is more about this valuation adjustment than the earnings themselves) and neither have some hefty buyback announcements. The buyback announcements will help over time as they are a flow that is going in the right direction for stocks.

  At the moment, earnings and buybacks aren’t enough to create a bounce in stocks and risk assets, but they do set the stage for a nice long rebound once we get to that stage.

  Bad Actors Behaving Badly

  People keep wondering when China will abandon Russia. I cannot think of a reason for them to do so. Yes, they need us, but we need them far more than they need us, and we’ve already shown our colors (the West that is) by continuing to buy Russian oil. Xi cares about China and their long-term needs. I’m willing to bet that China sells military equipment to Russia long before they stop buying Russian commodities.

  Any leader of an autocratic nation, whose behavior goes against what the U.S. stands for, has to be working to establish even better and closer relationships with China, as they have the money (and the need for resources), don’t care about internal politics, and haven’t weaponized their currency the way we did when we froze the Russian Central Bank’s dollar reserves.

  On Putin, I spend about 2% of my time thinking about how we come to a peaceful outcome and about 98% of my time thinking about how he can use a nuclear weapon to further his goals. The nuclear threat is there, but it seems so “binary” that it isn’t as powerful as it might be. Putin, of all people, would seem to benefit by making the threat of nuclear attacks more real! Yes, he needs to be careful with India and China to ensure their ongoing purchases in the event he does something. Yes, he has to be extremely careful about our retaliation. No, I haven’t come up with a way that seems plausible, but this is coming up in conversation after conversation. If Putin’s only option is to “win” and he is most definitely not “winning” by any true measure, what will he do to “win”?

  Again, no one seems to have come up with a strategy that works for him to elevate his nuclear threat to get more from the West, but we have to believe he is exploring that option. One very sobering thought that came out of some of these discussions is that from the Russian (or Soviet) perspective, the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon was the U.S. I’m not sure what to say about that, other than it is sobering and may well factor into Putin’s thoughts.

  On the subject of nuclear, every bad actor (most are already pursuing nuclear weapons, if they don’t already have them) will be aggressively pursuing them now, having seen what a deterrent they are. I believe they aren’t working as well as Putin would like, but there is no argument that they are working.

  So far, Russia has held off on a full-scale cyber assault, but that remains a risk. I do have to say that our Geopolitical Intelligence Group has been spot on with their analysis that our defenses are thwarting Russian attempts. There have been a lot more cyber attacks than we hear about because our defenses (at a national and corporate level) have been so good! A big shout-out for the good team, but vigilance is still required.

  We live in a world where bad actors feel more emboldened to act badly, which gets me back to my “closeness” of supply chains, which I won’t regurgitate here, but I think is crucial and the direction countries and companies are headed!

  Inflation

  High energy costs are here for some time as we need to spend to build out sustainable energy sources and we need to re-invest in traditional energy sources that in many cases suffer from underinvestment. Personally, I don’t understand why starting the Keystone Pipeline isn’t on the table, but that is a topic for another day. Food inflation is likely to be worse than energy inflation.

  • War in Ukraine. With the war dragging on, it is almost impossible to expect much of a crop out of Ukraine. Russia may get a crop, but how will they ship it? Or even transport it within Russia as the invasion is co-opting their rail system. More problematic is this has the risk of becoming a muti-year problem.

  • Fertilizer. Our conversations are literally filled with fertilizer. Nitrates, peat, natural gas, etc. are all working against the cost of fertilizer. That is a major problem and is still getting worse rather than better.

  • Equipment. Like with most heavy equipment, there are supply chain issues.

  • Farms are expensive to run. Not only is fertilizer expensive, but workers are also expensive and the fuel to power the equipment is expensive.

  • Ukrainian refugees. Countries in Europe are finding homes for millions of refugees from Ukraine. That is straining existing supply and delivery systems. The food distribution system will adapt, but the massive displacement of people is not helping the food problem as logistics need to catch up with this shift in consumption.

  Since fuel and food inflation are real, I don’t see the politicians backing down on “fighting” inflation. I don’t really think that the Fed is in a great position to fight the type of inflation that we are getting. I also think that subsidies to help people purchase food and fuel are deflationary. They are potentially necessary as the poor are the hardest hit, but policies like that do more to offset the costs of inflation rather than stopping inflation.

  The Fed

  The Fed meeting is on Wednesday. The last Fed meeting sparked a big rally. There are two things that might be different this time:

  • Everyone knows the last Fed meeting sparked a rally, so they might be holding off selling risky assets until after the Fed meeting! I know that as a bear, I am deathly afraid of a post Fed rally, which might mean we don’t get it this time.

  • We will get balance sheet reduction and while that seems much more priced in, that could still be a scenario where we sell the news because it becomes real.

  I am scared of a post FOMC rally (and that could be the turning point), but it seems almost too obvious to happen again!

  On the bright side, I’m on the road for the next two weeks straight seeing customers, investors, and friends in person! That is the best part of this job, and I will enjoy it even if I still cannot get to the point of being bullish! I’m closer to being bullish, but not there yet! Small positions and nimble trading still seem to be the order of the day (and I don’t mind rates – the 10-year was only 3 bps higher on the week). I do hope that “Bad to the Bone” turns out to be a bad title, but that’s where I’m stuck right now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 18:40

• Alarming Signs Farmers Reduce Fertilizer May Wreck Crop Yields 
  Alarming Signs Farmers Reduce Fertilizer May Wreck Crop Yields 

  There is growing concern farmers worldwide are reducing chemical fertilizer, which may threaten yields come harvest time, according to Bloomberg. The repercussions could be huge: Lower yields may exacerbate the food crisis. 

  There are alarming signs commercial farmers in top growing areas in the world are decreasing the use of essential nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. 

  Revealed last week, SLC Agricola SA, one of Brazil’s largest farming operations, managing fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton fields in an area larger than the state of Delaware, will reduce the use of fertilizer by 20% and 25%. 

  Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries, are expected to spread less fertilizer because of high costs and shortages. A coffee cooperative representing 1,200 farmers in Costa Rica predicts coffee output could slip 15% next year because of soaring fertilizer costs. 

  The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) warned a reduction in fertilizer use would shrink yields of rice and corn come harvest time. Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the largest rice-producing countries — are spreading less fertilizer, and may result in a 10% reduction in output, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people.

  

  More fertilizer equals more food production; Less fertilizer equals lower food production. It’s a simple concept to understand and may suggest an even larger food crisis is on the horizon. 

  The US won’t be spared. Chairman of the Kansas Wheat Commission Gary Millershaski said his “biggest fear” this spring is that farmers in North America skip out on applying nitrogen to wheat plantings. He said, if farmers did, this might suggest harvests would be a “lower class of wheat.”

  In March, Tony Will, the chief executive of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer company CF Industries Holdings Inc., warned: “My biggest concern is that we end up with a very severe shortage of food in certain areas of the world.” 

  Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah provided Bloomberg Television’s David Westin with a timeline of when the “massive, immediate food crisis” begins. He said, “in the next six months.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 18:05

• California Expands Medi-Cal To Adults 50 And Older, Regardless Of Immigration Status
  California Expands Medi-Cal To Adults 50 And Older, Regardless Of Immigration Status

  Authored by Vanessa Serna via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  California will extend Medi-Cal health care coverage to more than 185,000 residents 50 years and older, regardless of their immigration status starting May 1.

  

  “This is an investment in our people, our economy, and our future,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an April 29 statement.

  This Medi-Cal coverage extension was a part of Assembly Bill 133, which was voted into law in July 2021, following Newsom’s proposal to expand health care to low-income residents and address “health disparities and inequities, especially among populations of color” during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the statement.

  Medi-Cal currently provides low-income individuals under the age of 25 or above the age of 65, pregnant women, and those with disabilities with free or low-cost medical and dental care.

  Until recently, Medi-Cal was only available for U.S. citizens in the state, except for refugees staying in the country temporarily.

  “We’re delivering concrete results for Californians, continuing to fulfill the promise of a Healthy California for All, and I encourage all those eligible to take advantage of these essential health services,” Newsom said.

  Looking forward, Newsom has also proposed expanding Medi-Cal coverage to about 700,000 people from ages 26 to 49, regardless of their immigration status by January 2024.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 17:30

• Buyback Blackout Period Is Over, And 10 More Reasons Why Goldman Calls The End Of The Market Carnage
  Buyback Blackout Period Is Over, And 10 More Reasons Why Goldman Calls The End Of The Market Carnage

  Two weeks ago, when looking at a recent matrix of market bull and bear cases, we asked if it was time to get bullish on stocks and concluded that the since fundamentals leaned in either direction, the answer was most likely “not yet” for one simple reason: JPM’s resident permabull, Marko Kolanovic, had just turned from modestly bearish – an extremely rare stance for him – to bullish again, urging his clients to reverse from taking profits (unclear on what exactly since he had been bullish all the way down from the market’s all time high)…

  

  … to buying the dip again. Meanwhile, at roughly the same time, the far more accurate strategists at Goldman’s flow desk – in this case Tony Pasquariello – had just warned that the market was likely to be well lower in several weeks time, not higher. After last week’s furious rout in the market they were right. 

  Which is why we find it worth mentioning that after correctly calling the market’s downward inflection point in April, those same Goldman folks are once again leaning bullish, and in a Friday note from Goldman Scott Rubner (which is not for mass distribution to the bank’s entire client base and instead is reserved for a handful of the bank’s top client as it indicate what the bank’s traders actually do believe, it is also available to zero hedge professional subscribers), he says that the worst is behind us and gives 11 reasons why the late April rout may have been the market bottom for the time being.

  Rubner’s argument in a nutshell: pointing to Thursday’s explosive move higher as testament of the market’s extremely negative sentiment and low positioning (which of course was followed by Friday’s rout), the Goldman trader thinks that global stocks will rally “significantly” in May as the flow-of-funds is set to improve starting on Monday (even though the closely watched 50bps rate hike FOMC meeting is due on May the 4th).

  Below we lay out Rubner’s bullish 11-point checklist in greater detail.

  • 1. US Corporates return back to the open window on Monday with dry powder. Rubner calculates $5BN of demand per day, every day until mid-June. US corporates are the largest buyer of equities in 2022 and have authorized record YTD (AAPL = $90bn; GOOG = $70bn; MSFT = $60bn; FB = $50bn, etc).
  • 2. Pensions flipped to buy given the recent outperformance of bonds vs stock. This should carry over into next week.
  • 3. S&P Index gamma turned negative on Thursday for the first time since March.
  • 4. Synthetic Short Gamma through CTA and Vol-Control strategies supply will fade over the next week (Thursday’s move will lower some of the supply expectations and Goldman’s estimates will dramatically change next week).
  • 5. Liquidity is simply not available to try to cover liquid macro. As we noted on several occasions last week [insert hyperlink to liquidity tweet], top book liquidity in the S&P 500 futures is $2.8M. This ranks in the 1st percentile in the last 10-years. This is as low as it gets.
  • 6. Sentiment is the most bearish since the market crash lows in March 2009. Rubner says that he has done “more bearish zoom calls these past two weeks, than I can recall.” The bears (AAIIBEAR) published a reading of 59.40 today. This was the highest level since March 5th 2009 (70.27). S&P500 rallied 8.54% in March 2009 and 9.39% in April of 2009. That was the generational market bottom.
  • 7. Money Market Inflows Logged a massive +$60B inflows last week, which was the largest weekly inflow since Covid 2020 (and typically another fear gauge).

  

  • 8. For the fixed income watchers, Goldman’s CTA models show some impressive demand. Goldman has +$20B of bonds to buy in a flat tape, but +$117B of bonds to buy in an up tape, and $37B of bonds to buy in a down tape. This should ease some of the pressure on long duration equities and largest construction of market cap.
  • 9. Goldman’s Prime Desk notes that hedge funds exposure is dismal. Gross and Net Exposure are currently at 2-year lows. And vs the past 5 years, Gross ranks in the 21st and Net ranks in the 38th. US TMT Megacap L/S ratio declined by -48% in the past 1-month. (~right before earnings)
  • 10. Everyone is short: Short leverage (with options) ranks in the 98th percentile in the last 5 years.
  • 11. New month = New Inflows. There should be some decent inflows to start May per normal rebalancing cycle in retirement accounts.

  

  * * *

  Rubner then does a more detailed breakdown of what the latest flows indicate for markets. We excerpt from the main points below (professional subscribers have access to the full note).

  1. Passive USA Large Cap Outflows (and resulting MOC 3:50pm imbalances): = “you ask me for money and I sell”

  • US Equity Funds registered their largest outflows of 2022.

  

  • b) US large cap Equity funds registered the largest outflows since 2018.

  

  • c) this is LIFO (last in, first out) behavior. This is where all of the new repatriated safe haven has flowed.

  * * *

  2. “Everything cross-asset outflow” – this is rare. Stocks, Bonds, and Cash all saw outflows this past week

  • You don’t see this very often. This is what we call an everything outflow. No lines saw inflows, and its back to checking accounts.

  

  

  

  * * *

  3. Retail Investors buyers of 0-1 DTE (days-to-expiry) puts are largest on record – does retail start buying calls again?

  • Friday’s same-day SPX were the highest dollar-volume ever traded for a single expiry on a single day
  • $225bln of puts and $160bln notional of calls traded
    • Already in 12 figures on Friday’s SPX expiration – $105bln in just the the first hour. Keep an eye on DTEs
  • Daily option volume Notional volume ($bln) traded in listed US equity options

  

  Final-day trading volume: Notional SPX option volume traded on the day of expiration, excluding Third Friday and end-of-month expirations

  

  * * *

  4. Both Professional and Retail Sentiment have reached new lows. Rules and Tools have historically marked a contrarian indicator.

  • GS sentiment indicator (SI) current reading of -2.2 is a signal of extremely light positioning and typically acts as a solid contra indicator for the market. Out of 687 weekly readings (first recording: 2/27/09), there have only been 14 instances in which the sentiment indicator was more negative (below -2.2).

  

  • AAIIBULL (bullish investors) reached the 9th lowest reading since 1987 (1820) observations (zeroth percentile).

  

  • Market returns after such extremely negative readings have been uniformly bullish, and the hit rate six months after such a reading is 100% (14 of 14 occasions), leading to a median 19% return!

  

   * * *

  5. Futures Positioning has been unwound and ranks in the 15th percentile over the past 10 years.

  • For context, the high futures position for 2022 was +$138.4B (January 25th ) vs. +$10B currently.

  

  * * *

  6. Peak Blackout is behind us. US Corporates return from the blackout window on May 2nd (Monday). The largest buyer of equities in 2022 has been out of the market for much of April and is now back.

  • 51% of the S&P 500 reported last week. This is the largest week for earnings in Q1. Corporates are slowing re-emerging from the blackout.

  

  • 2022 US corporate authorizations are off to the best year on record. Do they come back to buy stocks at these levels having already authorized? Do we hear about more big authorizations this week?

  

  • GS buyback activity last week was 2.4x the bank’s average 2021 levels – despite being in the earnings ‘blackout window.’ the bank estimates ~59% of companies will emerge by this time next week

  

  * * *

  7. S&P Index Gamma (no longer long) given institutional “forced hedging” of May puts – do we see monetization of puts after the big FOMC event next week?

  Dealer long gamma has been unwound, and works in both directions. This will exacerbate, not buffer moves in the same direction as the market.

  

  * * *

  8. Systematic Equity Supply is far smaller than some have feared given recent deleveraging.

  • Goldman calculates that CTA strategies have to sell $8B over the next 1 week and $21B to sell over the next month.
  • In an up tape, CTA strategies have up to buy $78B vs. down tape -$81B to sell. Said otherwise, they will continue to trade negative synthetic gamma in the same direction as the market

  

  

  * * *

  9. Synthetic fixed income short gamma (CTA strategies) have triggered flip levels. Does FI demand ease pressure on rate move and long duration equities?

  • Bond yields lower = SPX construction higher? This might be important chart for equity traders given the large cap tech weighting of the indices.

  

  * * *

  10. S&P 500 Top Book Liquidity “works in both directions”

  • Liquidity in the most liquid equity future in the world ranks in the 7th percentile in the past 10 years, and offers just $6M to trade on the screens.

  

  * * *

  12. Seasonals – “Sell in May and Go Away” this year? Positioning is already too low to sell from here. (30-yr look back)

  • This chart will matter if and when May inflows come back.

  

  * * *

  13. HF Leverage Exposure remains at cycle lows, does May the 4th become another clearing event and quick adding back of exposure?

  • Overall book Gross leverage +1.0 pts to 228.4% (5th percentile one-year) and Net leverage -0.6 pts to 72.9% (lowest since May ‘20). Overall book L/S ratio -0.9% to 1.937 (lowest since May ‘20).
  • Fundamental L/S Gross leverage +1.3 pts to 172% (6th percentile one-year) and Fundamental L/S Net leverage -1.1 pts to 49.3%, near the lowest levels since Apr ‘20.

  

  As Rubner concludes, “choppy and wide trading range continues but market technicals flip in favor of the bulls for may.” One thing is clear: the market can’t take much more pain without the Fed having to step in – we are talking the proverbial “flush” – no matter how much Biden berates Powell into standing to the side as stocks crash if it somehow means that inflation will shrink – and boost Biden’s approval rating – just because we enter a bear market. Incidentally, we wonder if Biden’s handlers have considered what will happen to the president’s approval rating if in additional to a stagflationary recession, the president were to also add a market crash to his list of achievements.

  Finally, for those curious how to best trade the world as envision by the Goldman flow trader, details can be found in the full note available to professional subscribers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 16:55

• 'We're Taking Back Our Street" – Sacramento Man Barricades Street To Stop Out-Of-Control Crime 
  ‘We’re Taking Back Our Street” – Sacramento Man Barricades Street To Stop Out-Of-Control Crime 

  People are fed up with the urban utopian socialist experiment in California. One business owner barricaded a public street in Sacramento to prevent a further spillover in crime from other areas. 

  “The game is over. We’re taking back our streets,” business owner Rich Eaton told FOX40. He barricaded part of Railroad Drive to prevent the commercial area from additional car burglaries, rampant building theft, prostitution, and homeless encampments. 

  

  “The city’s dereliction of duty has just come to a boiling point and I’m really just begging for help,” Eaton said, adding he has complained about the out-of-control crime to the mayor. So far, he’s received no response. 

  “I paid some homeless people some money so they would leave. I fed them; I took care of them and helped them and when Railroad Drive was cleared. I put up barriers,” Eaton said.

  A person who didn’t want to be identified and works for a company on the street told the local news: “It was like walking through a working meth lab to get to work.” 

  “There’s days when they’ll be parked three-wide on the street and we can barely get by. They’ve had our gates completely blocked. I’ve pulled up and had employees waiting to get in because they were afraid to get out of their gate and punch in the code.

  “Literally a week ago from this spot to there, all the way down and around the corner there were 57 motor homes and trailers parked,” the employee said.

  Eaton said someone scaled his building last week and stole his surveillance cameras from the roof. 

  “The prostitution, the stolen cars, people meeting on the street at 3 a.m.,” Eaton said, it’s just chaos he added. 

  Sacramento responded to Eaton’s barricade with an order to stop blocking the street. 

  Business owners taking action as city governments seem unresponsive is a new emerging trend. Last year, dozens of Baltimore City businesses banded together. They collectively threatened the mayor with no tax payment because they were fed up and frustrated “with the outburst of violence.”  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 15:45

• Being A Successful Trader Is A Paradox
  Being A Successful Trader Is A Paradox

  By Alex Barrow of Macro Ops Musings

  Winners Evolve

  This will make you sit up in your chair (emphasis mine):

  In the 1990’s Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson performed some research to try to understand some of the qualities that make up a well-run hospital. She was not prepared, however, for one of the results her research produced. After surveying the nurses at eight different institutions, one of the things her study found was that in those hospitals where nurses reported the very best leadership team, along with great relationships with their co-workers, the number of medical errors reported was ten times higher!

  What could possibly explain this outcome?

  …In hospitals where the nurses felt safe and highly regarded, both by their peers and by their managers, the reason they reported more errors was that they felt more psychologically “safe.” Nurses in these more cohesive, well-led units made comments such as “mistakes are natural and normal to document,” and “mistakes are serious because of the toxicity of the drugs, so you are never afraid to tell the nurse manager.”

  By contrast, in those environments where mistakes were not forgiven and miscreants were punished, nurses were more likely to report that “The environment is unforgiving, heads will roll.” In other words, it was highly likely that just as many mistakes — if not more — were made in these institutions, but not reported. Instead of learning from their mistakes, these hospitals were hiding from them.

  – Don P, Peppers & Rogers Group, Does Your Company Make Enough Mistakes?

  That opener is so eye-opening it is worth repeating:

  “in those hospitals where nurses reported the very best leadership team, along with great relationships with their co-workers, the number of medical errors reported was ten times higher!”

  Think about what this implies:

  • the sheer number of hospital errors that DON’T get reported

    • the number of errors that even top hospitals make (a lot)

    • the number of errors that marginal to poorly run hospitals make (surely a lot more)

    • the number of hidden or non-reported errors that are missed completely

  An observed reporting spread of 10-to-1 suggests the hospital error base rate is remarkably high. If there are remarkably high error rates in the confines of hospitals — where medical processes are exhaustively detailed and regimented — think how much more capacity there is for error in the relatively undocumented world of discretionary trading and investing.

  And if top hospitals report an order of magnitude more errors than second or third-rate peers… while surely having a lower absolute number of errors (because top-performing institutions are better run)… think of the overwhelming number of errors sloppy performers must make… and by simple logical extension, the vast quantity of errors marginal traders and investors must be making over and over again, every single day.

  (The collective presence of investor error fuels real trading opportunity, by the way, for the same reason errors at the poker table are profit opportunities for the skilled. Difference being, in a poker game you typically only have one opponent on the other side of a big hand. In a big trade you can have myriad investors, who have collectively all made the same mistake, pooling profits in your pocket by way of their positioning.)

  “Heads Will Roll”

  This fuels a delicious irony: If Edmondson’s findings translate to traders, one of the strongest indicators of performance quality is the frequency with which one admits and reports weaknesses or mistakes rather than hides them. This is 180 degrees from the attitude of “I never make mistakes ever.”

  When interviewing a prospective money manager, then, what you want to hear is: “We’ve messed up plenty of times but learned a lot, and continue to learn.” If instead you get some variant of “We’ve always been perfect and will continue to be perfect,” walk away fast.

  Why is it, then, that top performers are more willing to admit mistakes? Perhaps because lesser performers operate out of fear:

  • fear that bosses will judge them harshly
    • fear that clients or investors will judge harshly (or even pull funding)
    • an inaccurate self-judging compass (the perception that all mistakes are bad)
    • an ego-preserving data distortion field (fear of ego being bruised or even shattered)

  Unfortunately, bad bosses and bad clients actually justify such fear in all too many cases. The notion that “heads will roll” is the result of subconscious signals delivered and received. Within organizations, bad leaders really do “shoot messengers”… confuse useful feedback with negative performance… fail to distinguish between luck and skill… fail to cultivate small improvements… R&D expansion into adjacent areas… better results monitoring… and so on.

  In the investment world, bad clients are even worse: Rewarding slickly polished presentations from “empty suits”… chasing performance over a cliff… being emotionally averse to inevitable flat periods… disregarding the value of risk control… preferring artificial smoothness to organic robusticity… etcetera ad infinitum.

  (The answer to the “heads will roll” problem is tongue-in-cheek but effective: Avoid bad bosses and clients! If someone with a functional lack of understanding and/or an obtuse point of view has the ability to impact your future in a negative way, change your situation to remove that person’s impact — or at least minimize it — as soon as you can…)

  Mistakes vs Weaknesses

  For mechanical traders, and discretionary traders who long ago check-listed their basic processes, it is also important to distinguish between “mistakes” and “weaknesses” — and to recognize that reporting and studying a “weakness” can have the same beneficial impact as a mistake.

  Take the practice of honoring one’s risk points, for example, or always following a daily homework routine. For traders with a certain level of experience and professionalism, these standards are virtually never deviated from. For a seasoned and disciplined trader, mistakes defined as “a deviation from established best practices” might happen once in a quarter, or even less frequently than that (e.g. less than 2% percent of the time).

  Even still though, weaknesses can be treated as a form of mistake — and every process that crosses a minimum complexity threshold – like most any trading or investing methodology — has potential weaknesses embedded that can be observed, reported on and contemplated: Flaws in the structure of the process… potential adjustments to variable component weightings… adjustments to the step-by-step pre- and post-analysis process… the shoring up of knowledge gaps or re-tooling of assumptions… and so on.

  An Emphasis on Culture

  At Macro Ops we are keenly aware of mistakes — and “weaknesses,” which apply even when processes are down cold — and as a result have a very strong emphasis on culture.

  Institutional culture is real and powerful. You cultivate it, establish it, and strengthen it via what you do and how you do it, day after day. Think of the winning habits, processes and mindsets a successful person relies on until they are “second nature.” Then expand those mental models, ways of thinking and doing and interpreting, across a team, an organization, an entity of multiple individuals, where values and step-by-step actions, “ways of doing things” are passed on to anyone new who comes through the door. That’s culture.

  As the size of our research team grows — and we are hiring in 2021 by the way! — an emphasis on growing and maintaining the MO culture becomes ever more important. This is not just because culture contributes massively to consistent outperformance (though it certainly does)… but because the quality of your culture determines the rate at which you evolve.

  And the rate at which you evolve goes back to errors, weaknesses and mistakes…

  EVOLUTION, MORPHEUS, EVOLUTION

  Think of the following logic chain:

  • Error Data (Mistakes + Weaknesses) = Constructive Feedback

    • Constructive Feedback = Opportunity to Analyze and Refine

    • Analyzing and Refining = Incremental Improvement

    • Incremental Improvement = Micro-Evolution

    • Micro-Evolution over extended time cycles = Macro-Evolution

    • Macro-Evolution = Smarter, Faster, Deeper, Stronger

    • Smarter, Faster, Deeper, Stronger = DOMINATE

  To approach from another angle:

  • Natural evolution = serendipitous impact of randomly distributed trial and error

    • Accelerated evolution = guided impact of shaped and observed trial and error

    • Trial and error = experimentation, hypothesis, “useful failures” etc

    • Which cycles back around to errors, weaknesses etc as “Constructive Feedback”

  The trading organizations that deliberately nurture a “culture of embracing mistakes” will receive a much higher volume of constructive feedback… and will further be better positioned to respond and hypothesize… in turn allowing them to “analyze and refine” at a faster rate… allowing them to improve and evolve at a faster rate than their peers.

  In trading and investing, this is huge.

  But individuals can apply these ideas too. You don’t need a team to create a culture (though it certainly helps). You can embrace mistakes on your own by asking questions like:

  • Am I a vigilant observer of my trading and investing process?

    • Do I diligently record my errors and mistakes?

    • Do I seek out and contemplate potential weaknesses?

    • Do I probe and test for weaknesses as a matter of habit…

    • …not to bring myself down, but to make my process stronger?

    • Do I constantly seek to analyze, refine and evolve as a matter of survival?

    • Do I give myself permission to acknowledge weaknesses and still feel like a winner?

  Cheerful vs Zero Tolerance

  Keep in mind, too, that there is an important balance here. Being a winner means walking the line between tolerating mistakes — responding to them cheerfully and constructively — and ruthlessly stamping them out with a “zero tolerance” attitude.

  At Macro Ops, our general mode of operation is a response of positive urgency to fresh mistakes we uncover. When the observation bell goes off, we “halt the assembly line” and ask questions like:

  • What was the origin of this mistake (or observed weakness)?

    • Did it come from a gap in process, misread of information, judgment error etc?

    • Was it something subtle and nuanced, or big and obvious?

    • Does it fall under research, execution, strategic allocation, or something else?

    • How do we extract maximum tuition from this?

    • Should a specific step-by-step aspect of the process be modified?

    • Should a conceptual or philosophical principle be explored (or re-explored)?

    • How can we best evolve and strengthen from this?

    • How do we use this to become more awesome?

  We can’t claim originality in this. The most successful organizations in the world, be they trading-focused or something completely different, all have some variant of the same mindset.

  For instance: The following quotes are from Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater (one of the most successful hedge funds of all time):

  More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.

  I believe the biggest problem humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.

  Your ability to see the changing landscape and adapt is more a function of your perceptive abilities and reasoning abilities than your ability to learn and process quickly.

  Recognize that you will certainly make mistakes; so will those around you and those who work for you. And what matters is how you deal with them. If you treat mistakes as learning opportunities that can yield rapid improvement if handled well, you will be excited by them.

  If you don’t mind being wrong on the way to being right, you will learn a lot.

  Of course, there is also a certain class of mistakes we have “zero tolerance” for — things like:

  • Neglecting risk or failing to follow a risk management protocol

    • Blatantly neglecting an established process step

    • Any type of “phoning it in” or extended delivery of subpar effort

    • Being “mentally hard of hearing” — not paying attention to repeated instruction

    • Making the same mistake repeatedly (failing to learn from repeated trials)

  In other words, some mistakes are understandable and even exciting — as Ray Dalio puts it — because their presence indicates forward evolution and opportunity for advancement on the capability frontier.

  But other mistakes — the ones that go back to well-covered areas, well-developed process, or issues of moral code and doing one’s best work — represent serious internal issues and thus receive a brutally harsh response. (We aren’t afraid to lose our tempers.)

  The Circle of Competence

  In evaluating mistakes, you can picture acceptable vs unacceptable in the context of a circle — a “circle of competence.”

  

  Mistakes on the circumference of the growth circle are acceptable, and even desirable… if they represent intelligent efforts at expanding competence. The only way you make the circle bigger is by evolving your capabilities… and you do this via thoughtful trial and error, risk-adjusted tinkering and refining, allocations to R&D, and so on.

  Mistakes deep within the circle are unacceptable, however, because they represent failure in areas already covered… or failure in areas that should be covered… or worse yet, a failure of internal structure as relating to things like capacity for hard work, commitment to accuracy, moral commitment to excellence, and so on.

  Furthermore there are at least two competence circles that matter: The circle for the individual team member, and the circle for the organization as a whole. Efforts to expand the organization as a whole — via contributions to team knowledge or net capability — are appreciated and rewarded. There are many “good failures” in respect to this endeavor, because the potential ROI (return on investment) is so long-term beneficial. (This is a good acid test of leadership by the way. Does the leadership “get” this? Do they embrace it as a directive?)

  On the individual team member side, competence circles should match up with experience levels and expectations. A senior trader or analyst with 10+ years of experience will be expected to have a much larger competence circle than, say, a fresh analyst with lots of talent but only a modicum of seasoning. For this reason a certain type of mistake or weakness may be acceptable in one team member but not in another, again relative to situational differences.

  Altogether this unites to create an enlightened (in our opinion) and goal-oriented approach to evaluating mistakes and weaknesses: We want to maximize top performance, minimize “unforced errors” and low-grade process failures, and cultivate a healthy expansion of competence for both individual team members and the organization as a whole. Mistakes made in alignment with this goal are not only tolerated but appreciated — “winners evolve” is our short and sweet motto, and it applies across the board. Mistakes of the unacceptable kind, if made too frequently, result in a friendly parting of the ways (so as to avoid team resentment and “Full Metal Jacket” treatment).

  Confidently Humble

  In many ways, being a successful trader is a paradox. You must develop a deep sense of confidence in your methodology and talent, yet remain ever humble and flexible. You have to trust yourself, but also know when to intelligently doubt yourself — and have no fear of doing so. You need a profound unshakeable faith in who you are and what you can do… yet at the same time maintaining the attitude of the humble student, the raw beginner, the white belt always ready to learn.

  Getting this mix right is also the key to personal evolution and incremental improvement, because evolution itself is such an iterative, trial-and-error driven process (and thus a reflective / contemplative process).  It’s not enough to get your hands dirty and fall on your face every so often. Having fallen, you must have the presence of mind to put your ego aside… objectively examine your weakness or mistake… and then put in the elbow grease of analyzing, and intelligently responding to, the data born of your stumble.

  None of this is rocket science. But it is harder than it sounds… harder even than rocket science in some aspects… and thus represents a golden opportunity, because so few can do it! The need for ego preservation is a massive block to trading in so many ways — even among people who appear “humble” on the outside, yet cannot apply a “culture of embracing mistakes” on the internal level.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 15:10

• Biden Price Hike: Most Americans Blame US President For Higher Gas Prices
  Biden Price Hike: Most Americans Blame US President For Higher Gas Prices

  A majority of Americans still don’t believe the Biden administration’s ham-fisted attempts to shove the “Putin’s Price Hike™” narrative down our throats.

  According to a new Rasmussen poll, when asked whether Biden or Russian President Vladimir Putin is to blame for higher fuel prices, “76% of Republicans think Biden bears most responsibility for higher fuel prices, as do 24% of Democrats and 54% of voters not affiliated with either major party.“

  

  What’s more, 84% of likely US voters believe the rising price of gasoline, home heating oil and other petroleum products is a ‘serious problem.’ 61% say it’s a ‘very serious problem.’

  And when did the vast majority of this inflation occur? Pre-Ukraine.

  

  Rasmussen’s findings echo those from several weeks ago, as NBC’s Tom Costello reported on “The Today Show” that people aren’t buying the Putin Price Hike narrative.

  “President Biden is trying to label this Putin’s price hike. Well most Americans, according to an NBC News poll, are not buying that. Only 6% blame Putin; most believe that President Biden’s policies are very much to blame.“

  And in March, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that more Americans blame Biden than the Ukraine invasion or corporate greed for the rise in gas prices.

  Forty-one percent of those polled say the Biden Administration’s economic policies are more responsible for the recent rise in gas prices.

  Two other factors tied for second place at 24% each. The first was the war in Ukraine and resulting sanctions against Russia, while the second factor was oil companies charging more. -WCSC, Mar. 30

  What was that, Joe?

  

  That said, talk to us about the cost of energy when Putin shuts off gas to Europe.

  Europe may be hurtling toward a sudden halt of Russian natural #gas, which would trigger energy rationing and a deep recession. The continent’s gas balance is “just one supply disruption away from completely falling apart,” says a JPMorgan analyst. https://t.co/37c5Gq9dUH

  — Bloomberg Energy (@BloombergNRG) May 1, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 14:35

• Diesel For Dinner
  Diesel For Dinner

  Via Doomberg Substack,

  “Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.” – Lao Tzu

  The words edible and eatable are often used interchangeably but embedded within their respective definitions is a distinction that makes an important difference. Edible means “safe to eat,” whereas eatable means “pleasant to eat.” A variant of the word eatable is delicious, commonly defined as “highly pleasant to eat.” Delicious certainly sounds more enticing than highly eatable, a phrase nobody would use to compliment an exquisite meal crafted by a professional chef. We find such linguistic nuances pleasing.

  Whether the balance of calories a person consumes is edible, eatable, or delicious depends on where they sit on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a concept we covered at length in a piece we wrote last July called Why Are Cows Sacred?  For those at the base of the pyramid, the struggle to consume enough edible food just to see another sunrise defines much of their existence. At the top of the pyramid sit those fortunate souls who can afford to cook delicious meals with fresh ingredients, eat at fine restaurants, or even hire a personal chef to tend to their every dietary indulgence.

  

  At the molecular level, the distinction between edible and inedible can be subtle. The rearrangement of a few atoms within an otherwise similar chemical structure can make the difference between satiation and a trip to the emergency room.  Prior to the advent of the modern chemical and energy industries, humanity leveraged animal and plant byproducts to create many of the functional materials used in daily life, making the tradeoff between food and other needs a more visceral one than it is today. The edible parts were eaten, and the inedible stuff – presumably identified through an unfortunate series of trial and error experiments – was converted into other useful things or burned to create energy.

  Armed with humanity’s mastery of chemistry, we can now rearrange atoms with astonishing specificity at an unimaginable scale, pushing billions of people further up Maslow’s hierarchy than they would otherwise be. In addition to using fossil fuels to create most of the materials that surround us, we leverage them to produce fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and other inputs into the farming process, boosting crop yields to levels once thought impossible. We also synthesize mountains of edible ingredients directly from oil and gas. Touring a modern food processing factory would seem almost indistinguishable from a specialty chemical plant, mostly because they aren’t all that different.

  

  While it makes perfect sense to leverage our bounty of fossil fuels and ability to manipulate them at the molecular level to increase global food abundance, going through the effort to grow food only to turn around and burn it for energy seems less than ideal. In a controversial piece we wrote in January titled “In Praise of Corn Ethanol,” we put forth a theory that the adoption of corn ethanol as a mandated additive to gasoline was a scheme to coverup one of the greatest environmental scandals of the past century: the use of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent. While some readers interpreted our piece as supporting this policy – undoubtedly because of the title – our primary purpose was to highlight the ugly history that got us to the current situation, and how it was predominantly a dirty political compromise. In hindsight, “Why Corn Ethanol is a Thing” might have been a better title.

  No such compromise underpins the decision to use foodstuffs as replacements for diesel, a policy that will make the unfolding global food crisis substantially worse if it is not soon overturned.

  When a barrel of oil is refined, it is separated into various products using the different boiling points of its components. Gasoline boils at a lower temperature than diesel and represents about 43% of each barrel of oil. Diesel makes up approximately 27%, with the other 30% destined to become heating oil, jet fuel, asphalt, and other important materials. Because of its higher energy density per gallon and the efficiency of engines designed to use it, diesel is a desirable fuel, especially for long-haul trucking.

  

  Trucks at the pump | Getty Images

  Unfortunately for those near the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, many cooking oils – liquid fat isolated from various crops used extensively in frying, baking, and other types of food preparation all over the world – have a molecular structure quite similar to that of diesel. It does not take much chemical magic to transform previously edible cooking oils into workable substitutes for the valuable fuel. Now that the environmental lobby has convinced government officials worldwide that “renewable carbon content” is prima facia a desirable thing – a fallacy that deserves its own Doomberg piece – various mandates exist to literally take food out of the mouths of the hungry and pump it into our trucks for burning. For the planet, and whatnot.

  The first commercially relevant incarnation of a diesel substitute derived from crops is a product known as biodiesel. Oils derived from palm, sunflower, soybean, rapeseed, and castor are used as inputs, to name a few, and they are reacted with methanol (derived from fossil fuels) in a chemical process known as transesterification. Transesterification generates a product with higher oxygen content than standard diesel. This presents some challenges, including poor low-temperature performance, increased microbial growth, corrosion of engine parts, and higher shipping costs (biodiesel cannot leverage existing pipelines that are used to transport regular diesel). Much like corn ethanol, biodiesel is blended with regular diesel at concentrations between 2-20% before being marketed. Despite these limitations, government mandates have motivated farmers the world over to redirect a sizable chunk of their crops from the grocery store to the gas station.

  Nearly all of the challenges with biodiesel have been overcome with the recent development of renewable diesel, a material synthesized by hydrotreating cooking oils. Here’s how the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) describes the differences (emphasis added throughout):

  “Renewable diesel is a biomass-based diesel fuel similar to biodiesel, but with important differences. Unlike biodiesel, renewable diesel is a hydrocarbon that is chemically equivalent to petroleum diesel and can be used as a drop-in biofuel that does not require blending with petroleum diesel for use…

  Because renewable diesel is a drop-in fuel, it meets ASTM D975 specification for petroleum diesel and can be seamlessly blended, transported, and even co-processed with petroleum diesel.”

  

  Image credit: iStockPhoto / Lori Hays

  To the truckers forced to meet renewable carbon content mandates, renewable diesel is a godsend. It requires no change on their part, is indistinguishable from regular diesel, and allows them to proudly proclaim their green bonafides. To the companies who produce it, renewable diesel is a government-mandated financial pot of gold. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues valuable renewable identification numbers (RINs) to track compliance with various mandates and to stoke production. There’s also a national $1-per-gallon tax credit to further incentivize producers.

  While support at the federal level has been important, the real driver for renewable diesel adoption has been the State of California. Through its low-carbon fuel standards (LCFS) program, credits currently trading for $115 per carbon ton are being issued, and renewable diesel is now the largest source of incremental credits. This is before the real capacity to produce renewable diesel comes online.

  Where will all this renewable diesel come from? In the US, soybean oils are the main input, and it should come as no surprise that planting strategies are being quickly modified to produce more of it. This quote from an industry consultant frames the magnitude of the upcoming disruption well:

  “The dramatic development of the U.S. renewable diesel industry is similar to how ethanol changed the U.S. corn industry from 2007 to 2010, says Dan Basse, president of AgResource Company. But he believes renewable diesel could be more disruptive.

  ‘We are calling for 90.5 million soybean acres in 2022 versus this year’s 87 million, and that just gets us started in meeting renewable diesel demand,” he says. “Then we’d need to increase soybean acres by 5 million to 7 million each year. We have to top 120 million acres of soybeans to meet the growing demand for renewable diesel.’”

  With the force of the government’s thumb on the scale of demand compounding pre-existing inflationary pressures hitting farmers, the price of soybeans has soared to fresh all-time highs. At the time of this writing, soybeans trade for $17 per bushel, more than double the price seen just two years ago. Unless these policies are unwound, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where positive price momentum abates.

  

  In a piece we wrote last October called Starvation Diet, we warned that the unfolding energy crisis would trigger a global famine, a process that would be exacerbated by protectionism. Here’s a key passage:

  “We’ve written extensively about how the market for energy in Europe broke and how the ripple effects will snap through our delicate supply chains like a whip. When the supply of critical goods goes short, countries implement protectionist policies in a futile attempt to minimize the impact at home. A cascading series of retaliatory moves usually follows, leading to economic vapor lock. We are seeing that pattern play out now in agriculture.”

  Although we take no joy in being proven right in this regard, more evidence of our prescience emerged last week when Indonesia shocked the world by banning all exports of palm oil. Cooking oils can be substituted for each other and price pressures on one oil inevitably puts a bid under the others. Here’s how The Guardian describes the situation:

  “The price of edible oils such as soyoil, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil is expected to rise after Indonesia announced a surprise export palm oil ban, experts have warned.

  Major edible oils are already in short supply due to adverse weather and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The move by Indonesia to pause exports will place extra strain on cost-sensitive consumers in Asia and Africa hit by higher fuel and food prices.”

  The magnitude of this ban cannot be overstated. According to data from Statista, palm oil accounted for 35% of all cooking oil produced last year. Indonesia is responsible for a staggering 60% of global palm oil production. The blast waves emanating from this explosive move will be felt the world over, most acutely by those already on the brink that can least afford to react. Bluntly, people are going to starve.

  In the face of a global energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, food shortages, and rampant inflation, does it make sense to be redirecting so many acres of valuable cropland to make renewable diesel, a fuel we can easily and directly drill for domestically? Do our policymakers understand the interconnected nature of these markets, and how forcing a strong link between diesel and soybeans creates a tunnel through which the contagion of crisis in one market bleeds directly into the other? Imagine how grotesque this spectacle must seem to the most vulnerable among us. While they scramble to secure enough edible food to survive, our elite know-it-alls gorge themselves on the most delicious hors d’oeuvres the cocktail party circuit can provide. Through either shocking ignorance or callous indifference, they convince themselves they are saving the planet.

  Saving the planet for who, exactly? The poorest citizens on Earth? Nah.

  Let them eat diesel.

  

  *  *  *

  If you have enjoyed this or any of the 105 articles we’ve published in the last year, please hit the “Like” button and consider upgrading your subscription. New articles will be limited to paid subscribers after April 30th. Claim your spot in the Chicken Coop today!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 14:00

• New COVID Bill Fines Parents For Unvaxxed Kids And Doubles Income Taxes 
  New COVID Bill Fines Parents For Unvaxxed Kids And Doubles Income Taxes 

  An absurd COVID-19 bill by radical leftist Road Island Senator Samuel W. Bell says that residents who refuse the vaccine and its booster shots are subjected to fines and pay more income tax unless they receive an exemption. 

  Bell introduced Rhode Island Senate Bill S2552 on March 1. As of last week, the bill had not been passed into law is currently in review by the Senate Health and Human Services committee. 

  S2552 states eligible Rhode Island residents would have to be vaccinated against COVID. If they reject, they could face a $50 monthly fine and pay double the state income tax. There are also fines for unvaccinated children under the age of 16 that would be imposed on the parents. Text from the bill reads:

  This act would mandate all residents sixteen (16) years or older to be vaccinated against COVID-19. If a resident is under sixteen (16) years of age, the resident would be required to be immunized against COVID-19, with the responsibility for ensuring compliance falling on all parents or guardians with medical consent powers.

  Additionally, any person who violates this chapter would be required to pay a monthly civil penalty of fifty dollars ($50.00) and would owe twice the amount of personal income taxes.

  Talking about the bill, Bell told the Boston Globe:

  “The reason I introduced the bill is we have a crisis with the pandemic.

  “Thousands of Rhode Islanders have died. I’ve had really painful calls from constituents who can’t go to the store because they’re immuno-compromised, who have lost loved ones to this pandemic, who are really ill and not fully recovered, suffering long-term effects.”

  Bell has faced harsh criticism for the introduction of the bill. He tweeted this email he received from one angry Rhode Islander. 

  

  Subjecting adults to fines and more taxes for not being vaxxed or even their kids not being vaxxed is a significant overreach by government. Also, the vaccine is not risk-free, especially for children.

  Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and immunologist who has contributed to the technology of mRNA vaccines, recently said: “Think twice before you vaccinate your kids. Because if something bad happens, you can’t go back and say, ‘whoops, I want a do-over.'” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/01/2022 – 13:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The People Behind DHS's Orwellian "Disinformation Governance Board"
  The People Behind DHS’s Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board”

  Authored by Jeff Thompson via The Organic Prepper blog,

  A “Disinformation Governance Board” has just been created and is going to be run by the Department of Homeland Security. Their primary goal is going to be to “police” what is deemed to be “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

  

  No clarification has been given as of yet as to what this policing will mean, but it has been pointed out that the creation of this new Disinformation Governance Board is going to have the full strength of the DHS behind it.

  DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “the goal is to bring the resources of (DHS) together to address this threat.”

  Nina Jankowicz has been chosen to head up the new disinformation office as the executive director.

  Nina Jankowicz

  

  Nina Jankowicz

  Jankowicz received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. A full list of the staff at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University can be found here.

  Some of the current faculty/staff members within the Walsh School of Foreign Service are:

  • Rebecca Katz

  • Shantayanan Devarajan

  • Thomas Banchoff

  • Madeleine Albright

  Jankowicz also spent time previously working with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (also called the Wilson Institute) in the past as a disinformation fellow. A full listing of their staff can be found here.

  Some of the current staff members, faculty, and associates at the Wilson Institute include:

  • Cynthia Arnson – Director of the Latin American Program

  • Shihoko Goto – Director for Geoeconomics and Indo-Pacific Enterprise/Deputy Director of the Asia Program

  • Duncan Wood – VP for Strategy and New Initiatives; Senior Advisor to the Mexico Instituted; Interim Director of the Global Europe Program

  • Lonnie Bunch III – Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

  She also previously worked with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry with the Fullbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, where she offered advice and oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

  In addition to her past work history, Nina is also the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, published in 2020, and a book that was just published this month, How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back.

  How to Lose the Information War

  Within this book, Nina discusses what she learned during her time with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and Belarus as she worked to combat “Russian information warfare tactics.” The book examines five different nations and the policies they pushed to counter “misinformation” in what is claimed to be a fight for “the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.”

  (If you’re looking for information on how to starve the beast, check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)

  How to Be a Woman Online

  Here, Nina says that toxic masculinity has poisoned the internet against women, particularly women who aren’t white. She argues from the standpoint that something needs to be done against these men to keep them from saying these things.

  When interviewed by NPR about this book, Nina said, “And I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities all around the world…”

  Nina went on within the interview to advocate for stronger consequences against men online who say things that are deemed to be wrong.

  “…we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well,” Nina said. She later went on to add, “really any law enforcement of consequences against abusers would make such a big difference because part of the reason this happens right now is that hardly anything ever happens to the people who are levying the abuse.

  The announcement

  News about the new taxpayer-supported agency was released to the American public by Alejandro Mayorkas during the House Appropriations Subcommittee as the 2023 budget for the Department of Homeland Security was discussed. 

  This came about after Representative Lauren Underwood (?) asked Mayorkas what he was going to do to combat “misinformation campaigns” aimed at people who aren’t white.

  

  Lauren Underwood

  Underwood said that not only was disinformation a “huge threat to our homeland,” but that “foreign adversaries attempt to destabilize our elections by targeting people of color with disinformation campaigns.”

  She went on to add, “A newer trend that we saw in the 2020 election and already in the 2022 midterms is that disinformation is being heavily targeted at Spanish-speaking voters, sparking and fueling conspiracy theories.”

  “DHS and its components play a big role in addressing myths and disinformation in Spanish and other languages. Can you share what steps you’ve taken and what future plans you have to address Spanish-language myths and disinformation through a department-wide approach?”

  Mayorkas’ response was the reveal of the DGB.

  He not only revealed that the DGB was in the process of being created but said that there were a number of other “different offices engaged in this critical effort,” one of which is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

  

  Alejandro Mayorkas

  Rob Silvers, the Undersecretary of Policy, and Jennifer Gaskill are stated to be involved in heading up the new agency, in addition to Nina Janckowicz.

  She pushed propaganda designed to help Joe Biden out of a scandal 3 weeks before the 2020 election.

  The Senate must act to stop her from doing more damage. https://t.co/tHyABHrLmM

  — Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) April 27, 2022

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

  Trump talking about how he would “put out that fire” in Portland is the language of authoritarianism. It means the violent clearing of protestors, arrest without cause, abuse of human rights. That’s now law enforcement, that’s lawlessness.

  — Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) September 30, 2020

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

  *  *  *

  Organic Prepper’s response to this unconstitutional attack on the free press… We’ve decided to be proactive rather than reactive. While we hope the censorship doesn’t go too far, our website has already been targeted in the past. We tried then to play their game and post non-controversial, valuable preparedness advice without the hot button topics. But it didn’t matter – they still defunded us. This time, we’re playing OUR game and vow to continue bringing you the same information we would have without a Ministry of Truth threatening our livelihood. We’d like to introduce The Official Newsletter of the Apocalypse. This PDF will be sent to you once per month, on the 15th, and it will contain all the articles published on The OP over the previous month. You can save it to your computer, print it out, or download it to your USB archive. We’ve made this as affordable as possible while still covering our costs. Subscriptions during our presale begin at a mere $4.14 a month. Our first newsletter will come out May 15th. If you order now, during our presale, not only do you get a lower price, but you’ll also get January, February, and April’s content absolutely free. You can choose either a yearly or monthly subscription. The presale price is only available for a few days. Should we encounter a worst-case scenario that shuts down the website, then we would be able to get you the content that *would* have been published with the option of receiving it more frequently than once a month. We won’t be silenced easily. This is how we’re fighting back.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 23:30

• Which US State Drinks The Most Beer?
  Which US State Drinks The Most Beer?

  Beer consumption spans almost the entire world, and is a staple in much of the United States.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Polly Eaton details below, when stacked up next to other alcoholic beverages, beer is America’s preferred drink of choice, closely followed by wine and spirits. In fact, it is the fifth most-consumed drink overall in the country, behind coffee, water, soft drinks and tea.

  At the end of 2021, beer in the U.S. was a $94.1 billion industry. Alongside massive multinational conglomerations, it is also driven by over 9,000 breweries of different types.

  This visualization, created by Victor Dépré of Hypntic Data, maps the consumption of beer by gallons per capita across the U.S. using data from Top Agency and The Beer Institute.

  

  <!–

  <!–

  800 ) { vizElement.style.width=’1200px’;vizElement.style.height=’1107px’;} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width=’1200px’;vizElement.style.height=’1107px’;} else { vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=’1727px’;} var scriptElement = document.createElement(‘script’); scriptElement.src = ‘https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);
  //–>

  //–>

  //–>

  What is Beer?

  Beer is produced from the fermentation of combined water, malt, and yeast. It was first produced 12,000 years ago with the emergence of grain agriculture.

  Today, beer is made from several different malted grains: wheat, corn, rice, oats, and most commonly, barley. Hops, a type of flower, are added for flavor, balancing out the malt’s sweetness with a bitter taste while also preserving the beer’s freshness and giving a good amount of foam.

  American Beer Consumption By State

  So which states drank the most beer, and what was their preferred brand?

  The annual consumption stats come from the Beer Institute’s Brewer’s Almanac report, while the preferred beer of choice was compiled by Data Agency’s 2021 Beer Rankings report, which is based on a combination of surveys combined with Google search analysis from all over the country.

  New Hampshire took the top spot in 2020, outdrinking other states with 41.5 gallons of beer consumed annually per capita. In contrast, the lowest consuming state was Maryland which only consumed 19.7 gallons per capita, about half as much.

  The most popular beer?

  Despite the growing trend of craft breweries in some states, the most popular beer across the country was Budweiser of Anheuser-Busch, which took the top spot in 23 states.

  

  Which State Has The Most Breweries?

  Each state also has varying numbers of breweries operating within, and there are many different types.

  Larger breweries, including those run by some of the world’s largest companies, are also called macrobreweries. They are usually defined as having an annual production greater than 6 million barrels of beer, compared to craft breweries and other types of microbreweries which have a lower annual production.

  Craft breweries are also usually independently owned, and through both positioning and general perception, have come to be associated with specialties and originality, adding unique and interesting ingredients to traditional brews.

  

  California has the highest number of breweries in the country, more than double any other state, at 1,466.

  On the flip side, Mississippi has the fewest breweries, with the most recent Beer Institute’s 2021 almanac only listing 26 in the entire state.

  Beer Sales During the Pandemic

  Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, commonplace items saw massive spikes in sales across the world.

  As lockdowns were implemented and people were forced to stay at home, household items like toilet paper, soap, and pastas began to disappear from store shelves at alarmingly fast rates. Beer was no exception, and sales have continued to increase, going up by 8.9% in the U.S. since 2020.

  This is a worrisome fact to many researchers, as it could be a strong indicator that alcohol was used as a coping mechanism against anxiety and isolation felt during the pandemic. This rise could be a result of increased consumption, but may also indicate increased stockpiling.

  Regardless of why beer sales increased, it will be interesting to see which way the trend swings with the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions and the attempted return to normalcy in the months to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 23:00

• CDC Reports First Human Case Of Avian Influenza
  CDC Reports First Human Case Of Avian Influenza

  By Becker’s Hospital Review

  A Colorado man has tested positive for an H5 bird flu virus, the first such case in the U.S., health officials said April 28. 

  

  The Colorado health department said the man, who is younger than 40, had been working on a commercial farm with poultry that, according to the CDC, was presumably infected with H5N1.

  He reported fatigue as his only symptom and is now in isolation and being treated with the flu antiviral drug oseltamivir. 

  It’s unclear whether the exposure resulted in an infection, according to statements from the health agencies. Officials from the Colorado health department said a positive test result came from a single nasal specimen. The CDC confirmed that result April 27, though it said repeat testing has been negative. 

  “Because the person was in close contact with infected poultry, the virus may have been present in the person’s nose without causing infection,” the Colorado health department said. The CDC said whether the positive test was the result of “surface contamination of the nasal membrane” cannot be determined now.

  “The appropriate public health response at this time is to assume this is an infection and take actions to contain and treat,” the CDC said, adding risk to the general public remains low. 

  The CDC has been monitoring H5N1 outbreaks among wild birds and poultry since late 2021.

  The agency said it has been tracking the health of more than 2,500 people with exposure to infected birds, and this marks the only detected case. The first such human infection caused by the predominant group of H5N1 viruses now circulating was reported in the U.K. in December. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 22:30

• Shanghai Ship-Jam Spells Supply Chain Trouble
  Shanghai Ship-Jam Spells Supply Chain Trouble

  China’s tough new lockdown measures have led to a major backlog of cargo and container ships in front of Shanghai’s port. With employees unable to go to work, the world’s largest container port is having to manage with significantly fewer staff.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, the scale of the problem, using a map of the area on April 28, as provided by FleetMon, an online tracking portal for ships.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  In terms of container throughput, Shanghai’s port is the largest in the world. 47 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs, unit of measure for container sizes) were handled there last year. To put this into perspective, the largest port in Europe is in Rotterdam, and had only 15.3 million TEUs handled there in that same year. This Statista graphic provides an overview of the world’s largest cargo ports.

  FleetMon uses ships’ Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) signals to display traffic volume. These are important in shipping for the exchange of navigational data via radio. Every ship over 20m has to transmit an AIS signal. It transmits, among other things, call name, vessel type, GPS position, dimensions and similar data.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 22:00

• Michigan Investigated Hundreds Of Doctors, Nurses Over COVID-Related Complaints
  Michigan Investigated Hundreds Of Doctors, Nurses Over COVID-Related Complaints

  Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Hundreds of nurses and doctors, including a chief medical examiner, have been investigated by the state of Michigan on COVID-related allegations ranging from videotaping a wedding where some guests weren’t wearing masks to telling trick-or-treaters not to get the vaccine.

  

  Authorities dismissed many of the complaints. Dozens are still pending, with a number referred for disciplinary action. Some have been referred to the Michigan Attorney General’s office for criminal prosecution.

  An allergy and asthma specialist is the subject of one of the referrals sent to the attorney general. The complaint accuses the doctor of prescribing “a lethal dosage” of ivermectin.

  Copies of the complaints, which total more than 500, were provided exclusively to the Epoch Times. The Pacific Justice Institute obtained the records through a FOIA request. The institute represents some of the accused nurses and doctors.

  The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs received and investigated the complaints. Those they have investigated have either been dismissed or referred to its enforcement division for disciplinary action or the AG’s office. Many are listed as still being listed “under board review.” The list provided to the institute includes complaints as recent as February 24, 2022.

  One of the nurses the Pacific Justice Institute represents is Holly Austin, a college nursing professor who holds a doctorate in nursing.

  She faced the revocation of her license by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs for speaking at a public school board meeting in December of 2021 as a parent against plans to reinstitute a mask mandate at her children’s school.

  Dave Peters, a staff attorney with Pacific Justice Institute, told The Epoch Times he was shocked when the state continued its investigation into Austin even after he submitted a 100-page response to the state’s allegations that she was spreading misinformation.

  “I remember not long ago that such actions by government authorities or anybody else would have had the entire journalist community howling about suppression and chilling free speech, ” said Peters, who also holds a master’s degree in medicine.

  According to documents Peters provided to The Epoch Times, it took the state more than a year to close the investigation against Austin. The state concluded in a March 3, 2022 letter “that following a thorough review and investigation,” it had “determined a violation of the Public Health Code cannot be substantiated.”

  More than 200 doctors and nurses found themselves under investigation just for expressing concerns about the COVID vaccine or for not wearing or promoting the wearing of masks. One doctor was reported for shaking hands with someone who wasn’t wearing a mask; another was the subject of a complaint for claiming he had a bad reaction to the COVID vaccine.

  In February, Ljubisa Dragovic, Chief Medical Examiner for Oakland County, found himself under investigation by the state for performing autopsies without wearing a mask.

  “When you are working in an environment with deceased individuals there is no active sneezing or coughing on the part of the cadavers. It was nonsense,” Dragovic told The Epoch Times, “you can’t get or give COVID to a dead person.” Dragovic said he couldn’t wear a mask because his glasses would fog up, and he couldn’t see what he was doing.

  “The last thing you want to be is blinded while using a sharp scapula,” he said.

  Dragovic, who is fully vaccinated and believes in wearing masks around live patients and co-workers, said he spent about two hours answering questions from investigators for the Michigan Medical Licensing Board.

  According to Dragovic, another medical examiner filed the complaint. The person was “totally crazed with fear over COVID,” Dragovic said. That doctor was hired at the height of the pandemic to perform autopsies but refused to do so out of fear he would contract COVID-19, even locking himself in his office at times. He eventually quit, according to Dragovic.

  The complainant only filed the allegation a year later after Dragovic refused to give the doctor a job reference.

  Peters says the case is an example of how the state investigations had nothing to do with keeping the public safe.

  “This was used to kill free speech to intimidate people into submission,” he said, “period.”

  Dozens of the complaints were againt doctors who issued mask waivers to children. Three nurses were accused of falsifying proof of vaccines, including one who allegedly did so for a friend for a cruise.

  The licensing board referred complaints against two physicians and two chiropractors to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for “not following COVID-19 safety precautions.”

  The board investigated several physicians and nurses for either promoting or prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

  The complaint against Austin cites an email she wrote to the Brighton School Board that included a compilation of research she had conducted on the harm of wearing masks. She cited over 200 studies.

  “I implore you to be informed of the current literature regarding masks and their ineffectiveness to decrease the transmission of COVID-19, the potential and inherent harms of masks on our pediatric population, and the short term and long term sequelae to our youth with continued mask mandates,” Austin wrote.

  Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times about the investigations.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 21:30

• "Not The Right Fit" – Disney Exec Who Led Anti-Florida-Bill Response Leaves Firm After 3 Months
  “Not The Right Fit” – Disney Exec Who Led Anti-Florida-Bill Response Leaves Firm After 3 Months

  The Disney executive who sculpted the company’s response to Florida’s parental rights bill has left his position after just three months on the job.

  

  Disney’s (now former) new head of corporate affairs, Geoff Morrell, said in a statement to his team that:

  “It has become clear to me that for a number of reasons it is not the right fit,” adding that,

  “After talking this over with [Disney CEO] Bob [Chapek], I have decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities.”

  Morrell’s efforts to position the company against the bill have arguably backfired as Florida Republicans led by Gov. Ron DeSantis stripped Disney of special privileges the company has enjoyed in that state for several decades.

  Another example of ‘get woke, go broke’?

  

  Kristina Schake, hired earlier this month, will replace him as head of communications, Disney said in a statement Friday. She is a former public relations director for Instagram and served as a spokeswoman for First Lady Michelle Obama. 

  We can only imagine how strong her virtue-signaling game is…

  Read Chapek’s memo to staff, obtained by Deadline:

  Team-

  I am writing to share the news that Geoff Morrell, our Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Fortunately, the strength and experience of our existing leadership team—including relatively new all-star hires—means there is no shortage of talent to guide our reputation-driving functions. With Geoff’s departure, I am pleased to share the following changes:

  First, Kristina Schake will lead The Walt Disney Company’s communications efforts, serving as our Executive Vice President, Global Communications reporting directly to me. In this expanded role, Kristina will have oversight for corporate and segment communications and continue to be our chief spokesperson. Our business segment and content communications leads will continue to dual report to both division leadership and corporate communications, now led by Kristina.

  We are incredibly fortunate to have Kristina with us at this important time. Her 30-plus years of experience includes roles leading President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine education program, communications for Instagram, and leadership positions in political campaigns and the Obama White House. Kristina has a strategic approach and collaborative style, as well as relentless optimism and a strong appreciation of our brand and its place in the world. These attributes will be invaluable as she works to protect and enhance our reputation, and I am thrilled to be working with her more closely.

  Next, Government Relations and Global Public Policy will now be led by our General Counsel, Horacio Gutierrez. Since joining the company earlier this year, Horacio has integrated seamlessly into the Disney family, and has quickly become a valued advisor to me and the leadership team on a wide range of issues. His extensive experience leading these areas will be incredibly useful in driving our efforts.

  In addition to his current direct reports, Susan Fox, Senior Vice President for Government Relations, and Yvonne Pei, Senior Vice President, External Relations, Greater China, will join Dorothy Attwood, Senior Vice President, Global Public Policy, in reporting directly to Horacio.

  Finally, Jenny Cohen, Executive Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, will now report solely to me in her role leading our CSR and ESG efforts. Jenny is a strong leader, and has done incredible work modernizing our approach in key areas like environmental sustainability, community investment, and philanthropy.

  I am incredibly confident in this team, and look forward to working with them and all of our leadership to set Disney’s course for the next 100 years of extraordinary entertainment and experiences.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 21:00

• Tverberg: The World Has A Major Crude Oil Problem; Expect Conflict Ahead
  Tverberg: The World Has A Major Crude Oil Problem; Expect Conflict Ahead

  Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

  Media outlets tend to make it sound as if all our economic problems are temporary problems, related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, world crude oil production has been falling behind needed levels since 2019. This problem, by itself, encourages the world economy to contract in unexpected ways, including in the form of economic lockdowns and aggression between countries. This crude oil shortfall seems likely to become greater in the years ahead, pushing the world economy toward conflict and the elimination of inefficient players.

  To me, crude oil production is of particular importance because this form of oil is especially useful. With refining, it can operate tractors used to cultivate crops, and it can operate trucks to bring food to stores to sell. With refining, it can be used to make jet fuel. It can also be refined to make fuel for earth moving equipment used in road building. In recent years, it has become common to publish “all liquids” amounts, which include liquid fuels such as ethanol and natural gas liquids. These fuels have uses when energy density is not important, but they do not operate the heavy machinery needed to maintain today’s economy.

  In this post, I provide an overview of the crude oil situation as I see it. In my analysis, I utilize crude oil production data by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) that has only recently become available for the full year of 2021. In some exhibits, I also make estimates for the first quarter of 2022 based on preliminary information for this period.

  [1] World crude oil production grew marginally in 2021.

  

  Figure 1. World crude oil production based on EIA international data through December 31, 2021.

  Crude oil production for the year 2021 was a disappointment for those hoping that production would rapidly bounce back to at least the 2019 level. World crude oil production increased by 1.4% in 2021, to 77.0 million barrels per day, after a decrease of -7.5% in 2020. If we look back, we can see that the highest year of crude oil production was in 2018, not 2019. Oil production in 2021 was still 5.9 million barrels per day below the 2018 level.

  With respect to the overall increase in crude oil production of 1.4% in 2021, OPEC helped bring this average up with an increase of 3.0% in 2021. Russia also helped, with an increase of 2.5%. The United States helped pull the world crude increase down, with a decrease in production of -1.1% in 2021. In Section [5], more information will be provided with respect to crude production for these groupings.

  [2] The growth in world crude oil production shows an amazingly steady relationship to the growth in world population since 1991. The major exception is the decrease in consumption that took place in 2020, with the lockdowns that changed consumption patterns.

  

  Figure 2. World per capita crude oil production based on EIA international data through December 31, 2021, together with UN 2019 population estimates. The UN’s estimated historical amounts were used through 2020; the “low growth” estimate was used for 2021.

  Figure 2 indicates that, up through 2018, each person in the world consumed an average of around 4.0 barrels of crude oil. This equates to 168 US gallons or 636 liters of crude per year. Much of this crude is used by businesses and governments to produce the basic goods we expect from our economy, including food and roads.

  A big downshift occurred in 2020 with the COVID lockdowns. Many people began working from home; international travel was scaled back. The reduction of these uses of oil helped bring down total world usage. Changes such as these explain the big dip in crude oil production (and consumption) in 2020, which continued into 2021.

  Even in 2019, the world economy was starting to scale back. Beginning in early 2018, China banned the importation of many types of materials for recycling, and other countries soon followed suit. As a result, less oil was used for transporting materials across the ocean for recycling. (Subsidies for recycling were helping to pay for this oil.) Loss of recycling and other cutbacks (especially in China and India) led to fewer people in these countries being able to afford automobiles and smartphones. Lower production of these devices contributed to the lower use of crude oil.

  On Figure 2, there is a slight year-to-year variation in crude oil per capita. The single highest year over the time period shown is 2005, with 2004 not far behind. This was about the time many people think that conventional oil production “peaked,” reducing the availability of inexpensive-to-produce oil.

  [3] Crude oil prices dropped dramatically when economies were shut in, beginning in March 2020. Prices began spiking the summer and fall of 2021, as the world economy attempted to open up. This pattern suggests that the real problem is tight crude oil supply when the economy is not artificially constrained by COVID restrictions.

  

  Figure 3. Average weekly Brent oil price in chart prepared by EIA, through April 8, 2022. Amounts are not adjusted for inflation.

  An analysis of price trends suggests that most of the recent spike in crude prices is due to the tightness of the crude oil supply, rather than the Ukraine conflict. The Brent oil price dropped to an average of $14.24 in the week ending April 24, 2020, not long after COVID restrictions were enacted. When the economy started to reopen, in the week ending July 2, 2021, the average price rose to $76.26. By the week ending January 28, 2022, the average price had risen to $90.22.

  Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Brent spot price on February 23, 2022, was $99.29. Brent prices briefly spiked higher, with weekly average prices rising as high as $123.60, for the week ending March 25, 2022. The current Brent oil price is about $107. If we compare the current price to the price the day before the invasion began, the price is only $8 higher. Even compared to the January 28 weekly average of $90.22, the current price is $17 higher.

  Saying that the Ukraine invasion is causing the current high price is mostly a convenient excuse, suggesting that the high prices will suddenly disappear if this conflict disappears. The sad truth is that depletion is causing the cost of extraction to rise. Governments of oil exporting countries also need high prices to enable high taxes on exported oil. We are increasingly experiencing a conflict between the prices that the customers can afford and the prices that those doing the extraction require. In my view, most oil exporting countries need a price in excess of $120 per barrel to meet all of their needs, including reinvestment and taxes. Consumers would prefer oil prices under $50 per barrel to keep the price of food and transportation low.

  [4] Food prices tend to rise when oil prices are high because products made from crude oil are used in the production and transport of food.

  History shows that bad things tend to happen when food prices are very high, including riots by unhappy citizens. This is a major reason that high oil prices tend to lead to conflict.

  

  Figure 4. FAO inflation-adjusted monthly food price index. Source.

  [5] Quarterly crude oil data suggests that few opportunities exist to raise crude oil production to the level needed for the world economy to operate at the level it operated at in 2018 or 2019.

  Figure 5 shows quarterly world crude oil production broken down into four groupings: OPEC, US, Russia, and “All Other.”

  

  Figure 5. Quarterly crude oil production through first quarter of 2022. Amounts through December 2021 are EIA international estimates. Increase in OPEC first quarter of 2022 production is estimated based on OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, April 2022. US crude oil production for first quarter of 2022 estimated based on preliminary EIA indications. Russia and All Other production for first quarter of 2022 are estimated based on recent trends.

  Figure 5 shows four very different patterns of past growth in crude oil supply. The All Other grouping is generally trending a bit downward in terms of quantity supplied. If world per capita crude oil production is to stay at least level, the total production of the other three groupings (OPEC, US, and Russia) needs to be rising to offset this decline. In fact, it needs to rise enough that overall crude production growth keeps up with population growth.

  Russian Crude Oil Production

  The data underlying Figure 5 shows that up until the COVID restrictions, Russia’s crude oil production was increasing by 1.4% per year between early 2005 and early 2020. During the same period, world population was increasing by about 1.2%. Thus, Russia’s oil production has been part of what has helped keep world crude production about level, on a per capita basis. Also, Russia seems to have made up most of its temporary decrease in production related to COVID restrictions by the first quarter of 2022.

  US Crude Oil Production

  Growth in US crude oil production has been more of a “feast or famine” situation. This can be seen both in Figure 5 above and in Figure 6 below.

  

  Figure 6. US crude oil production based on EIA data. First quarter of 2022 amount is estimated based on EIA weekly and monthly indications.

  US crude oil production spurted up rapidly in the 2011 to 2014 period, when oil prices were high (Figure 3). When oil prices fell in late 2014, US crude production fell for about two years. US oil production began to rise again in late 2016, as oil prices rose again. By early 2019 (when oil prices were again lower), US crude oil growth began to slow down.

  In early 2020, COVID lockdowns brought a 15% drop in crude oil production (considering quarterly production), most of which has not been made up. In fact, growth after the lockdowns has been slow, similar to the level of growth during the “growth slowdown” circled in Figure 6. We hear reports that the sweet spots in shale formations have largely been drilled. This leaves mostly high-cost areas left to drill. Also, investors would like better financial discipline. Ramping up greatly, and then cutting back, is no way to operate a successful company.

  Thus, while growth in US crude oil production greatly supported world growth in crude oil production in the 2009 to 2018 period, it is impossible to see this pattern continuing. Getting crude oil production back up to the level of 12 million barrels a day where it was before the COVID restrictions would be extremely difficult. Further production growth, to support the growing needs of an expanding world population, is likely impossible.

  OPEC Crude Oil Production

  Figure 7 shows EIA crude oil production estimates for the total group of countries that are now members of OPEC. It also shows crude oil production excluding the two countries which have recently been subject to sanctions: Iran and Venezuela.

  

  Figure 7. OPEC crude oil production to December 31, 2021, based on EIA data. Estimates for first quarter of 2022 based on indications from OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, April 2022.

  If Iran and Venezuela are removed, OPEC’s long-term production is surprisingly “flat.” The “peak” period of production is the fourth quarter of 2018. The fourth quarter of 2018 was the time when the OPEC countries were producing as much oil as they could, to get their production quotas as high as possible after the planned cutbacks that took effect at the beginning of 2019.

  Strangely, EIA data indicates that production didn’t fall very much for this group of countries (OPEC excluding Iran and Venezuela), starting in early 2019. The 2019 cutback seems mostly to have affected the production of Iran and Venezuela. It was only later, in the first three quarters of 2020, when COVID restrictions were affecting worldwide production, that crude oil production for OPEC excluding Iran and Venezuela fell by 4 million barrels per day. Production for this group then began to rise, leaving a shortfall of about 900,000 barrels a day, relative to where it had been before the 2020 lockdowns.

  It seems to me that, at most, production for the group of OPEC countries excluding Iran and Venezuela can be ramped up by 900,000 barrels a day, and even this is “iffy.” Iraq is reported to be having difficulty with its production; it needs more investment, or its production will fall. Nigeria is past peak, and it is also having difficulty with its production. The high reported crude oil reserves are meaningless; the question is, “How much can these countries produce when it is required?” It doesn’t look like production can be ramped up very much. Furthermore, we cannot count on continued long-term growth in production from these countries, such as would be needed to keep pace with rising world population.

  

  Figure 8. Crude oil production indications for Iran and Venezuela, based on EIA data through December 31, 2021. Change in oil production for first quarter of 2021 is estimated based on OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, April 2022.

  Figure 8 suggests that, indeed, Iran might be able to raise its production by perhaps 1.0 million barrels a day when sanctions are lifted.

  Venezuela looks like a country whose crude oil production was already declining before sanctions were imposed. The cost of production there was likely far higher than the world oil price. Also, Venezuela has oil debts to China that it needs to repay. At most, we might expect that Venezuela’s production could be raised by 300,000 barrels per day in the absence of sanctions.

  Putting the three estimates of amounts that crude oil production can perhaps be raised together, we have:

  • OPEC ex Iran and Venezuela: 900,000 bpd

  • Iran: 1,000,000 bpd

  • Venezuela: 300,000 bpd

  • Total: 2.2 million bpd

  The shortfall of crude oil production in 2021, relative to 2018 production, was 5.9 million bpd, as mentioned in Section [1]. The 2.2 million barrels per day possibly available from this analysis gets us nowhere near the 2018 level. Furthermore, we have nowhere to go to obtain the rising crude oil production required to support the rising population with enough crude oil to supply food and industrial goods at today’s consumption level.

  [6] Eliminating, or even reducing, Russia’s crude oil production is certain to have an adverse impact on the world economy.

  Figure 9 shows the step-down in crude oil production that occurred in early 2020 and indicates that the world’s oil supply is having difficulty getting back up to pre-COVID levels. If Russia’s crude oil production were to be eliminated, it would make for another step-down of comparable magnitude. Major segments of the economy would likely need to be eliminated.

  

  Figure 9. Quarterly crude oil production through first quarter of 2022 divided by world population estimates based on 2019 UN population estimates. Crude oil amounts through December 2021 are EIA estimates. Crude oil production estimates for first quarter 2022 are as described in the caption to Figure 5.

  [7] When there isn’t enough crude oil to go around, the naive belief is that oil prices will rise and either more oil will be found, or substitutes will take its place. In fact, the result may be conflict and elimination of segments of the economy.

  Our self-organizing economy will tend to adapt in its own way to inadequate crude oil supplies. Eventually, the economy may collapse completely, but before that happens, changes are likely to happen to try to preserve the “better functioning” parts of the economy. In this way, perhaps parts of the world economy can continue to function for a while longer while getting rid of less productive parts of the economy.

  The following is a partial list of ways the economy might adapt:

  • Fighting may take place over the remaining crude oil supplies. This may be the underlying reason for the conflict between NATO and Russia, with respect to Ukraine.

  • COVID lockdowns indirectly reduce demand for crude oil. A person might wonder whether the current COVID lockdowns in China are partly aimed at preventing oil and other commodity prices from rising to absurd levels.

  • Some organizations may disappear from the world economy because of inadequate funding or lack of profitability.

  • Additional supply lines are likely to break, allowing fewer types of goods and services to be made.

  • The world economy may subdivide into multiple pieces, with each piece able to make a much more limited array of goods and services than is provided today. A shift toward the use of other currencies instead of the US dollar may be part of this shift.

  • World population may shrink for multiple reasons, including poor nutrition and epidemics.

  • The poor, the elderly and the disabled may be increasingly cut off from government programs, as total goods and services (including total food supplies) fall too low.

  • Europe could be cut off from Russian fossil fuel exports, leaving relatively more for the rest of the world.

  [8] Countries that are major importers of crude oil and crude oil products would seem to be at significant risk of reduced supply if there is not enough crude oil to go around.

  Figure 10 shows a rough estimate of the ratio of crude oil produced to crude oil products consumed in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. On an “All Liquids” basis, the US ratio of crude oil production to consumption would appear higher than shown on Figure 10 because of its unusually high share of natural gas liquids, ethanol, and “refinery gain” in its liquids production. If these types of production are omitted, the US still seems to have a deficit in producing the crude oil it consumes.

   

  Figure 10. Rough estimate of ratio of crude oil produce to the quantity of crude oil products consumed, based on “Crude oil production” and “Oil: Regional consumption – by product group” in BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. Russia+ includes Russia plus the other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

  Perhaps all that is needed is the general idea. If inadequate crude oil is available, all of the countries at the left of Figure 10 are quite vulnerable because they are very dependent on imports. Russia and the Middle East are prime targets for countries that are desperate for crude oil.

  [9] Conclusion: We are likely entering a period of conflict and confusion because of the way the world’s self-organizing economy behaves when there is an inadequate supply of crude oil.

  The issue of how important crude oil is to the world economy has been left out of most textbooks for years. Instead, we were taught creative myths covering several topics:

  • Huge amounts of fossil fuels will be available in the future

  • Climate change is our worst problem

  • Wind and solar will save us

  • A fast transition to an all-electric economy is possible

  • Electric cars are the future

  • The economy will grow forever

  Now we are running into a serious shortfall of crude oil. We can expect a new set of problems, including far more conflict. Wars are likely. Debt defaults are likely. Political parties will take increasingly divergent positions on how to work around current problems. News media will increasingly tell the narrative that their owners and advertisers want told, with little regard for the real situation.

  About all we can do is enjoy each day we have and try not to be disturbed by the increasing conflict around us. It becomes clear that many of us will not live as long or well as we previously expected, regardless of savings or supposed government programs. There is no real way to fix this issue, except perhaps to make religion and the possibility of life after death more of a focus.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 20:30

• The Countries With The Best (And Worst) Work-Life Balance
  The Countries With The Best (And Worst) Work-Life Balance

  Mexicans are among those struggling most with their work-life balance, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, Colombians’ and Costa Ricans’ lives aren’t really in balance either. The United States and the United Kingdom also performed pretty poorly, coming in 13th and 14th out of all 38 OECD member countries (plus Russia, Brazil and South Africa) covered in the Better Life Index for 2020.

  Cultures of overwork also led to undesirable results in South Korea and Japan.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  At the other end of the spectrum, people in Italy enjoy the best work-life balance.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Unsurprisingly, the most important aspects for a healthy work-life balance is the amount of time people spend (not) at work, how many people work very long hours and how much time remains for leisure. The authors of the Better Life Index note that “evidence suggests that long work hours may impair personal health, jeopardise safety and increase stress.”

  Employed Italians had the most time for leisure and personal activities in the survey, while only 3 percent of employees in the country worked very long hours (50 or more hours a week).

  In comparison, 10.4 percent of American employees worked very long hours, causing the United States to rank much lower (29th out of 41 countries in the running).

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 20:00

• Russian Cyber Attacks Fail To Materialize After Biden Warned 'It's Coming'
  Russian Cyber Attacks Fail To Materialize After Biden Warned ‘It’s Coming’

  Authored by by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute, 

  One month after President Joe Biden warned Americans to prepare for cyberattacks from Russia, a US official said that Washington still has yet to detect any. 

  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has assessed that Russia has not breached US systems, with agency head Jen Easterly saying the administration has “not seen attacks manifest here.”

  

  “To date, we have not seen specific attacks on the US. What we are concerned about is the fact that Russia’s malicious cyber activity is part of their playbook,” she said in a statement on Thursday. 

  Easterly did mention that American economic penalties could provoke Russian cyber operations in the future, despite the lack of such breaches to date.

  “We are very concerned that as the war drags on, there may, in fact, be retaliatory attacks given the very severe sanctions we have imposed on the Kremlin, the US and our allies,” the agency head continued. 

  In a March 21 speech, Biden told Americans that “the magnitude of Russia’s cyber capacity is fairly consequential, and it’s coming,” ominous warning of major hacks on the horizon. The Biden administration has issued several similar alerts that have failed to materialize. 

  The White House has warned for months that Moscow could deploy chemical weapons and has even shipped protective equipment to Kiev’s forces to prepare for such an attack.

  WATCH: Biden nonchalantly says Russia is about to conduct a cyberattack against the United States.

  “It’s coming.” pic.twitter.com/t0W90Sbkai

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2022

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

  On April 6, however, a series of unnamed US officials told NBC News that “there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine,” adding that Washington hurled the accusation merely to “deter Russia from using the banned munitions.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 19:30

• Twitter's $17 Million Per Year Censorship Czar Could Get Axe Under Musk
  Twitter’s $17 Million Per Year Censorship Czar Could Get Axe Under Musk

  Twitter’s censorship czar Victoria Gadde – who broke down in tears last week during a conference call to discuss Elon Musk’s purchase of the company – stands to lose her job which paid $17 million last year, as Musk is reportedly planning to cut jobs and executive pay as part of the takeover.

  

  Musk expressed “no confidence” in Twitter’s current management following the announcement of his plans to buy the company.

  That said, the 48-year-old Gadde – who was behind decisions such as Zero Hedge’s February 2020 ban for peculating that Covid-19 may have emerged from a Wuhan Lab, and former President Trump’s ongoing ban, has a reported $12.5 million severance package, according to the NY Post.

  Musk shared a flowchart last week based on a 2019 appearance by Gadde on “The Joe Rogan Experience” where journalist Tim Pool absolutely wrecked her over anti-conservative bias.

  pic.twitter.com/1CE7rjBrNH

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022

  Musk also called Twitter’s decision to block the Hunter Biden laptop story – another ‘buck stops with Gadde’ decision – “obviously incredibly inappropriate.”

  The piece was banned by major social media sites in the weeks before the election, with Twitter justifying accusations of censorship by labeling the story “content obtained through hacking that contains private information.”

  Many mainstream outlets also tried to discredit the Post’s article, before later reporting on its veracity long after President Joe Biden was elected. -NY Post

  Fortunately for Gadde any any other Twitter employees who gets the axe, they can simply start their own Twitter.

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 19:00

• Escobar: The Empire Of Lies, Operation Z, & The New Global Chessboard
  Escobar: The Empire Of Lies, Operation Z, & The New Global Chessboard

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  The only antidote to propaganda dementia is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed.

  

  Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies.

  What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat.

  This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

  As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:

  “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

  So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.

  Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

  Patrushev goes Triple-X unplugged

  Let’s start with President Putin’s speech to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg celebrating the Day of Russian Parliamentarism.

  Putin demonstrated how a hardly new “geopolitical weapon” relying on “Russophobia and neo-Nazis”, coupled with efforts of “economic strangulation”, not only failed to smother Russia, but impregnated in the collective unconscious the feeling this an existential conflict: a “Second Great Patriotic War”.

  With off the charts hysteria across the spectrum, a message for an Empire that still refuses to listen, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”, had to be inevitable:

  “I would like to emphasize once again that if someone intends to interfere in the events taking place from the outside and creates threats of a strategic nature unacceptable to Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning fast. We have all the tools for this. Such as no one can boast of now. And we won’t brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know about it – we have made all the decisions on this matter.”

  Translation: non-stop provocations may lead Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat to be forced to present their business cards in select Western latitudes, even without an official invitation.

  Arguably for the first time since the start of Operation Z, Putin made a distinction between military operations in Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. This directly relates to the integration in progress of Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov, and implies the Russian Armed Forces will keep going and going, establishing sovereignty not only in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics but also over Kherson, Zaporozhye, and further on down the road from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, all the way to establishing full control of Nikolaev and Odessa.

  The formula is crystal clear: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.”

  Now let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged.

  The key take away may be here:

  “The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.”

  Patrushev shows how “tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.” The U.S. goes no holds barred “to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.”

  Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine: “The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”

  And that mirrors the psyche of American elites:

  “You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”

  Previously, in an interview with the delightfully named The Great Game show on Russian TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had once again detailed how the Americans “no longer insist on the implementation of international law, but on respect for the ‘rules-based world order’. These ‘rules’ are not deciphered in any way. They say that now there are few rules. For us, they don’t exist at all. There is international law. We respect it, as does the UN Charter. The key provision, the main principle is the sovereign equality of states. The U.S. flagrantly violates its obligations under the UN Charter when it promotes its ‘rules’”.

  Lavrov had to stress, once again, that the current incandescent situation may be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis: “In those years, there was a channel of communication that both leaders trusted. Now there is no such channel. No one is trying to create it.”

  The Empire of Lies, in its current state, does not do diplomacy.

  The pace of the game in the new chessboard

  In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev, as the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union explained in our recent interview, Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard: “Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”

  That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.

  Earlier in the week, in his meeting with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Putin went as far as stating that he’d be more than willing to negotiate – with only a few conditions: Ukrainian neutrality and autonomy status for Donbass. Yet now everyone knows it’s too late. For a Washington in Totalen Krieg mode negotiation is anathema – and that has been the case since the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine meeting in Istanbul in late March.

  So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.

  That includes desperate gambits such as the one uncovered by SVR – Russian foreign intel, which very rarely makes mistakes. SVR found out that the Empire of Lies/War Inc. axis is pushing not only for a de facto Polish invasion to annex Western Ukraine, under the banner of “historical reunification”, but also for a joint Romanian/Ukrainian invasion of Moldova/Transnistria, with Romanian “peacekeepers” already piling up near the Moldova border.

  Washington, as the SVR maintains, has been plotting the Polish gambit for over a month now. It would “lead from behind” (remember Libya?), “encouraging” a “group of countries” to occupy Western Ukraine. So partition is already on the cards. Were that ever to materialize, it will be fascinating to bet on which locations Mr. Sarmat would be inclined to distribute his business card.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 18:30

• $2 Billion Hedge Fund Loses Nearly Half After Carvana Plummets 75% In 2022
  $2 Billion Hedge Fund Loses Nearly Half After Carvana Plummets 75% In 2022

  For a vivid example of a hedge fund that prospered and grew, expanding relentlessly with the blessings of the Fed’s ZIRP and QE but now that QE is on idefinite hiatus and the Fed’s put is gone and successful “investing” actually requires more skill than just putting cash into high beta names and praying that the Fed will keep BRRRRing, is imploding look no farther than CAS Investment Partners, a Westport-based hedge fund which had “grown” more than 1000% sine its inception in October 2012 yet which has lost nearly half of its assets in just the past four months, thanks to a heavily concentrated portfolio of stocks, but mostly novelty used care dealer Carvana.

  CAS – which is based on the initials of its 40-year-old founder, Clifford Sosin – had built up a huge (for a smallish hedge fund) 3.3 million share stake in Carvana in 2019 and early 2020, one which grew to over $1 billion in August 2021 when CVNA stock topped $350 and accounted for a quarter of the fund’s AUM as of March 31. However, since then things have gone from bad to worse, and after dropping to $250/share by year-end, Carvana has plunged another 75% in 2022, before tumbling another 10% on Friday as traders grow concerned that the company equity may be worthless and a debt-for-equity swap is inevitable (and there is a lot of debt to be swapped) especially if the used car market is just now starting to crack.

  The crash in CVNA shares, and the resulting collapse in the CAS hedge fund, must have prompted a barrage of angry and or concerned investors phone calls, which culminated on Friday in a 25-page letter (attached below) written by Sosin, in which he writes (over and over) that Carvana’s troubles are transitory and that all will be well soon:  “Carvana’s challenges, especially when coupled with the precipitous decline in its stock price, clearly seem terrifying,” Sosin wrote in the Friday’s letter. However, “I believe that in due time we will look back at them as bumps in the road on the company’s path to success.”

  Sosin, who started his career in the Houlihan Lokey restructuring group in 2004, then worked at Silverpoint and UBS before starting off on his own in 2012 – declined to comment to Bloomberg.

  Carvana, which was once a pandemic darling, has since fast fallen out of favor. Its first-quarter results revealed a deepening cash burn, stemming from surges in used-vehicle prices and capital spending. Meanwhile, after peaking a few months ago, used car prices appear set to plunge in the coming months now that the US consumer is fully tapped out.

  Used car prices. pic.twitter.com/O6R6iLHRH8

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 12, 2022

  Adding insult to injury, earlier this week Carvana struggled to raise $3.3 billion in the junk bond market and had to revamp a junk-bond offering, adding a bankruptcy-friendly make whole provision.

  Not looking good for CVNA https://t.co/itWOMmB6as

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 27, 2022

  Those new bonds tumbled to 96 cents on the dollar in their first day of secondary trading even after Apollo Global swooped in to buy roughly half of the sale…. or rather because Apollo swooped in, in a move many speculate is a signal Apollo will control the fulcrum security, and thus the post-reord equity, in the coming Chapter 11 filing.

  

  And while we wait for the (used) wheels to come off the Carvana bullish narrative, we go back to what we said at the top, namely how this story may be indicative of the reversal of fortune for “hedge” funds who never actually had to hedge, or do any work for that matter in a world where the Fed did all the work for them, and how now that the Fed is no longer there holding hands, how everything is imploding. Indeed, as Bloomberg notes, “for CAS, 2022 is a stark contrast to its previous performance. Its fund hasn’t had a down year since launching in October 2012, and in 2020 it returned a record 96.5%.”

  

  Desperate to avoid a flood of redemptions, in his 25-page letter Sosin focused entirely on Carvana, and acknowledged its weak unit volume, but said it should accelerate when the industry normalizes (which may take a while since the US economy is only just now entering a recession). He added that the company should generate profits of $100 million annually from its acquisition of Adesa Inc.’s U.S. car-auction business, which was financed with this week’s debt offering. Then again there is the $600 million in interest expense:

  “While the company’s $600 million of annual interest expense is largely fixed, and a certain level of fixed/ overhead costs are necessary to run the company, the company’s growth investments are under the management’s control.”

  Still, Sosin refuses to cut and run, writing that “Carvana has a great deal of latent margin potential,” and adding that “this potential should allow the company to pursue its growth ambitions, albeit at a slower pace of expansion, without meaningfully accessing the capital markets or counting on a significant used-vehicle industry recovery.”

  For now, the market clearly disagrees.

  But if Sosin fast and furious reversal of fortune is bad, it’s nowhere near as bad as the billionaire father-son duo behind the Phoenix-based Carvana. Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III have lost almost $14 billion combined so far this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The younger Garcia, the company’s chief executive officer, has lost about 73% of his net worth since the start of 2022.

  The senior Garcia began selling Carvana shares in late October 2020 as they climbed to around $200 each from their pre-pandemic level of about $90. The stock closed Friday at $57.96.

  “If Carvana works out as well as it could, they might be among the richest people on the planet,” Sosin told Bloomberg in a 2019 interview. Three years since that remark, he said the company still has a bright future.

  “I am not immune to mistakes, and I promise that when I eventually make a doozy I will put it here at the top of this letter,” Sosin wrote. “In this case, however, I do not believe I have.”

  For those who disagree, here is a list of CAS’s holdings: if and when the margin calls and forced selling comes, these are the names that Sosin will rush to liquidate to avoid a collapse of his hedge fund. Which is why others may decided to sell them first.

  

  Sosin’s full Carvana letter is below.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 18:00

• Shippers Are Back In The Driver's Seat On Rates
  Shippers Are Back In The Driver’s Seat On Rates

  By Michael Rudolph of FreightWaves.com

  This past week marked the first interruption of consecutive declines in the Outbound Tender Volume Index (OTVI) since early March.

  

  It is still too early to dance around the maypole, however, as this bounce has not yet erased the significant contraction seen in freight demand.

  

  Though OTVI climbed 6.6% over the past week, it faced easy comps as volumes were depressed in the week following Easter Sunday. On a year-over-year (y/y) basis, OTVI is down 16.75%. Comparisons on a y/y basis can be thorny because OTVI can be inflated by an uptick in tender rejections. At this time last year, OTVI was greatly inflated by rising tender rejections, whereas rejection rates have since nosedived to incredible lows.

  Looking at accepted tender volumes, which is OTVI adjusted by the Outbound Tender Reject Index (OTRI), we see growth of only 0.3% y/y as well as growth by 8.3% on week-over-week (w/w) basis — the latter w/w growth, again, came against easy comps. The y/y picture for accepted volume may not appear grim, but the overall freight market is historically strong during the run-up to summer. The current limping state of the market, on the other hand, should concern carriers.

  The Chinese government appears to be gearing up for extended COVID lockdowns in Shanghai and, given recent school closings, possibly Beijing. The Port of Shanghai is the busiest container port in the world; any disruptions to its operations would have severe ripple effects on global supply chains. At first glance, the Port of Shanghai does not seem to be majorly impacted by the ongoing lockdowns — average dwell times for exports are currently at a little more than two days, well below the average of three days over the past year.

  Part of these low dwell times can be explained by the lack of goods flowing into the port, as productivity at manufacturing plants and the movement of truck drivers are both heavily restricted by the lockdowns. There is a likely accumulation of goods that are languishing in nearby warehouses or that have yet to be produced by factories in Shanghai. This accumulation is a ticking time bomb: Once it is able to be delivered to the terminals, the port will be inundated with excess cargo and will then be unable to operate efficiently.

  Another cause for concern will be the limited supply of empty containers caused by restricted freight flow at Chinese ports. Shipments from China to Europe are already being delayed, inhibiting the gross number of containers that can be delivered, unloaded and, in turn, reloaded and shipped to the United States. Any curb on trade between Europe and the U.S. is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, a reduction in new vessel arrivals will allow East Coast seaports to tackle the backlog of cargo that is currently congesting them. On the other, this reduction could kick the can further down the line, as exporters on the East Coast would eventually have a limited supply of empty containers themselves. Whatever the case, the lockdowns in China are threatening to extend well into the summer.

  

  Of the 135 total markets, 100 reported weekly increases after volumes recovered from the Easter lull.

  Since last week was quite barren, freight demand this week faced favorable comps on a w/w basis. Volumes returned to the ports: Charleston, South Carolina, was up 23.4%; Los Angeles was up 7.77%; and Houston was up 4.96%. Volumes also returned to the largest markets: Atlanta was up 10.2%; Ontario, California, was up 6.63%; and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was up 6.41%.

  There were, however, a few markets to which this bounty of freight volume was not extended. Lakeland, Florida — the state’s largest market by outbound volume — was the only market in the state to experience contraction this week, with volumes falling nearly 2% w/w. The Indianapolis market, a Midwestern hub for manufacturing, saw volumes decline 2.14% w/w after a recent survey expressed Hoosier manufacturers’ concerns about their ability to overcome supply chain disruptions and to contend with the rising costs of material inputs.

  By mode: Reefer volume took a tumble this week as the Reefer Outbound Tender Volume Index (ROTVI) fell 6.7% w/w. Lakeland, Florida — the nation’s largest outbound market for reefer freight — saw its own ROTVI decline 3.1% w/w after a sharp rise and fall early in the week. Dry van volumes, however, bounced back and the Van Outbound Tender Volume Index (VOTVI) rose 6.9% w/w accordingly. In produce-heavy markets, such as those in the Southeast, reefer volumes should be sustained by seasonal patterns — after all, demand for food is fairly inelastic.

  Tender rejections finally fall to sub-10% levels and show no signs of slowing

  Although treading water above 10% at the beginning of the week, OTRI quickly fell into single-digit percentages before the week’s end. Excepting the onset of the 2020 pandemic, OTRI’s current trend marks both the steepest and longest decline in a non-holiday-affected period.

  

  Over the past week, OTRI, which measures relative capacity in the market, fell to 8.82%, a change of 138 basis points (bps) from the week prior. OTRI is now 1,634 bps below year-ago levels as it is decidedly established in single-digit percentages.

  One of the biggest pressures facing carriers is the uninterrupted rise of diesel prices. Carriers playing primarily within the spot market already are exposed to volatile rate swings and reduced demand for spot freight, but to make matters worse, they typically have to eat the cost of fuel as part of their all-in rate. Yet even carriers running contracted loads still face the pressure of diesel hikes, since they normally pay for fuel at the point of sale while fuel surcharges can take months to reimburse them. That period of waiting for reimbursement can be crucial, since other monthly costs cannot be deferred so easily: insurance expenses, maintenance costs and, if the carrier’s equipment is not paid off, debt servicing.

  Larger carriers often buy fuel at discount, wholesale prices and then charge elevated retail prices for their surcharges, but the trucking industry as a whole is dominated by smaller carriers. As of February 2021, of all the carriers registered with the FMCSA, a mere 2.6% operated fleets with 20 or more trucking units. Almost 92% had fleets of six or fewer trucks. So, while larger carriers might experience some insularity from diesel price hikes, the truckload market is altogether exposed to these fluctuations.

  

  The map above shows the Weighted Rejection Index (WRI), the product of the Outbound Tender Reject Index — Weekly Change and Outbound Tender Market Share, as a way to prioritize rejection rate changes. As capacity is finding freight, there are currently no blue markets that would normally be objects of attention.

  Of the 135 markets, only 24 reported higher rejection rates over the past week as carriers compete for loads amid quieter freight demand.

  By and large, capacity came back online during this week with only a few notable exceptions. As volume surged through the East Coast seaports, rejection rates rose as capacity did not meet demand. After a dramatic fall in tender rejections the week prior, Savannah, Georgia, saw rejections rebound by 159 bps to 6.73%. Similarly, the market of Charleston posted a rejection rate of 7.08% this week, up 82 bps from the previous week. These two markets host two of the fastest-growing container ports in the U.S., since they are increasingly an attractive alternative to congested seaports in Southern California.

  

  By mode: Despite falling 315 bps this past week, the Flatbed Outbound Tender Reject Index (FOTRI) shows clearer demand for flatbeds than its dry van and reefer counterparts. FOTRI currently sits at 29.22%, 304 bps higher on a y/y basis. In Illinois (and probably elsewhere), it was commonly joked that there were two seasons: winter and construction. Construction season is already well underway, with new residential and nonresidential construction heating up to levels not seen since 2006. Moreover, high crude prices are driving investment into oil drilling. Accordingly, flatbeds will be in great demand for the foreseeable future.

  Rejection rates in the other two modes, dry van and reefer, have continued along a protracted decline that began in early March. The Van Outbound Tender Reject Index (VOTRI) is now at 8.7%, 124 bps lower on a w/w basis and 1,642 bps lower y/y. Following the trend in ROTVI, the Reefer Outbound Tender Reject Index (ROTRI) is down 479 bps this week to 11.43%, a whopping 3,307 bps below year-ago levels. 

  Contract rates show signs of following spot rate trend, declining rapidly w/w

  The spot rate data available in SONAR from Truckstop.com is updated every Tuesday with the previous week’s data.

  

  The bottom has yet to be found on dry van spot rates. To borrow yet another analogy from roller coasters, any carrier wearing a waterproof poncho is painfully dry as it waits for the Splash at the end of the Mountain. Truckstop.com’s national all-in dry van spot rate, which is based on the top 100 lanes from Truckstop.com’s load board, fell 8 cents per mile this week to $2.94 per mile, including fuel surcharges and other accessorials. 

  This week marks the first time that the rate has fallen below $3 a mile since February 2021. For context, the national rate averaged around $2.10 a mile prior to the pandemic, almost 30% lower than the current rate. While the gap between then and now might seem insurmountable, keep in mind that spot rates have already fallen 23% from their peak in early January. Diesel prices will, however, continue to provide upward pressure on spot rates. In short, spot rates are unlikely to return to $2.10 a mile, but they might soon be moving into the same neighborhood.

  Of the 102 lanes from Truckstop.com’s load board, only 19 reported weekly increases, up from last week’s 13 lanes but not up enough to provide relief to carriers. The most drastic increases were found on peripheral lanes in New England: For example, Syracuse, New York, to Hartford, Connecticut, jumped 25 cents per mile to $4.39 a mile, well above the national average.

  Ever since the supply chain disruptions early in the pandemic, shippers have been increasingly shifting their contract bid cycles to shorter periods so as to keep better pace with a volatile market. Now that data has come in from the Q2 renegotiations, it is clear that shippers have realized their newfound pricing power. Contract rates, which are the base linehaul rate excluding fuel surcharges and other accessorials that are included in spot rates, fell 9 cents per mile to $2.81 a mile. This decline bodes ill for those carriers hoping that contract rates would insulate them from the rapid decline seen in the spot market. Nevertheless, contract rates are still up 16.1% y/y, so all is not yet lost for those carriers.

  There are also the backhaul lanes to consider, many of which have hit their floor on rates and are now steadily increasing. Of these lanes, Dallas to Los Angeles is one of the most interesting, since it shares some characteristics with a backhaul lane but not others. Dallas is currently the third-largest outbound market in the country, yet carriers are covering loads from it to Los Angeles at rates near their operational cost. Because of that razor-thin margin, spot rates (which include fuel surcharges) on this lane are mainly affected by shifting diesel prices. 

  As a result, FreightWaves’ Trusted Rate Assessment Consortium (TRAC) spot rate from Dallas to Los Angeles has risen only 2 cents per mile over the past week to $1.90 but has spiked by 52 cents per mile over the past six months. These increases translate to a 1.1% gain w/w and a 37.7% gain over a six-month period. Meanwhile, diesel prices have risen by a comparable 1.2% w/w and by 38.4% over a six-month period.

  

  The opposite is true for rates along headhaul lanes, where carriers had a comfortable margin above their operating costs. For example, the FreightWaves TRAC spot rate along the extremely dense lane from Los Angeles to Dallas has fallen 7 cents per mile over the past week to $2.71 a mile and has plummeted a staggering $1.38 per mile over the past six months. 

  

  With rejection rates continuing to fall as they have been, shippers have no incentive to keep increasing or even maintaining those contract rates set in previous quarters. Instead, shippers have firm possession of pricing power for the moment and, from the looks of it, will exercise it to the best of their ability. Except on lanes in which fuel cost is a significant factor, neither contract nor spot rates should be expected to reverse course anytime soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 17:30

• Buffett Blasts Bankers For Turning Stock Market Into "A Gambling Parlor"
  Buffett Blasts Bankers For Turning Stock Market Into “A Gambling Parlor”

  After a tumultuous week of violent lurches higher (but mostly lower), the S&P 500 has ended April with its worst start to a year since the start of World War 2…

  

  Vacation bookings are soaring, car sales are booming and Americans continue to spend with abandon, thanks to higher wages and brisk hiring; and yet, the economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter, led by trade deficits and a drop in inventory purchases.

  “The market is worried about a very fragile economic outlook, as it should be,” said Joe LaVorgna, chief Americas economist at Natixis and former Trump White House economic adviser.

  “The economy is fundamentally soft: The Fed is going to hike next week, the situation in Ukraine is not getting better and high inflation is cutting into costs.”

  All this chaos and divergence appears to have ‘triggered’ 91-year-old Warren Buffett who lambasted Wall Street for encouraging speculative behavior in the stock market, effectively turning it into a “gambling parlor.”

  

  Having announced that Berkshire Hathaway suffered a $1.58 billion loss in the first quarter of 2022 (a huge reversal from the nearly $5 billion gain it saw at the same period of 2021), Buffett spoke at length during his annual shareholder meeting Saturday about one of his favorite targets for criticism: investment banks and brokerages.

  “Wall Street makes money, one way or another, catching the crumbs that fall off the table of capitalism,” Buffett said.

  “They don’t make money unless people do things, and they get a piece of them. They make a lot more money when people are gambling than when they are investing.”

  Buffett bemoaned that large American companies have “became poker chips” for market speculation. As CNBC reports, he cited soaring use of call options, saying that brokers make more money from these bets than simple investing.

  Still, the situation can result in market dislocations that give Berkshire Hathaway an opportunity, he said:

  “That’s why markets do crazy things, and occasionally Berkshire gets a chance to do something.”

  98-year-old Charlie Munger also chimed in, warning that “It’s almost a mania of speculation.”

  “We have people who know nothing about stocks being advised by stock brokers who know even less,” Munger said.

  “It’s an incredible, crazy situation. I don’t think any wise country would want this outcome. Why would you want your country’s stock to trade on a casino?”

  CNBC noted that an audience member made an inaudible comment while he was talking.

  “Was that a banker screaming?” Buffett joked.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 17:00

• Johnstone: "Oh God It's Going To Get So Much Worse"
  Johnstone: “Oh God It’s Going To Get So Much Worse”

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  Rightists have spent the last couple of days freaking out and invoking Orwell’s 1984 in response to something their political enemies are doing in America, and for once it’s for a pretty good reason.

  

  The Department of Homeland Security has secretly set up a “Disinformation Governance Board”, only informing the public about its plans for the institution after it had already been established.

  The disinformation board, which critics have understandably been calling a “Ministry of Truth”, purportedly exists to fight disinformation coming out of Russia as well as misleading messages about the US-Mexico border. We may be certain that the emphasis in the board’s establishment has been on the Russia angle, however.

  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in her patented “You’re such a crazy idiot for questioning me about the White House” manner, dismissed alarmed questions about what specific functions this strange new DHS entity was going to be performing and what its authority will look like.

  “It sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities,” Psaki said.

  “I’m not sure who opposes that effort.”

  PSAKI: “It sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities. I’m not sure who opposes that effort.” pic.twitter.com/Z4xOv46RLT

  — Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 28, 2022

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

  The answer to the question of “who opposes that effort” is of course “anyone with functioning gray matter between their ears.” No government entity has any business appointing itself the authority to sort information from disinformation on behalf of the public, because government entities are not impartial and omniscient deities who can be entrusted to serve the public as objective arbiters of absolute reality. They would with absolute certainty wind up drawing distinctions between information, misinformation and disinformation in whatever way serves their interests, regardless of what’s true, exactly as any authoritarian regime would do.

  I mean, is anyone honestly more afraid of Russian disinformation than they are of their own government appointing itself the authority to decide what counts as disinformation?

  This important point has gotten a bit lost in the shuffle due to the utterly hypnotic ridiculousness of the person who has been appointed to run the Disinformation Governance Board. Nina Jankowicz, a carefully groomed swamp creature who has worked in Kyiv as a communications advisor to the Ukrainian government as part of a Fulbright fellowship, is being widely criticized by pundits and social media users for her virulent Russiagating and whatever the hell this is:

  You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation 💁🏻‍♀️ https://t.co/eGV9lpctYn pic.twitter.com/WVQFA2bPmq

  — Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) February 17, 2021

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

  Because of this person’s embarrassing cartoonishness, a lot more commentary lately has been going into discussing the fact that the Department of Homeland Security’s Ministry of Truth is run by a kooky liberal than the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has a fucking Ministry of Truth.

  Which is really to miss the forest for the trees, in my opinion. Would it really be any better if the “Disinformation Governance Board” was run by a chill dude you wouldn’t mind having a beer with? Especially when we know the ideological leanings of this department are going to bounce back and forth between elections and will always act in service of US empire narrative control regardless of who is in office? I don’t think so.

  The real issue at hand is the fact that this new institution will almost certainly play a role in bridging the ever-narrowing gap between government censorship and Silicon Valley censorship. The creation of the DHS disinformation board is a far more shocking and frightening development than last year’s scandalous revelation that the White House was advising social media platforms about accounts it determined were circulating censorship-worthy Covid misinformation, which was itself a drastic leap in the direction toward direct government censorship from what had previously been considered normal.

  White House fact-sheet says part of the mammoth $33 billion spending package it’s requesting for Ukraine will be to “support independent media.” Because nothing screams “independent” like being directly funded by the US Government as part of its “information warfare” initiative pic.twitter.com/O3JshV1Mg9

  — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 28, 2022

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

  We should probably talk more about how as soon as people accepted that it was fine for government, media and Silicon Valley institutions to work together to censor misinformation and rally public support around an Official Narrative about a virus, the ruling power establishment immediately took that as license to do that with a war and a foreign government as well.

  Like, immediately immediately. We went from a massive narrative control campaign about a virus, which people accepted because they wanted to contain a deadly pandemic, straight into a massive narrative control campaign about Russia and Ukraine. Without skipping a beat. Like openly manipulating everyone’s understanding of world events is just what we do now. Now we’re seeing increasingly brazen censorship of political dissent about a fucking war that could easily end up getting us all killed in a nuclear holocaust, and a portion of the Biden administration’s whopping $33 billion Ukraine package is going toward funding “independent media” (read: war propaganda).

  We should probably talk more about this. We should probably talk more about how insane it is that all mainstream western institutions immediately accepted it as a given that World War II levels of censorship and propaganda must be implemented over a faraway war that our governments are not even officially a part of.

  It started as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, without any public discussion whatsoever. Like the groundwork had already been laid and everyone had already agreed that that’s what would happen. The public had no say in whether we want to be propagandized and censored to help the US win some kind of weird infowar to ensure its continued unipolar domination of the planet. It just happened.

  No reason was given to the public as to why this must occur, and there was no public debate as to whether it should. This was by design, because propaganda only works when you don’t know it’s happening to you.

  The choice was made for us that information is too important to be left in the hands of the people. It became set in stone that we are to be a propaganda-based society rather than a truth-based society. No discussion was offered, and no debate was allowed.

  In the middle of an election campaign, Defence Minister Peter Dutton tells Australians to “prepare for war”. He compared China with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Australia has no enemies, none, zero. But it speaks for its master in Washington. Read on:https://t.co/dSRhu5b23i

  — John Pilger (@johnpilger) April 25, 2022

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

  And as bad as it is, it’s on track to get much, much worse. They’re already setting up “disinformation” regulation in the government which presides over Silicon Valley, the proxy war between the US and Ukraine is escalating by the day, and aggressions are ramping up against China over both the Solomon Islands and Taiwan. If you think imperial narrative management is intense now, wait until the US empire’s struggle to secure global hegemony really gets going.

  Do you consent to this? Do you? It’s something you kind of have to take a position on, because its implications have a direct effect on our lives as individuals and on our trajectory as a society. How much are we willing to sacrifice to help the US win an infowar against Russia?

  The question of whether we should abandon all hope of ever becoming a truth-based society and committing instead to winning propaganda wars for a globe-spanning empire is perhaps the most consequential decision we’ve ever had to make as a species. Which is why we weren’t given a choice. It’s just been foisted upon us.

  Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. By taking our control of information out of our hands without asking our permission and determining for us that we are to be a propaganda-based civilization for the foreseeable future, they have stolen something sacred from us. Something they had no right to take.

  Nothing about the state of the world tells us that the people who run things are doing a good job. Nothing about our current situation suggests they should be given more control, rather than having control taken away from them and given to the people. We are going in exactly the wrong direction.

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 16:30

• NY Case Against Trump Implodes As Grand Jury Ends With No Charges
  NY Case Against Trump Implodes As Grand Jury Ends With No Charges

  New York’s grand jury case against Donald Trump is ending without charges for the ex-president, as a lengthy criminal investigation into alleged manipulation of property assets to secure tax advantages or better loan rates is set to expire this week.

  

  Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) inherited the case from former DA, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (who famously accepted campaign donations from Harvey Weinstein to quash a #MeToo investigation).

  According to the Washington Post, Bragg decided not to move forward and ask the grand jury to vote on charges – mostly because the new DA had major issues using former Trump fixer Michael Cohen as a star witness.

  Bragg has said he will announce when the investigation is over, noting that even after the special grand jury disbanded, other grand juries hearing a broad range of criminal cases in New York would be available to take action in this one if needed. -WaPo

  The expiration of the grand jury comes after two senior prosecutors (Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne) quit the case in February after claiming Bragg was stalling the inquiry. Cohen said he met with investigators from the DA’s office around a dozen times, but that nobody has contacted him since the two departures.

  According to Pomerantz, Trump’s ““financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people.”

  Meanwhile, attorneys for NY Attorney General Letitia James’ (D) office told WaPo that it’s unlikely a criminal case will be brought, despite a spokeswoman for James saying that the investigation is ongoing.

  James is looking into Trump’s business practices. On Monday, a lawyer from her office said a lawsuit could be filed in that case soon. Last week a judge held Trump in contempt for failing to provide James’ office with business records – fining him $10,000 per day until he complies. Trump’s attorneys are appealing the order, as well as another one from New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron which require Trump and two of his adult children to be deposed by James’ team.

  On Friday, Engoron rejected a bid by Trump to purge the contempt ruling after he and his attorneys submitted affidavits. The affidavits “fail to specify” who conducted searches for the requested documents, or where and when searches took place, the judge said. He called Trump’s two-paragraph sworn statement “completely devoid of any useful detail.” -WaPo

  Trump and team maintain they did nothing illegal regarding the Trump Organization’s asset valuations – accusing James of waging lawfare against him in a personal vendetta.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 16:00

• Why Is CDC Trying To Put A Mask On Your Face Again?
  Why Is CDC Trying To Put A Mask On Your Face Again?

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  We know the wicked truth about Chairman Mao’s “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.” He said this in 1957 while inviting anyone to criticize the Communist Party. There were cheers all around and the criticisms were unleashed. This lasted six weeks, after which many of the biggest critics were shot. It was a bait and switch. 

  It’s a brilliant tactic for evil regimes. Ferret out the enemy and then make them go away. 

  

  That’s not exactly what happened this week but the analogy works. A judge in Florida this week struck down the Biden administration’s transportation mask mandate. The opinion was highly technical and turned entirely on issues of administrative law. The judge ruled that the Public Health Service Act of 1944, the first ever to give the quarantine power to the federal government, did not authorize the imposition of universal mandates on what is really an article of clothing in the name of “sanitation.”

  Instead, what appeared to happen here was entirely arbitrary. The Biden administration wanted masks and the CDC imposed them, including with criminal penalties. For a full year, travelers have been hectored and threatened at every turn. 

  After the court decision, a hundred flowers bloomed in the form of air-born celebrations from coast to coast. 

  Will it last? Not if our rulers in DC get their way. 

  But let’s be clear about something. It’s about masks but more. The mask is a metaphor for all the controls, restrictions, impositions, mandates, closures, and resulting wreckage of the past two years. People hate them because they are so personal. More precisely, they are depersonalizing, which is precisely how the lockdown period of American history has felt the entire time. 

  We are our faces, to others and ourselves. Take that away and what are we? We are tools. We are pawns. We are lab rats for their experiments. Masks are dehumanizing because they are supposed to be. The mask has a very long history as a tool of subjection and enslavement. We all know this intuitively. 

  Therefore, the opportunity to throw it off was glorious. One evening an entire nation of travelers celebrated. Celebrating even more were the airline staff, flight attendants, and pilots. They have lived two years in these ridiculous things, which have nowhere been proven to work to crush a virus. Emancipation from them was a welcome relief. So too for workers around the country, whose interests have been consistently disregarded. 

  We found ourselves in the position of caste-like scenes in restaurants around the country: customers dining happily while being served by masked workers. This is inconsistent with the democratic and commercial ethos. 

  All the airlines as well as Amtrak announced it quickly, perhaps as a way of making it impossible for the Biden administration to roll it back. Even Biden himself said that the new rule is that everyone should do what they want. I guess he didn’t get the memo. 

  Hold one just one minute, said someone in the administration. We need to find out what the Department of Justice says. Then the Justice Department immediately kicked it to the CDC: they are in charge of “The Science” and so we’ll wait. 

  “The Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disagree with the district court’s decision and will appeal, subject to CDC’s conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health. The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health. That is an important authority the Department will continue to work to preserve….

  If CDC concludes that a mandatory order remains necessary for the public’s health after that assessment, the Department of Justice will appeal the district court’s decision.”

  What’s this about? The plaintiff Health Freedom Defense Fund issued a sharp statement: 

  “DoJ’s statement is perplexing to say the least and sounds like it comes from health policy advocates not government lawyers. The ruling by the US District Court is a matter of law, not CDC preference or an assessment of “current health conditions.”

  In the early days of the Biden administration, the PR decision at the top was that it would always “follow the science,” a statement that the new president said many times. This was supposed to be different from the Trump administration, at least after the summer of 2020 when the CDC lost control over the political side of the executive state. 

  On one hand, following The Science sounds good. However, if the “science” really means the bureaucracies and hence this slogan is just another way of passing the buck, there is a problem. The bureaucracies are unaccountable, and typically default to the safest and changeless route to preserve their power over the population. 

  Even so, following the DOJ’s announcement, there must have been moments of panic at the CDC. They had the hot potato and didn’t know what to do with it. Finally they settled on the usual strategy: they threw it to an anonymous committee. Then the committee came out with a statement unsigned by anyone in particular. 

  Instead of citing The Science, or claiming that they knew for sure that masks were great for people, the statement started with the following sentence: “To protect CDC’s public health authority….” Notice that this doesn’t say to protect public health. It says public health AUTHORITY. Those are certainly different things. 

  In any case, the decision was made. The CDC “has asked DOJ to proceed with an appeal.” Ah, there we go: throw that potato back at a different agency. The CDC has merely asked! So now the DOJ will appeal, as forced by the sloganeering of the Biden administration and the deference to the CDC. The results will certainly be terrible for the administration because the next court will agree with the previous court that there was never any legal basis for the mandate in the first place. 

  They could also issue a stay. That would be catastrophic for the Biden administration. Public anger would be out of control. Mao got away with this because he had total power. Biden does not. In fact, his poll numbers are awful. I’ve personally never seen an example of a sadistic government that is simultaneously politically masochistic. In other words, these people not only do not understand what’s good for the country; they don’t even know what’s good for themselves! 

  The words of the CDC statement are the chilling part. They care about their authority first and foremost, even only. This seems to be the view pervasive in Washington today, as a Cold Civil War heats up between the states and with Washington. Every day grows more intense. Every day, the conflict becomes more raw and brutal. There seems to be no end in sight because there will be no rollbacks, no apologies, no regrets, no admission that their “authority” was an overreach all along. 

  Will governments have learned their lessons? Look around! We live in a world burdened by extremely arrogant and immovable public agencies that have lost public trust. The administrative state is right now as angry as the public is at them. There is a peaceful solution here but it doesn’t seem to be on the table. 

  If I’ve learned anything new over the last two years, it’s about the strange way in which the ruling class is impervious not only to actual research but also to the will of the people, even when it shows up in devastating polls.

  They seem not to regard the celebrations after the judge’s decision not as a corrective but a challenge to overcome. 

  WATCH: Dr. Fauci tells me on #TheSourceKasie🕵🏻‍♀️ “This is a CDC issue, it should not have been a court issue.” @CNN pic.twitter.com/rZZyHnFqJ5

  — Kasie Hunt (@kasie) April 21, 2022

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

  In an interview with @LesterHoltNBC from last night’s broadcast, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, addressed a judge’s decision striking down the CDC’s travel mask mandate. pic.twitter.com/7t31y9BSEX

  — NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) April 22, 2022

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

  It’s all about…authority. Not public health but public-health authority. Who is in charge? That’s what’s really at issue. They say them and we say us. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 15:30

• Russia To Pull Out Of ISS Over Western Sanctions 
  Russia To Pull Out Of ISS Over Western Sanctions 

  Russia’s move to leave the International Space Station (ISS) was initially slated for 2025. The invasion of Ukraine and resulting Western sanctions have accelerated this departure. 

  Bloomberg cites media reports from two Russian state news agencies — Tass and RIA Novosti — that head of Russia’s space agency on Saturday announced Moscow will pull out of the ISS.

  “The decision has been taken already, we’re not obliged to talk about it publicly. 

  “I can say this only — in accordance with our obligations, we’ll inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a year’s notice,” Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview on state television. 

  

  Rogozin earlier in March “threatened to leave” the ISS over Western allies hammering Russia’s economy with devastating sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. This angered Moscow so much that they threatened to deorbit the ISS. 

  Moscow has halted deliveries of rocket engines to the US. Roscosmos recently refused to launch European satellites into low Earth orbit. 

  Rogozin’s Saturday interview provided no timeline on when Russia plans to exit the ISS. 

  The timing of Russia’s soon-to-be departure comes as Elon Musk’s SpaceX can ferry astronauts to the station. 

  The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and fracturing of Russia and US relations in space is evidence of a new bipolar world emerging. It has pushed Russia and China loser together where a new space race will take shape: The West versus Russia and China. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 15:00

• "Toto, I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore"
  “Toto, I Don’t Think We’re In Kansas Anymore”

  Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

  Recently, an American colleague commented to me, “We no longer live in a democracy but a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.”

  

  Is he correct? Well, a dictatorship may be defined as “a form of government in which absolute authority is exercised by a dictator.”

  The US today is not be ruled by dictatorship (although, to some, it may well feel that way.)

  But, if that’s the case, what form of rule does exist in the US?

  At its formation, the founding fathers argued over whether the United States should be a republic or a democracy. Those founders who later formed the Federalist Party felt that it should be a democracy – rule by representatives elected by the people. Thomas Jefferson, who created the Democratic Republican Party, argued that it should be a republic – a state in which the method of governance is democracy, but the principle of governance is that the rights of the individual are paramount.

  He argued that, “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty one percent can vote away the rights of the other forty nine.”

  At that time, Benjamin Franklin has been credited as saying, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.”

  Very well stated.

  As Americans still legally vote, and it may well be that the voting is not altogether rigged, the US could be regarded as a democracy. Of course, to be accurate, it could also be defined as a bureaucracy – rule by officialdom, and/or a plutocracy – rule by the very rich. Both of these descriptions are undeniably accurate.

  Another question that’s hotly debated is what sort of “ism” the US is living under. There’s a visible trend in new candidates to openly promote socialism. Historically, socialism has always been an excellent way to gain votes, as the socialist promises largesse to the average man that government will provide by robbing the rich. Not surprisingly, the average voter would find this prospect very attractive.

  Socialist candidates in the US today base their argument for socialism on the premise that “capitalism has failed,” and that premise is providing them with great headway. They claim that prosperity for the American people is almost non-existent; that the middle class is shrinking and the small upper class is growing ever-richer.

  These claims are undeniably true… but not because capitalism has failed.

  Vladimir Lenin stated that “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” He was quite correct. Fascism is a slow cancer that eats away at an economy. It transfers wealth to the largest, most politically influential corporations. Yet, the concept of fascism is greatly misunderstood today. Most anyone who decries fascism will describe symptoms such as jackboots and swastikas, but fail to offer an actual definition.

  For a definition, we might ask Benito Mussolini, the father of national fascism. He stated, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

  By defining the term, we can conclude that the US is no longer a capitalist country and hasn’t been one for a long time. The US began its slide into fascism in a major way around the time that income tax and the Federal Reserve were created – in 1913. These measures were the brainchild of the largest bankers of the day and the Fed still remains under the power of the major banks.

  Over the last century, the Deep State, which is corporatist in origin, has grown and has done a first rate job of introducing a combination of socialism and fascism, a bit at a time. This has slowly destroyed the economy, education and the national moral compass, not to mention achieving the utter corruption of the political system.

  By contrast, capitalism is a free-market system, in which the economy, unfettered by the interference of governments, finds its own level at any given time. It fluctuates naturally, based upon supply and demand, each correcting the other with regularity.

  But government edicts operate with force and permanence, constricting the natural flow of money, goods and services. Over time, regulations pile on top of regulations until the system becomes dysfunctional.

  Socialism, by its very nature, is a central restrictive force on the free market. Its logical conclusion is very visible in Venezuela today, where government regulation has produced such a stranglehold on the economy that it’s broken down in every way, resulting in dire poverty and even starvation.

  But, as stated above, in the US, the Deep State has been thorough in its presentation of the US economy as a capitalist economy. In doing so, they’ve provided the encouragement of full socialism in the political realm.

  In the near future, the economy will begin to collapse under the weight of growing fascism and socialism. However, the blame will be laid at the feet of capitalism.

  In my belief, the majority of Americans will be fooled into thinking that capitalism is the problem and that socialism will save the day. During the coming financial crisis, they’ll dive in with both feet.

  Voters, even many of those who are moderate, will support socialist candidates. The first national election that occurs after the crisis has begun will result in an overwhelming victory for socialist and other leftist candidates. The next president will provide a plethora of socialist “solutions” to counter “the damage done by capitalism.”

  But such a prediction does not require a crystal ball. This has happened many times before. The Athenian Republic ran into the same problem. The Roman Republic also deteriorated in this manner. As stated by Aristotle, “Republics decline into democracies and democracies decline into despotisms.”

  Quite so. It’s a natural progression.

  And so, it shouldn’t be surprising if the more imaginative American were to observe, worriedly, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  He would most certainly be correct. Like the flag in the image above, the founding principles have been turned upside down and the rights of Americans have been shredded. “America,” as a concept, no longer exists in the USA. Its vestiges remain, but soon, they too will be on the way out.

  Liberty always exists somewhere in the world, but it does tend to change location from time to time.

  Perhaps a final quote from late eighteenth century America would be of benefit – one from Thomas Paine.

  “My country is wherever liberty lives.”

  *  *  *

  Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country, but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay. In the years ahead, there will likely be much less stability of any kind. That’s precisely why, Doug Casey and his team just released this new report with all on details on how to can play your cards—both for prudence and profit. Click here to get the details now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/30/2022 – 14:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• China And Russia's "Space War": Where Is The US?
  China And Russia’s “Space War”: Where Is The US?

  Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • “Evidence of both nations’ intent to undercut the United States and allied leadership in the space domain can be seen in the growth of combined in-orbit assets of China and Russia, which grew approximately 70% in just two years.” — Kevin Ryder, senior analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for space and counterspace, Air Force Magazine April 12, 2022.

  • Space has already become the scene of an ongoing “shadow war” in which China and Russia conduct attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day, according to General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations.

  • “The threats are really growing and expanding every single day…. We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened…. Hostile action toward our space-based assets is not a question of ‘if,’ but instead, ‘when.'” — General David Thompson, Washington Post, November 30, 2021.

  • “Fifteen years after China’s ASAT strike, we still lack the ability to defeat an attack on our space systems or launch an offensive strike if circumstances warrant.” — US Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton (Ret.), former commander of U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command, The Hill, April 12, 2022.

  • “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will continue to integrate space services… to erode the U.S. military’s information advantage.” — Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, February 2022.

  • “If deterrence were to fail, we would face an adversary that has integrated space into all aspects of their military operations…. Space provides the foundation of everything we do as a joint force, from delivering humanitarian assistance to combat on the ground, in the air, and at sea…. We cannot afford to lose space; without it we will fail.” — General John W. Raymond, U.S. Chief of Space Operations, Space Force News, April 5, 2022.

  Space has already become the scene of an ongoing “shadow war” in which China and Russia conduct attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day, according to General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations.

  

  Pictured: A Long March 3B rocket, carrying the Beidou-3GEO3 satellite, lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China’s Sichuan province on June 23, 2020. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

  Space-based threats from China and Russia have grown exponentially in recent years, according to a new report on the issue by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), published April 12.

  “Evidence of both nations’ intent to undercut the United States and allied leadership in the space domain can be seen in the growth of combined in-orbit assets of China and Russia, which grew approximately 70% in just two years,” noted Kevin Ryder, DIA senior analyst for space and counterspace.

  “This recent and continuing expansion follows a more than 200% increase between 2015 and 2018.”

  “Space is a warfighting domain now,” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in April.

  “China’s long-standing and extensive modernization program is the greatest challenge… Although China is the Department’s pacing challenge, we also regard Russia as an acute threat.”

  Space has already become the scene of an ongoing “shadow war” in which China and Russia conduct attacks against U.S. satellites with lasers, radio frequency jammers, and cyber-attacks every day, according to General David Thompson, the U.S. Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations. The attacks are “reversible” for now, which means that the damage to the attacked satellites is not permanent, but they amply demonstrate the intentions and abilities of the two main competitors of the United States in space.

  “The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” Thompson said in November 2021. “We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

  China leads by far over Russia. “The Chinese are actually well ahead [of Russia],” according to Thompson. “They’re fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.” Some of those systems are ground-based, such as anti-satellite missiles (ASAT) and lasers intended to blind, damage, or destroy satellites. Others are space-based, such as orbiting “killer” satellites programmed to attack other satellites at a certain point in time, whether with blinding lasers, robotic arms or other means meant to destroy or incapacitate. According to the Pentagon’s 2021 report to Congress on China’s military capabilities:

  “The PLA continues to acquire and develop a range of counterspace capabilities and related technologies, including kinetic-kill missiles, ground-based lasers, and orbiting space robots, as well as expanding space surveillance capabilities, which can monitor objects in space within their field of view and enable counterspace actions.”

  In January 2007, China tested its first successful ASAT, destroying one of its own inactive weather satellites and creating one of the world’s largest space debris incidents. According to the Pentagon’s 2021 report:

  “The PRC has an operational ground-based Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile intended to target low-Earth orbit satellites, and China probably intends to pursue additional ASAT weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous Earth orbit”.

  Russia tested another ASAT in November 2021, during which it successfully destroyed one of its inactive Soviet-era satellites, creating 1,500 pieces of debris in what General Thompson has called an “incredibly dangerous and irresponsible act.” The ASAT was part of Russia’s mobile missile defense complex known as Nudol, which, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s new report, is “capable of destroying ballistic missiles and low-orbiting satellites.” Russia is reportedly also developing an air-launched ASAT weapon that could be launched from aircraft, such as the Russian MiG-31, to target spacecraft in low earth orbit.

  What is concerning is that the US appears to be at a grave disadvantage countering such attacks. “Fifteen years after China’s ASAT strike, we still lack the ability to defeat an attack on our space systems or launch an offensive strike if circumstances warrant,” Retired US Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command, noted.

  “Hostile action toward our space-based assets is not a question of ‘if,’ but instead, ‘when.’ Attacks are regularly occurring at lower thresholds. Our adversaries fully understand the U.S. military’s reliance upon these systems and will seek to compromise or destroy them to gain a decisive advantage in any terrestrial conflict… The goal is to develop resilient, defendable capabilities that can withstand an attack, while also developing offensive options that will deter strikes against our systems in orbit.”

  While China has made it a goal to become the world’s leading space power by 2045, China could overtake the United States by the end of the decade, according to General Thompson — especially because China is putting up satellites at twice the rate of the United States.

  “We are still the best in the world, clearly in terms of capability. They’re catching up quickly… We should be concerned by the end of this decade if we don’t adapt.”

  In addition, China’s space station, Tinangong, is expected to become fully operational between 2022 and 2024. Three Chinese astronauts, one of them a former fighter pilot and another a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pilot, just landed back in China after spending six months in space working on the space station. China plans to continue conducting explorations on the moon, including establishing a robotic research station, and in March 2021 signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia on a joint lunar research station.

  The latest threat assessment report of the US intelligence community, published in February, also makes it clear that while both Russia and China “increasingly see space as a warfighting domain”, the greater threat comes from China. According to the report:

  “The PLA will continue to integrate space services—such as satellite reconnaissance and positioning, navigation, and timing—and satellite communications into its weapons and command-and-control systems to erode the U.S. military’s information advantage.

  “Counterspace operations will be integral to potential military campaigns by the PLA, and China has counterspace-weapons capabilities intended to target U.S. and allied satellites. The PLA is fielding new destructive and nondestructive ground- and space-based antisatellite (ASAT) weapons.”

  In a recent speech, U.S. Chief of Space Operations General John W. Raymond described just how crucial space is to warfare and why it is paramount that the United States remain the preeminent space power:

  “If deterrence were to fail, we would face an adversary that has integrated space into all aspects of their military operations. They use space to detect, track, and target our forces with long-range precision weapons. Space provides the foundation of everything we do as a joint force, from delivering humanitarian assistance to combat on the ground, in the air, and at sea. Our joint operational plans assume assured access to space. … We cannot afford to lose space; without it we will fail.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 23:40

• How Far Are We From Phasing Out Coal?
  How Far Are We From Phasing Out Coal?

  At the COP26 conference last year, 40 nations agreed to phase coal out of their energy mixes.

  However, as Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti details below, despite this, in 2021, coal-fired electricity generation reached all-time highs globally, showing that eliminating coal from the energy mix will not be a simple task.

  This infographic shows the aggressive phase-out of coal power that would be required in order to reach net zero goals by 2050, based on an analysis by Ember that uses data provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

  

  Low-Cost Comes at a High Environmental Cost

  Coal-powered electricity generation rose by 9.0% in 2021 to 10,042 Terawatt-hours (TWh), marking the biggest percentage rise since 1985.

  The main reason is cost. Coal is the world’s most affordable energy fuel. Unfortunately, low-cost energy comes at a high cost for the environment, with coal being the largest source of energy-related CO2 emissions.

  China has the highest coal consumption, making up 54% of the world’s coal electricity generation. The country’s consumption jumped 12% between 2010 and 2020, despite coal making up a lower percentage of the country’s energy mix in relative terms.

  

  Together, China and India account for 66% of global coal consumption and emit about 35% of the world’s greenhouse gasses (GHG). If you add the United States to the mix, this goes up to 72% of coal consumption and 49% of GHGs.

  How Urgent is to Phase Out Coal?

  According to the United Nations, emissions from current and planned fossil energy infrastructure are already more than twice the amount that would push the planet over 1.5°C of global heating, a level that scientists say could bring more intense heat, fire, storms, flooding, and drought than the present 1.2°C.

  Apart from being the largest source of CO2 emissions, coal combustion is also a major threat to public health because of the fine particulate matter released into the air.

  As just one example of this impact, a recent study from Harvard University estimates air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths globally.

  The Move to Renewables

  Coal-powered electricity generation must fall by 13% every year until 2030 to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals of keeping global heating to only 1.5 degrees.

  To reach the mark, countries would need to speed up the shift from their current carbon-intensive pathways to renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

  How fast the transition away from coal will be achieved depends on a complicated balance between carbon emissions cuts and maintaining economic growth, the latter of which is still largely dependent on coal power.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 23:20

• New Jan. 6 Bodycam Videos Show DC Police Officer Assaulting Unconscious Protester
  New Jan. 6 Bodycam Videos Show DC Police Officer Assaulting Unconscious Protester

  Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times,

  A District of Columbia police officer used a large wooden stick to strike the body and head of protester Rosanne Boyland three times as she lay motionless on the ground on Jan. 6, 2021, according to bodycam footage from several officers obtained by The Epoch Times.

  Use-of-force expert Stanley Kephart, upon reviewing the previously unreleased footage, concluded that the three full-force blows by D.C. police officer Lila Morris constituted a felony assault with intent to cause great bodily harm.

  Kephart called Morris’s use of force “indefensible” and the internal-affairs investigation of Boyland’s death a “clear and convincing coverup.”

  “I think that the first thing that occurred is an assault under the color of authority by Morris,” Kephart told The Epoch Times. “That is a crime, an arrestable offense.”

  Police at the mouth of the Lower West Terrace tunnel at the U.S. Capitol ignored dozens of pleas to help Boyland after she collapsed, the videos show.

  When a lifeless Boyland was pulled inside the building more than 10 minutes later, other police and EMS personnel began 50 minutes of life-saving efforts that ultimately failed.

  An independent forensic pathologist hired by the Boyland family contends that her cause of death wasn’t an overdose of the prescription drug Adderall—as reported by the D.C. medical examiner—but manual asphyxia. Boyland was crushed under a pile of people when police gassed protesters and pushed them out of the tunnel at about 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 6.

  ‘Under the Color of Authority’

  Kephart, a 42-year law enforcement veteran and former director of security for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, reviewed Boyland’s case at the request of The Epoch Times. He has testified as a witness more than 350 times on topics including excessive force, police discipline, officer safety, and crowd control.

  Kephart concluded that Morris’s use of force was a felonious “assault under the color of authority,” with intent to cause great bodily harm. He said that Morris should be prosecuted in criminal court and fired from the D.C. Metro police force.

  “I believe two things were in operation here. One was anger at this person,” Kephart said, referring to Boyland. “That was overridden by fear. And those two elements were the causal connection between what was done to the person by the officer and the result.”

  

  The force used against Boyland fails a four-part standard set in the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor, Kephart said: whether force was ever needed and appropriate in the situation, the extent of the injury, and “whether the force was applied in a good-faith manner to maintain and restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically.”

  Police are trained not to strike people in the head with a blunt object. In the West Terrace tunnel, something overcame that training, Kephart said.

  “If you have a trained officer who is angry at what the crowd is doing and the crowd rises up and puts him in a position where he feels his personal safety is compromised, fear begins to take over the anger, and the reflexive response throws the training right out the window,” Kephart said.

  Chief Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment. A message left with the department’s public information office wasn’t returned.

  

  One protester who allegedly used the same wooden stick to strike and jab at police in the terrace tunnel was charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon. Jonathan Mellis was charged in a 10-count indictment on March 10, 2021. He pleaded not guilty. Mellis is being held in jail pending trial.

  Police Ignored Pleas for Help

  Police bodycam video shows protesters begging officers to render life-saving aid to Boyland from the moment she collapsed at the mouth of the tunnel. The pleas grew more desperate as it became apparent Boyland was dying. That sparked a violent backlash from rioters, who attacked the police line with fists, flag poles, sticks, and a whisk broom.

  “There’s people under here!” shouted Justin Winchell, Boyland’s friend who accompanied her to Washington that day. “There’s people trapped under here!”

  A protester right at the police line who was bleeding from a baton strike to the head pointed to Boyland and pleaded for help. “Get her up. Get her up! Get her up, please,” the man urged. “Save her life! Save her life, please!”

  One officer used his baton and boots to push five protesters on top of Boyland, bodycam video shows. “Please get her up! She’s gonna die!” Winchell shouted.

  There was the sound of a female coughing as a battle raged above and around Boyland. The coughing stopped at 4:26:04 p.m., according to a timeline developed by The Epoch Times from police bodycam footage. A few seconds later, the large crowd on the terrace began chanting, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

  “My God! She’s dead! She’s dead! Rose!” Winchell cried at 4:26:52 p.m. “Rosanne! I need somebody! She’s dead! … I need somebody! I need medics!”

  Just shy of 4:28 p.m., protester Luke Coffee of Dallas stepped to the front of the police line, held up his hand, and shouted, “Stop!” He was squirted in the face with pepper spray but maintained his position.

  A rioter threw a large wooden stick at Morris from out in the crowd. At the time, Morris was in the tunnel, crouching behind a protester who had his arms covering his head.

  3 Strikes

  Morris picked up the wooden stick, raised it over her head, and struck Coffee on the right elbow, bodycam video shows. She aimed a second strike at Coffee but missed.

  The video then shows that Morris raised the stick over her head with both hands and unleashed three quick hits to Boyland’s body: one to the ribs and two to the head. The second blow to the head drew a horrified reaction from Winchell.

  The wooden stick flew from Morris’s left hand as she wound up for another strike on Boyland, the videos show. Morris whiffed in her final attempted hit. The stick ricocheted off the tunnel arch and flew over Morris’s head.

  Coffee reached down and picked up an aluminum crutch that had been thrown at police several times during the afternoon. He held the crutch over his head for several seconds, then used it like a plow to push the police line back into the tunnel several feet.

  As Coffee pushed the police line back, bystanders dragged Boyland down several steps and began CPR. Nearly three minutes later, they carried her directly in front of the police line and continued doing CPR. No officers moved to lend assistance.

  At 4:31 p.m., Boyland was dragged by officers to the back of the tunnel and inside the Capitol. In the process, she lost her jeans, backpack, and top, leaving her clothed only in leggings, according to bodycam video.

  

  A SWAT team member in a green tactical uniform began CPR. The D.C. Fire and EMS Department was summoned. Within a few minutes, a team of six to eight first responders was working to resuscitate Boyland. She was hooked to an automated external defibrillator.

  Morris watched the resuscitation efforts. At 4:38 p.m., her bodycam captures a female voice—likely Morris—asking, “Is he dead?”

  Boyland was loaded onto a makeshift gurney and wheeled to the east wing of the Capitol to meet a medical transport unit from D.C. Fire and EMS.

  “When we got into the Capitol, they had her on some sort of dolly or pull cart, and they were pulling her down the hallway towards us,” Capt. Ellen Kurland, an EMS supervisor, said in a Jan. 6 documentary produced by DC Fire and EMS. “We worked her for 30 minutes, and she had been down 20 minutes before we were even able to get to her.”

  Boyland was put on an IV and given epinephrine every four minutes to stimulate her heart. The rescue squad requested approval to depart for The George Washington University Hospital at 5:10 p.m. “Authorization was not granted,” read a summary of records obtained by the Boyland family.

  The records don’t indicate why the ambulance wasn’t allowed to leave the Capitol for a half-hour after requesting approval. A message from The Epoch Times left at the D.C. Metro Fire and EMS Department hasn’t been returned.

  The ambulance finally left the Capitol at 5:40 p.m. for the one-mile trip to the hospital. Due to traffic and road closures, the ambulance didn’t arrive at the emergency room until 6 p.m. Boyland was pronounced dead at 6:09 p.m.

  “We are not 100 percent [certain of] when she actually passed, but agree it was in that time frame [4:21 to 4:26 p.m.] and probably before Lila Morris got hold of that stick,” Bret Boyland, Rosanne’s father, told The Epoch Times. “No matter whether Rosanne was alive or not, we were shocked and appalled at the officer’s attack.”

  ‘Objectively Reasonable’

  Troubled by the contradictions in the Boyland case, Gary McBride of Decatur, Texas, filed an excessive-force complaint against Morris with the Metropolitan Police Department in September 2021.

  “I don’t condone what happened at the Capitol, and I don’t condone the beating of anyone who is defenseless either,” McBride wrote to the D.C. Metro Internal Affairs Bureau on Sept. 14. “It doesn’t matter if you are a protester, preacher, or politician; you should be held accountable for your actions.”

  Two months later, in November 2021, Capt. David K. Augustine wrote to McBride and said, “The use of force within this investigation was determined to be objectively reasonable.”

  Cause of Death Disputed

  The D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy on Boyland on Jan. 7, 2021. The cause of death was ruled amphetamine intoxication. Boyland’s family questioned that conclusion.

  Boyland had a prescription for Adderall, a medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). There was no visual evidence or witness statements to indicate any signs the drug impaired her on Jan. 6.

  

  The Boyland family hired Park Dietz & Associates to review the autopsy findings. The Park Dietz forensic pathologist agreed that the manner of death was an accident but concluded Boyland’s death was caused by manual asphyxia. Boyland was cremated, so a new autopsy was not possible.

  “Compressional asphyxia refers to a situation in which pressure exerted on the chest or back of an individual impedes normal breathing and often leaves no diagnostic physical findings,” read a summary of the Park Dietz report provided to The Epoch Times by the Boyland family.

  Amphetamine toxicity “was not the proximate cause of Ms. Boyland’s death, although it cannot be ruled in or out as a contributory factor,” the pathologist wrote. “The circumstances surrounding Ms. Boyland’s death are not consistent with a drug overdose as the proximate cause and cannot be ignored.”

  The original autopsy didn’t note any evidence of injury, except for a four-inch bruise on her right forearm. However, bodycam footage of Boyland being dragged from the tunnel entrance at 4:31 p.m. shows what appears to be a wound on her forehead. Another bodycam view seems to show a long red mark starting on the lower section of her left rib cage.

  Winchell told an Atlanta television station in 2021 that Boyland developed a nosebleed after the officer struck her in the face with the walking stick.

  “I want you to hear me: She was already blue, and the Capitol police—I kid you not—had been hitting everyone with batons and stuff, understandably,” Winchell said.

  “But I’m talking, she is laid out, maybe dead at this point, but they hit her at least two times in the body. And then they hit her once in the face, once right here in her nose, and some blood started coming out of her nose.”

  

  According to the autopsy, Boyland suffered left and right anterior rib fractures, but those were likely caused by CPR compressions, the Park Dietz report said. The report noted no evidence that a beating or traumatic injury contributed to her death.

  “This does not mean that she was not beaten by a police officer, only that she was already deceased at that time,” the Boyland family said in a statement.

  The report said it’s unclear what role chemical irritants sprayed by police and protesters might have had on Boyland’s death. Videos show mace dripping off the clothing of protesters near the police line.

  “Please stop pepper spraying,” an unknown man near Boyland pleaded at 4:26 p.m. “Her lungs are full of it.”

  Police used an unknown gas on protesters in the tunnel at 4:20 p.m. According to security video, a loud explosion was heard seconds beforehand, causing many protesters in the tunnel to drop to the ground.

  Chemical agents such as pyrotechnic oleoresin capsicum, delivered via an exploding munition, work primarily on the lungs. Witnesses in the tunnel described feeling like the oxygen was sucked from the air, making it impossible to breathe. The response was panic.

  Kephart said crowd-control munitions were a mistake in such a tight and crowded space.

  “If you’re using gas munitions to cause the air to be saturated with a gas displacing the oxygen, and causes them to panic and pass out, thereby clogging the ability for them to disperse because they’re passed out, you have created and worsened the problem,” Kephart said.

  “This is an absolute symptom of a lack of proper training. This offends common sense.”

  Police can allow fear to overcome their training in high-stress situations, but so can crowds like the one in the West Terrace tunnel.

  “The same thing is true with the crowds: If fear [strikes], they do the wrong thing,” he said. “They either drop-down, or they try to flee. And in attempting to do either of those two options, they worsen the circumstance in crowd compaction.”

  Birthday Filled With Sadness

  April 26 was a sad day at the Georgia home of Bret and Cheryl Boyland. Their late daughter Rosanne would have turned 36. Instead of enjoying a birthday celebration, the Boyland family had to confront the grief that has been ever-present since the night of Jan. 6, 2021.

  Rosanne’s parents struggle with many lingering questions about her death. Among them is the exact time their daughter died. Bret Boyland said that based on the review of Rosanne’s autopsy and other factors, he believes she died between 4:21 p.m. and 4:25 p.m.

  A review of video and audio from police bodycams identified a series of female coughs between 4:25:34 and 4:26:04. Boyland said the coughs were too short for him to tell if they came from his daughter.

  Bodycam and security video of Boyland’s time in the Capitol before being taken to the hospital provided some comfort to her family.

  “We were glad to get details of life-saving efforts after she was dragged into the Capitol,” Bret Boyland said. “She just got that attention too late.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 23:00

• Streaming Accounts For Just 30% Of US TV Screen-Time
  Streaming Accounts For Just 30% Of US TV Screen-Time

  When Netflix reported its first-ever subscriber drop in its latest earnings report, the company went into some detail on how it sees its growth prospects in the longer term.

  But, as Statista’s Feliz Richter points out, among other things, the company shared an interesting piece of information with respect to its position in the competitive landscape in the United States: Netflix’s share of total TV viewing in the U.S. has been “steady to up,” the company said quoting Nielsen data, despite the launch of several new streaming services.

  Perhaps more importantly though, streaming as a whole is still at the beginning of the road, despite commanding a fair share of the conversation surrounding TV content, especially among younger audiences.

  According to a monthly Nielsen report called “The Gauge”, streaming accounted for just 30 percent of total TV screen time in March 2022, with linear TV (i.e. cable and broadcast) still dominating video consumption on the big screen.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  While cable is still far ahead of streaming at 37 percent of TV usage, broadcast has actually been overtaken, accounting for just 25 percent of TV consumption.

  Breaking down the streaming total by individual service reveals how much room to grow there still is for Netflix, YouTube and the like.

  At 7 percent of TV screen time, Netflix is the leader of the streaming pack, ahead of YouTube (6 percent) and Hulu (3 percent).

  “Considering that we are less mature in other countries and that this excludes mobile screens (where we believe our share of engagement is even lower), we are confident that we have a long runway for growth,” Netflix wrote in a letter to shareholders last July.

  Looking at the age gap in TV consumption, the future does indeed look bright for streaming services.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 22:40

• These Are The World's Biggest Shipping Hubs
  These Are The World’s Biggest Shipping Hubs

  The volume of goods transported around the globe by container ships has increased continuously in recent years.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, according to data from the Hong Kong Marine Department shows that ports in Asia, especially in China, are increasingly dominating the industry.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  In 2005, there were still two European and one North American port in the ranking of the biggest shipping hubs in the world.

  In 2021, only Rotterdam remained in the top 10 – in the bottom rank.

  

  Asian ports have grown at a fast rate in recent years. In addition to several Chinese ports, Singapore and Busan in South Korea also make the top 10 ranking. In Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand, completely new shipping hubs have emerged.

  In contrast to the production of goods, the increases in port size in Asia are not an indication that the Asian port technology itself in more innovative, faster or more competitive. According to experts, the development of port infrastructure simply reflects the growth in trade flows.

  Maritime shipping suffered setbacks in the coronavirus crisis as supply chains around the globe were disrupted. Shipping volumes initially declined as factories in Asian production hubs closed down, only to be overstretched as restocking needs in receiving countries caused a shipping boom later in the pandemic.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 22:00

• Hundreds Of CDC Employees Still Haven't Received COVID-19 Vaccine
  Hundreds Of CDC Employees Still Haven’t Received COVID-19 Vaccine

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Nearly 400 employees at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) haven’t received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to data obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times.

  

  A total of 382 workers at the CDC are unvaccinated, Roger Andoh, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer at the agency, told The Epoch Times.

  Another nine employees have just had one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, meaning they also don’t qualify as fully vaccinated per the CDC’s guidelines.

  Collectively, the number is 3.2 percent of the CDC’s workforce.

  Andoh initially pointed to a statement from the government that contained data as of December 2021 and declined to fully answer The Epoch Times’ FOIA request, which asked for more detailed figures that were current as of March 15.

  “Please note that this is the most recent and most complete data available and some data elements that you requested are not available,” Andoh said initially.

  When asked to clarify, another CDC officer repeated Andoh’s statement.

  After The Epoch Times filed an appeal to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent agency, the office changed its stance without explaining why.

  “After an additional search, we are providing you with the following information,” Andoh said in the new response.

  “The response I got to your appeal from CDC gave me the impression they didn’t mean to withhold any information in the first place,” Jonathan Nelson, a FOIA analyst with HHS, told The Epoch Times in an email. “Based on that, my (personal) belief is that this was just an accidental omission on their part.”

  In addition to revealing that 391 employees weren’t fully vaccinated, the CDC said that 12,399 were fully vaccinated, meaning that they had received two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson jab.

  Additionally, 5,810 employees shared that they had received a booster dose, although the agency stressed that employees don’t have to say whether they’ve had a booster.

  The CDC also disclosed that the agency had granted zero requests for exemption to President Joe Biden’s federal worker vaccine mandate, which is poised to take effect on May 31 after a months-long suspension due to a court ruling.

  The CDC’s media office didn’t reply when asked what would happen to unvaccinated workers who don’t have an exemption, and why no exemptions had been granted.

  The data were current as of April 12.

  Three other health agencies inside HHS that are deeply involved in promoting COVID-19 vaccination and refused to provide data beyond December 2021 still have not provided the figures requested. They are the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the National Institutes of Health.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 21:40

• Inspired By Tyler Durden, "Fight Club Thailand" Has No Rules 
  Inspired By Tyler Durden, “Fight Club Thailand” Has No Rules 

  Most films made over the last two decades have been long forgotten except for the movie “Fight Club.” The constant theme of this movie is the globalist system has transformed men into cowards. Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

  “We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

  Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) is a fictional character imagined by a depressed white-collar man (Edward Norton) who has insomnia. Durden persuades the narrator (Norton) to punch him to be jolted into the present so he can feel a swell in his masculinity. And so they begin to beat each other, which is the origin of the fight club. 

  Soon after, Norton becomes confident and aggressive and doesn’t miss his possessions. Other men become attracted to Norton’s alpha perception and gather in secret locations to fight each other, seeking to tap their untapped masculine energy that has been depressed by modern society. 

  Two decades later, halfway around the world, young men seeking to reclaim their masculinity are fighting in an underground club in Bangkok, Thailand, according to AFP. 

  

  Inspired by the movie, “Fight Club Thailand” allows shirtless men to brawl against each other in one round increment lasting three minutes per round, where anything goes. 

  “Here, you don’t have to know how to fight. You just need to have heart and that’s it,” club co-founder Chana Worasart told AFP. 

  

  Worasart said he started the club in 2016, inspired mainly by Tyler Durden. 

  “I think the popularity is due to a variety of occupations and fighting styles that are different from the styles in the (professional) ring,” he said.

  The fighters are everyday people from Bangkok and surrounding areas who want to unleash their inner masculinity in a fighting ring surrounded by old rusted shipping containers with a homemade backcloth banner on one that reads in bold white capitalized words: FightClub. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 21:20

• Who Is The Hero? Albright Vs. Assange
  Who Is The Hero? Albright Vs. Assange

  Authored by Lawrence Davidson via Consortium News,

  Our image of a hero has two aspects. The first consists of generic, stereotypical traits: bravery, determination in the face of adversity, achievement against heavy odds — the kind of person who saves the day.

  The second aspect is more culturally specific, describing and contextualizing the circumstances of bravery and determination, and the nature of achievement in terms that are narrowly defined. In other words, cultural descriptions of bravery are most often expressed in terms compatible with the social and political conditions of the hero’s society.

  

  Heroes are ubiquitous. For instance, there are American heroes, Russian heroes, Israeli heroes, Arab heroes, Ukrainian heroes, and so on. Where does good and bad come into it? Well, that too becomes a cultural judgment. Below are two examples of “heroes.” I will leave it to the reader to decide who is good and who is bad.

  Albright —From Outside the Establishment

  Madeleine Albright was the first woman to serve as American secretary of state (1997-2001). She served in this capacity under President Bill Clinton during his second term. As such, she must be seen as a loyal promoter of her president’s foreign policy — a policy she may have helped create — regardless of any moral or ethical considerations. In other words, she is a “company” point person.

  Whether this requires bravery is questionable. As we will see, it will require a persistence toward a single end defined in societal or national terms. This does indicate determination and achievement in the face of an alleged foe.

  When Madeleine Albright died in 2022, the following “achievements” were critically cited in the obituaries written by those outside the establishment and thus critical of Albright:

  1. Russia was “her obsession” and this led to her being the U.S. government’s point person on the expansion of NATO eastward into what had been the Soviet sphere of influence. This was done in violation of guarantees given to Russia in 1989 that NATO would not go further than the border of the newly united Germany — an act that helped prepare the ground for the present war in Ukraine.
  2. In 1997-1998, acting as secretary of state, she threatened Iraq with aerial bombardment if its government did not allow for weapons inspections at designated sites. The Iraqis eventually complied but got bombed anyway.
  3. She also made sure draconian sanctions were applied (including banning many medicines) to Iraq for an extended period of time. The result was the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked by the journalist Lesley Stahl on the TV show 60 Minutes whether the draconian sanctions were worth the price of the deaths of approximately a half-million Iraqi children, she replied, “we think this was a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”

  This led one critic of the U.S. government to judge Albright’s career as follows:

  “It is the ultimate moral crime to target for misery, pain and death those least responsible for the offenses of their tyrannical rulers. Yet this is the very policy Madeleine Albright, made “Standard Operating Procedure for US diplomacy.”

  Albright — From Inside the Establishment

  From inside the establishment, that is, from inside the U.S. government and foreign policy establishment as well as an allied media, she was lauded as a dedicated, talented and energetic leader.

  

  One member of the House of Representatives said upon her death,

  “Our nation lost a hero today. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was the face of US foreign policy throughout some of the most difficult times for our nation and the world. … She brought nations together to expand NATO and defend the very pillars of democracy across the world. … She taught us that we can solve some of the world’s most difficult issues by bringing people together and having tough, uncomfortable conversations.”

  According to the eulogistic obituary published by The New York Times, 

  “Her performance as secretary of state won high marks from career diplomats abroad and ordinary Americans at home. Admirers said she had a star quality, radiating practicality, versatility and a refreshingly cosmopolitan flair.”

  What can we conclude from these contrasting views? We quickly come to realize that inside the establishment one rarely, if ever, hears any reference to such things as the human cost of a policy, the end of which is defined in terms of national interest. In the case of Madelene Albright, national interest trumped human interest. Still, she was held a hero nonetheless.

  Assange & Manning 

  Julian Assange is an Australian computer specialist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. It is a website dedicated to providing “primary source materials” to journalists and the public alike.

  WikiLeaks eventually released “thousands of internal or classified documents from an assortment of government and business entities.” The site raised immediate hostility from many governments and corporations, which decried the “lack of ethics” of Assange and his fellows — who were exposing the often unethical, and sometimes murderous, behavior of those now attacking the website.

  Bradley (aka Chelsea) Manning was an Army intelligence specialist assigned to a base near Baghdad during the Iraq War. Manning was suffering from a gender identity crisis. He also had serious second thoughts about the Iraq War.

  Eventually, his growing opposition to the war led him to secretly send Assange “750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents.” Manning was later exposed and arrested, court-martialed and eventually had his sentence commuted by President Barack Obama.

  From Inside the Establishment

  As the writer and therapist Steven Berglas observes,

  “for as long as there have been moral canaries in our societal coal mines they have been denigrated for being as corrupt, or more so, than the miscreants they attack.”

  Assange and Manning face just such charges.

  The complaints were, if you will, weaponized in 2010 after WikiLeaks released “half a million documents” relating to U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, obtained from the then young, disillusioned Army intelligence analyst Manning. This was followed by another release of about a quarter-million U.S. diplomatic cables, many of which were classified.

  Assange was now deemed “a terrorist” by the government terrorists he had exposed. Subsequently, these actions were deemed “a threat to U.S. national security” by the U.S. government. As a result, Manning was jailed and suffered court-martial while Assange, now living in England, has been fighting extradition to the U.S. for years.

  From inside the establishment both Assange and Manning are criminals. Both exposed secrets of governments and it is an established principle that states cannot run without secrets. This is partially because all states sometimes act in criminal ways. To expose these episodes is deemed more criminal than criminal acts of the states. Why so? Because governments say so and design their laws accordingly.

  This rather arbitrary position taken by governments has been sold to the citizenry as necessary for the security of their state, but as we see, the consequences of WikiLeaks’mass release of classified documents has not been shown to have endangered the nation in any obvious way. Nonetheless, Assange and Manning are deemed criminals for setting a precedent that threatens other potential criminals employed by state and business.

  From Outside the Establishment 

  Outside the establishment the view is 180 degrees in the other direction. Again, to quote Steven Berglas

  “whistleblowers are rare, courageous birds that should be considered national treasures not disgraces.… It is clear that most snitches have more integrity–-and are infinitely more altruistic-than their government or corporate counterparts.”

  For instance, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, Manning is “a consummate hero, and deserves a medal and our collective gratitude, not decades in prison.” At court-martial, Manning stated that the leaked material to WikiLeaks was intended to…

  “spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general… and cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.”

  A heroic act, but also perhaps a naive one.

  The Issue of Ethics

  Governmental leaders and their aides often reserve for themselves the right to do illegal things such as

  • using sanctions that undermine opposition governments while ignoring the negative consequences on the wellbeing of civilian populations;
  • aiding and abetting coups that overthrow democratic and undemocratic governments alike, depending on how, in each case, Washington sees their economic and military stance; and
  • carrying out of illegal actions such as assassination, torture, and illegal imprisonment. All of this is immoral and unethical while being deemed necessary within the context of national interest.

  Nonetheless the common citizen, who lives within what we shall call a propaganda bubble spun by his/her own government and its cooperating mainstream media, has a hard time understanding events except in propaganda designed terms.

  Madeleine Albright’s funeral buried her legacy of war-making and extraordinary deceit

  The word “Iraq” was not mentioned once during the 3 hour celebration of the imperial icon, writes @samhusseini https://t.co/liQemhfFbD

  — The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) April 27, 2022

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

  Most will pay no attention at all to the fate of whistleblowers, who speak in opposition to the propaganda, because their actions do not touch their lives, which are locally focused. For the small number who find that there is something not quite right about negative media reports of whistleblower revelation, there is often a sense of helplessness and inertia that causes their momentary uneasiness to go nowhere.

  The unfortunate truth is that this phenomenon of mass indifference to what the government does in the name of national interest and security, backed up by seemingly blind support of the media, has become one of the pillars of societal stability. That does not mean that challenges such as those launched by Assange and Manning are not worth the effort. They might lead to reforms (the Watergate scandal and its consequences comes to mind), but under ordinary circumstances the status quo will carry on.

  So, who are the heroes? Is it those who promote state policies which, regardless of their immorality, allegedly sustain state prestige, security and stability? Or is it those who shine a momentary light into dark places and reveal the immorality of state behavior — often at the cost of the destruction of their careers and reputations? You choose.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 21:00

• 71% Of Elementary School Math Textbooks In Florida Contained 'Woke Indoctrination' 
  71% Of Elementary School Math Textbooks In Florida Contained ‘Woke Indoctrination’ 

  The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) rejected dozens of mathematics textbooks for its K-12 curriculum, citing references to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and problematic woke content. 

  FDOE said 41% of submitted textbooks by publishers were “impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics.” Some of those topics included controversial CRT, inclusions of Common Core, and Social-Emotional Learning. 

  A shocking 71% of the submitted textbooks contained prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies for grade levels K-5 that didn’t align with FDOE standards. 

  Here’s a breakdown of FDOE’s findings of the 54 of the 132 (41%) reject textbooks. 

  *78 of 132 total submitted textbooks are being included on the state’s adopted list.

  *28 (21 percent) are not included on the adopted list because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.

  *12 (9 percent) are not included on the adopted list because they do not properly align to B.E.S.T. Standards.

  *14 (11 percent) are not included on the adopted list because they do not properly align to B.E.S.T. Standards and incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.

  *Grades K-5: 71 percent of materials were rejected.

  *Grades 6-8: 20 percent of materials were rejected.

  *Grades 9-12: 35 percent of materials were rejected.

  Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.“

  “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law,” DeSantis added.

  Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran said, “Florida has become a national leader in education under the vision and leadership of Governor DeSantis. When it comes to education, other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”

  Here’s one example of a “woke” math problem in one of the textbooks. 

  

  The report should be an eye-opener to parents about the massive indoctrination of the most vulnerable: children. There are ways to avoid toxic CRT that some teachers are already warning it’s “absolutely everywhere.” 

  Through homeschooling, or if parents don’t have the means, at least be open to understanding what is being taught at school. 

  The larger question is, who are these publishers, and why are they trying to indoctrinate kids with radical Left thinking? 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 20:40

• Durham's Treatment Of Clinton Camp Contrasts With Mueller's Treatment Of Trump Camp
  Durham’s Treatment Of Clinton Camp Contrasts With Mueller’s Treatment Of Trump Camp

  Authored by Peter Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The way special counsel John Durham is treating people associated with the 2016 Clinton campaign while investigating them is far cry from how special counsel Robert Mueller treated people associated with the 2016 Trump campaign while investigating them.

  

  After Durham last year indicted lawyer Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI, court documents revealed that the special counsel had long been in communications with Clinton campaign lawyers, hearing them out on why certain subpoenaed documents were protected by attorney-client privilege and thus shouldn’t be turned over. Durham only recently asked the court to compel production of the documents or at least have the judge review a sample of them before making a final decision.

  “We have tried for some time to understand better the theory of privilege that is being asserted over various documents, and, you know, we have had conversations and have been unable to get comfort as to the grounding and bases of various privilege theories that have been asserted here,” said Durham’s lead prosecutor, Andrew DeFilippis, during a March 31 hearing (pdf).

  Sussmann allegedly lied in September 2016 to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker about his motivation to give him reports and data supposedly showing secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The FBI determined no such channel existed.

  Sussmann told Baker in an email that he was going to the meeting not representing any client. However, he billed the time to the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

  The data and reports were provided to Sussmann by Rodney Joffe, who has run several tech companies. Sussmann, Joffe, and others were part of a “joint venture” to dig up dirt on Trump and help Clinton, Durham said, but stopped short of alleging the venture amounted to a criminal conspiracy.

  Durham’s approach contrasts with the methods used by Mueller, who in 2017-2019 investigated supposed collusion between the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Russia to sway the election in his favor. No such collusion was found, though Mueller prosecuted or referred for prosecution multiple Trump associates for unrelated or process crimes.

  In August 2017, a few months after taking over the FBI Russia probe, Mueller had FBI agents raid the home of Paul Manafort, a career political consultant who headed Trump’s campaign for several months before his prior foreign dealings were criticized by media.

  Mueller busted through Manafort’s attorney-client privilege, asserting the crime-fraud exemption, which strips the privilege from communications that a judge agrees pertained to committing or planning a crime. Largely based on secret evidence, D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell agreed with Mueller that Manafort “downplayed” in his lobbying disclosures his company’s prior activities in the United States on behalf of a Ukrainian political party (pdf). The judge thus allowed Mueller to question to some degree Manafort’s previous lawyer.

  In April 2019, on a referral from Mueller, New York prosecutors had the FBI raid the office of Michael Cohen, then-personal lawyer of President Trump. Cohen’s lawyer said at the time that during the raid agents seized privileged communications between Cohen and his clients. In such a case, the government sorts out what is and isn’t privileged on its own, usually assigning a team independent of the case investigators to do the sorting.

  Lawyers for both Manafort and Cohen said the raids were unnecessary because their clients had voluntarily cooperated with law enforcement.

  Trump pardoned Manafort, but not Cohen, who made substantial efforts trying to implicate his former boss in a crime. Cohen recently told The Daily Beast that unless Manhattan prosecutors bring charges against Trump by April 30, he will cease his cooperation.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 20:20

• North Korea Observers Say Kim Readying First Nuclear Test Since 2017
  North Korea Observers Say Kim Readying First Nuclear Test Since 2017

  North Korea is gearing up for its potential first nuclear weapons test since 2017, FT and other news agencies are reporting, which analysts say appears confirmed in a series of new satellite images. 

  “The commercial satellite images were collected this week and analyzed by experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,” according to CSIS experts cited in FT. “They revealed the construction of buildings, movement of lumber and an increase in equipment and supplies immediately outside a new entrance to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the country’s north-east.”

  

  The report features the findings of CSIS authors who’ve issued the new study on Pyongyang’s weapons testing which says, “Although some sources suggest the seventh nuclear test could occur between May and September of this year, the date of a seventh nuclear test will undoubtedly depend exclusively upon the personal decision of Kim Jong Un.”

  The study further finds that “Current satellite imagery indicates that preparations are well under way and should not be discounted as insignificant activity.”

  Simultaneously, Kim Jong Un has been ratcheting what’s being viewed in the West as his public ‘nuclear readiness’ rhetoric, calling on the nation’s military leaders “bolster up their strength in every way to annihilate the enemy” – according to the latest state media reporting Friday, which commented on a massive military parade in the capital early in the week.

  This despite that Pyongyang has long touted a self-imposed moratorium on tests. At a major display of military hardware Monday, including some of the country’s latest ICBMs on parade, Kim praised the military, describing the “modernity, heroism and radical development of the armed forces of the Republic and their matchless military and technological superiority.”

  North Korea broadcasted images of a vast military parade to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the country’s army, showcasing leader Kim Jong Un’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles. pic.twitter.com/GTev8jqeBH

  — NoComment (@nocomment) April 26, 2022

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

  According to the scene reported in state KCNA and summarized by Reuters: 

  Photos released by state media showed Kim perched on a white horse and wearing a white, military-style tunic with gold trim as he reviewed the troops.

  Monday’s parade had featured several of the North’s latest missiles, including its largest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Hwasong-17, and a recently tested hypersonic missile.

  State media further cited Kim as saying these advanced nuclear-capable weapons are for self-defense purposes and ultimately to safeguard the country’s “fundamental interests”.

  #NorthKorea‘s state broadcaster shows images of a vast military parade for the founding anniversary of North Korea’s armed forces#KimJongUn said at the parade the country will rapidly accelerate the development of its nuclear arsenal, state media reported pic.twitter.com/EXU1UBpcQv

  — 🅰🅻🅴🆁🆃 🅲🅷🅰🅽🅽🅴🅻 (@AlertChannel) April 26, 2022

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

  This after last month Washington and its regional allies including Japan expressed alarm as North Korea resumed testing its largest ICBMs – also amid long stalled engagement with Washington which hasn’t happened on any substantive level since the Trump administration.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 20:00

• US Hotel Room Rates Hit Record High Prices Despite Occupancy Remaining Below Pre-Pandemic Levels
  US Hotel Room Rates Hit Record High Prices Despite Occupancy Remaining Below Pre-Pandemic Levels

  That pesky “Putin-flation” sure is running rampant. It seems like scorching inflation is still unfolding in nearly every sector, including the price of hotel rooms, according to a new report.

  The national average daily rate for a room in March rose to $146.61, marking its highest level for any month on record, according to a new writeup by BisNow. 

  STR, who provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry, reported this week that the average daily rate (ADR) rose 10.9% from pre-pandemic figures (March 2022 vs. March 2019). 

  Occupancy, however, slid -6.2% to 64%, the release notes, while revenue per available room (RevPAR) was up 4% to $93.82. 

  Of all major U.S. cities, Tampa experienced the highest occupancy level (84.7%) even though it was still down 3.6% from 2019. None of the top 25 markets saw an increase in occupancy over 2019, the firm reported. 

  

  And of course, the steepest decline in occupancy came from none other than San Francisco, which saw a stunning -23.4% dropoff in occupancy from March 2019. 

  In total, U.S. hotels sold 6.6 million in group room nights versus 7.8 million in 2019. Despite the decline in occupancy, “urban hotels increased their average daily room rates 56% month-over-month, while airport locations were up 42%,” the report says. 

  CoStar National Director of Hospitality Jan Freitag commented to BisNow: “Easter and spring break are just the two obvious indicators of continued pricing power for the U.S. hotel industry driven by, as we had said repeatedly before, very healthy leisure demand.”

  “I’m very, very interested in seeing what the summer holds with regards to pricing power,” Freitag concluded.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 19:20

• The Economics Of Kart Racing
  The Economics Of Kart Racing

  By Russell Clark of The Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack

  As mentioned previously, stepping away from managing money has allowed me more time with other parts of my life. But these different areas have also opened my mind to various other ideas, so I would like to share some details. One area that takes up an awful lot of my time is my son’s karting career (Instagram : jarrettclark55 – please follow. It brings him untold joy to have more followers!). There are many, many stories that I could tell you about karting, but I am just going to focus just on the economics, as I think it illustrates many of the potential flaws with many “quality” stocks.

  

  Jarrett is competing in the British Championships Honda Cadet Class this year. Many of the current Formula 1 drivers have competed in British Karting Championships. It is highly competitive, with races held all over the UK. You can see below, the chassis, tyres and engine are all specified.

  

  To try and make karting fair, all of the equipment is regulated. Race tyres have to bought from the organiser on the day and a set costs £150 or so, and chassis can be bought from a number of different providers with a new one costing around £2,500. Engines however are far more variable. If, like me, you knew nothing about karting before starting, you might have googled 160cc 4-stroke engine to get an idea of how much that costs, and then estimated the cost of an engine at around £250 to £400.

  

  However, the reality is that there is a lot of variation in the power of the Honda engines when the leave the factory, some have good “bottom” (i.e. good acceleration) while some have good “top” (i.e. a very fast top speed). What in practice happens, is that engines with a proven history of winning trade a large multiple of their ex-factory price. Think of a number and triple it, and you will be closer. You also need three to four engines – one wet engine, one dry engine, and one practice engine. You may ask if people will really pay that much money for an engine? The way I explain it to people, is imagine the most insane football mum or dad you have ever seen, the one who is shouting non-stop at the ref, and their own kids and is totally emotionally committed to their child making it in football. Now imagine if you came up to them and said, “Hey I have magic football boots which means your child will be competitive with the best kids in the country. Would you like them?”. If you can imagine that conversation, then you can understand why competitive karting engines are so expensive. Almost all karting parents are totally emotionally committed to their child making it, so demand is very strong.

  However, the value of the engines are subject to changes in regulations. A few years ago the British Karting Championship was run under a pooled engine system, which meant every driver had to rent an engine at random on the day of the event. The pooled engines were all adjusted to be roughly the same level, but there will still be some variation. And there is a alternative karting championship which is run under those rules, but the British Karting Championship is the official competition and has the largest participation and gets the best racers. In some European countries in some racing classes, karting regulations are such that the winner of a kart race must sell their engine to anyone that wants it at fixed price. This acts to keep a ceiling on engine prices.

  There are some advantages to not regulating engines. The Honda Cadet is an entry level for karting, so many novice karters begin racing at this level, and by making fast engines expensive allows the older more experienced karters to battle it out far away from the novices. It also acts as a barrier to entry, to reduce competition. Hence like most regulation, it benefits insiders at the detriment to outsiders.

  UK Motorsport are contemplating changes to karting for next year, which has caused us to be underwater on our own engines on a mark to market basis. We may end up being forced sellers at a loss, but having talked to some more experienced people than myself, there is a chance that no changes will occur and the engines will bounce back in value, as this is exactly what happened a few years ago. I was told off one specific engine fell to 80% in value, before fully recovering.

  There are other expenses and considerations, and if there is demand for a post purely on the costs of being a karting parent, I will try and oblige. But the point of this story is to show how regulatory schemes create “undeserved” value. Does this happen in markets? Of course it does. The best possible example of this, are the rating agencies, specifically Moody’s and S&P. I will go into detail of how bad these companies are at their core business, but first of all you should be aware that from a financial perspective, both business are high “quality” and have been 10 baggers since 2010.

  

  However, the reality of their key service, providing ratings for fixed income securities is that they largely produce a pointless and typically bad product. The rating agencies were the root cause of the global financial crisis, by giving investment grade ratings to CDO and other structured finance products, when in fact they were worthless. However, in the move away from investment banks to clearinghouses, the rating of a bond by the rating agencies became even more important to markets, not less important.

  If the subprime was a one off, perhaps this would be excusable, but rating agencies typically downgrade bonds at the worst time, and upgrade too late. A classic example of this was the Eurocrisis. In 2010, the first arrow indicated when Irish bonds were downgraded to junk. The second arrow indicates when the rating agencies upgraded Ireland to investment grade. That the rating agencies follow market action, rather than have any predictive power is well known by market participants. Or to put it another way, the market does a far better job than the rating agencies – but regulators requires bond issuers to have a rating from a rating agency, despite the market doing a far better job of pricing risk.

  The rating agencies have a dream business. Government regulations create forced buyers of a substandard product. I would argue that clearinghouses are in very similar position, doing a substandard job, but with regulations creating forced buyers of their substandard services.

  

  I have used the karting analogy for two reasons.

  • Firstly, I want to make the point that politics, as expressed through regulation is a very powerful force in market. The ability to influence regulation is a very powerful value creator for many businesses, particularly in America. Healthcare, aerospace, utilities, finance and recently semiconductors are all deeply influenced by regulation and politics, and area that I have previously ignored.

  • The second reason is that future posts are going to refer to some investment ideas that I have gleaned from travelling around the country as I help my son with his karting career. I thought if I suddenly start talking about market observation I picked up at a Premier Inn in Sunderland, the most immediate question would be why was there, rather than the merit of an investment idea.

  And my next post will indeed be about an investing observation I made while on a karting trip to Sunderland.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 19:00

• India Is Urging Tesla To Produce Vehicles Locally
  India Is Urging Tesla To Produce Vehicles Locally

  India is urging Tesla to manufacture its vehicles locally. 

  The country said this week that the electric vehicle manufacturer is “welcome in India” and is encouraged to produce vehicles in the country, according to comments made by Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. 

  India has conveyed to Tesla that “manufacture in China and sell in India is not a good proposition,” according to a Bloomberg wrap up of the story this week.

  Gadkari reportedly made the comments at the Raisina Dialogue, “a geopolitical conference organized by the Observer Research Foundation”. He went as far as to say that Elon Musk “will have to manufacture his Tesla cars in India, and not China, if he wants to come and sell the vehicles in the country,” according to The Economic Times. 

  

  He said that Musk would “not get any special treatment when it comes to customs duties”, referring to importing vehicles from China. 

  Gadkari also defended several recent incidents of EVs catching fire in India, stating that the high temperature in battery cells was to blame. Gadkari said that India needs a system for testing battery cells to help avoid such incidents in the future.

  Meanwhile, Tesla finally got its factory in Berlin open earlier this month after years of delays and red tape. 

  Video of Gadkari’s comments can be viewed here on The Economic Times’. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 18:40

• Musk's Mention Highlights Twitter Counsel Baker's Russiagate Past At FBI
  Musk’s Mention Highlights Twitter Counsel Baker’s Russiagate Past At FBI

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former top FBI attorney James Baker, who now serves as Twitter’s deputy general counsel, has had a spotlight thrown on him after billionaire Elon Musk, who recently negotiated a deal to buy Twitter, responded to comments about Baker’s past actions during the FBI’s Russia investigation in 2016.

  

  On April 26, a day after Musk reportedly reached an agreement with Twitter, filmmaker Mike Cernovich wrote on Twitter that Baker, during his time as FBI general counsel, “personally arranged a meeting” with cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann, who was at the time working for the Clinton campaign.

  “In this meeting, Sussmann presented fabricated evidence in the Alfa bank matter,” Cernovich wrote.

  Sussmann was charged last year by special counsel John Durham for lying to Baker during that meeting.

  “Sounds pretty bad,” Musk responded on Twitter to the Cernovich post.

  Sounds pretty bad …

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022

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

  According to court documents, it was Sussmann who asked for the meeting, which took place in September 2016 at FBI headquarters. The two men knew each other from their time working in the Justice Department criminal division.

  Sussmann emailed Baker that he was going to the meeting not representing any client. But in fact, he billed the time to the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Durham alleges that this was a material lie, which means that it had a natural tendency or was capable to affect government decisions.

  During their meeting, Sussmann gave Baker data and reports purportedly showing secret communications between The Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. The FBI determined that there was no such secret communication. A tech expert firm hired by Alfa-Bank concluded that the data may have been fabricated, although Durham hasn’t made that assertion.

  The data and reports were provided to Sussmann by Rodney Joffe, who has run several tech companies. Sussmann, Joffe, and others were in a “joint venture” to dig up dirt on Trump and help Clinton, Durham said, thus far stopping short of alleging the venture amounted to a criminal conspiracy.

  Baker told congressional investigators in 2018 that it was unusual for him to be personally approached by somebody in order to pass on information to the FBI. He remembered two other instances: one related to the Dennis Montgomery case of alleged illegal government spying on Americans and the other being Mother Jones reporter David Corn, who said he sent Baker a copy of the infamous Steele Dossier in November 2016. Baker said he had long known Corn, and their children used to carpool together (pdf).

  The dossier was prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was, in turn, paid (through intermediaries) to collect dirt on Trump by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

  As it turned out, much of the dossier, including its core claim of Trump–Russia collusion, was fabricated.

  There was nothing inappropriate about Sussmann’s passing on the Alfa-Bank information, Baker said. He said he was generally aware that Sussmann had an association with the DNC.

  The Sussmann trial is scheduled for mid-May. He has pleaded not guilty.

  Durham was tasked, around March or May 2019, with reviewing the 2016–’17 FBI investigation of alleged collusion between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia to sway the 2016 election. No such collusion was found.

  Baker told lawmakers that the FBI probe was lawfully predicated. Durham previously contested such a claim.

  In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham as special counsel. In February 2021, Durham resigned his position as a federal prosecutor and has continued the investigation in the sole capacity of special counsel.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 18:20

• Heatwave Triggers Indian "Power Crisis" As State Firms Seek Russian Crude To Secure Supplies
  Heatwave Triggers Indian “Power Crisis” As State Firms Seek Russian Crude To Secure Supplies

  India is one of those G-20 members not bowing down to US pressure to halt purchases of Russian energy products. The South Asian country’s power grid is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal and crude, and has come under severe stress as one of the worst heatwaves in years causes widespread blackouts. 

  Another devastating heatwave has parched large swathes of India this week (after record heat in March), resulting in power blackouts. In the capital New Delhi, high temperatures hit 104 Fahrenheit and could increase even more through the weekend. 

  

  Fossil fuels power about 75% of India’s power grid, and the rest is renewable energy. Soaring temperatures mean increasing power output as cooling demand rises. The government has forced power cuts for factories in various provinces to mitigate the grid’s collapse. Nearly 42% of the grid comprises the industrial sector, followed by residential at 24% and agriculture at 18%. 

  “In view of the present power crisis, .. it has been decided to impose scheduled cuts,” a state power utility told Reuters. 

  “Power cuts are expected to worsen in the coming days as the heatwaves and a pickup in economic activity are seen increasing electricity demand at the fastest pace in nearly four decades,” Reuters explained. 

  Since most electricity generated in India is from fossil fuels and extreme heat increases power demand. Reuters revealed that Indian refiners are negotiating a six-month oil deal with Russia to import millions of barrels per month. 

  Western sanctions against Russia forced many countries to find alternative sources, but a growing number of G-20 members are becoming defiant and ignoring Washington and continuing to do business with Moscow outside the dollar system.

  Reuters also notes that New Delhi has asked state-run energy companies to evaluate a potential purchase of European oil major BP’s stake in sanctions-hit Russian firm Rosneft. BP exited its stake in Rosneft in late February, taking a massive $25 billion hit. 

  India is securing its future with fossil fuels from sanctioned Russia to ensure its supplies for power generation remain adequate. New Delhi is ignoring Washington’s request to boycott Russia shows the West’s waning control over the rest of the world. Is this the latest example of a bipolar world emerging? 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 18:00

• 'Down Payment On World War III': Peace Activists Blast Biden's Ask For More Ukraine Aid
  ‘Down Payment On World War III’: Peace Activists Blast Biden’s Ask For More Ukraine Aid

  Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

  Peace advocates reacted to Thursday’s request by U.S. President Joe Biden for $33 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by warning against what they called a dangerous escalation and by accusing the administration of misplaced priorities.

  Biden is asking Congress for additional funding for war-ravaged Ukraine, including more than $20 billion in “security and military assistance,” $8.5 billion in economic aid, and $3 billion in “humanitarian assistance.” 

  

  “It’s not cheap. But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen,” said Biden. “We either back the Ukrainian people as they defend their country, or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggression in Ukraine every day.”

  The president’s appeal for additional funds comes on top of the $4.6 billion in security assistance the U.S. has given Ukraine since January 2021, including $3.7 billion since Russian forces invaded the country in February.

  Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink, called Biden’s request “a down payment on World War III.”

  “Biden’s call for an enormous $33 billion for Ukraine is over half the entire budget for the State Department and USAID,” she tweeted, referring to the United States Agency for International Development. “We need diplomacy, not billions more in weapons!”

  Benjamin also noted that the Biden administration—which refuses to unfreeze Afghanistan’s central bank reserves—”won’t fill the $2 billion shortfall in the urgent U.N. appeal for the desperately poor people of Afghanistan.”

  $33 billion to the Ukraine.

  Ppl can’t put food on the table. Rents gone up. Housing prices have gone up. Raises have almost gone down when accounting for inflation. We’re having supply shortages across the board.

  But we have $33 billion to spend on Ukraine but not US citizens.

  — Joe Biden Hates Black People (@realnikohouse) April 28, 2022

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

  Jennifer Briney, host of the Congressional Dish podcast, tweeted: “How can the U.S. possibly maintain the already-pretty-clear-fiction that we aren’t ‘in’ the Ukraine-Russia war if we inject $33 billion into it? How can this not lead to escalation?”

  Ben Freeman, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, pointed out that “the $20 billion military assistance package is more than the total defense budgets of all but 13 countries in the world.”

  Others commented on what they implied are the administration’s misplaced priorities amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, worsening economic inequality, and the climate emergency. “Biden’s $33 billion ’emergency’ military aid package for Ukraine is three times the size of the EPA’s entire budget for 2022,” tweeted CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair, referring to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

  DATA: A cumulative total of U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

  February 25: $350m
  March 12: $550m
  March 16: $1.35b
  April 1: $1.65b
  April 5: $1.75b
  April 13: $2.55b
  April 21: $3.35b
  April 24: $3.67b
  April 28: $14.67b (if approved by Congress)

  — Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 28, 2022

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

  Writer and activist Margaret Kimberly bemoaned that “Biden is asking struggling Americans who lost their child tax credit for $33 billion after his Ukraine police blew up in his face.”

  Ben Cohen, co-founder of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, wondered why Biden is “asking for an extra $33 billion to help Ukraine and not an extra $33 billion to replace every single lead pipe in America” when “we have at least 1.2 million children suffering from lead poisoning here and now.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 17:40

• Spring Wheat Used In Pizza Crust Nears 14-Year High As Floods Devastate Northern Plains 
  Spring Wheat Used In Pizza Crust Nears 14-Year High As Floods Devastate Northern Plains 

  U.S. spring-wheat futures are nearing the highest level since 2008, as the Northern U.S. Plains are plagued with devastating floods that prevent farmers from planting in the high-producing crop region.

  Blizzards, winter storms, high winds, and extreme flooding battered the Dakotas and stalled plantings in April, raising concerns about shrinking crop yields as prevent plant dates for North Dakota are at the end of May.

  Welcome to North Dakota #flood2022 pic.twitter.com/DYrWqoHa4G

  — AGBULL (@AgBullMedia) April 24, 2022

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

  Because of wet conditions, farmers cannot work their fields, which means yields will decrease everyday wheat isn’t planted. 

  “The spring-wheat crop should continue to see planting delays with heavy rains, and cold weather in the forecast,” commodity research firm The Hightower Report said.  

  The most-active spring wheat futures contract increased more than a 1% to $12.02 a bushel, nearing March’s peak and closing in on the highest level since 2008. Prices have more than doubled since the virus pandemic low. $4.90. 

  

  Spring wheat is used in specialty items like rolls, croissants, bagels, and pizza crust. Money managers are holding a record net-long position due to supply fears following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, disrupting global wheat production. 

  Compound the U.S. drought of 2021, the Ukraine crisis, and floods in the Northern U.S. Plains, the world is even more dependent on the Northern hemisphere for major food needs. If the U.S. experiences production woes this crop season, if that’s because of weather-related issues or simply not enough fertilizer, then there’s an increasing risk a global food crisis could become more pronounced by the end of the year or into the next. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 17:20

• Hospitals Ignoring Price Transparency Rule Rack Up Billion-Dollar Profit
  Hospitals Ignoring Price Transparency Rule Rack Up Billion-Dollar Profit

  Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via OpenTheBooks substack,

  It’s like playing baseball with one side (patients) wearing blindfolds and the other side (hospitals) running up the score at will.

  Topline

  It was an historic, bipartisan healthcare reform. In 2020, President Donald Trump proposed and the Biden Administration finalized the transparency rule whereby hospitals were forced to open their books and post their prices for healthcare services online and in real time.

  Blatantly, though, hospitals are refusing to comply. As of January 1, 86-percent of hospitals were not complying with the transparency rule according to an investigation by the organization Patient Rights Advocate.

  One year after the rule went into effect, a staggering 857 out of the 1,000 hospitals surveyed refused to open their pricing books or were non-compliant.

  In 2021, three of the largest hospital systems in the country – HCA Healthcare, CommonSpirit Health, and Ascension — made a collective $120 billion. Yet, those systems still weren’t posting their prices online by January 2022.

  Even smaller “non-profit” hospital groups, like, UPMC in Pittsburgh, were non-compliant. However, in 2020, their CEO made $9 million; between 2016 and 2020, he was paid $34.7 million.

  That’s like playing baseball with one side (patients) wearing blindfolds and the other side (hospitals) running up the score at will.

  The Rule

  The federal hospital price transparency rule took effect on January 1, 2021 as a part of the Affordable Care Act. It required hospitals to post all their prices online in a way that’s easily accessible to patients, without barriers like requiring that they submit personal identifying information.

  Hospitals must provide the clear pricing information online “(a)s a comprehensive machine-readable file with all items and services” and “in a display of shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format,” according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

  Big number

  There are 361 hospitals owned by the three large hospital systems and only two of those hospitals were posting their prices. According to the report:

  • HCA Healthcare had $58.8 billion in revenue (2021) — none of 188 hospitals complied.

  • CommonSpirit Health had $33.3 billion in revenue (2021) – only one of 88 hospitals complied.

  • Ascension had $27.2 billion in revenue (2021) – only one out of 85 hospitals complied.

  CommonSpirit Health and Ascension didn’t respond to requests for comment by our deadline.

  Case study – HCA Healthcare

  An HCA Healthcare spokesperson responded to our comment request and said the hospitals are compliant – but wouldn’t say exactly when they began posting the required information.

  “Over the last year, we have worked diligently and have completed our implementation of these requirements,” the HCA spokesperson said.

  “Our hospital websites have a consumer-friendly Patient Payment Estimator tool that provides relevant information to help patients understand what their out-of-pocket costs may be for hospital care, including those that are uninsured. In addition, we have posted contracted rates with third party payers using one of the machine-readable file formats listed in the regulations to provide the five types of ‘standard charges.’”

  Certainly, it’s a good first step; however, more work needs to be done.

  Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reviewed about a dozen of HCA Healthcare hospital’s websites and found information under “patient financial resources” or “patient payment estimator” tabs.

  While HCA hospital websites all have downloadable files of standard charges, they all include disclaimers that the prices can vary in several ways from what is stated.

  The HCA files all also have shorthand or abbreviated descriptions of the services, making it hard to understand some of the services.

  HCA also includes a gross cost and a discounted cost of services but lack the required payer-specific negotiated charges, and de-identified minimum and maximum negotiated charges.

  The hospital websites are also required to have a “display of at least 300 shoppable services.” In the absence of the shoppable services list, hospitals can display an internet-based price estimator tool that patients can access without having to submit personal identifying information.

  The HCA websites have these patient payment estimators, where patients can search for a service. But the customer must add their information — their full name, date of birth and insurance. This appears to violate the rules.

  Case study — UPMC

  Susan Manko, vice president of public relations for UPMC and University of Pittsburgh, told OpenTheBooks that the Patient Rights Advocate report is inaccurate.

  “The PRA website is (and has been for some time now) wrong,” she said.

  “PRA completely missed that the appropriate pricing information has been available to the public on these hospitals’ websites for more than the past year and that these hospitals are compliant with federal regulations regarding pricing transparency.”

  She provided the links for UPMC Shadyside and UPMC Magee-Womens, which indeed have a price estimator tool and a machine-readable file of items and services on the websites.

  Patient Rights Advocate argues that while UPMC’s machine readable file lists prices for services provided by three dozen insurance companies, it lacks specific plans, like HMO and PPO plans, making the list incomplete. The rule clearly requires that “each list of payer-specific negotiated charges must be clearly associated with the name of the third party payer and plan.”

  Big potential penalties

  Price transparency can revolutionize U.S. healthcare by introducing price competition in the industry. Price disclosure also helps to prevent gouging and surprise billing.

  So, on January 1, CMS increased the penalty for hospitals that don’t comply with the transparency rule. The upper bound penalties for the three large healthcare groups with 361 hospitals could collectively exceed $724 million per year.

  Minimum penalties start at $300 per day for smaller hospitals with 30 or fewer beds, and increase to $10 per bed per day for hospitals with more than 30 beds, up to $5,500 per day.

  If hospitals aren’t in compliance for a full year, the minimum penalty is $109,500 per hospital, and the maximum penalty is more than $2 million per hospital.

  Key background

  Patient Rights Advocate reviewed the websites of 1,000 licensed hospitals – out of the 6,000 across America. The group analyzed whether the required pricing information was posted.

  Hospitals are required to display the price of the 300 most common shoppable services, either in a standard charges list or a price estimator tool. But the report criticized the latter, saying “price estimator tools” give non-binding estimates (including price ranges) accompanied by disclaimers.

  That’s far different from actual price disclosure, the report noted.

  The report found most hospitals did not post all payer-specific and plan-specific negotiated rates.

  For instance, there was incomplete or missing data fields, fields with zeros, N/As and asterisks for negotiated rates.

  It also found that hospitals often listed many more “accepted insurance plans” on their websites away from where they listed their standard charges, implying that their standard charges didn’t include all accepted plans.

  Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com was at the forefront of shaping the federal rule, encouraging the public in the fall of 2019, and beginning of 2020 to comment on the health care price transparency proposal put forth by the Trump Administration.

  With that push, about 2,000 comments were sent to Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Biden Administration finalized the rule. A true bipartisan reform that forces transparency from a politically powerful group.

  Noncompliant hospitals—a year later and no fines

  As of March 2022, CMS, which enforces the rule, has issued approximately 345 warning notices to noncompliant hospitals, a spokesperson told OpenTheBooks.com on April 25.

  The agency has also issued 136 corrective action plan requests “to hospitals that previously received warning notices but have not yet corrected deficiencies,” and 145 hospitals “have received case closure notices after having addressed previous citations,” the spokesperson said.

  CMS hasn’t issued any penalties because “each hospital that has come under compliance review has resolved its deficiencies, or is in the process of doing so.”

  OpenTheBooks.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request earlier in April, asking HHS to divulge which hospitals received noncompliance notices and corrective action plans and whether the general public has notified HHS of noncompliant hospitals.

  While HHS has acknowledged the request, it has not yet provided the records.

  But the spokesperson said, “specifics surrounding the compliance and status of hospitals are not publicly available. The Hospital Price Transparency final rule indicates that once CMS issues a civil monetary penalty, CMS will make public the name of the hospital on a CMS website; releasing this information prematurely could identify hospitals that have already taken corrective actions and come into compliance after issuance of a warning letter, given the relationship in timing of our reviews and the hospitals being at various stages addressing compliance requests.”

  Thanks for reading OpenTheBooks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  Crucial quote

  Until CMS strongly enforces the rule, there is no reason for the remainder of the hospitals to comply, the Patient Rights Advocate report noted.

  “We are now entering the second year since the hospital price transparency rule became law, and compliance remains at very low levels,” the report stated. “The largest hospital systems are effectively ignoring the law, with no consequences.”

  Critics

  The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2021 that some hospitals have posted pricing data on their websites but they “masked the information from online search results, using special code that blocks pricing data on their websites from the results of search engines,” noting the coding is illegal under new rules that take effect in 2022.

  One hospital system, the North Oaks Health System, based in Hammond, La., posted some data early in 2021 but removed it two weeks later, as none of its competing hospitals had posted their rates.

  “You get nervous about putting those negotiated rates out there,” the system’s chief financial officer, Mark Anderson, told The Journal. “You don’t know who will look at those rates and say, ‘I want to negotiate to the Medicare rates.’ We didn’t want to put ourselves at a competitive, strategic disadvantage.”

  *  *  *

  Additional Reading

  An OpenTheBooks.com June 2019 report “Top 82 U.S. Non-Profit Hospitals: Quantifying Government Payments and Financial Assets” showed that hospitals with non-profit tax status and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting healthcare poorer.

  Our study published at Forbes showing the top 82 non-profit hospitals added billions of dollars to their bottom line, lavishly compensated their CEOs, and spent millions of dollars lobbying government to defend the status quo.

  A $4,000 Covid Test In Oklahoma Resulted In A Debate On Healthcare Prices and Transparency, Forbes, published January 31, 2021.

  New Documentary, InHospitable, Details The Big Profits In “Non-Profit” Healthcare, Forbes, published December 14, 2021.

  Adam Andrzejewski (say: And-g-f-ski) is the CEO/Founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Last year we filed 47,000 FOIA requests and captured $12 trillion in government spending (2021). Work featured at The BBC, Good Morning America; ABC World News Tonight; USA Today; The Wall Street Journal; Forbes; and The New York Times. My presentation to the Hillsdale College National Leadership seminar posted on YouTube has 3.7+ million views. Learn more at OpenTheBooks.com.

  Thanks for reading OpenTheBooks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 17:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• After Secretly Pillaging Billions In Turkish Assets To Prop Up Lira, Erdogan Is Going After Foreigners' Dollars
  After Secretly Pillaging Billions In Turkish Assets To Prop Up Lira, Erdogan Is Going After Foreigners’ Dollars

  Back in December, when the crashing Turkish lira mysteriously soared higher on a government and central bank mandated short squeeze, which we later learned was funded by tens of billions in US Dollars soft confiscations, we wrote that “Erdogan Is Secretly Pillaging Billions In Turkish Assets To Prop Up The Lira, And His Rule.”

  Confirming what many have dreaded for a while – that Erdogan is literally making up healthy economic numbers for international consumption while pillaging the country out of the back door without reporting it, Bloomberg reported that while the government has said it didn’t intervene in the currency market, it lied and the fall of $5.9 billion probably signals a backdoor intervention similar to operations carried out over two years from October 2018, when state lenders sold dollars – typically those belonging to local private savers – to support the local currency.

  What was even more alarming is that Erdogan actually thinks the international community is so stupid, nobody will notice what is going on. As Bloomberg showed, net foreign assets dropped by $5.9 billion to minus $5.1 billion on in just days.

  

  Alas since, then Turkey’s reserve position has only deteriorated and gone from bad to worse, and according to Goldman, as of April 27, the TCMB’s net foreign assets were US$7.4bn, down by US$0.33bn from a week ago. TCMB bank swaps and the stock of the FX deposit facility increased by US$1bn to US$41.8bn compared with a week ago due entirely to a rise in swaps, which picked up to US$41.2bn. The stock of the FX deposit facility has again remained flat at around only US$0.6bn.

  

  According to Goldman’s estimates, net foreign assets excluding swaps with banks and other central banks continued to decrease to negative $57.4bn, down by US$1.3bn since a week ago.

  

  Of course, if and when Turkey runs out of domestic FX – read dollars – which it can confiscate and buy lira with, the domestic currency, which ended 2021 as one of the world’ performers and has gone nowhere since then thanks to non stop government intervention, will crater and resume its freefall.

  So what sis Erdogan to do? Simple: having confiscated most domestic gold and hard currencies, the Turkish president is now hoping to confiscate foreigners’ dollars.

  But how? Doesn’t he have to make it desirable and attractive to put one’s hard currencies into the kleptocrat nation?

  Bingo… and that’s precisely why Bloomberg reports that Turkey is working on a plan to attract inflows of hard currency by offering lira funding, free of interest and with a “guaranteed” 4% return in dollars, to foreign investors willing to park their money for at least two years. Needless to say, but any time Turkey “guarantees” anything, run.

  Under the plan, the central bank would provide lira liquidity to foreigners for investment in local bonds with a maturity of at least two years, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations. Besides extending zero-yield swaps, the monetary authority would also guarantee a 4% return in dollar terms when the securities mature, the person said.

  Translation: please give us your dollars and we promise to take good care of them and even give you a much higher yield than you can earn (for now) in the US.

  Remarkably, nobody has dared to speak up and point out that the Turkish dictator (and currency) is naked. Instead, investors are actually buying the worthless Turkish lira, which was headed for its first gain in over two weeks, trading 0.2% stronger against the dollar. 

  Bloomberg came the closest to pointing out the sheer audacity of the plan, writing that “the outreach to investors marks a new tack for Turkey and would represent a major U-turn by the central bank, a reflection of pressure on authorities to reverse capital outflows. It’s used similar measures to shore up the currency at home by rolling out state-backed deposit accounts that shield savers from lira weakness.“

  Indeed, after a currency crisis in 2018, Turkey introduced numerous restrictions on foreign transactions to defend the lira, placing limits on swaps with local banks to deter short sellers. But as a side effect, foreign holdings of Turkish stocks and bonds have fallen to a historic low… and in the case of net assets ex swaps, are actually negative to the tune of $57 billion!

  Meanwhile, deepening trade imbalances and the world’s most negative interest rates when adjusted for prices have made the $800 billion economy increasingly vulnerable at a time of intensifying global tightening led by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

  Furthermore, courtesy of the lunacy that is Erdogonmics, where the central bank “fights” near record inflation by cutting rates, instead of using higher rates to make lira assets more appealing, Turkey has introduced a series of unconventional policies to attract hard currency and boost the central bank’s reserves.

  TURKISH CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR SAYS DEVELOPMENTS SHOW RATE CUTS WERE CORRECT DECISION pic.twitter.com/7PzWmUw6Gv

  — Newsquawk (@Newsquawk) April 28, 2022

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

  Deposits in so-called FX-protected accounts reached 782 billion liras ($52 billion) as of April 22, according to data compiled by the banking regulator. This month, the central bank revised some reserve requirement rules for banks in an effort to encourage conversion of foreign exchange into the local currency.

  Expect some gullible and extremely naive investors, those who are unaware what depth Erdogan can plumb to preserve his authoritarian status quo for just one more day, to hand over a few billion in USD assets which will promptly be “repossessed” and used by Turkey to prop up the lira for as long as possible. Then when everything crashes, and when Erodgan finally disappears into some non-extradition country, good luck to all trying to recoup their money.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 02:45

• UK Wants 'Global NATO' Capable Of Defending Pacific
  UK Wants ‘Global NATO’ Capable Of Defending Pacific

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

  British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said her government favors the creation of a “global NATO” that is able to guarantee the defense of Taiwan and the broader Pacific region, calling for preemptive action against would-be aggressors.

  In an address outlining UK foreign policy on Wednesday, Truss said London rejects the “false choice between Euro-Atlantic security and Indo-Pacific security,” instead arguing “we need both.”

  

  “I mean that NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats,” she continued. “We need to preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with allies like Japan and Australia to ensure that the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”

  Though the official did not elaborate on what kind of support she favors for Taipei or what she envisions for a globally-engaged military alliance, Truss’ speech mirrored remarks by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this year, when he said NATO’s reach must be extended into the Indo-Pacific.

  Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are already global NATO partners – each designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by Washington – while other security organizations serve similar functions in the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad alliance, consisting of the US, India, Japan and Australia, is often dubbed the ‘Asian NATO’ and largely exists to counter China. It has considered allowing other regional states to join to create a ‘Quad Plus,’ among them South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand.

  The three-way AUKUS collective, meanwhile, has seen Washington, Canberra and London join forces to bolster the defenses of the region, including through the sharing of nuclear information. Like the Quad, the grouping has also reportedly mulled whether to expand to include additional countries like Japan.

  In recent months, several members of the NATO bloc have conducted ‘freedom of navigation’ missions in the Pacific to support territorial claims recognized by the United States and its western allies, namely those of Taiwan. 

  While both Downing Street and the White House frequently bill the military activity in the disputed region as defensive, Beijing views the operations as aggressive intrusions into its territory. 

  She even goes one step further in the insanity: “NATO should protect Taiwan too”

  She says the U.K. rejects “the false choice between Euro-Atlantic security and Indo-Pacific security” and is in favor of “a global NATO” 🤦https://t.co/bHeTqQi5i3

  — Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) April 28, 2022

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

  US warships have carried out near monthly sail-throughs in the Taiwan Strait since President Joe Biden took office, repeatedly drawing the ire of Chinese officials. Following the latest mission earlier this week, the People’s Liberation Army again condemned the move as “a provocation that undermined peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” The UK had ceased such operations in 2008, but it made its first military transit through the strait in more than a decade last September. 

  In seeking to create a globe-spanning military coalition able to project power across the Pacific, Truss may find a partner in South Korea’s President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who is now considering whether to join the Quad and AUKUS organizations. Yoon has staked out a more hawkish stance than his predecessor toward both China and North Korea, even urging Washington to re-deploy nuclear bombers and submarines to the Korean peninsula earlier this month.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 02:00

• US Nuclear Strategy In "Very Bad Place" With China And Russia: Expert
  US Nuclear Strategy In “Very Bad Place” With China And Russia: Expert

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

  The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to align with Russia and to build up its nuclear arsenal present a unique strategic threat to the United States, according to one expert.

  

  “China is actually building up its arsenal in ways that it wasn’t doing before,” said David Santoro, President of the Pacific Forum, a foreign policy think tank. “So, it’s becoming a much more capable nuclear-armed state.”

  Santoro made the comments during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “China Insider” program, in which he said that there was no historical precedent for how the United States should proceed strategically against two near-peer nuclear adversaries.

  “We don’t necessarily need to have a symmetric arsenal to the Russians and the Chinese,” Santoro said, “In fact, we’ve really never had that. Even during the Cold War, we did not have the exact same arsenal as the Soviets did. But what I will say is that this is the very first time that the United States is facing two very capable nuclear-armed states.”

  “The other piece that we shouldn’t forget is that Russia and China seem to be increasingly cooperating at all levels, including at the strategic level. I don’t think they are engaging in any nuclear cooperation, but we’ll have to see what happens over the next few years and decades.”

  Santoro’s comments echoed warnings made by political and military officials earlier in the year, who said that the Sino-Russian partnership presented an unprecedented strategic situation, and that the United States now faced an “epic” nuclear threat.

  Despite the rising threat, Santoro said that there was very little happening in the way of positive diplomatic developments, and that no meaningful arms control discussions were taking place between the Unites States, China, and Russia.

  “Unfortunately, right now, there is not much diplomacy going on,” Santoro said. “We had strategic stability dialogues with the Russians, and we managed to renew the so-called ‘New START’ agreement, which is the only arms control agreement that’s left between the EU and the United States and Russia. But now in the context of the Ukraine war, we don’t have those dialogues.”

  “The United States has really left the door open to to nuclear diplomacy,” Santoro added. “It’s never closed it. It’s always said, we’re ready to engage just, you know, let us know when you’re ready.”

  The strategists dominating the conversation in Beijing right now, however, did not believe in managing escalations through mediums like crisis hotlines, Santoro said. Instead, they were more focused on attributing blame for international tensions to the United States and its allies as a means of solidifying China’s own power.

  The observation followed comments made by former assistant secretary for defense Graham Allison, who said that the CCP would likely continue its support for Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia even in the event it deployed a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, as well as other warnings that China was pursuing nuclear modernization for global domination.

  Fears of CCP aggression in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, meanwhile, have spurred regional leaders to inquire after the possibility of either developing their own nuclear weapons or hosting nuclear weapons from the United States, to protect themselves from the regime.

  “We always had our so-called ‘US nuclear umbrella’ protecting Japan and Korea from North Korea, but also, for that matter, other threats including, to some extent, China,” Santoro said. “So we’ve always offered those guarantees to Tokyo and to Seoul.”

  “Our Japanese and Korean friends want to know more and have a greater sense of nuclear enfranchisement given the fact that the environment is changing and not for the better.”

  To that end, Santoro said that the United States would likely need to increase its information and technology sharing with partners in the Indo-Pacific in order to adequately curb CCP aggression.

  “We are now at a point where we’ll we’ll need to share a lot more of our nuclear planning and nuclear operations and how we would resort to nuclear weapons, not just conventional deterrence, but the roles that U.S. nuclear weapons would play in a crisis,” Santoro said.

  “Unfortunately, you know, we sometimes talk about strategic stability as the organizing principle between U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations,” Santoro added. “I don’t think that we are able to reach stability right now. We’re in a very, very bad place with both of them.”

  “In the foreseeable future, I see a lot more competition than stability. The best we can get to is what what I call stabilization, which is [where] we are still in a very competitive mode with both of them, but we’re able to do a number of things, possibly by engaging in crisis management work, assuming we can, to reduce the most dangerous aspects of that competition.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 00:20

• Musk Sold $4 Billion Of Tesla Stock Following Twitter Deal
  Musk Sold $4 Billion Of Tesla Stock Following Twitter Deal

  In the days following the Twitter board’s decision to accept his $44bn all-cash takeover bid, Elon Musk has sold 4.4 million shares of Tesla stock (worth roughly $4 billion).

  

  Musk reported the sale in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

  The shares were sold over the past few days, at prices ranging from $872.02 to $999.13, were the first by the Tesla chief since a burst of selling late last year that raised more than $16bn (which were offsetting tax payments on vesting options).

  

  Amid lots of chatter around force Tesla sales and margin calls, it appears Musk’s sales were aimed at silencing fears that the deal would not go through – and would spark a spate of ‘fire-sales’ – as he tweeted late Thursday that: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”

  No further TSLA sales planned after today

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2022

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

  The terms of the Twitter deal require him to come up with about $21bn in cash, though it is not expected to close for another six months.

  As a reminder, Musk is paying for Twitter partly with his own cash, and the rest with a mix of a buyout loan and a loan against his Tesla stock.

  

  Source: WSJ

  Mr. Musk has a net worth of $252 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the world’s richest person.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/29/2022 – 00:01

• NASA Slams Chinese Opacity As Beijing And Russia Plan To "Undercut" US Space Dominance 
  NASA Slams Chinese Opacity As Beijing And Russia Plan To “Undercut” US Space Dominance 

  NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized China for lacking transparency and willingness to cooperate with the US. Beijing has pushed for closer ties with Russia to displace US’ global leadership in space. 

  “We want cooperation that has not been forthcoming from the Chinese government (but) it takes two to tango,” Nelson told reporters. “We simply haven’t had any transparency from the Chinese.”

  

  Nelson’s said after China launched its space station in 2021, one of the boosters careened back toward Earth. He said Chinese space officials shared no tracking data of where the booster was projected to land.  

  “When they put up their space station they did not reserve enough fuel to control where it came down and thank the Good Lord it came down in the Indian Ocean. (But) it could have come down in Europe, it could have come down in Saudi Arabia. It could have come down in Greece,” he said. 

  Nelson added there’s a lack of transparency regarding Chinese activity in space. He noted NASA is restricted from working with the Chinese government or any China-affiliated organizations unless approved by Congress. 

  There’s been hostility and shadiness between both countries in space. NASA banned China from being a member of the International Space Station (ISS) program. 

  Nelson then pivoted to Russia and said NASA had “the Good Housekeeping seal of approval from the White House” to extend a space partnership with Russia “despite the horrors that we are seeing with our eyes daily on television of what’s happening in Ukraine.” The good news, he said:

  “I see that professional relationship with astronauts and cosmonauts and the ground teams in the two respective mission controls, I see that continuing.” 

  Meanwhile, a new Defense Intelligence Agency report indicated that China and Russia are aligning forces and plan to “undercut the US and allied global leadership in the space domain.” 

  So China ignores NASA, and Moscow and Beijing move closer together in an emerging space race against the West. It’s a sign the world’s old economic order is fracturing as a new bipolar world appears from the ashes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 23:40

• China Reports 1st Ever Human Case Of H3N8 Bird Flu
  China Reports 1st Ever Human Case Of H3N8 Bird Flu

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

  A boy in China has contracted the H3N8 strain of bird flu, which appears to be the first known human case in the world, said the Chinese regime’s health authorities.

  

  The case involved is a 4-year-old boy who had been hospitalized on April 10 in Zhumadian city in the central province of Henan, China’s health commission said in an April 26 statement.

  No human (to human) infection of this strain has been reported, the agency added.

  H3N8 is known to infect horses, seals, and dogs. It is one of the two strains that cause dog flu in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It has been detected in dogs across much of the United States, CDC said on its website, adding it hasn’t infected a human.

  The commission said that the chances of it spreading among people were low.

  “This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” read the statement. “There is a low risk of large-scale transmission.”

  Though rare, infections in humans can lead to adaptive mutations that potentially allow these viruses to more easily spread in mammals, said Erik Karlsson, deputy head of the virology unit at the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia.

  Karlsson said the virus warranted expanded surveillance. He added its implication in the 1889 influenza pandemic, known as the Russian flu, was “a major concern for the risk of the virus.”

  China’s commission said an initial assessment determined the variant is of avian origin. It noted there were chickens and crows raised in the boy’s home and that wild ducks were populated in the area.

  His close contacts did not show any abnormalities during the medical surveillance period, it added.

  The boy developed symptoms including a fever on April 5 and was diagnosed with H3N8 about two weeks later on April 24, according to the statement.

  He is in critical condition, according to Hong Kong’s health department, citing a notification from Beijing. The National Health Commission did not mention this detail in the statement.

  Last year, China reported a 41-year-old man contracted H10N3, which is also believed to be the first human infection of the type of avian influenza.

  In 2021, China has reported 21 human infections with the H5N6 subtype of avian influenza to the World Health Organization (WHO). Though the numbers are much lower than the hundreds infected with H7N9 in 2017, infections leave many critically ill and have resulted in at least six deaths, raising concerns among experts.

  “We need to be concerned about all spillover events,” Karlsson said.

  Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 23:20

• Trump Jr. Launches Gun-Rights Group To Ensure Left "Never Disarms Americans" 
  Trump Jr. Launches Gun-Rights Group To Ensure Left “Never Disarms Americans” 

  Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News he is launching a new gun-rights group to combat the Biden administration and Democratic gun control groups. 

  Called the “Second Amendment Task Force,” Trump Jr. will serve as the group chairman. The mission is clear: Protect Americans’ right to bear arms. 

  “The Second Amendment is the whole ballgame; it’s the freedom that protects all of our other freedoms. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress are hellbent on eroding our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, whether it’s nominating radical gun-grabbers to senior positions in the executive branch or pushing anti-gun legislation,” Trump Jr. said. 

  He explained more about his new gun-rights group: “The Second Amendment Task Force is entirely devoted to ensuring the Left is never successful in disarming American citizens.”

  

  The group will also fight against Biden administration nominees for the ATF and Democrat legislative initiatives that could jeopardize Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

  Trump Jr. tweeted up a storm in the summer of 2021 against the Biden administration’s ATF nominee David Chipman. The nomination was eventually withdrawn because of Chipman’s radical views. Biden’s attempt to get gun-grabbing Chipman as ATF head inspired him to launch the group. 

  “The idea for the group came from our successful effort to stop a radical anti-gun lobbyist from becoming the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). 

  “We had to make sure that the American people knew what was going on, especially with Red State Democrats. If they’re considering casting an anti-Second Amendment vote, we’re going to make sure they feel the pain. This new group will help us put more structure and resources around those efforts to make sure we’re as successful as we can be.,” Trump Jr. said. 

  What remains a question is why Trump Jr. is starting his own gun-rights group when there’s the NRA, Gun Owners of America, Firearm Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation. 

  A new gun-rights organization with Trump Jr. at the helm could undoubtedly increase in popularity among law-abiding, gun-loving citizens and become a powerful voice that gun-grabbing Democrats fear.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 23:00

• Chinese Regime Seeks To Control Global EV Supply Chain, Leaving US Vulnerable: Experts
  Chinese Regime Seeks To Control Global EV Supply Chain, Leaving US Vulnerable: Experts

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

  Competition between the United States and China in the realms of electric and autonomous vehicles could determine the future control of global supply chains in an unprecedented way, according to a lawmaker and several experts.

  “Our competitors, particularly in China, are not holding back,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) during an April 27 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a security-focused think tank.

  “We cannot fall behind on the global stage.”

  

  Peters said that the future of the automotive industry was in electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs), and that the nation to best develop those industries would win a great advantage in the global marketplace.

  To that end, former Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair noted that both EVs and AVs were singled out in Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial plan as part of its top 10 high-tech areas to seize leadership in. This, he said, demonstrated a clear effort to displace the United States as the lead controller of global supply chains and the international industrial ecosystem.

  “If the United States loses full spectrum industrial capacity in the automotive industry, and this means designing the cars, testing them, building them, fixing them, the whole ecosystem, then we are hollowing out the industrial sector that we counted on to become the arsenal of democracy in the second world war,” Blair said.

  “The big picture is China’s all-of-government push and the importance of the automotive sector to American industrial capability.”

  Blair added that the ongoing technological decoupling of China from the rest of the world in terms of its data and systems standards would prove a vital component of how Sino-American competition in the sector unfolded.

  “This sort of decoupling of the Chinese economy from the rest of the world is something you need to watch in this space,” Blair said.

  “It may be that separate AI [artificial intelligence] industries and AV technologies grow up in China and the rest of the world.”

  John Bozzella, President of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, agreed that China could effectively seize control of vital supply chains by seizing industrial prominence in EV and AV technologies, thus pushing the United States out of access to vital technologies.

  “The countries that really take the lead in developing cutting edge innovative technologies in the auto sector are going to control the supply chains, set the standards, set the running rules, and really own global markets,” Bozzella said.

  “With regard to EVs, you see the U.S. industry already behind China because we’re competing with a national effort,” Bozzella added.

  With that in mind, Bozzella suggested that the United States would need to better unite the powers of its private industry with a national strategy, and work to develop the utilities and infrastructure needed to transition its industrial base to produce EV and AV technologies.

  “The China story does suggest that this private sector leadership ought to be supported by a national strategy,” Bozzella said.

  “We are competing with the Chinese government, not the Chinese auto manufacturers.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 22:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Germany Supports 'Gradual' EU Ban On Russian Oil As Moscow Rejects Gas Payment From Seized Trading Unit
  Germany Supports ‘Gradual’ EU Ban On Russian Oil As Moscow Rejects Gas Payment From Seized Trading Unit

  Update(1130ET): As the EU attempts to impose unity amid the still fast escalating gas for rubles standoff and potential full-blown energy crisis, Germany has said for the first time it is ready to back a ‘gradual ban’ on Russian oil.

  As detailed in a breaking Bloomberg report, “Berlin would support a phased approach to targeting oil rather than some of the other options that have been discussed, such as a price cap or payment mechanisms to withhold parts of Moscow’s revenue, according to people familiar with talks among EU ambassadors.”

  “The ban would also need to come with a transition period, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private,” the report adds, which is akin to the EU strategy when in banned coal earlier in April.

  Meanwhile, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen upon the start of Wednesday charged the Kremlin with trying to fracture Europe’s response with “blackmail” – Moscow has rolled out a few more tricks of its own amid Germany’s signaling a change of posture regarding Russian energy it’s population is so heavily dependent on…

  “Russia’s major gas bank rejected a payment from a trading firm that Germany seized from Moscow’s control, the first sign of friction following the take-over amid a broader regional energy dispute,” according to Bloomberg.

  Gazprombank is indicating it rejected some April and May gas deliveries payment – even though it was made in rubles per Russia’s firm request – on the basis that the German government previously took over Gazprom PJSC’s German subsidiary as part of sanctions enforcement.

  Meanwhile at Gazprom headquarter in Berlin, Germany. pic.twitter.com/LaX8z7NLCI

  — Anonymous Operations (@AnonOpsSE) April 20, 2022

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

  * * *

  Update(0918ET): Is Europe starting to panic amid cracks in a ‘unified European front’? It appears so, based on a press briefing in Brussels by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said:

  “Its’ very clear and the request from the Russian side to pay in rubles is a unilateral decision and not according to the contracts,” and further “Companies with such contracts should not accede to the Russian demands. This would be a breach of the sanctions so a high risk for the companies.”

  She also denounced this “as an instrument of blackmail” after the Gazprom suspension of gas to Poland and Bulgaria. “This is unjustified and unacceptable,” she said earlier in the day. “And it shows once again the unreliability of Russia as a gas supplier.”

  * * *

  It appears that Putin’s gambit is working.

  One day after Russia halted natgas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria due to “nonpayment in rubles”, confirming that the country is willing to go ahead with its bluff and shut down supplies to “unfriendly” nations and sending European nat gas prices soaring, Bloomberg reports citing a person close to Russian gas giant Gazprom, that already Europe’s fake united front is cracking as four European gas buyers have already paid for supplies in rubles as Russia demanded even as further cutoffs if others refuse the Kremlin’s requirement aren’t likely until the second half of May, when the next payments are due.

  While it was unclear which are the four companies violating EU directives and paying directly in rubles, according to Reuters Germany’ Uniper and Austrian OMV are among the companies that have folded to Kremlin’ demands:

  • GERMAN UNIPER CO SAYS PAYMENT SCHEME FOR RUSSIAN GAS IN RUBLES DOES NOT CONTRADICT THE SANCTIONS AND IT IS POSSIBLE TO PAY IN RUBLES – OFFICIAL

  • AUSTRIA AND THE AUSTRIAN OMV HAS ACCEPTED THE TERMS OF PAYMENT FOR RUSSIAN GAS IN RUBLES – AUSTRIAN CHANCELLOR

  Pro-Russian EU member Hungary, meanwhile, has struck a deal to pay into a euro-denominated account with Gazprombank, which in turn will deposit the amount in roubles to Gazprom Export, foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said in a video posted to Facebook. Its next payment is due on May 22, he said. Slovakia has reached the same agreement, he added as more of Europe realizes that it is impossible to live without Russian energy sources.

  Separately, to facilitate their compliance with Russian demands (and ostensibly in breach of European sanctions), ten European companies have already opened the accounts at Gazprombank needed to meet President Vladimir Putin’s payment demands, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential matters.

  As we reported yesterday, Russia halted gat supplies to Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday after they refused Gazprom’s proposed mechanism for ruble payments, which the gas giant says does not violate European Union sanctions. Russia supplies gas via pipelines to 23 European countries. Moscow demanded that it be paid in rubles for nat gas shipments after the EU imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. However, the EU told member states that the mechanism the Kremlin proposed, which required opening euro and ruble accounts with state-controlled Gazprombank, would violate the sanctions. It appears that to at least 10 energy companies, complying with Russian demands to keep the gas flowing is more important than potentially pissing off some Eurocrats.

  According to the FT, Gazprom Export notified Bulgargaz and PGNiG of the suspension of gas supplies from April 27 until payment is made in accordance with the decreed procedure, the company said. It warned that the unauthorised withdrawal of gas volumes transiting through Poland and Bulgaria to other European countries such as Germany would result in a reduction of transit supplies.

  “Bulgaria and Poland are transit states,” Gazprom said. “In the event of unauthorized withdrawal of Russian gas from transit volumes to third countries, supplies for transit will be reduced by this volume.”

  In response to the “unexpected” supply halts, which infuriated EU president Ursula von der Leyen, who today tweeted that “Gazprom’s announcement is another attempt by Russia to blackmail us with gas” adding that Europe is “prepared for this scenario” although judging by the scramble by several energy companies to pay in rubles that is not really true…

  Gazprom’s announcement is another attempt by Russia to blackmail us with gas.

  We are prepared for this scenario. We are mapping out our coordinated EU response.

  Europeans can trust that we stand united and in solidarity with the Member States impacted.

  — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) April 27, 2022

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

  … European gas prices rose by 20% on Wednesday. Futures contracts tracking Europe’s wholesale gas price advanced almost by a fifth at €117 per megawatt hour in early trading. Prices are almost seven times higher than a year ago.

  “Gazprom has completely suspended gas supplies to Bulgargaz (Bulgaria) and PGNiG (Poland) due to non-payment in roubles,” Gazprom said in a statement on Wednesday.

  While we already know that at least a handful of European energy buyers folded to Russian demands, multiple European buyers have refused to pay in roubles (for now), saying it contradicted contract terms and would be a way to bypass EU sanctions on the Russian central bank.

  “Politically, this raises the stakes for the EU Commission’s decision on whether the new payment system would violate sanctions and, hence, will probably keep market volatility elevated,” said Goldman Sachs analyst Samantha Dart in a note to clients. She also added that it is Goldman’s “view that it is in the interest of both the EU and Russia to work out a solution that brings gas payments in compliance with the EU’s legal requirements, consistent with recent comments from Brussels.”

  Today’s events can work as an added incentive for the EU, and especially Germany, to find a way to work out a RUB payment mechanism given the significant economic toll a halt in gas flows would have in the region, which would be much greater than that of Poland or Bulgaria.

  Well, it appears that in lieu of a political resolution, at least some companies are taking matters into their own hands, a development which will either escalate tensions further and lead to even more draconian measures, as the following Reuters quotes suggests:

  • WESTERN OFFICIALS SAY RUSSIA DECISION TO HALT GAS TO POLAND, BULGARIA IS LIKELY TO BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE AS IT DEMONSTRATES WHY DEPENDENCE ON RUSSIA MAKES COUNTRIES VULNERABLE TO COERCION

  … or force Europe to realize that full sanctions of Russian energy are impossible and force politicians to find loopholes, as this next Reuters headline signals:

  • EU WILL TEMPORARILY INCREASE GAS PURCHASES FROM THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION THROUGH COUNTRIES READY TO PAY IN RUBLES TO COMPENSATE FOR THE CESSATION OF SUPPLIES TO POLAND AND BULGARIA – TASS SOURCE

  To be sure, in a worst case scenario, Goldman warns that “a full interruption of Russian flows to Germany would potentially lift European gas prices to over 200 EUR/MWh this summer.”

  Given all of this, it appears the Ruble is no longer “rubble” after all, trading at 6-month highs versus the dollar…

  

  And near two-year highs against the euro…

  

  Just remember, Janet Yellen said this was all manipulation and told you that “you should not infer anything” from the value of the ruble.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 22:31

• Where People Spend The Most (And Least) Time On Social Media
  Where People Spend The Most (And Least) Time On Social Media

  On average, global internet users spend 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media per day, though, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, trends differ widely by country. In many of the markets that Global Web Index surveyed, social media use had shrunk or plateaued in Q1 2020 when compared with 2019 and 2018 figures, but the coronavirus pandemic reversed this trend in many countries.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Emerging markets continue to spend the most time on social networks during a typical day.

  This could be driven by these markets generally having younger populations, with the 16 to 24-year-old segment driving growth globally.

  Nigeria spent the most time connected to social networks, devoting more than four hours a day to the digital social sphere.

  Filipinos typically spent almost as much time per day on social media sites, while Indians and Chinese clocked in around 2.5 hours and 2 hours, respectively, per day.

  Countries with aging populations exhibited shorter social media use. During a typical day in Japan, people spend only three quarters of an hour staying connected on social networks. Germany posts only slightly higher numbers, with users going on social media for one hour and twenty minutes every day, while the UK and the U.S. both spent closer to two hours per day engaging with social media.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 02:45

• On Ukraine, Turkey Walks Fine Line Between NATO, Russia
  On Ukraine, Turkey Walks Fine Line Between NATO, Russia

  Authored by Adam Murrow via The Epoch Times,.

  Turkey has proven adept at maintaining neutrality in regards to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. While Ankara has condemned Russia’s “special military operation,” it has also declined to follow the lead of its NATO allies in supporting US-led sanctions on Moscow. According to local experts, its reasons for doing so are both economic and political, and reflect Turkey’s varied approach to its relations with Russia.

  “Turkey is a neighbor to both countries, with whom it has intense economic relations,” Halil Akinci, who served as Turkey’s ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2010, told The Epoch Times.

  “So it’s in Ankara’s interest to stay on good terms with them both.”

  Neutrality, he added, also left Turkey in the perfect position to mediate—thus raising its international profile—“since we’re the only ones acceptable to both sides.”

  

  Condemnation Without Sanctions

  When the Russian operation first began on Feb. 24, Turkish officials condemned it as “unacceptable” and a “violation of international law.” They were also quick to stress, however, that Ankara—unlike its NATO allies—had no intention of enforcing US-led sanctions on Russia.

  Prof. Dr. Mehmet Seyfettin Erol, a political analyst and head of the Ankara Center for Crisis and Policy, an independent think-tank, said Turkey had “reasonable grounds” for declining to support sanctions.

  “Turkey is positioning itself as a mediator by keeping communication channels open with Russia,” Erol told The Epoch Times. He went on to assert that Ankara and Moscow were closely engaged on a broad range of issues based on principles of “cooperation and competition.”

  Akinci, when asked if Turkey was subject to pressure by NATO to adopt a harder line against Russia, said no one could reasonably expect Ankara to enforce sanctions —especially given current economic realities.

  “Because of its massive trade dependence on Russia, Turkey isn’t in a position to do this [i.e., enforce sanctions],” he said. “Like the rest of the world, Turkey simply cannot ignore Russia’s vast natural resources.”

  Indeed, an estimated 45 percent of Turkey’s natural gas imports currently derive from Russia, along with more than 75 percent of its imported wheat. This represents a dire situation for a country that has seen its currency lose more than 80 percent of its value year-on-year, causing the prices of many staple commodities—including bread—to skyrocket.

  At the same time, Turkey has significant trade relations with Ukraine, which supplies it with another 10 to 15 percent of its total wheat imports. Ankara and Kyiv also cooperate in the defense-industries field, including the joint manufacture of aerial drones.

  ‘Constructive’ Mediation Efforts

  Turkish neutrality may be economically expedient, but it has also served to raise the country’s profile by positing it as the ideal mediator—a role it has assumed with gusto. On March 10, the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers met in Turkey’s resort city of Antalya; and on March 29, delegations from both countries held talks in Istanbul. Although hailed by all sides as “constructive,” the talks failed to produce any tangible breakthroughs.

  Russia, for its part, which appears to have the upper hand militarily, demands guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO. It also demands Kyiv’s recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea (annexed by Russia in 2014), and recognition of two Russian-speaking territories in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region (Donetsk and Luhasnk) as independent republics.

  Based on recent signals from both camps, Erol believes it is likely that Ukraine will “give up on NATO membership first, and Moscow will accept Ukraine’s European Union membership in return.” The main sticking point, he believes, is the Donbas region. “Russia demands recognition of the so-called republics, but the Kyiv administration and the international community do not seem to accept this,” he said.

  Because it involves major power players like Russia and NATO, the conflict could become a long-simmering “proxy war” lasting “months or even years,” Erol warned, citing past Russian entanglements in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

  Akinci agreed that reaching a negotiated settlement “could take a long time.” He added, however, that if the military equation were to change significantly on the ground, “[diplomatic] positions could change as well.”

  In the meantime, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has extended an open invitation to both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet in Istanbul for further talks. “I wholeheartedly believe that a peaceful solution can be found through dialogue,” he said on April 18. Three days later, Russian forces reportedly captured the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

  Ties With Russia: ‘Not Black and White’

  Historical rivals, the Ottoman (i.e., Turkish) and Russian empires fought at least a dozen major conflicts over four centuries, ending with the First World War. But today, Turkey, despite its 70-year-old membership in NATO, is keen to remain on good terms with Russia, with which it shares a substantial maritime border in the Black Sea.

  That being said, the two have implacable foreign-policy differences, especially in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. In Syria, for example, Turkey supports anti-Assad armed groups, while Russia backs the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The two countries also support diametrically-opposing forces in war-ravaged Libya.

  Turkey-Russia relations bottomed out in late 2015, when a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Sukhoi fighter near Turkey’s tense border with Syria. But relations quickly recovered the following year, especially after a failed coup attempt against Erdogan’s government, for which Ankara blamed Fetullah Gulen, a US-based Turkish-Muslim preacher who claims to have an international following.

  Washington’s refusal to extradite Gulen to Turkey then led to a rupture in US-Turkey ties and a concurrent improvement in Ankara’s relations with Moscow.

  “Because Gulen resides in the US, Turkey implicitly accused Washington of supporting the coup attempt,” Dr. Ilhan Uzgel, a prominent Turkish political analyst, told The Epoch Times.

  “This, in turn, led [Erdogan’s] ruling Justice and Development Party to ally itself with nationalist and Eurasianist elements who favor closer ties with Russia, China and Iran,” Uzgel, a former professor of international relations, added.

  “This combination of external and domestic factors prompted Ankara’s subsequent ‘tilt’ towards Moscow.”

  In 2017, Turkey went so far as to announce the purchase of an advanced S-400 missile-defense system from Russia. The move infuriated Turkey’s NATO allies and eventually resulted in limited US sanctions being imposed on Turkey itself.

  In explaining Ankara’s eclectic approach to Moscow, Akinci stressed that, at least with respect to the Middle East, Turkey’s differences with the US “are actually deeper” than those with Russia.

  “For example, our American allies have nurtured, and continue to support, an organization opposed to Turkey’s territorial integrity,” he said.

  Here he was referring to the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Syrian branch of which the US has backed in its war against Assad, but which Ankara views as a terrorist group. “In this case, US policy actually poses a greater danger to Turkey than anything the Russians are doing,” Akinci asserted.

  He added: “Every state has its differences with Russia and every state has interests in common with Russia. In some areas, the US and Russia get along quite well; in others, they do not. Geopolitics is never black and white.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/28/2022 – 02:00

• The Illusion Of Freedom: We're Only As Free As The Government Allows
  The Illusion Of Freedom: We’re Only As Free As The Government Allows

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

  “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”

  – George Carlin

  We’re in a national state of denial.

  

  For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

  Case in point: on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to favor a high school football coach’s right to pray on the field after a game, the high court let stand a lower court ruling that allows police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones, sweeping Americans up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

  Likewise, although the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for a death row inmate to have his pastor audibly pray and lay hands on him in the execution chamber, it refused to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an extended period of time.

  For those who have been paying attention, there’s a curious pattern emerging: the government appears reasonably tolerant of those who want to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner that doesn’t challenge the police state’s hold on power, for example, by praying on a football field or in an execution chamber.

  On the other hand, dare to disagree with the government about its war crimes, COVID-19, election outcomes or police brutality, and you’ll find yourself silenced, cited, shut down and/or branded an extremist.

  The U.S. government is particularly intolerant of speech that reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. For instance, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the latest victim of the government’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers, is in the process of being extradited to the U.S. to be tried under the Espionage Act for daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

  Even political protests are fair game for prosecution. In Florida, two protesters are being fined $3000 for political signs proclaiming stating “F—k Biden,” “F—k Trump,” and “F—k Policing 4 Profit” that violate a city ban on “indecent” speech on signs, clothing and other graphic displays.

  The trade-off is clear: pray all you want, but don’t mess with the U.S. government.

  In this way, the government, having appointed itself a Supreme and Sovereign Ruler, allows us to bask in the illusion of religious freedom while stripping us of every other freedom afforded by the Constitution.

  We’re in trouble, folks.

  Freedom no longer means what it once did.

  This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

  Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

  My friends, we’re being played for fools.

  On paper, we may be technically free.

  In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

  We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

  Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

  With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

  As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

  Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

  In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

  Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

  Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

  This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

  That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

  We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

  By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

  For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

  We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

  Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

  We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

  The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else.

  The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

  This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

  Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

  If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 23:25

• Stinger Missile Production Hit With Delays, Raytheon CEO Warns
  Stinger Missile Production Hit With Delays, Raytheon CEO Warns

  Stinger shoulder-fired missiles are in short supply, and increased production might not come online for a few years, Raytheon Technologies Corporation revealed in a conference call with investors on Tuesday. 

  Robert Spingarn from Melius Research asked Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes: “Will the Army replace the current 1,400 stingers that were sent to Ukraine?”

  Hayes replied Raytheon is “currently producing stingers for an international customer, but we have a very limited stock of material for stinger production.” 

  

  The CEO added, “DoD hasn’t bought a stinger in about 18 years. And some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we’re going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile of the seeker head.”

  Hayes said it’s “going to take us a little bit of time” to ramp up production and doesn’t expect DoD to place large replenishment orders for stingers until 2023 or 2024. 

  BREAKING: Raytheon Technologies says it cannot quickly make new Stinger missiles, which the US has been sending to Ukraine. CEO Greg Hayes says the company must redesign electronics in the missile and seeker. “That’s going to take us a little bit of time.”

  — Marcus Weisgerber (@MarcusReports) April 26, 2022

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

  In the past two months, the US has sent more than1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. With stingers in limited production, this could be problematic for the West if the conflict in Ukraine broadens. 

  The Army recently sent out a request for a next-generation infrared homing surface-to-air missile with plans to award a contract in the 2Q23, though the new missiles won’t be fielded until 2028.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 23:05

• Former NATO Commander Disguises War Propaganda As Novel
  Former NATO Commander Disguises War Propaganda As Novel

  Authored by by Patrick Macfarlane via The Libertarian Institute, 

  On March 9, 2021, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, co-authored a fiction novel with Elliott Ackerman, another former U.S. military officer. The book, entitled 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, imagines a kinetic war between the United States and China.

  Given the pedigree of its authorship, the novel provides a compelling window into the psychology of NATO’s military leadership and, correspondingly, the foreign policy establishment behind it. To those familiar with said psychology, the events of the novel will not be surprising.

  

  It begins with a Chinese ambush of a U.S. vessel in the South China Sea; an Iranian capture of a U.S. pilot; a full scale naval battle between the U.S. and China (resulting in a total U.S. defeat); and a Russian invasion of Poland. The novel concludes with a limited nuclear exchange between the U.S. and China.

  Given the last few decades’ hawkish hand wringing about Chinese and Russian cyber capabilities, the tactics employed in the novel are similarly unsurprising. A Chinese cyberattack disables U.S. hardware, allowing the naval rout. The Iranians, as allies of Russia and China, similarly disable U.S. aircraft. For their part, the Russians slice underwater communications cables leading to a complete internet blackout in the West.

  To an uncritical reader, the novel appears to be a “cautionary tale” and a “warning” against global conflict. The novel’s dust jacket states:

  Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors’ years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.

  Mainstream outlets were as successful in their attempts to paint 2034 as a “warning” as their reviews were cringeworthy.

  Wired, which ran a series of exclusive pre-print excerpts, had this to say:

  Wired has always been a publication about the future—about the forces shaping it, and the shape we’d like it to take. Sometimes, for us, that means being wild-eyed optimists, envisioning the scenarios that excite us most. And sometimes that means taking pains to envision futures that we really, really want to avoid.

  By giving clarity and definition to those nightmare trajectories, the hope is that we can give people the ability to recognize and divert from them. Almost, say, the way a vaccine teaches an immune system what to ward off. And that’s what this issue of WIRED is trying to do…

  Consider this another vaccine against disaster. Fortunately, this dose won’t cause a temporary fever—and it happens to be a rippingly good read. Turns out that even cautionary tales can be exciting, when the future we’re most excited about is the one where they never come true.

  The Washington Post’s review was almost worse.

  This crisply written and well-paced book reads like an all-caps warning to a world shackled to the machines we carry in our pockets and place in our laps, while only vaguely understanding how the information stored in and shared by those devices can be exploited. We have grown numb to the latest data breach—was it a pollical campaign (Hillary Clinton’s), or one of the country’s biggest credit-rating firms (Equifax), or a hotel behemoth (Marriott), or a casual-sex hookup site (Adult Friend Finder), or government departments updating their networks with the SolarWinds system (U.S. Treasury and Commerce)?

  In “2034,” it’s as if Ackerman and Stavridis want to grab us by our lapels, give us a slap or two, and scream: Pay attention! George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, “Nineteen Eighty-four: A Novel” was published 35 years before 1984. Ackerman’s and Stavridis’s book takes place in the not-so-distant future when today’s high school military recruits will just be turning 30.

  Between Wired’s ham-handed COVID-19 vaccine analogy and the CIA Washington Post’s ironic Orwell reference, the mainstream marketing campaign clearly attempts to portray the novel as a cautionary tale.

  

  It is impossible to gaze into the hearts of men, but we do have some clues. Those clues suggest that the co-authors really do seek to warn against war with China. However, in doing so, they advocate for it. Indeed, their warning is not against the folly of empire, but against a rising China.

  Ultimately the co-authors’ MacBethian premonition of conflict necessitates escalatory U.S. policy. On March 18, 2021, the pair were interviewed by NPR. Stavridis had this to say:

  …a subtext in all of this [the novel] is to strike a warning bell about the rise of China and the propensity in human history going back 2,500 years almost any time a [sic] established power is challenged by a rising power, it leads to war. It’s a dangerous moment. And 15 years from now, I think, will be a moment of maximum danger because China will have advanced in its military capability and technology. Therefore, our military deterrent will somewhat decline. We’re standing in the danger, as we say in the Navy.

  Ackerman embraces this view:

  …and we’re not only sounding the alarm bell, but the book is also trying to situate where America is in this moment of 2034.

  Further, the pair assert they do not believe in the American decline.

  Interviewer (to both): “…do you believe this, that America will be the author of its own destruction?”

  Stavridis: “I believe there are many in the world who do believe that. I personally do not…there are many in the world who believe our best days are somehow behind us. They would be miscalculating, in my view, to believe that.”

  Ackerman: “I would add I am by no way a believer in the decline of America. And I am very much committed to the idea of the American ideal. That being said, looking back throughout our entire history, the greatest threat is us turning inward and destroying that ideal. Lincoln himself said – I’m paraphrasing, but basically said that if America is going to destroy itself, we will be the author and the finisher. And I think he says, a nation of free men will live forever or die by suicide. And I don’t think that’s Lincoln being a declinist about the United States. But I think it’s him recognizing that our divisiveness can oftentimes be the greatest threat and what leaves us the most unable to respond to challenges from outside the country.”

  Indeed, a reader would be hard pressed to find any point where the co-authors suggest any strategy short of increasing military confrontation with China. Instead, they warn that America must be more united against an outside threat. It must, by implication, build up its military force, and, oddly enough, confront Chinese technological advances with less reliance on our own technology.

  Stavridis expanded on his China policy prescriptions in a June 2021 interview:

  The South China Sea is a vital entry point for the United States today. It’s a massive body of water full of oil and gas as well as fisheries, and about 40 percent of global trade passes through it.

  So, there are strong strategic reasons, as the United States values its alliances in Asia, to push back against Chinese claims.

  It is not just the South China Sea but also the East China Sea, where the Senkaku Islands lie, that are vital to American interests as long as our allies operate there and trade flows through there.

  And above all we simply as an international community cannot acquiesce to China’s preposterous claims, which have been rejected by international law.

  Indeed, a number one red line would be an attack against our allies.

  For example, if China attacked and tried to forcibly take the Senkaku Islands, that would be a red line for the United States. Or an attack against the Philippines, another treaty ally of the United States. An attack against any treaty allies would be the number one red line.

  A second red line would be trying to attack U.S. military personnel operating in the South China Sea.

  We conduct what we call “freedom of navigation patrols.” These are our warships sailing through international waters such as the South China Sea.

  If China were to attack a U.S. ship to attempt to demonstrate their view that they own the South China Sea, that would be a red line. In fact, the book “2034” opens with an attack involving U.S. military personnel being killed in the South China Sea.

  Stavridis believes that the U.S. must continue to devote itself to entangling alliances, against which the founding fathers warned. The U.S. must also continue to press its presence in the South China Sea.

  Despite resolutely warning against a war against China, Stavridis commits the U.S. to myriad tripwires that would ignite it. These China policy positions parallel Stavridis’ positions on Ukraine. It’s always more, more, more.

  More funding, arming, and training Ukrainians, more U.S. commitment to NATO, more U.S. weaponization of Big Tech, more money to the U.S. State Department, more interagency cooperation, and more silencing dissent. These positions are escalatory. At the very least, they flirt with making Washington a direct party to the War in Ukraine. They may give Russia reason to attack U.S. and NATO forces.

  Given Russia’s nuclear footing, these policies pose an existential threat to humanity itself.

  Indeed, it will always be a mystery how the hawks convinced the American public that the path to peace leads through war. Perhaps those of us who survive the inevitable result of this mantra can ponder the answer while painting on the cave walls.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 22:45

• Map Shows Wildfire Outbreak Sweeping Across US Amid Megadrought
  Map Shows Wildfire Outbreak Sweeping Across US Amid Megadrought

  New data from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) shows an outbreak of wildfires sweeping across the country. 

  FIRMS’ interactive map shows wildfire activity is expanding in the country’s Southeast, Midwest, and Southwest regions amid one of the worst megadroughts in 1,200 years. 

  

  National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) released an update Wednesday that said more than 3,700 wildland firefighters and personnel are assigned to eleven major fires. 

  “The Southwest area continues to have the most large fire activity, where five incident management teams are assigned. One complex incident management team is assigned to a large fire in Nebraska,” NIFC said. 

  The agency said more than 21,181 wildfires had burned 1,080,836 acres in the US since the beginning of the year. That’s above a 10-year average of 14,958 wildfires that burned 727,141 acres. Some of the most devastating wildfires have been in Texas due to “extreme drought” and high winds. 

  

  Much of the US West is experiencing severe to extreme drought conditions. The outbreak of fires comes as no surprise. 

  

  Recent forecasts by federal government meteorologists may suggest drought conditions could worsen as there’s a 59% chance of La Niña for the Northern Hemisphere through summer. What this would mean is drier conditions that could spark even more wildfires. 

  However, it’s the opposite in the Northern Plains, where historic flooding has wiped out farmlands and delayed plantings that could trigger additional global food supply chain problems. 

  Megadroughts, wildfires, and historic floods are some of the natural disasters plaguing the US. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 22:25

• States Join Forces To Tackle Border Crisis And Cartel-Related Crime
  States Join Forces To Tackle Border Crisis And Cartel-Related Crime

  Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Ohio has been beleaguered by the opioid crisis for years. It has one of the highest overdose rates in the country, next to West Virginia, Kentucky, and Delaware.

  

  As with all states, nearly every grain of fentanyl that Arkansas law enforcement seizes has traveled across the U.S.–Mexico border.

  In 2021, Arkansas State Police confiscated 10 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill more than 2 million people, according to Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Two milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal.

  In Georgia, fentanyl-involved deaths increased by more than 106 percent during fiscal year 2021, according to Gov. Brian Kemp.

  On April 19, the Republican governors of 26 states announced the creation of a new Border Strike Force, which aims to “disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations.”

  “The porousness of the Southern Border is an open door to transnational criminal organizations that use it to traffic drugs that feed the addiction epidemic throughout the United States,” the memorandum of understanding states.

  The group includes two southern border states—Arizona and Texas—as well as 24 others: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

  “In the absence of federal leadership, states are partnering together to create the American Governors’ Border Strike Force to disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations by increasing collaboration, improving intelligence, investing in analysis, combating human smuggling, and stopping drug flow in our states,” the agreement states.

  

  The amount of drugs being seized at the border has plummeted as illegal alien apprehensions have reached record highs, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics.

  “If we seize even 5 percent of what’s coming across the border, we’re lucky,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, referring to a question about fentanyl pills.

  “And if there’s nobody there to detect you and apprehend you, the cartels are going to push it through between the ports of entry when they know that there is absolutely no chance that we’re going to apprehend that narcotic.”

  In mid-December 2021, law enforcement authorities seized a record 1.7 million fentanyl pills in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  More than 100,000 Americans, a record amount, died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl was involved in almost two-thirds of those deaths.

  

  Sharing Personnel and Intel

  The group of governors, in their memorandum of understanding, pledged to work together to “serve as a force multiplier to target cartels and criminal networks financially and operationally.”

  “Together, governors will improve public safety, protect victims from horrific crimes, reduce the amount of drugs in our communities, and alleviate the humanitarian crisis at the Southern Border,” the agreement states.

  States can request help from other participating states and state-specific certifications and licenses will be honored among states. Each state is responsible for its own costs.

  Currently, 160 National Guardsmen from Georgia are stationed at the southern border.

  “As new and even larger waves of migrants approach the border, I grow increasingly concerned for their safety,” Kemp wrote in a March 31 letter to President Joe Biden. The body of Texas National Guard Specialist Bishop E. Evans was recovered from the Rio Grande on April 25 after he drowned while attempting to rescue illegal immigrants—who were later identified as allegedly being involved in marijuana trafficking.

  Last summer, state troopers from Nebraska, Iowa, and Florida augmented troopers in Texas to apprehend human smugglers and illegal aliens who evaded Border Patrol. Florida also sent Fish & Wildlife officers to help patrol areas of the Rio Grande in its boats.

  

  Hutchinson said one of the most important elements of the Border Strike Force is the sharing of intelligence on the operation of criminal organizations.

  “Increased coordination with other states will be a benefit to our state and nation, but increased action from the federal government is still needed to help manage this,” he said.

  Ohio is prepared to offer other states intelligence analyst support, if asked, the governor’s office said.

  Since 2019, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has set up four narcotics intelligence centers in his state that help trace drug trafficking organizations back to their ringleaders and suppliers.

  “Many times, those investigations reveal that Mexican cartels are behind the drugs being trafficked in Ohio,” DeWine’s office told The Epoch Times via email.

  State Laws

  The 26 states also plan to review their state laws regarding human trafficking, drug trafficking, and transnational criminal organizations “to ensure that such crimes are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “We’re currently in the process of determining what laws may need strengthening and where we can step up enforcement efforts in drug interdiction, human trafficking, and other crimes stemming from a porous southern border,” Hutchinson told The Epoch Times via email.

  Texas just strengthened its anti-smuggling laws last September, while Arizona doesn’t have a state law against human smuggling, and border counties are suffering the impact.

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been implementing state border security initiatives since June last year under Operation Lone Star, but has stopped short of testing state Constitutional powers to deport illegal immigrants.

  The state has appropriated $3 billion for Operation Lone Star, which includes the arrest and prosecution of illegal alien trespassers, beefed-up law enforcement and National Guard presence along the border, and busing illegal immigrants to Washington.

  Abbott recently caused significant delays for commercial trucks at several major Texas–Mexico trade bridges, which forced neighboring Mexican states to sign deals pledging to curb illegal border crossings. To date, there’s no indication that the four Mexican states are reining in illegal immigration.

  

  Title 42

  Governors, Border Patrol agents, and border sheriffs have expressed concern over the revocation of Title 42—a public health provision that allowed for the quick expulsion of illegal immigrants.

  The Biden administration announced that Title 42 would end on May 23; however, a federal judge is preparing to block the move. Title 42 was never designed to be central border security or immigration policy, but as the Biden administration removed other border security measures, it became more significant.

  The Department of Homeland Security has estimated that the end of Title 42 could mean up to 18,000 illegal alien apprehensions per day. Border agents are currently apprehending more than 6,000 per day.

  

  Title 42 has slowly been whittled down by the Biden administration since February 2021—first to allow in all unaccompanied children, then families with children under the age of 7, then, most families in general, most single females, and then, single adults from non-Spanish-speaking countries.

  “We are now processing illegal aliens from Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala) under Expedited Removal rather than T[itle] 42,” Judd wrote on Twitter on April 19.

  In February 2021, 73 percent of illegal immigrants were expelled under Title 42. By March 2022, it had been reduced to 49 percent.

  “Illegal border crossings lead to more drugs entering the country, more dangerous individuals evading arrest, and more victims of human trafficking,” the 26 governors stated.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 22:05

• 75% Of Young Adults Believe The U.S. Is Suffering From A "Mental Health Crisis"
  75% Of Young Adults Believe The U.S. Is Suffering From A “Mental Health Crisis”

  A new survey released this week has concluded that nearly 75% of young adults across the country agree that “the United States has a mental health crisis.”

  The results, released by The Hill this week, were compiled by the Institute for Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. The survey found that only 6% of people who responded to the survey disagreed with “the idea that the U.S. is undergoing a mental health crisis.”

  The survey queried “more than 2,000 U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 29 from March 15-20”. 

  52% of young adults who responded reported “experiencing feelings of depression and hopelessness”, while about 25% of respondents admitted to thinking about self-harm.

  

  In what may be an allusion to the pandemic and lockdowns starting to wind down (unless you live in China), the latter number is down 4% from a year prior, when 28% of respondents said they thought about self-harm. 

  More than 25% of respondents said they knew someone who had committed suicide. 

  Similar studies have shown that almost half of all young adults experienced mental health symptoms in the second year of the pandemic, The Hill wrote. These findings came as the result of a second study, when researchers at UCSF “”used a sample of 2,809 adults ages 18-25 years from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey data to evaluate the scope of anxiety and depression symptoms from June through early July 2021”. 

  48% of those young adults reported mental health symptoms and 39% said they used prescription medications. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 21:45

• MSNBC, ABC Claim Elon Musk Wants To See Abuse Of Women & Jews, And A Return To Apartheid
  MSNBC, ABC Claim Elon Musk Wants To See Abuse Of Women & Jews, And A Return To Apartheid

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Amid the meltdown of leftists canceling themselves following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the most extreme reactions came from the likes of MSNBC’s Joy Reid and ABC’s The View, where it was declared that Musk is a white supremacist who wants to see the return of segregation, as well as abuse of Jewish people and rampant misogyny against women.

  

  Perpetual race grifter Reid proclaimed that Musk “misses the old South Africa in the 80s. He wants that back,”  adding “Elon Musk’s companies have a history of open racism.”

  She also charged that Musk’s “idea of freedom means freedom to be a jerk and to be cruel and to have no one be able to stop you.”

  Reid’s guest Jason Johnson then declared that Musk could make public everyone’s private Twitter messages, before she declared that free speech advocates only want to “come in and be able to punch people in the face and walk around and laugh about it and then not have anyone be able to stop them.”

  Reid then stated that “there was a time when people had the double hashtags around their names because they were Jewish and right-wingers were saying get in the oven any time you made any benign comment on Twitter.”

  She added “They attacked women. You know, the misogyny was crazy on Twitter for a while,” insinuating that Musk is all for that kind of activity.

  “The thing is the enjoyment they get out of being in this town square is being able to harass people, being able to attack people,” she further stated.

  Watch:

  Reid stirred up the Apartheid accusation on Twitter (ironically), and also suggested that Musk is keen on allowing “nazis” free reign on Twitter:

  If he really thinks he can create that same toxic, high school bully, 80s South Africa world here and somehow monetize that, he should maybe stick to sending compensatory technology to “near space” for his fellow men with more money and time on their hands than interesting ideas.

  — Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) April 25, 2022

  Elon Musk has spent years silencing his critics. He doesn’t care about “free speech.” This Twitter crusade is about releasing the trolls, nazis & MAGAnuts from Gab and Gettr isolation because they can only be entertained by harassing normal people here. https://t.co/CqRkKE9EUO

  — Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) April 22, 2022

  And this: https://t.co/fOEFgBFKqi

  — Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) April 22, 2022

  Others amplified the idiotic claim:

  Elon musk buying Twitter is a dream come true for white nationalists. After all musk is from the former apartheid country of South Africa which the white supremacists idolize.

  — (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) April 25, 2022

  Wonder if Elon musk will copy the apartheid rules of his home country South Africa and give us check marks based on our skin color? The whiter the check mark the more rights you have on Twitter. #AskingForAFriend

  — (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) April 25, 2022

  Elon Musk is from South Africa, so that means he loves white nationalism. Yeah, OK. Just like every German is a Nazi.

  It’s completely deranged, but what else would you expect from Reid? She says this about everyone who disagrees with her on any topic.

  Over at ABC, The View co-host Sunny Hostin declared that Musk only cares about free speech for “straight white men” and is preparing to “take away the guardrails” and “unleash the trolls”.

  She then blurted out that “there have been some surveys done” and claimed that 85% of women have seen abuse on Twitter, insinuating that’s what Musk wants to see.

  Hostin then whined about Musk being rich and cited Mark Zuckerberg’s “takeover” of Facebook as an example of how billionaires shouldn’t have control over “modes of communication.”

  Watch:

  Again, completely factually incorrect blathering and deranged accusations, all triggered by Elon Musk saying he supports free speech, and illustrative of exactly why Musk bought Twitter, as Joe Rogan points out below.

  The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022

  Joe Rogan’s reaction to @ElonMusk buying Twitter

  pic.twitter.com/8fhRwOFx4N

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 26, 2022

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 21:25

• Oklahoma GOP Governor Sign Nation's First Law Banning Non-Binary Birth Certificates
  Oklahoma GOP Governor Sign Nation’s First Law Banning Non-Binary Birth Certificates

  Oklahoma is the first state to write a nonbinary prohibition into law that will ensure “clarity and truth” on official birth documents, according to AP News. 

  Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed the bill into law on Tuesday that explicitly says birth certificates will have only male or female gender assignments. The new law comes after an executive order from the governor restricted the Oklahoma State Health Department from adding a nonbinary option. 

  

  “People are free to believe whatever they want about their identity, but science has determined people are either biologically male or female at birth,” said Oklahoma Rep. Sheila Dills, the bill’s House sponsor, in a statement after the bill passed the House last week.

   “We want clarity and truth on official state documents. Information should be based on established medical fact and not an ever-changing social dialogue,” she added.  

  Meanwhile, Oklahoma elected the first nonbinary state legislator in the country, Democrat Mauree Turner, in 2020. Turner tweeted this as the bill was being debated last week: 

  “I find it a very extreme and grotesque use of power in this body to write this law and try to pass it — when literally none of them live like us.” 

  The news comes one month after Gov. Stitt signed a bill prohibiting biological males from competing in girls’ sports. 

  It’s worth noting the Biden administration recently announced making an “X” gender on US passports. 

  According to the think tank Movement Advancement Project, sixteen states and the District of Columbia have already allowed gender marker designation besides male or female. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 21:05

• Mask Mandates Make Comeback To US College Campuses
  Mask Mandates Make Comeback To US College Campuses

  Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Two months after the federal government eased mask recommendations for most Americans, some colleges and universities have reinstated mask mandates, along with other measures, citing surges in COVID-19 cases on their campuses.

  

  Several prominent institutions—including American University and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; Columbia University in New York; Johns Hopkins University in Maryland; and Rice University in Texas, to name a few—have brought back indoor mask requirements that were phased out not too long ago.

  Many of these schools already have vaccine and booster mandates. For example, Columbia required all students and employees to submit proof of their booster vaccination before March, boasting an overall 99.9 percent compliance rate for the campus community. Yet it now demands that students wear surgical masks in classrooms because of an uptick of COVID-19 cases on campus and elsewhere in New York City.

  “Based on the current situation and in an abundance of caution, we will require wearing of non-cloth masks in classrooms,” the Ivy League school announced on April 10. In a more recent update, the university said the requirement wouldn’t go away any time soon, despite an overwhelmingly high level of vaccination among the campus population.

  “We anticipate making no changes in our current campus COVID-19 guidance, unless New York City puts in place measures that we would be required to follow,” Columbia officials said on April 22, noting a “gradual increase in COVID-19 cases” in the city.

  Rice also requires all eligible students and employees to get booster shots. In mid-March, the Houston-based university lifted its mask mandate for vaccinated individuals, only to reverse the policy after less than a month because of a sudden rise in COVID-19 cases.

  “There’s been a significant rise in the number of positive cases reported in our community—about 145,” the university said in an April 10 statement. Specifically, Rice demanded that everyone in a classroom wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status, except for instructors while lecturing, since 90 percent of those new cases have occurred among undergraduate students. Large events also have been canceled. Students can continue to eat in dining halls, but at half of the designated capacity.

  According to a COVID-19 tracker on Rice’s website, the university has recorded 31 positive tests for the week following Easter. There’s also been a noticeable downward trajectory since April 10, but the restrictions remain in place.

  Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, health officials and the mayor raised the city’s COVID-19 alert level on April 18, requiring citizens to wear face coverings when out in public. That has prompted a number of schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple, St. Joseph’s, La Salle, Drexel, and Thomas Jefferson universities, to require students and staff to mask up while in school buildings.

  All of these Philadelphia schools went mask-optional again just three days later, when the city announced that it not only has reversed the decision to reimpose the mask mandate, but also ditched the COVID-19 alert system that triggered it.

  “The infection rate is going down, hospitalizations are going down, and, frankly, the ruling in Florida confused a lot of stuff. SEPTA is doing what they did and confused a lot of stuff,” said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney.

  Kenney was referring to a U.S. district judge in Florida who struck down a federal rule requiring face coverings for planes and other forms of public transportation, as well as the decision by SEPTA, Pennsylvania’s regional transit authority, to lift the requirement that travelers must wear masks on its buses and trains.

  Florida’s universities were among the earliest in the nation to drop their mask mandates. South Florida University has been mask-optional since August 2021, while the University of Florida said it simply doesn’t have the authority to force people to mask up on campus.

  “The university does not currently have the authority to take the actions you recommend,” University of Florida President Kent Fuchs wrote in response to the Alachua County Commission, which had asked the school to adhere to a public health emergency declaration that mandated masks indoors.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 20:45

• Whistleblower Son Of Deutsche Banker Who Committed Suicide, Found Dead In LA
  Whistleblower Son Of Deutsche Banker Who Committed Suicide, Found Dead In LA

  The body of Valentin Broeksmit was found early on Monday morning on the 4500 block of Multnomah Street on Monday, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

  

  45-year-old Broeksmit was reported missing last year, with the LAPD saying he was last seen on April 6, 2021 around 4 p.m., at Griffith Park on Riverside Drive driving a 2020 red Mini Cooper.

  But he continued tweeting under the handle @BikiniRobotArmy during this period).

  His last tweet:

  #NewProfile only the penetive man shall pass pic.twitter.com/5c1ljFxiau

  — val broeksmit (@BikiniRobotArmy) April 5, 2022

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

  If that names rings a vague bell, it should.

  Self-described as a “comically terrible spy”, Broeksmit was best known for his brief moment in the spotlight as he reportedly worked with federal authorities investigating the activities of Deutsche Bank and its ties with former President Donald Trump.

  Journalist Scott Stedman, who writes at the Forensic News website, also confirmed Broeksmit’s death in a tweet.

  “He supplied me and other journalists with Deutsche Bank documents that highlighted the bank’s deep Russia connections,” Stedman wrote.

  “It is very sad. I don’t suspect foul play. Val struggled with drugs on and off.

  “In truth, I hadn’t talked to Val since January and before that many more months. I wish I had.”

  Broeksmit was reportedly “pretty troubled” for many years…

  I’m sad to hear this news. I knew him in our teenage years. He was pretty troubled back then but there was an innocence and transcendence about him. He did some stupid things but he never acted in bad faith. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. Rest in peace, dear Val.

  — Les Warburton (@LesWarburton1) April 26, 2022

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

  Given the circumstances, perhaps most sadly is the fact that, as we detailed in 2016, Valentin was the son of high-ranking Deutsche Bank banker William Broeksmit who committed suicide at age 58 – found hanging in his London flat from a dog leash tied to the top of a door.

  As we reported at the time, financial papers had been strewn about the scene of his suicide, and on a dog bed near the body were a number of notes to family and friends. One was addressed to Deutsche Bank CEO Anshu Jain, with an apology. That note offered no clue as to the reason he was sorry.

  It was reportedly the papers left behind by his father than Valentine Broeksmit had offered to federal investigators (and he was subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee during its probe of Trump’s ties to the bank).

  New York Times reporter David Enrich wrote in 2019 that Broeksmit helped the FBI in its probe of Deutsche Bank, noting that Broeksmit had drug-use issues and would often bend the truth to come up with “far-fetched theories.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 20:25

• Plastic Grocery Bag Bans Actually Boost Sale Of Small Plastic Garbage Bags: Study
  Plastic Grocery Bag Bans Actually Boost Sale Of Small Plastic Garbage Bags: Study

  Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Researchers have discovered that bans and fees on plastic carryout grocery bags (CGB) could have serious unintended consequences.

  

  The investigators found that both bag fees and outright prohibitions boosted the sale of 4-gallon and 8-gallon plastic bags—in line with the view that many consumers reuse their supposedly single-use bags as garbage bags around the house.

  “The effect of a 5¢ fee for either paper or plastic CGBs is essentially the same as that of a ban on plastic bag and a fee of 10 or 15¢ on paper bags. While policy makers may choose fees over bans in order to soften the blow, our results suggest that the overall effect on consumers is little different,” wrote the authors, professor Richard Woodward of Texas A&M University (TAMU) and Yu-Kai Huang of both TAMU and the University of Georgia.

  Woodward and Huang used Nielsen retail scanner data from Washington; Santa Clara County, California; San Luis Obispo County, California; and Montgomery County, Maryland between 2006 and 2014. All four had passed restrictions on carryout grocery bags before 2014.

  They used nearby counties that had not implemented such measures as controls.

  Huang and Woodward found that plastic bag laws did not impact the sale of larger bags, lending additional support to the view that small plastic garbage bags end up substituting for the regulated grocery bags.

  The study comes at a time when laws regulating the sale of plastic grocery bags are spreading rapidly throughout the United States and the wider world.

  Chicago, for example, charges a tax of 7 cents per plastic bag.

  Uniform plastic bag fees are a regressive tax because people pay the same amount no matter their wealth or income.

  Carryout plastic bag bans have been passed in California, New York, Maine, Vermont, Oregon, Hawaii, Delaware, and Connecticut.

  Such bags have also been banned in China, New Zealand, and many other countries, including several African countries.

  In Kenya, for instance, people caught producing, importing, or using banned plastic bags can suffer major fines or even imprisonment.

  Woodward and Huang estimated that plastic bag regulations led stores to purchase an average of 127 more pounds of plastic each month because of the substitution of small plastic garbage bags for carryout bags.

  “While we are unable to tell the net effect on plastic consumption, because of the heavier weight of purchased trash bags, it is possible that a bag ban could even lead to an increase in total plastic waste, and this is without taking into account any plastic content in purchased CGBs that consumers buy, and eventually discard, as a result of the ban,” the authors noted in the study.

  The Epoch Times has reached out to Plastics Industry Association for comment.

  The Epoch Times has also contacted an anti-single use plastic group, the Footprint Foundation. The Footprint Foundation is associated with Footprint, a materials science firm that aims to replace single-use plastics with plant-based alternatives.

  In addition, The Epoch Times has reached out to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group known for its opposition to single-use plastics.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 20:05

• Iran & China Declare Deepened Military Cooperation To Confront 'US Unilateralism'
  Iran & China Declare Deepened Military Cooperation To Confront ‘US Unilateralism’

  The anti-West axis appears to be growing on the peripheries of the Ukraine conflict as Washington is perceived as giving an unbending ‘with us or against us’ ultimatum. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi hailed deepening strategic and military cooperation between the Islamic Republic and China on Wednesday.

  According state media cited in The Associated Press, “Raisi told China’s Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe that Tehran sees its ties with Beijing as strategic. Closer cooperation would serve to confront what the Iranian president described as U.S. unilateralism as talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers have stalled.”

  

  Raisi appeared to indirectly reference the US and perhaps NATO, which included urging the two countries to cooperate in “Confronting unilateralism and creating stability and order is possible through cooperation of independent and like-minded powers.”

  Wei too seemed to remotely reference the Ukraine crisis and the West’s economic war against Russia when he said China and Iran could deepen security ties “particularly in the current critical and tense situation.” And more, per the AP:

  Wei said his visit was aimed at “improving the strategic defense cooperation” between Iran and China — cooperation that he said would have a “remarkable” impact in defusing unilateralism and fighting terrorism.

  The harshest and most direct criticism aimed at Washington came from Iran’s defense chief, Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtinai, who blasted US militarism and aggression abroad.

  Ashtinai said, “wherever the U.S. has had military presence, it has created waves of insecurity, instability, rifts, pessimism, war, destruction and displacement.”

  Iran’s Gen. Ashtinai is expected to visit China next as head of a military delegation from the Islamic Republic at the invitation of Beijing, in furtherance of the declared deepened defense and strategic ties. Recently, in 2021, the two countries signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement focusing on industrial development, infrastructure and transportation.

  Multiple of the world’s largest economies have recently seen their leaders either sit on the fence regarding US pressure to jump on the Russia sanctions bandwagon, or outright blame NATO for stoking the conflict, as was the case with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa…

  I’m telling my kids these were the men in black. Oh and if you don’t already know who these people are please become firmiliar with them because you’ll be seeing their names and faces much more than you ever have before. #China #Russia #India #SouthAfrica #Brazil pic.twitter.com/CosSfiVW07

  — The Breakout Boss (@BreakoutBen) March 14, 2022

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

  Officials in Tehran have this week voiced their view that Washington will be forced back to the negotiating table in Vienna amid the stalled nuclear deal due to events in Ukraine and the resulting European energy crisis. Earlier this month Iran said that it considers all that’s needed for a renewed JCPOA agreement as essentially a ‘done deal’ – but that it’s the US that’s stalling.

  “Failure to reach a deal [so far] is a result of domestic troubles in the US but the ever-increasing problems caused by the Ukraine war will put pressure on [President Joe] Biden to accept the necessity of a deal [with Tehran],” a spokesman for Iranian delegation to the Vienna nuclear talks said to official news agency IRNA on Sunday.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 19:45

• More Secret Gender Transition Closets Discovered In Public Schools
  More Secret Gender Transition Closets Discovered In Public Schools

  Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  They started in colleges, but trans closets—rooms stocked with transgender clothes and accessories for students to change into after arriving to school and back out of before going home—are being discovered in public schools with some indication they are being kept a secret from parents.

  

  In a recent TikTok video, a California teacher implies that the trans closet he started at the high school where he works is meant to be kept from parents.

  “The goal of the transition closet is for our students to wear the clothes that their parents approve of, come to school and then swap out into the clothes that fit who they truly are,” the teacher said.

  The California Family Council and others eventually confirmed the identity of the teacher as Oakland Unified School District Spanish teacher Thomas Martin-Edwards, who is also the founder of “Queer Teacher Fellowship.”

  Martin-Edwards, the teacher who runs the trans closet, is also transgender. He has posted videos of himself in the classroom showing off the stilettos he wears to school.

  Neither Martin-Edwards, a former assistant principal in another school district, nor the school responded to inquiries by The Epoch Times about the trans closet.

  “This is [an] example of the deceit schools are deliberately using to carry out a growing transgender movement in public schools behind the backs of parents,” the Christian conservative group California Family Council wrote on its website.

  “In addition to gender ideology madness, this school is teaching children that it is acceptable to defy their parents.”

  California Family Council first discovered the trans closet through a Facebook posting by a nonprofit group that calls itself “The Transition Closet.”

  On its Facebook page, The Transition Closet states it is working with one of the district’s high schools to create a trans closet—posting “we are extremely excited to begin our journey in working with Fremont High School of Oakland, California, along with our favorite teacher of TikTok/@justaqueerteacher.”

  Amare Roush, founder of The Transition Closet, told The Epoch Times that her organization does support keeping the existence of trans closets at schools secret from parents, because of the abuse she says children often face at home if they disclose to their parents they are transgender.

  “We do provide a safe space for kids whose parents are not accepting, because it’s known to help lower the suicide rate,” said Roush who is also a certified advocate for domestic violence victims.

  “These kids are going to do it anyway, we just want a way to provide them with a way to do it safely to where they’re not wearing clothes that are too small for them, or doing so in a way that’s going to get them hurt by their parents.”

  Roush emphasized that school was the best venue to provide trans kids with trans clothing.

  “Kids are at schools 40 hours a week, that’s where they spend most of the time, that’s where they form most of their relationships,” she said, “clothing is a big part of how we express ourselves and those kids that are able to express themselves correctly, are able to feel supported correctly.”

  Another trans closet being operated out of the Denver Conservatory Green Middle School in Colorado was also recently posted about on social media.

  The Twitter post ignited a flurry of messages slamming the school for encouraging transgenderism among students as young as 12 years old.

  “This is grooming,” tweeted one Colorado man, “Police should come to the classroom and arrest whoever the teacher is in this classroom.”

  The school also did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times.

  The original post about the Denver trans closet was made by “Buy Nothing Central Park” and refers to the closet for transgender students as being started at “our school.” It also asks for clothing for the trans closet being dropped off at the school.

  Megan Fox, a freelance columnist for PJ Media and co-host of the weekly YouTube show “Exposing Family Court Corruption,” recently raised $1,650 through gofundme.com to pay for documents relating to the trans closet at a Colorado school.

  Fox recently wrote in her column that the school told her she had to pay $1,650 to obtain the documents, which she requested via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). According to Fox, the school said the bill was based on 55 hours of staff time at $30 an hour to fulfill her request.

  On its website, The Transition Closet states that “the near future holds transition closet[s] and services throughout the school district for students of the Trans/Nonbinary/Intersex and additional LGBTQIA+ community members.”

  Roush said her organization is working with other schools in the United States to start trans closets and her organization currently runs them at several churches including Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches.

  For the California school trans closet, the Arkansas-based group also includes contact information linked to the website validbybrodie.com, which includes a “start your own closet” section for students, teachers, and school administrators.

  It has also adopted the slogan “when your [sic] ready to come out of the closet, step into ours” and has an online shop that includes a variety of transgender accessories.

  It also sells transgender workbooks for teens and runs online name change clinics.

  Roush emphasized that transgender accessories are never supplied to minors without a parent’s permission.

  She said that transgender kids ended up physically hurting themselves by using duct tape instead of transgender accessories to hide their genitals.

  “Nobody would ask for this; we are just trying to ease the transition of kids that are dealing with this,”‘ she said.

  Her group also works with colleges to establish transition closets.

  Marshall University, the University of Arkansas, Penn State, and the University of California are among colleges that have been operating trans closets for years.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 19:25

• "Bigger Mess Than Last Year" – Global Supply Chain Crisis Could Emerge By Summer 
  “Bigger Mess Than Last Year” – Global Supply Chain Crisis Could Emerge By Summer 

  The next round of supply chain bottlenecks could be even greater than last year’s massive congestion at ports as China’s “zero COVID” policy has shuttered factories and locked down major cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai. A backlog of orders is building, and commercial vessels off China’s top ports are increasing. Once China reopens, a tsunami of container ships will flood global shipping lanes.  

  Bloomberg provides a good summary of how the global supply chain is going to get slammed (again):

  “We expect a bigger mess than last year,” said Jacques Vandermeiren, the chief executive officer of the Port of Antwerp, Europe’s second-busiest for container volume, in an interview. “It will have a negative impact, and a big negative impact, for the whole of 2022.”

  Beijing’s zero-tolerance policy will unleash what we’ve been warning for months (read: here & here): a logistical disaster as top ports in the Asian country have slowed to a trickle, leaving empty containers piling and massive amounts of commercial vessels sitting offshore. 

  Once China reopens, and those vessels begin shipping products worldwide, FreightWaves founder and CEO Craig Fuller warns this will “wreck your summer.” 

  The Chinese Communist Party is about to wreck your summer. https://t.co/AaKfaS710J

  — Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🇺🇦 (@FreightAlley) April 23, 2022

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

  “Once product export activities resume and a large volume of vessels make their way to the U.S. West Coast ports, we expect waiting times to increase significantly,” said Julie Gerdeman, CEO of supply-chain risk analytics firm Everstream Analytics.

  This may suggest that Goldman Sachs’ high-frequency weekly supply chain congestion index could reverse after falling for much of the year. If congestion worsens after China reopens, Goldman’s analysts might have to reevaluate their ‘peak supply chain’ call. 

  

  So how bad are the backups of container ships at the Shanghai port, a major hub for international trade, and one of the largest and busiest container ports in the world? 

  Well, satellite imagery from April 14, 2022, versus April 2019 shows the extent of the congestion. 

  

  Quite a difference from 3 years ago…

  

  Vessel congestion has been increasing at the Shanghai terminal. As of April 19, 2022, over 470 ships are still waiting to deliver goods to China. Here’s a broader view of the massive congestion.

  

  Goldman recently told clients supply-chain setbacks “have been somewhat worse than we anticipated, and we have adjusted our growth and inflation forecasts slightly in response in recent weeks.” When bottlenecks in China clear, vessels will flood major shipping lines as a seasonal import pickup gets underway. 

  At America’s dual hub of Los Angeles and Long Beach, 57 vessels were reported, the highest since late. U.S. container dwell times are also creeping higher again. 

  

  Congestion in Europe is already severe, and top ports such as Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Antwerp are working above capacity. 

  The global impacts of this current bottleneck are expected for summer and will greatly increase once China lockdowns are eased. According to an article in Freight Waves, this could turn into the most significant supply chain issue since the pandemic’s start if China’s shipping congestion isn’t cleared up soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 19:05

• Luongo On Disney's Demise: "This Is Not The Way"
  Luongo On Disney’s Demise: “This Is Not The Way”

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

  We live in an age of maximum arrogance. When you watch companies with some of the most marketable brands in the world torch them on an altar of political correctness, it’s easy to just think them stupid or going with the flow of history.

  But they aren’t.

  Because not only do we live in an age of maximal arrogance, we also live in the biggest self-created false realities in human history.

  It is the height of irony that the biggest brand in storytelling, Disney, has succumbed to its own arrogance and self-delusion, becoming trapped in a false reality that Disney should dictate the direction humanity should accept.

  That’s what lies at the heart of Disney’s troubles today. It arrogantly believed it has an obligation to decide what is and is not culturally acceptable to a majority of its customers. It completely misread the room in thinking a large percentage of its business comes from the insufferably woke suburban moms who are just as fucked up as the kids they’ve raised.

  The good news is Disney got the message loud and clear that they are not the arbiters of when it’s appropriate to groom children for adulthood. The bad news is they may not have heard it.

  Social media, political pressure and simply the massive extended echo chamber that is California politics suffused Disney’s board and its corporate culture with the mind virus of egalitarianism, eschewing any basic faith in humanity itself.

  Since they’ve rejected all forms of god, or submission to a higher authority that wasn’t man-made, Disney decided it was time to undermine all of its properties by coming out of the closet, as it were.

  Disney chose poorly.

  The Phildickian Nightmare Made Real

  I’m a huge Philip K. Dick fan.

  Dick wrote dozens of short stories and at least half a dozen important novels focusing on this very problem of false realities leading to a crisis in faith. In Dick’s work those false realities were tangible: You could visit them through drugs or meditation, meet your analogue from an alternate Universe or by nearly dying get trapped in a hellish landscape of someone else’s design.

  But in reading these tales, we recognize that they exist as metaphor, like all stories do, to teach us lessons about how to navigate our conflicts and emerge transformed into something better. For all of his wacky situations and conceits, Phil Dick’s stories are all about the most important issues we all face: empathy overcoming shame, pride justifying violence, selfishness justifying nihilism.

  Dick’s protagonists are all suffering basic crises of faith. The modern world has let them down, led them on a false path experiencing deep mid-life bouts of ennui as their carefully constructed coping strategies to numb their pain are shattered.

  And like all great storytellers Dick chose the fantastical and the weird not just to hide real human stories as enticements, but also, I’d argue, to make them far more memorable than they would have been otherwise.

  UBIK, for example, has been hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and whose ideas populate hundreds of derivative works of Hollywood. It’s what we will remember him for. By contrast all of his ‘real world’ literature which covered the same topics, couldn’t get published during his lifetime.

  The Storyteller’s Apprentice

  The alchemy of the fantastic with the mundane is what makes for great storytelling. It’s what made Disney into Disney. It’s what gave Dick’s science-fiction work its heft and power. It’s what makes stories something worth retelling.

  Taken to its extreme stories and legends become something larger than individual chapters. In an oral tradition the stories handed down would morph to suit the challenges of the day, their sequels can and would contradict what came before. Continuity wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t important, what was important was the underlying lessons, the underlying truth.

  Read any anthology of ancient stories and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

  Dick created novels like UBIK and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch to be purposefully insolvable puzzles of nested realities. They can be seen as examples of modern storytellers submitting to the higher power of stories themselves, knowing that the puzzles they present bring people back to them over and over.

  And guess what? You get exposed, again and again, to the deeper message, the deeper meaning. It’s what happened to me. I used to re-read UBIK every June 5th, the day the novel opens, because the book is that important to me.

  It’s why we watch beloved movies multiple times. You may have come for the superheroes or the lightsabers but you come back for the story.

  The point being is that stories which last have resonance and speak truth. Some become so big they grow beyond their origins into something that cannot be untangled. They become myth, legend. When the stories in the Bible or the Norse myths were being passed down through the ages, there wasn’t any care about continuity, only imparting lessons to the next generation who heard them.

  Jordan Peterson has made the point that it is actually the lack of continuity, the lack of logic, that makes Creation Myths capable of sustaining a culture and a society from falling into chaos and civil war. He frequently uses the example of the Egyptian stories of Osiris, Set and Horus as the big example, which sustained ancient Egypt, apparently, for thousands of years.

  Even Christianity can’t claim that…yet.

  This is the responsibility Disney took on when it acquired first Pixar Studios, then Marvel Studios and then, most importantly, Lucasfilm. It already owned ESPN and ABC. It was now a story generating conglomerate so large that it owned all the modern mythmaking franchises sans DC Comics.

  And with its overtly dipping its wick into the obvious political fray over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law it betrayed that responsibility as a repository and generator of new stories capable of becoming myth to its core.

  Disney, who used to stand apart from Hollywood’s descent into depravity and violence, became the ultimate symbol of it overnight.

  The War Over the Stars

  Star Wars I would argue, is one example of a modern story which is looked on by many today with that same kind of reverence. Star Wars’ inherent weirdness is what makes it so very accessible. The comic mythologies of Marvel and, in particular, DC have these same echoes.

  Both have been subverted to serve the ‘Woke’ agenda of the World Economic Forum and their Great Reset of all things human into all things Transhuman, which I’ve discussed at length in the past.

  It’s also why I think Zack Snyder’s Justice League {ZSJL} was a major turning point in the culture war, because the fans overrode the studio, exposing their betrayal of good storytelling for personal political gain. They butchered ZSJL and its predecessor on purpose to kill the franchise and create something both incomprehensible (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) and hollow (2017’s Justice League)

  That’s how much Warner Bros. executives hate Zack Synder and the basic message of his DCEU films:

  Chaos is bad, men need to be strong, and unite against madmen who are irredeemable.

  Management are furious by the runaway success {of ZSJL}, across the globe…This movie touched a deep nerve with a lot of people, especially in China (330 million views in the first 7 days), and whose release, in and of itself, feels like an inflection point.

  Snyder’s DC films aren’t woke, they are archetypal. The more this story about how Warner Bros’ execs screwing Snyder over gets out, the worse it looks for them and the more momentum the fans have to get stories they want, not the stories the powers want to give them.

  … or the stories the powers think we need, which is the fine line between propaganda and art.

  With Warner Brothers Discovery now a reality, everything DC in the pipeline is being retooled and all attempts to leave poison pills behind with billions of dollars tied up in bad projects blocked by new CEO David Zaslav, it’s looking like my call about ZSJL being an inflection point in the culture war was prophetic.

  Disney hasn’t yet cleaned house and possibly never will.

  I stopped referring to Star Wars as a fairy tale years ago, recognizing that it has risen for some to the level of Creation Myth. The bitter divide over the Original Trilogy vs. the Sequel Trilogy is a kind of incel version of the Old Testament/New Testament divide.

  It’s not that Star Wars is a good replacement for these far older, richer stories. It is that Star Wars has become that replacement for too many in our world today. As such, we have to recognize the angst surrounding it is real, even if the reality in which that angst was generated is a false one.

  They are in need of something more.

  

  This is why The Mandalorian was such a hit with all Star Wars fans. It restored some faith.

  Again from last year’s article on this subject:

  With two good guys who have deep storytelling chops now effectively running Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni and John Favreau, Star Wars will regain ‘the high ground’ in the culture war over the next decade.

  Now, today I’m not as sure of this statement as I was then, because Disney’s leadership has shown itself to be so thoroughly compromised.

  But if Star Wars comes back in full it will be despite the internal war within Disney and Lucasfilm. They will have to respond in part because of the competition on the horizon from Warner Discovery and also because burning Disney to the ground will leave it vulnerable to the same forces which led Elon Musk to buy Twitter.

  The Way Forward

  Embedded to the core of Star Wars is this idea of the power of stories to sustain culture. The mythology of the Jedi’s impartiality helped sustain the Old Republic for “a thousand generations,” even as they became hidebound and dogmatic.

  George Lucas built Star Wars on this idea, a mythology for a culture losing touch with its old traditions. Early returns are that he was successful. Star Wars will have to last a hundred years as a playground for storytellers to acquire even a smidgen of that power.

  Canonically, the collapse of the Jedi and the cynicism of Luke Skywalker as expressed in The Last Jedi is what spurred Favreau and Filoni to create The Mandalorian and heal the divide in the fanbase.

  Mando’s story is the opposite of Luke’s: A bad man driven by faith in an ancient creed to protect the innocent Grogu (Baby Yoda). That faith leads him to self-sacrifice but also challenging the creed’s self-negation to plant the seeds of spiritual rebirth in the post-Empire chaos through which hope springs in all of us.

  The creed he follows is even older than The Republic, a story of the historical conflicts between Mandalorians and Jedi going back 10,000 years. Those stories have sustained the most faithful even through racial purges, deadly civil wars, and the Empire’s turning Mandalore to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

  It is truly powerful stuff, of the type new myths are born from. Mando’s story will be finding a new relationship with his creed that restores Mandalore, just like Luke did with the Jedi creed.

  “This is the way,” has joined “May the Force be with you,” as the rallying cry of a generation of people inspired by a story. To bear the burden of rebuilding a fallen world takes both fortitude and faith, hope and strength.

  And it shows you just how far Disney has fallen as a company that it succumbed to madness about race, sex and parental rights in service of false realities rather than seek the truth inherent in its own stories.

  The way out of the crisis is through it.

  *  *  *

  Join my Patreon if you want to get real.

  BTC: 3GSkAe8PhENyMWQb7orjtnJK9VX8mMf7Zf
  BCH: qq9pvwq26d8fjfk0f6k5mmnn09vzkmeh3sffxd6ryt
  DCR: DsV2x4kJ4gWCPSpHmS4czbLz2fJNqms78oE
  LTC: MWWdCHbMmn1yuyMSZX55ENJnQo8DXCFg5k
  DASH: XjWQKXJuxYzaNV6WMC4zhuQ43uBw8mN4Va
  ETH: 0x1dd2e6cddb02e3839700b33e9dd45859344c9edc
  DGB: SXygreEdaAWESbgW6mG15dgfH6qVUE5FSE
  ARRR: zs132w864erce9x8lmcmlnv8vw05p646kp0uxy29q82ak4n9504at0sut3eu3kmscn5yqhtje2yjyv

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 18:45

• DHS Creating 'Disinformation Governance Board' Ahead Of Midterms
  DHS Creating ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Ahead Of Midterms

  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to control narratives combat whatever they deem ‘misinformation’ before the 2022 midterms and beyond.

  According to Politico, the new entity will focus on ‘misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.”

  It’s only been a couple days since Elon purchased Twitter and the government has already formed a Ministry of Truth https://t.co/mWwyrRP9lv

  — Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) April 27, 2022

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

  It will be headed by Nina Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

  She also sings erotic Harry Potter songs.

  Cat’s out of the bag: here’s what I’ve been up to the past two months, and why I’ve been a bit quiet on here.

  Honored to be serving in the Biden Administration @DHSgov and helping shape our counter-disinformation efforts. https://t.co/uN20vl7qqV pic.twitter.com/JEn4FqLdck

  — Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) April 27, 2022

  So basically the same group of disinformation agents who lied about the Hunter Biden laptop, President Trump, COVID lockdowns, deaths in nursing homes, etc will now create a board to protect us from them? https://t.co/E1O54uBj0r

  — Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) April 27, 2022

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

  “The goal is to bring the resources of (DHS) together to address this threat,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during Wednesday testimony.

  

  News of the DHS entity comes just days after Elon Musk secured a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, which he’s vowed to change into a free speech platform within the bounds of the law.

  As PJ Media notes:

  Jankowicz has written two books, How to Lose the Information War and How to Be A Woman Online. In a pinned tweet pimping her newly released second book, Jankowiz lets her inner misandry loose and writes, “Men ‘burst violently into your mentions and your life like the Kool-aid man, demanding your attention, hawking opinions that they believe are unarguably, manifestly correct and indispensable.’”

  As a thought experiment – what do you think the “Disinformation Governance Board” would have done with the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 US election – which Democratic politicians and dozens of former intelligence officials swore had ‘all the hallmarks’ of a Russian disinformation campaign – a claim which turned out to be misinformation itself?

  They didn’t need a ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ until @elonmusk threatened their control over the narrative.

  — Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) April 27, 2022

  She pushed propaganda designed to help Joe Biden out of a scandal 3 weeks before the 2020 election.

  The Senate must act to stop her from doing more damage. https://t.co/tHyABHrLmM

  — Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) April 27, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 18:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Can Africa Offer An Alternative To Russian Gas?
  Can Africa Offer An Alternative To Russian Gas?

  Europe is turning to Africa for help with weaning them off their dependence on Russia’s natural gas supply, as the war in Ukraine continues to escalate.

  It’s a move supported by Akinwumi Adesina, the head of the African Development Bank, who said in March, “Europe is looking for alternative sources of gas supply. This can be in Africa.”

  Now, Italy is conducting a diplomatic campaign to discuss the possible diversification of its energy imports, having carried out visits to Algeria and Egypt before Easter, followed by Congo and Angola this month.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details in the infographic above, the continent’s largest natural gas exporters by far are Algeria and Nigeria, each with between 35,000 and 40,000 million cubic meters shipped abroad in 2020 (ranked 7th and 8th globally). Last year, these countries were the only two African suppliers of gas to the European Union, accounting for 17 and 4 percent of the EU’s natural gas imports, respectively.

  The other major players in the region are Egypt, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, and Angola.

  While countries in sub-Saharan Africa have gas reserves, they have not had the interest from abroad and investment needed for the industry to open up access to Europe, according to Al Jazeera.

  Three pipelines currently bring natural gas from Africa to Europe:

  • the Transmed, which allows the export from Algeria to Italy (via Tunisia),

  • the Medgaz, which connects Algeria to Spain under the sea,

  • as well as the Greenstream, more modest in capacity, which connects Libya to Sicily.

  Due to diplomatic tensions with Morocco, Algeria closed the Maghreb-Europe (GME) pipeline, which passes through its neighbor’s territory, last October.

  From 2027, the NIGAL pipeline is expected to transport natural gas from Nigeria (which exports mainly by sea), but construction of this pipeline has not yet begun.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 02:45

• Finland, Sweden Plan To Apply To Join NATO In May: Reports
  Finland, Sweden Plan To Apply To Join NATO In May: Reports

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Finland and Sweden have agreed to both apply for NATO membership next month, local media outlets from the two Scandinavian countries reported on Monday.

  According to the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti, Sweden suggested the two countries “indicate their willingness” to join the Western military alliance on the same day and Finland agreed “as long as the Swedish government has made its decision.”

  

  The Swedish newspaper Expressen later cited Swedish government sources who confirmed the Iltalehti report. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and her Swedish counterpart, Magdalena Andersson, are set to meet during the week of May 16 and are expected to announce their intention to seek a NATO membership after that.

  However, following the reports Finland tried to reign in speculation on a specific timetable: 

  Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto has said it would be “useful” for Sweden and Finland to launch joint Nato membership bids.

  But he said that no fixed date had been set for any potential application.

  The comments came as Nordic media reported the countries could launch a simultaneous bid to join the security bloc next month.

  Earlier this month, Marin and Andersson met in Stockholm to discuss the possibility of joining NATO, a discussion prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After the meeting, Marin said Finland would decide on whether to apply to join NATO in “weeks, not months”.

  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said he believes all 30 members of the military alliance would welcome Sweden and Finland. “If they decide to apply, I expect that all allies will welcome them,” Stoltenberg said in early April. “We know that they can easily join this alliance if they decide to apply.”

  Separately on Monday, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that Sweden had received promises from the US and Britain of an increased military presence in the region and “strong political support” from NATO members during the application process.

  

  Sweden and Finland joining NATO would significantly increase tensions with Russia in the region as Moscow has warned it will bolster its forces along the over 800-mile border it shares with Finland. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has hinted Russia could deploy nuclear and hypersonic missiles in response.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/27/2022 – 02:00

• Global Military Spending Tops $2 Trillion For First Time In History
  Global Military Spending Tops $2 Trillion For First Time In History

  Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams, 

  Global military expenditures surpassed $2 trillion for the first time ever last year, with the United States spending more on its war-making capacity than the next nine nations combined, according to new data published Monday.

  The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported an all-time high of $2.1 trillion in worldwide military spending for 2021, a 0.7% increase from 2020 levels and the seventh straight year of increased expenditures. 

  

  “Even amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, world military spending hit record levels,” SIPRI senior researcher Diego Lopes da Silva said in a statement. “There was a slowdown in the rate of real-terms growth due to inflation. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1%.”

  Tori Bateman, policy advocacy coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said that “this year, we’ve seen how military spending fails to keep us safe. It’s shameful that governments, especially the United States, continue to destabilize our world with more weapons, while failing to address climate change, public health, and other true global crises.”

  “It’s time for the United States, and world leaders everywhere, to cut military spending and commit to solving our problems for real,” she added.

  With $801 billion—or 38% of total global military spending—the United States spent more in 2021 than the next nine nations combined: China ($293 billion), India ($76.6 billion), the United Kingdom ($68.4 billion), Russia ($65.9 billion), France ($56.6 billion), Germany ($56 billion), Saudi Arabia ($55.6 billion), Japan ($54.1 billion), and South Korea ($50.2 billion).

  U.S. funding for military research and development increased by nearly a quarter between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement expenditures fell by 6.4% over that same period, a trend that “suggests that the United States is focusing more on next-generation technologies,” according to SIPRI researcher Alexandra Marksteiner.

  “The U.S. government has repeatedly stressed the need to preserve the U.S. military’s technological edge over strategic competitors,” she added.

  The latest SIPRI analysis comes weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden rejected progressive lawmakers’ calls for Pentagon spending cuts and asked Congress to green-light more than $813 in new military spending for the next fiscal year—a $31 billion increase from current levels.

  World military expenditure reached an all-time high of $2.1 trillion in 2021, the seventh consecutive year that spending increased. New SIPRI data out now.

  Press Release ➡️ https://t.co/9dsFAulApR
  French ➡️ https://t.co/UfndNpD5Cr
  Swedish ➡️ https://t.co/x7yN1Pg3DJ#GDAMS2022 pic.twitter.com/6cV9U1ykw0

  — SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) April 25, 2022

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

  That amount includes nearly $146 billion for the procurement of new weaponry, including Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, Northrup Grumman B-21 bombers, and Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarines manufactured by General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries.

  The new SIPRI report also comes as some of the largest U.S. weapons makers are gearing up for what is expected to be a big earnings week as the West’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine—providing Ukrainian forces with billions of dollars in weaponry—fuels arms industry profits. Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the National Priorities Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, recently noted that “spending 12 times as much on our military as Russia didn’t prevent a war in Europe. It just deprived us of resources at home.”

  “Even during a pandemic, supply chain crisis, and painful inflation, we’ll put more resources into the military and war than public health, education, green jobs, affordable housing, scientific and medical research, child care, and every other domestic need—combined,” she wrote. “This special treatment for the Pentagon recklessly squanders precious resources that could be used to strengthen our families and communities against our compounding crises at home.”

  Last week, an analysis by In These Times and Zain Rizvi at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen revealed that the U.S. has spent 7.5 times more money on nuclear weapons than on global Covid-19 vaccine donations, despite Biden’s pledge that “America will become the arsenal of vaccines as we were the arsenal of democracy during World War II.”

  “What’s keeping us safe,” asked Koshgarian, “Is it maintaining this huge nuclear stockpile or delivering these vaccines?”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 23:40

• US Army To Test "Largest Drone Swarm Ever" In Utah Desert
  US Army To Test “Largest Drone Swarm Ever” In Utah Desert

  A swarm of military drones will be launched over the Utah desert as part of an international field training exercise later this month, according to a report published by The War Zone. The swarm will comprise of 30 small drones for a dual air-assault mission.

  “I think what you’re going to see is an expansive use of electronic warfare and an expansive use of our interactive drone swarm,” Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, head of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, told The War Zone. 

  “We feel like we’re going to be flying the largest interactive drone swarm ever in partnership with DARPA and our science and technology experts out of Aviation and Missile Command,” Rugen said. 

  The test will occur at the Army’s 2022 Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise, which runs from April 25 to May 12 at Dugway Proving Ground near Salt Lake City, Utah. The service will use a combination of ALTIUS 600 and Coyote drones by Raytheon. 

  ALTIUS 600’s range is about 276 miles and can operate for four hours. Depending on payloads, the drone weighs 20-27 pounds and can be outfitted with a warhead head for offensive missions. Meanwhile, Coyote drones provide reconnaissance. 

  The drones will be launched from an assortment of aircraft and ground vehicles. 

  “We’ll be launching them pretty much, you know, Monster Garage-style, anyway we can,” Rugen said. “Which again shows, in my mind, just the flexibility of our air-launched effects initiatives because we can launch it from the air. We can launch it from the ground. We can launch from fixed-wing, rotary-wing, any type of ground vehicle.”

  The drones will form a swarm where surveillance ones with infrared sensors and electronic warfare payloads will detect and relay intelligence to human operators overseeing the operation. Humans will decide how to engage the enemy targets, whether through suicide drones or other firepower means. 

  Earlier this month, the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center released a short animation of a similar drone swarm scenario.

  Judging by the Biden administration’s speed in transferring small high-tech drones to Ukraine, these new drone swarms could make their way to the war-torn country in the near term. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 23:20

• The Coming Removal Of The Mandate Of Heaven, Part 3: Political Infighting
  The Coming Removal Of The Mandate Of Heaven, Part 3: Political Infighting

  By Eric Mertz of the General Crisis Watch Substack,

  Read The Coming Removal Of The Mandate Of Heaven, Part 0: China’s Founding Myths here…

  Read The Coming Removal Of The Mandate Of Heaven, Part 1: Food here…

  Read The Coming Removal Of The Mandate Of Heaven, Part 2: Water here…

  A journey into the hall of mirrors which is modern Chinese politics

  

  I want to preface this article by stating everything I say here could be wrong.

  Modern Chinese politics is a hall of mirrors, and the true allegiance of every player in the game is known only to themselves. As such, we on the outside are left with no choice but to try and interpret what we see and understand it using logic and critical thinking – and all the while knowing it’s entirely plausible our own biases are warping what we’re seeing.

  So take all of this with a grain of salt and do your own research.

  Until then, let’s break out the thumbtacks and string.

  Chinese Communist Party

  Economic Stakes

  Before we can talk about the factions within the Party, we need to clear up a common myth.

  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP, officially the Communist Party of China in English translations) is not actually communist. It hasn’t been since Deng Xiaoping lifted the boot of the state off the collective throats of the Chinese people in December of 1978 enough for the Chinese people to breathe.

  This lessening of pressure on the Chinese people was just enough for China to transition from Communism to Fascism.

  Such an allegation is going to be a tough sell, so let me point you to the Foundation for Economic Education’s definition and after you’ve finished reading it, come on back for a discussion of the arguments in favor of Deng turning China into a fascist state.

  Corporatism

  The one core aspect of fascism you will find anywhere is the tendency to corporatism. As the FEE points out, this usually manifests in the existence of a single organization that represents all interests within a given constituency, which is very true of the Chinese economy and what passes for a civil society. These organizations have an appointed leader chosen by the Party, and they subordinate the interests of the group to that of the State and by extension the Party.

  These groups maintain sufficient autonomy to pursue the directives handed down by the State in the most efficient manner they’re allowed so they can solve the issues the State tried – and failed – to solve under Mao. To that extent, 1,400 such organizations exist throughout China – with 19,600 provincial branches and 160,000 county-level branches for these organizations.

  Protectionism and Autarky

  Fascism is the marriage of socialism to nationalism, and in economics this manifests in the form of protectionism and autarky. China has shown its willingness to engage in this through its deliberate manipulation of the Yuan to manipulate the balance of trade and the extensive subsidies granted to domestic firms as a means of choking out foreign firms when it comes to competition both at home and abroad.

  Suppression of Labor Unions

  In China, every trade union is legally required to be a member of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, with their interests subordinated to the state via a ban on the collective bargaining tactics protected in law in Western nations and the appointment of labor union leaders by external powers rather than through an election by members of the association.

  Overview of the Faction System

  The factional system discussed below originated out of the concerns for the legitimacy of the party moving forward after the death of the leadership who fought the Chinese Civil War and defeated the Kuomintang and the National Resistance Army after the CCP hid in the mountains and sold opium during the war against the Japanese.

  To that end, the new party leadership claimed legitimacy on the basis of two pillars – the growth of the economy and the improvement of the standard of living, and the creation of patronage systems that would guarantee jobs for educated young men and women. This patronage would bind ambitious young party apparatchiks into a chain of command where they would act as clients within the Party and State of their patrons – and by extension see a 30% higher chance of being promoted once a spot opened up.

  When Deng Xiaoping took power and announced he was going to share power to prevent the disaster which was the Mao era from reoccurring, two factions emerged – the Shanghai Clique and the Communist Youth League Clique. The Shanghai Clique had undisputed hegemony over the Party from 1989 and the ascension of Jiang Zemin until Hu Jintao was able to secure his first term as President in 2002.

  Hu Jintao and his ally, Li Keqiang, struck a deal with Jiang Zemin wherein the two factions would share power and trade positions in turn. Certain positions within the cabinet of the executive branch would be set aside for each clique in the opposition’s government – each seat associated with the political base which the clique represented – to ensure both groups worked together and neither felt threatened.

  Within this structure, the Communist Youth League Faction was a populist organization that represented the rural provinces and the internal illegal migrants who were flocking to the cities looking for work despite the fact they lacked the hùkǒu (household registration permit which allows an individual to live in a given location) or dān wèi (work unit which created a de facto caste system within the Chinese economy and controlled what job one was legally allowed to work and where). In contrast, the Shanghai Clique represented the coastal regions and the State-Owned Enterprises and large cartels on the coasts who were the primary source of hard currency by which China imported food and coal.

  After Hu served his two terms, it was decided the CCP needed to prevent either clique from establishing full hegemony over the State or the Party, so the choice was made to place Xi Jinping as the next President of the People’s Republic of China.

  This proved to be a mistake.

  Tsinghua Clique

  Based out of Beijing, the Tsinghua Clique has as its core a cadre of students and teachers from Tsinghua University. Tsinghua is a member of the C9 League (the Chinese equivalent to the Ivy League) and a Double First-Class University (a designation of the university’s priority in terms of funding to ensure it is able to compete academically on the world stage).

  As with the Shanghai Clique, the Tsinghua Clique is a complex network of interpersonal relationships between patron and client, with Xi Jinping and President of the Central Party School and Vice-Minister for Education Chen Xi at their center.

  The Tsinghua Clique has effectively shut down the Communist Youth League Clique as a faction within Chinese politics, with large numbers of loyal party members from rural provinces such as Fujian and Shaanxi and sidelining the Premier of the People’s Republic of China (the de facto Head of Government) who had been placed as Xi’s second in command by the CCP as part of the initial plan to share power between the Shanghai and CYL Cliques.

  However, the rapid expansion of the Tsinghua Clique has come with very real concern regarding competency. Xi has reportedly personally played a role in promoting men known for their loyalty rather than their competency, with very real concerns of a looming disaster should they hit a disaster they are not ready to face.

  Such as the outbreak of a global pandemic.

  Part of this rapid consolidation of power has been the placing of key personnel in the Military, Domestic Security Services, Party, and Economy, and, perhaps most importantly, in the Party Organization Department. In the case of the economy, this has gone as far as completely cutting the Premier out of his normal role as manager for the Chinese economy – a de facto role which dates back to Deng Xiaoping’s “liberalization” of the economy; while in his role as Head of the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party Chen has been placed in charge of staffing every Party Organ and State Agency.

  Combined with the strict hierarchy within the party, this has meant serious problems for the rival factions within the party. Chen has moved rapidly to use his position to staff any opening with either an ally of his and Xi’s, or with clients thereof, often rapidly promoting individuals up the chain as new positions come open. The two have also worked together to wield greater control over the workings of their subordinates both within the Party and in the State, in direct contrast to Hu Jintao’s more hands-off approach.

  Meanwhile, Xi and Chen were instrumental in moving their allies into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support Minister of Foreign Affairs and State Counselor Wang Yi, and helped set a radical change of direction in terms of foreign policy.

  Under Deng Xiaoping, China chose a more conciliatory foreign policy to ensure a peaceful rise to prominence without presenting a threat to the world, using the language of cooperation to court foreign investment that the CCP could use to gain strength and attain some level of prosperity. Instead, China under Deng and Jiang would seek to work behind the scenes, influencing other nations covertly through the use of bilateral relations and occasionally trade deals.

  The Tsinghua Clique began to radically change this course in 2017, when they began to take a more belligerent tone with the rest of the world. Billed as a response to growing hostility towards the CCP abroad, Xi claimed it was time for China to step out of the shadows and take a more assertive place on the world stage.

  This new diplomatic stance would be dubbed “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” after the 2017 film “Wolf Warrior 2”.

  Xi Jinping

  

  The most powerful man in China, Xi Jinping is the son of the former top Propaganda Minister and Mao’s former number two before he was purged at Mao’s order for supporting the publishing of a biography of a party martyr which Mao’s internal security chief claimed was a front to rehabilitate Gao Gang. When all education above that of the primary level was abolished and students were ordered to bring their teachers forward for struggle sessions, Xi was in Middle School. His home was ransacked, his sister Xi Heping committed suicide due to the militant nature of the student radicals and Xi’s mother was dragged before the people and forced to denounce her husband as an enemy of the people and of the revolution.

  Xi would be sent to a village in rural Shaanxi and forced to live in a cave house as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. There, he worked as a Secretary for the village party where he was required to assist in the activities of the Cultural Revolution before he ran away to Beijing. He was eventually caught, placed in one of the detention facilities run by the Red Guards, and returned to the village he’d “deserted” to dig ditches before he was “allowed” to return to white-collar work with the party for seven years before he was able to bribe his way into party membership.

  This lack of formal education is noticeable in his speech, where Xi speaks with a middle-school level of fluency in Mandarin and often finds himself struggling to discuss more technical issues. Despite this, Xi was able to make sufficient connections to get himself a position at Tsinghua University, where he studied political science and Marxist theory – graduating with a doctorate in the field.

  It was here that Xi would meet the allies who would help propel him to become the most powerful man in China since Jiang Zemin.

  Xi’s Titles include:

  • Paramount Leader

  • President* of the People’s Republic of China

  • Chairman of the Central Military Commission

  • General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

  *Although the position has been translated as “President” since 1982, the Chinese title for the Head of Government “Guójiā Zhǔxí” is the same as that used for the Chairman of the Central Military Commission “Zhōngyāng Jūnwěi Zhǔxí”. The change in 1982 was a result of China’s shift away from the Soviet Union in favor of closer ties to the US. However, the translation of “Chairman” is a more accurate translation than that of “President”, which is best translated into Chinese as “Zǒngtǒng”.

  Shanghai Clique

  The other major player, though far weaker these days, is the Shanghai Clique established by Jiang Zemin during his rise to power following the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

  With a power base in China’s Special Economic Zones along the coast, the Shanghai Clique has a reputation within China as a party of corrupt elitists who’re primarily interested in using foreign trade as a means to enrich themselves. From the Shanghai Clique’s perspective, this foreign trade is the lifeblood of China, and the wealth gained from exports is the only thing keeping China moving and fed. This is an accurate perspective, as China is heavily dependent on imports to provide food, coal, and oil.

  Traditionally, members of the Clique sought positions in Shanghai as it was the training and testing grounds where they could attain higher positions in the nation as a whole. Positions within Shanghai were thus highly sought after, and Jiang and his allies would use their patronage network to find the best candidates from across the country to cycle them through the city. This had the double effect of creating a patronage network that would, in theory, live beyond Jiang’s retirement – or even his death.

  Jiang Zemin

  

  An unlikely leader of China, Jiang Zemin was the compromise candidate to fill Zhao Ziyang’s position as General Secretary of the CCP after Zhao was forcibly vacated from the seat for having supported the Tiananmen Square protests.

  Before this, Jiang had been one of the most powerful CCP officials in the south, and was Deng’s point man for the liberalization of the Chinese economy from Communism to Fascism.

  As a child, Jiang was raised by his uncle and aunt – Jiang Shangqing and Wang Zhelan – due to the infertility of their marriage. Until, that is, Shangqing was killed fighting the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Jiang would grow up in Nanjing under the governance of the Imperial Japanese Army, managing to gain an education despite the horrors imposed by the IJA in the city.

  After college, he joined the CCP and was named Economic Minister of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1983 before being sent to Shanghai to serve as mayor. It was here Jiang would truly step up as the point-man of Deng’s economic reforms and establish his power base.

  His elevation to the Party Secretary for Shanghai in 1987 brought with it an automatic seat in the Politburo, just in time for the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Widely regarded as little more than a potted flower*, the various factions who sought to fill Zhao’s vacated seat eventually agreed to him as a compromise as they stepped back to reconsolidate their powerbases and forge alliances.

  This proved to be a tactical mistake.

  Jiang used Tiananmen Square as an example of Deng’s failure to properly pursue ideological training of the youth, with a heavy focus on staffing the propaganda ministry with loyalists. Supporters of the political liberalization movement in general – and of democracy in particular – were thoroughly purged from positions within the Party propaganda organs.

  When Deng died, Jiang took the country in a new direction. Viewing the widening gap between provinces in terms of GDP as a threat to the legitimacy of the party, especially with the sheer level of corruption (estimated to be consuming an average of 10% of the economy) which had accompanied it along the coast. Unemployment in some areas rose to 40% at this point, State-Owned Enterprises were shuttering due to an inability to compete, the Iron Rice Bowl** was broken, organized crime began to spread rapidly, and rural peasants were streaming into the cities.

  Jiang began to crack down on the economy of the coastal regions during this era, and began to move clients within the party who were patronized by his allies into higher positions whenever a new position opened. This placed him in the perfect position to claim the title of Paramount Leader when a new “threat emerged”.

  In 1992, the practice of traditional stretching and breathing exercises known as Qigong began to take China by storm. Initially, this had considerable support from the CCP as it was perceived to promote the health of the people – something which would translate into greater productivity. However, within 3 years the various qigong groups – of which Falun Gong had become the largest – were viewed as having too much power within the Party and by extension the government after the leadership within the State mandated Qigong Associated rejected being co-opted by the party.

  Jiang ordered the practice suppressed, banning books and publications in the process. State-owned media began to refer to Falun Gong as “peasant superstition” and proclaimed the religious aspects were at odds with China’s status as an officially atheist state.

  On April 22, 1999, a group of Falun Gong practitioners staged a sit-in protest in Tianjian against the government’s policies of repression. They were beaten and arrested, with onlookers told the orders came from the Ministry of Propaganda in Beijing.

  Three days later, 10,000 practitioners descended on Beijing to peacefully assemble to demand the release of those who had been arrested.

  It was the largest mass protest action since Tiananmen Square and the first one to ever occur at the government compound.

  Jiang responded by constructing an entirely new extrajudicial organ of repression, the 610 Office, to persecute Falun Gong practitioners at home and abroad.

  *Potted flower is an insult in Chinese which indicates one is ornamental but ultimately useless.

  **The Iron Rice Bowl was a series of guaranteed jobs in State-Owned Enterprises, the military, and the civil service. The individual holding the rice bowl may be shuffled around within the organization, but couldn’t be fired.

  Communist Youth League Clique

  The former rival faction to the Shanghai Clique, the Communist Youth League Clique was formed from the adult leadership of the CYL at the time of Deng Xiaoping’s decision to transfer to a system of collective leadership.

  Originally founded with the idea of training new cadres who could take over running the country as the revolutionary cadre retired, the refusal of the old revolutionaries to retire frustrated their ambitions. The CYL Cadre likely would have remained in the political wilderness if Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang hadn’t taken advantage of Deng’s move to open the governance of the country.

  The cornerstone of the CYL Clique was a populist opposition towards the coastal bias at the expense of the hinterlands. With growing inequality between the rural hinterlands and the industrial and commercial coastal regions, the rural region had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo.

  Politicians associated with the CYL Clique have focused on steering investment in the economy towards the rural areas, and were the only politicians in the CCP who expressed interest in dealing with the environmental issues which have been plaguing the country (see Part 2 for more on this). They also placed a strong emphasis on shared power and responsibility, refusing to consolidate their power when they had the chance.

  However, the CYL Clique’s hands-off attitude towards management and redirection of funds from the coastal areas to the hinterlands caused severe corruption issues and drove dissatisfaction with their leadership. Dissatisfaction which was compounded by the failures in how Hu and his associates failed to respond appropriately to the SARS outbreak.

  Failures which the CCP would repeat when SARS reared its ugly head again in 2019.

  Red Aristocracy

  Less a faction than a strata within Chinese society, the Red Aristocracy is the highly unofficial but very real collection of the children and grandchildren of high-ranking officials from the early years of the CCP. Lacking formal leadership or any kind of unity, the Red Aristocracy is less a faction than a loose collection of vaguely aligned interests centered in the military with little representation in politics.

  This lack of unity or formal leadership means they lack the patronage systems which help the members of more formally defined cliques. It has allowed the ascendant Tsinghua Clique to cut their power – cutting their seats on the Politburo and the Central Committee by half. When Xi, himself a Princeling, came to power, he did so with the backing of the Red Aristocracy within the military’s various State-Owned Enterprises.

  The increasingly technocratic nature of the CCP has further sidelined the PLA from the factional games, largely due to the lack of any cross-training between the military and the civil administration.

  Infighting

  Current Politburo

  -Xi Jinping – Tsinghua Clique

  -Li Keqiang – CYL Clique

  -Li Zhanshu – Tsinghua Clique

  -Wang Yang – CYL Clique

  -Zhao Leji – Tsinghua Clique

  -Han Zheng – Shanghai Clique

  -Wang Huning – Shanghai Clique

  Political Warfare

  Anti-Corruption Drive

  One of the most important things Xi has done was the merger of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection with several other independent organizations into the National Supervisory Commission at the cabinet level in 2018. Corruption has been rampant in the era when Hu Jintao was running the country, and the investigations into corrupt officials are likely valid. However, lacking an independent judiciary, any convictions handed down by a Chinese court are not.

  This is not helped by the fact we know several high-ranking members of the Shanghai Clique have been purged – only to have their positions replaced by loyal members of the Tsinghua Clique. This has occurred in every institution over which Xi has authority over; the Party, the State, the People’s Liberation Army, the State-Owned Enterprise cartels, and the various Internal Security apparatuses.

  This has even resulted in the execution of officials such as former Director of Public Security for Inner Mongolia, Zhao Liping, and Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of a State-Owned Enterprise named China Huarong Asset Management Co., Ltd., Lai Xiaomin. Over 170 high-ranking party officials have been expelled from the CCP, with a significant number of them having been given significant prison sentences – including 35 high-ranking members of the Central Committee, former head of China’s domestic surveillance apparatus, Zhou Yongkang, and even former Politburo member, Sun Zhengcai.

  Poverty Alleviation

  If you recall from the section on the Communist Youth League Clique, their rise to power was largely fueled by populist discontent over the imbalance in economic investment. While the coast is full of shining cities which glisten in the sun, the Chinese hinterlands are deeply impoverished. Peasant families rely on coal-fire stoves built into the base of their beds to stay warm, dilapidated houses are common, and poverty is widespread.

  Recognizing the potential threat this poses to the Tsinghua Clique’s hold on power, Xi decided to steal Hu Jintao’s playbook and ran with it. In 2012 alone, Xi ensured the rural hinterlands received twice the amount of money that these regions received in all of Hu Jintao’s second five-year term. Combined with attacks on the Communist Youth League Clique in media as elitists who’re only using the rural communities for power, and cut financial support for the organization which gave the Clique its name by half.

  Party Games

  Meanwhile, Xi has cut the membership of the rival organizations in both the Central Committee and the Politburo by half. These dismissed individuals have been replaced with members of the Tsinghua Clique, or in some cases simply not-at-all. Acceptance into the party has been cut by half, with the CCP shrinking as a percentage of the population for the first time since the end of the Chinese Civil War.

  Meanwhile, the Tsinghua Clique has managed to use expulsions and reshuffling of positions within the Party and the State to place their people in control of the cities of Tianjian, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Guangzhou. This has created an anocratic nightmare, where the Shanghai Clique or the Communist Youth League Clique are competing with the Tsinghua Clique within the governing structure of the State.

  It is widely speculated among China Watchers that this is playing a role in the disaster which the world is watching unfold in Shanghai right now.

  Those purged have been subjected to torture, forced confessions, and even coerced suicide.

  Bloodshed

  However, these party games are nothing compared to the blood which has been shed.

  Xi has reportedly survived six assassination attempts on his life by rival cliques.

  Primarily carried out by Communist Youth League Clique partymen, these assassination attempts include an instance where Xi’s car was deliberately struck by another vehicle twice on the same day in September of 2014 and what appears to have been a coup attempt in March 2012 which was only quashed by the PLA. The Shanghai Clique, meanwhile, reportedly attempted to use police officials to kill Xi using police officers in a city in the south. In both instances, Xi has responded with extensive purges, often targeting security personnel and replacing them with members of his Clique.

  There have even been accusations of terrorism having been carried out by rival groups.

  On August 12, 2015, two explosions ripped through the Port of Tianjian. 800 metric tons of ammonium nitrate which had been sitting at the port awaiting export exploded late in the evening, killing 173 people and injuring hundreds more. Toxic substances such as sodium cyanide were released in the explosion, and toxic gases were present at dangerous levels for weeks after. When it rained six days later, the streets of the Beijing suburb were covered in white foam, and residents who were out and about complained of rashes and burns from caustic chemicals in the rain.

  Officially, the cause of the explosion was listed as auto-ignition of nitrocellulose which had been stored close to the ammonium nitrate. The hot weather had reportedly caused the wetting agent in the nitrocellulose to evaporate away, resulting in an explosion.

  However, reports indicate Xi has decided this wasn’t an accident.

  Unverified reports indicate PLA munitions were found at the site, with serial numbers tracing back to armories under the control of PLA officers loyal to Jiang Zemin.

  Military Role

  The PLA has not been spared. Xi has reportedly purged 165 General or Flag Officers from the PLA for corruption connected to State-Owned Enterprises in the PLA orbit – either directly owned by the PLA, by the Central Military Commission, or which are suppliers to the PLA.

  Despite this, the growing professionalism of the PLA and the growing bifurcation between the Administrative and Military branches of the CCP has resulted in both becoming more technocratic and reducing the cross-training which was more common in the era of Mao and Deng.

  This has prevented much of the head-counting and factional games which were present in previous eras and have served to sideline the Princelings from the power games of the administrative portions of the CCP. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic, it was largely assumed this meant a succession crisis was unlikely, as the PLA was unlikely to take a hand in choosing Xi’s successor unless China suffered a serious crisis that harmed the internal harmony of the State or weakened China’s economic growth.

  Xi’s Zero COVID policies have done both, and have brought the PLA into the heart of every major city in China. There, they have become enforcers of lockdowns and the sole means to distribute food to the people as private avenues for the distribution of food has been shut down.

  Economic Front

  Xi has recently cracked down on Big Tech firms connected to Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai Clique, with Jack Ma’s Ant Group being the standout example. One of the key board members of Ant Group is Jiang Guofei, the grandson of Jiang Zemin, and a member of the Shanghai Clique’s private sector branch. It is widely speculated the recent move to prevent Ant Group is connected to this link, along with the perception Jack Ma was a supporter of the Shanghai Clique’s more radical economic wing.

  The latter is an easy charge to make given the fact Alibaba had created a shadow banking, investment, and payment system within China which was only nominally answerable to the control of the People’s Bank of China*.

  However, while the use of the State to rein in Ant Group and force Jack Ma out in favor of a more pliant and reliable CEO has received the most attention from the press, Xi has been busy elsewhere.

  As of 2015, 115 Sate-Owned Enterprises had been purged of members of the Shanghai and Communist Youth League Clique leadership. Chen Xi, and before him Zheo Leji, has used his role as the Head of the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party to fill new vacancies with employees who were private sector clients of high ranking members of the Tsinghua Clique.

  When the oligarchs connected to the Party realized they were in danger, Xi cracked down on their ability to move money overseas. This has created a thriving black market where wealthy and corrupt businessmen in China will purchase a luxury travel package to a casino and resort in Macau where they will play a sufficient number of hands of high-stakes baccarat – sacrificing their losings to pay off the owner – and then convert the chips into a foreign currency. Xi has cracked down on this method of capital outflow as well, even going so far as to have the man who helped facilitate these outflows arrested.

  This has moved the money laundering operations overseas, where Triads in Vancouver – to name a rather interesting example – have set up a racket where oligarchs and corrupt politicians have been able to avoid the long arm of the Chinese law. Using casinos that are owned by the government of British Columbia, dirty money obtained from bribes, no-show jobs, patronage deals, and other corrupt means are then laundered from Yuan into Canadian Dollars and used to buy assets in Canada.

  *People’s Bank of China is China’s central bank. Unlike the Federal Reserve, the PBoC is under the direct control of the central government and has limited freedom to act on its own initiative to pursue monetary policy.

  Propaganda Front

  Jiang Zemin’s use of the propaganda offices to shape thought was vital in cementing the Shanghai Clique as the dominant force in China’s factional contests. As a former member of the Shanghai Clique Xi knew how important this was. Which is why he has so heavily focused on it in the run-up to the March 2023 election to determine whether he will serve a third term.

  To this extent, Xi has radically overhauled the education system.

  For all that China claims to be a new entity, the Confucian emphasis on education and literacy as a path into the bureaucracy and thus to wealth and power still holds – including the use of an entrance exam to determine whether a given student will even be able to attend a higher level of education. Students are only guaranteed education for their compulsory period up through the age of twelve, after which the family must pay for the schooling themselves. This has created a system of private tutoring akin to the cram schools found in Japan for the purpose of passing their high school entrance exam program.

  Or rather, it had.

  With the educational reform program, Beijing has placed these private systems under such strict control as to have effectively banned the program.

  Meanwhile, the CCP is planning to remove English from the core curriculum to make room for the mandatory classes in Xi Jinping Thought. It’s worth noting that this is only the second time in the history of the CCP since a leader’s ideology has been granted the title of Thought – the highest rank recognized under the party constitution – and only the third time propaganda of this time has been mandated as part of the curriculum.

  Hello the West world, it’s your time to be afraid and prepared – China is embracing Maoism (or shall we call it Xi-ism) again.
  Source: https://t.co/gruA7YMf49 pic.twitter.com/xNUX41PAs2

  — The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动官方推号 (@TGTM_Official) April 25, 2022

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

  Combined with a ban on foreign textbooks and a de facto ban on learning foreign languages in favor of Xi’s ideology, this creates a closed ideological loop that makes it far more difficult to question the official ideology of the ruling clique and will help cement their control. This situation is even worse in the Red Army schools which are run by the Red Aristocracy to ensure students will be unquestionably loyal to the Party. A development that Xi has strongly supported as they will help cement his control over the Party – and by extension the State.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 23:00

• Harvard Creates $100 Million Fund To Address Racist Past
  Harvard Creates $100 Million Fund To Address Racist Past

  Harvard University plans to commit $100 million to a new endowment fund to address its historical ties to slavery. 

  Harvard President Lawrence Bacow published a letter to the Harvard Community addressing the school’s uncomfortable truth: its “history includes extensive entanglements with slavery.” 

  “And the truth is that slavery played a significant part in our institutional history. Enslaved people worked on our campus supporting our students, faculty, and staff, including several Harvard presidents. 

  The labor of enslaved people both far and near enriched numerous donors and, ultimately, the institution.

  Some members of our faculty promoted ideas that gave scholarly legitimacy to concepts of racial superiority. 

  And long after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, Harvard continued discriminatory practices that sharply limited the presence of African Americans on our campus,” Bacow said.  

  “Harvard was the first institution of higher learning in America, founded in 1636. Slavery and the slave economy thread through the first 150 years of its history. Slaves made beds and meals for Harvard presidents”https://t.co/TwCjS2u7p2

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 21, 2020

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

  The letter from the president contained a hyperlink to a +100-page report detailing the Ivy League university’s strong connections to slavery, segregation, and discrimination. 

  Slavery was “integral to Harvard,” the report said, adding that segregation and discrimination were typical on campus through the 1900s.  

  The report urged the university to support descendants of those Harvard enslaved, establish a Legacy of Slavery Fund, and work more with Black colleges and universities. Here’s the complete list of recommendations the report laid for how Harvard should spend the money: 

  Recommendation 1: Engage and Support Descendant Communities by Leveraging Harvard’s Excellence in Education 

  Recommendation 2: Honor Enslaved People through Memorialization, Research, Curricula, and Knowledge Dissemination 

  Recommendation 3: Develop Enduring Partnerships with Black Colleges and Universities 

  Recommendation 4: Identify, Engage, and Support Direct Descendants

  Recommendation 5: Honor, Engage, and Support Native Communities 

  Recommendation 6: Establish an Endowed Legacy of Slavery Fund to Support the University’s Reparative Efforts Recommendation 7: Ensure Institutional Accountability

  Recommendation 7: Ensure Institutional Accountability

  Bacow said the new fund would be infused with $100 million, indicating “some of these funds will be available for current use, while the balance will be held in an endowment to support this work overtime.” 

  “Slavery and its legacy have been a part of American life for more than 400 years … the work of further redressing its persistent effects will require our sustained and ambitious efforts for years to come,” he said.

  A $100 million might sound like a lot of money, but it’s peanuts compared to Harvard Management Company, otherwise known as Harvard’s Endowment fund, which has a massive AUM of $53.2 billion (as of the latest figures from 4Q21).

  

  Maybe in the age of ‘wokeness,’ the school has found an easy way to virtue signal its way out of its very racist past. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 22:40

• Cause Of Spike In Homeless Deaths In LA During First Year Of Pandemic Revealed
  Cause Of Spike In Homeless Deaths In LA During First Year Of Pandemic Revealed

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

  There was a more than 50 percent spike in deaths among Los Angeles County’s homeless population during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to recently released data, which found that it was mainly driven by overdoses—not COVID-19.

  

  Los Angeles County, which has been dominated by Democratic executives and elected officials for years, said that between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, some 1,988 overall deaths among the homeless were recorded. That’s up about 56 percent from 1,271 deaths during the same time period one year earlier, said a report from the LA Department of Public Health, dated April 22.

  As a result, the county concluded that drug overdoses remained the top cause of death among homeless individuals during that timeframe. Overdose deaths also increased 78 percent “from the pre- to post-pandemic onset year,” the country wrote.

  There were 402 fatal overdoses in the pre-pandemic year, the country said. That “nearly doubled” to 715 in the first year of the outbreak, LA County said.

  “The findings in this report reflect a true state of emergency,” said LA County First District Supervisor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement. “In a civil society, it is unacceptable for any of us to not be profoundly disturbed by the shocking needs documented in this year’s homeless mortality report.”

  

  

  Heart disease was the second leading causing of death—increasing 29 percent year-over-year—and COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death, said the report. Traffic injuries and homicide were the fourth and fifth leading causes of death, respectively, during that time period, according to officials.

  “The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on people experiencing homelessness has clearly extended beyond the immediate effects of this new and deadly virus,” Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement. “The pandemic has exacerbated stressors already burdening this vulnerable population.”

  Los Angeles, which has favorable weather conditions, is home to the city’s notorious Skid Row district, which has been home to a significant number of homeless people for years now. Recent video footage uploaded to YouTube shows the area dominated by tents, cardboard shelters, old RVs, plywood structures, and other makeshift living quarters strewn about sidewalks and in parking spots.

  A study of San Francisco homeless deaths that was released in March 2022 revealed a similar trend. There were some 331 total homeless fatalities between March 2020 and March 2021, more than twice the previous year, according to findings posted by the University of California San Francisco and the city’s Department of Public Health. They found that drug overdoses were the leading cause of death during the first pandemic year.

  Meanwhile, a study released last week by the University of California-Los Angeles found that the overall quality of life in Los Angeles has dropped to its lowest levels in years.

  The so-called Quality of Life Index survey dipped to an overall rating of 53 out of 100, down five points from last year, according to UCLA.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 22:20

• Pentagon Blasts Russia's Nuclear War Rhetoric & Charge Of Proxy War As "Dangerous"
  Pentagon Blasts Russia’s Nuclear War Rhetoric & Charge Of Proxy War As “Dangerous”

  On Tuesday journalist Glenn Greenwald warned, “Whatever your views on the moral dimensions of this war, it’s hard to deny this is the most dangerous moment in US foreign policy in two decades. Every week, US/NATO involvement in the war intensifies, as Russia explicitly warns of nuclear war. For what?“

  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday in his most alarming comments yet on the Ukraine war warned there is now “considerable” risk of armed conflict spreading beyond Ukraine’s borders. He blasted NATO’s ramped up arms shipments to Kiev as part of its “proxy war” against Moscow, warning further that the possibility of a lead-up to nuclear war “should not be underestimated.” 

  “The risks now are considerable,” Lavrov said of the possibility for nuclear conflict, according to a Russian foreign ministry transcript. “The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it,” he added. “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”

  

  This kind of maximalist talk out of Moscow of the worst-case scenario appears to have completely undeterred Washington or its allies. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the same day promised Ukraine’s government to “keep moving heaven and earth” to ensure its Ukrainian military has whatever it needs to take on the invading Russian forces.

  “My Ukrainian friends: We know the burden that you all carry and we know, and you should know that all of us have your back,” Austin said.

  And on Tuesday, responding specifically to the now widespread reports of Lavrov’s ‘nuclear warning’ – Austin called this talk “dangerous and unhelpful”. He further suggested it’s mere “bluster”:

  “Rattling of sabers and dangerous rhetoric is clearly unhelpful and something that we won’t engage in,” Austin told reporters at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, after hosting the first of what what will become a regular meeting of allied and partner countries known now as the Ukraine Defense Consultative Group in support of the embattled former Soviet state.

  “Any bluster about the possible use of nuclear weapons is dangerous and unhelpful,” Austin said later. “Nobody wants to see a nuclear war, and nobody can win that.”

  Asked today at a press conference in Germany if he is not afraid of a nuclear war and the spread of the war beyond #Ukraine, US Secreatary of Defense Lloyd Austin called “the speculations”. as he said, about the use of nuclear weapons “unhealthy” and “dangerous”, a “bluster. ” pic.twitter.com/SRdwXWlOZa

  — Suzana Starikov (@Intetyst) April 26, 2022

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

  The day prior the Pentagon chief had said the US wants to see a “weakened” Russia due to its Ukraine war. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said at a news conference just after traveling to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

  Meanwhile, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby was also asked about Lavrov’s nuclear rhetoric, responding that “It’s obviously unhelpful, not constructive, and certainly is not indicative of what a responsible [world power] ought to be doing in the public sphere.”

  Virtually every week, Biden announces new massive aid of cash and weapons to Ukraine. Every week, US/NATO announce greater involvement that, weeks earlier, was deemed unthinkable. It’s a full-on proxy war. The risks are mind-boggling. What is being achieved that warrants this? pic.twitter.com/V2cQoFcvca

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 26, 2022

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

  Kirby said further according to Reuters, “A nuclear war cannot be won and it shouldn’t be fought. There’s no reason for the current conflict in Ukraine to get to that level at all.”

  Interestingly, it seems the Russian side would agree, and appeared to dabble in rhetoric of nuclear warnings as a way to stave off such a nuclear-armed showdown. But ominously, it seems both sides also agree they are inching toward this almost unimaginable scenario. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 22:00

• Reaction To Musk Offer Suggests Content Moderation More About Control Than Safety
  Reaction To Musk Offer Suggests Content Moderation More About Control Than Safety

  Authored by Kalev Leetaru via RealClear Politics (emphasis ours),

  The reaction among the press and tech communities to Elon Musk’s efforts to purchase Twitter has been nothing short of apocalyptic. A common theme has been that democracy itself would be under threat if unelected billionaire oligarchs controlled what was allowed online. Yet this is precisely how social media works today. The Musk controversy, like the Cambridge Analytica story before it, highlights the real issue: the fight over content moderation is less about online safety and more about who controls the digital public square.

  

  Only a year ago, the media cheered the unilateral decisions by a handful of billionaires to effectively banish then-President Donald Trump from the digital public square. Lawmakers and media outlets alike proclaimed the societal benefits of private companies controlling the digital public square beyond the reach of government. In contrast, the possibility of a libertarian-leaning billionaire like Musk wielding that same power has been presented as nothing short of an attack on democracy itself.

  In January, the Washington Post argued that oligarchs banning Trump wasn’t censorship; now it  warns of the “risks of social media ownership.” Former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos argued, “If you want people to be able to interact, you need to have basic rules” for speech. Former FCC chair Tom Wheeler went further, proposing a “First Amendment-respecting process in which the government doesn’t dictate content but does cause there to be an acceptable behavioral code.” In short, tech billionaires enforcing speech rules that align with Democratic Party priorities is a benefit to society; Republicans or libertarians wielding that same power is a threat.

  This double standard has been in place for some time. Consider how it played out a few years ago, in the Cambridge Analytica “scandal” involving the Trump campaign.

  After Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection victory, the media had heralded his campaign’s “groundbreaking” “dream team” of “masterminds” that “built a database of every American voter” by mass-harvesting their personal data from Facebook. As a campaign lead later put it, “We ingested the entire U.S. social graph … We would ask permission to basically scrape your profile, and also scrape your friends, basically anything that was available to scrape. We scraped it all.” They even scanned users’ photographs, “looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends – and ex-girlfriends” in their attempts to reach voters. These efforts were combined with offline data “showing which [television] channels they were watching, sometimes on a second-by-second basis” in order to build a holistic view of the American electorate. The Obama campaign’s own analytics director later conceded the scale of personal information acquired was “creepy.”

  Despite the campaign’s downloading of a measurable fraction of the data Facebook held on the American public, Facebook took no action, allegedly telling campaign staffers that “they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

  When Facebook rolled out new policies in 2014 that would limit the ability of future campaigns to replicate the Obama campaign’s mass downloads, media coverage lamented the loss of such a powerful political targeting tool. Concern focused on how future campaigns would be able to construct such detailed voter data, rather than on the privacy and societal implications of mass-harvesting people’s data without their consent. As the 2016 campaign drew to a close, with Hillary Clinton the expected winner, media coverage touted her campaign’s adroit use of mass data harvesting and analysis, while scoffing at the Trump campaign’s apparent failure to incorporate big-data analytics.

  All that changed in 2018, when the story broke that Trump’s campaign had almost exactly replicated Obama’s strategy of mass-harvesting Facebook data. Suddenly, the mass download of social media data was a “scandal” involving the “dangerous” “misuse” of “surveillance” technology that “exploited” voters’ privacy and represented a “serious breach of the law.”

  How did the work of Obama’s “masterminds” become “misuse” in the hands of Trump’s campaign?

  On a technical level, the two campaigns had done exactly the same thing: recruit supporters to allow them to harvest the data of their friends to build a massive database of Americans. The difference, as a Facebook spokesperson later clarified, was that the Trump campaign had acquired the data from a third party – Cambridge Analytica – while the Obama campaign had harvested the data itself. According to the spokesperson, if Trump’s campaign had downloaded the data itself instead of receiving it from Cambridge Analytica, it would not have been in violation of any Facebook policies. Despite demanding that Cambridge Analytica delete all of the Facebook data it had downloaded, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the Obama campaign would be allowed to keep all the data it had harvested and continue to use it for future Democratic campaigns because there was nothing wrong with what it had done.

  In short, the “scandal” was merely that the Trump campaign had contracted out the data collection instead of using its own staffers to download it. In the eyes of the media, however, Trump’s use of Facebook data had undermined democracy. Across the media, condemnation was swift and furious, with calls for new rules governing the use of social media data for campaigning.

  In the end, the battle over Elon Musk controlling Twitter has nothing to do with oligarchs or online safety, just as the Cambridge Analytica controversy had nothing to do with a technical distinction between contractors and employees. Instead, it is merely the latest chapter in the battle over who controls the digital public square – and which political party determines its rules.

  RealClear Media Fellow Kalev Leetaru is a senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. His past roles include fellow in residence at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 21:40

• Farm Crisis Hits Dakotas As Floods Delay Plantings, May Trigger US Food Shortage 
  Farm Crisis Hits Dakotas As Floods Delay Plantings, May Trigger US Food Shortage 

  In the last several weeks, farmers in the Northern Plains have been battered by blizzards, winter storms, high winds, and extreme flooding. These weather phenomena have delayed farmers from plantings in high-producing crop regions. Every week plantings are delayed, the harvest yield shrinks, and this comes at a precarious time as the global food supply chain is fracturing. 

  Private weather forecasters and ag specialist BAMWX warned about delayed plantings across the Northern Plains to Midwest to the Ohio Valley. Some farmers might not be able to plant until at least May as widespread above-average moisture, and widespread well below average temperatures inhibit farmers from working their fields. 

  BAMWX shows the most above-average precipitation occurred in The Dakotas. 

  

  Much of the Northern Plains to Midwest to the Ohio Valley experienced below-average temperatures. 

  

  BAMWX’s chief meteorologist Kirk Hinz provides a weather model looking out two weeks and shows more of the same: below-average temperatures and higher precipitation. The risk is that delayed plantings could extend well into the first half of May. 

  

  

  Spring has so far been filled with chaos and uncertainties for American farmers. Many cannot work in their fields because tractors would get stuck, fields are underwater, and saturated soils make for a bad growing environment. Also, cold weather disrupts plant nutrient intake and can damage seedlings very early in the growing cycle, which may cause premature death. 

  Given this uncertainty from the weather and how America’s food supply chain could be at risk. CBoT trader Tommy Grisafi (also risk advisor at commodity trading firm Advance Trading Inc), with ag clients throughout The Dakotas, provided this warning of what’s happening on the ground: 

  “As I sit in my office in Mayville, North Dakota, I’m starting to wonder how the Upper Midwest farmer will get all the crops planted in a timely fashion. Below average temps are forecasted for the next ten days; combine that with above-average snow and rainfall, which only means more delayed plantings. 

  “Upper Midwest farmers are running out of time as prevent plant dates could soon be triggered. North Dakota’s first prevent plant date is May 25th for certain parts of the state — this will mean farmers will file a prevented planting claim on their crop insurance and not plant.” 

  One significant reason plantings are delayed in North Dakota is flooding.

  Welcome to North Dakota #flood2022 pic.twitter.com/DYrWqoHa4G

  — AGBULL (@AgBullMedia) April 24, 2022

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

  Grisafi said, “North Dakota, Montana, and Canada are famous for growing specialty crops.” 

  “We often forget how these products are in everyday foods we consume. The Ukraine war was like throwing gas on an already hot fire. The Great drought of 2021 depleted supplies. The world is now dependent on the Northern hemisphere for major food needs. The US must grow record crops just to meet average demand. If not, this could add to the biblical food shortage coming down the pipe,” he said. 

  Grisafi has spent three decades on the CBoT and said fertilizer shortages plus delayed plantings suggest harvests could be severely impacted. “If only our government had a strategic fertilizer reserve,” he said. 

  He is in contact with hundreds of North Dakota farmers and various end-users, indicating many of these folks “will have trouble sleeping at night” because of the agricultural crisis emerging. 

  Here’s an aerial shot of one of Grisafi’s clients. The fields are completely flooded. 

  

  Grisafi’s Ag Bull podcast has recently stated, “planting delays and production problems in the US are moving markets.” Last month, we cautioned that the mainstream media fails to address how the US is careening towards a food crisis. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 21:20

• The "Gentlemen's Agreement": When TV News Won't Identify Defense Lobbyists
  The “Gentlemen’s Agreement”: When TV News Won’t Identify Defense Lobbyists

  Authored by Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea via TK News,

  When is a TV news interview not just an interview?

  Leon Panetta was the nation’s top security official under Barack Obama, famous for his hangdog eyes and soft-spoken, equivocating defenses of torture and assassination of Americans while serving as both Secretary of Defense and CIA director. That was years ago. Today, he’s a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, which represents a host of security companies, including famed munitions maker Raytheon. In Matt Orfalea’s booming video above, we see Panetta on a recent CNN broadcast stumping for Raytheon products like Javelin and Stinger missiles, with host Bianna Golodryga saying only that he “was America’s defense secretary and CIA director.” Orfalea goes on to capture how Panetta and other military “experts” chant WEAPONS WEAPONS WEAPONS over and over like they’re trying to open magic treasure chests, their commercial ties never revealed.

  As war rages, there will be officials on TV with sincere opinions about how the U.S. can help Ukraine. Very often, however, what you’re watching is a paid lobbyist plugging for a weapons maker.

  Joe Biden last week authorized another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. This second major tranche of weapons came on the heels of weeks of passionate advocacy from former national security officials calling for heavy spending on reinforcements. Somewhere in the past, these commentators usually have impressive credentials. However, the more recent jobs of these commentators are often paid gigs helping military contractors “achieve their business objectives.” This phenomenon was embarrassing before Iraq, but the last months have seen near-total saturation of the airwaves by such figures.

  TK News subscribers can click here to read the rest…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 21:00

• Former EBay Exec Pleads Guilty To Harassment Campaign Against Newsletter Critical Of The Company
  Former EBay Exec Pleads Guilty To Harassment Campaign Against Newsletter Critical Of The Company

  A former eBay executive has plead guilty to a role in a cyberstalking campaign, according to a new release by the Department of Justice this week. 

  On Monday, the DOJ announced in a release that the executive had a role in a “cyberstalking campaign targeting the editor and publisher of a newsletter that eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.”

  The executive, 47 year old James Baugh, was eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety & Security. He “pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts of witness tampering and two counts of destruction, alteration and falsification of records in a federal investigation”, according to the release.

  He was charged in 2020, along with David Harville, eBay’s former Director of Global Resiliency, the DOJ wrote. 

  

  The DOJ alleges that between August 2019 and August 2020, Baugh “agreed to engage in a harassment campaign targeting a husband and wife in Natick, Mass. for of their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers”.

  Executives at eBay had become “frustrated with the newsletter’s tone and content, and with the tone and content of comments posted beneath the newsletter’s articles,” the DOJ release reads. Baugh allegedly engaged in a three part harassment campaign against the victims that included:

  • sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick
  • traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device on their car
  • delivering items to the victims’ house including a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects

  Threatening Twitter messages were disguised as being from eBay sellers who were unhappy with the victims’ coverage in the newsletter, the DOJ alleges. 

  “Baugh and co-conspirators allegedly traveled from California to Natick to surveil the victims and to install a GPS tracking device on the victims’ car,” the release reads. It also alleges he made false statements to police and internal investigators as the situation began to unravel. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 20:40

• Democrat Efforts To Disqualify House Republicans For 'Insurrection' Was Just Dealt Crippling Blow
  Democrat Efforts To Disqualify House Republicans For ‘Insurrection’ Was Just Dealt Crippling Blow

  Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  An Arizona judge’s ruling against efforts to keep two Republican congressmen and a state representative off the November ballot due to their alleged Jan. 6, 2021, “insurrection” roles at the U.S. Capitol likely foreshadows the outcome of similar efforts in other states, according to the attorney who argued the case.

  

  Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury ruled against motions brought by plaintiffs seeking the removal of U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and state Rep. Mark Finchem, a Republican, saying the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause requires congressional action to remove an elected official, not a suit brought by private citizens in a state court.

  “The express language of the United States Constitution controls this issue. The Disqualification Clause creates a condition where someone can be disqualified from serving in public office. However, the Constitution provides that legislation enacted by Congress is required to enforce the disqualification pursuant to the Disqualification Clause,” Coury ruled.

  “Aside from criminal statutes dealing with insurrection and rebellion which Congress has enacted (lawsuits which require the government, not private citizens, to initiate), Congress has not passed legislation that is presently in effect which enforces the Disqualification Clause against the candidates,” Coury said.

  

  He was referring to Section 3 of the 14th amendment as the “Disqualification clause” approved by Congress following the Civil War to bar former officials of the Confederacy from holding office under the U.S. Constitution.

  Coury noted that “legislation that proposes to enforce the Disqualification Clause currently is pending in the United States Congress, but has not yet been enacted. Therefore, given the current state of the law and in accordance with the United States Constitution, Plaintiffs have no private right of action to assert claims under the Disqualification Clause.”

  The 11 plaintiffs, all individual Arizona citizens, who filed the complaint against Gosar, Biggs, and Finchem were represented by attorneys with Free Speech for People (FSP), an Austin, Texas-based left-wing advocacy group.

  An FSP spokesman told The Epoch Times the plaintiffs reject the judge’s reasoning and are planning to file an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.

  “This ruling is contrary to the law. Arizona is not exempted from the mandate of Section Three of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A candidate who has taken an oath of office and then engaged in insurrection has no place on a future Arizona ballot. We will be appealing this decision to the Arizona Supreme Court.”

  

  The FSP is also involved in related litigation against Representatives Madison Cawthorne (R-N.C.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

  In their complaint, the plaintiffs claimed Finchem—who is now seeking the Secretary of State position in the November election—was an active January 6 participant and coordinated his actions with Gosar and Biggs.

  “Finchem was engaged in efforts to intimidate Congress and the Vice President into rejecting valid electoral votes and to subvert the essential constitutional function of an orderly and peaceful transition of power,” according to the complaint.

  “Finchem was engaged with the January 6 attack by being in close contact with the planners of the Wild Protest, including throughout the day on January 6, and by participating in the attack with the advance knowledge that it was substantially likely to lead to the attack,” the complaint said.

  “Finchem promoted the events of January 6 ahead of time. He coordinated many of his efforts with U.S. Representatives Paul Gosar and Andrew Biggs, and agreed with them on a plan to first delegitimatize, then challenge, and finally overturn the 2020 presidential election,” the complaint continued.

  George Wentz, an attorney representing Gosar, told The Epoch Times that “the 14th amendment establishes the disqualification of people that have been engaged in insurrection or given aid and comfort to the enemy. Right there, in the 14th amendment, it says Congress shall decide how this will be enforced. And if only Congress can determine this, then certainly a state cannot.”

  Wentz said he believes the attorneys representing the plaintiffs are “trying to bypass the Department of Justice, they are trying to appoint themselves as a self-appointed, unaccountable to the people prosecutorial arm of the government, but they are trying to do [it] through a state law in a state civil court using [the] standard of the preponderance of the evidence.”

  But under the federal law approved by Congress, such prosecutions must be done in federal criminal courts using a standard of clear and convincing evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, Wentz pointed out.
  Congress did so, he said, by approving a law that directs the President of the United States, through the Department of Justice, to enforce the Disqualification Clause by initiating action in federal court in appropriate cases.

  “So they’re trying to do an end-run around the 14th Amendment itself,” Wentz said.

  A scheduling conference was held today between the parties, and appeal briefs are expected to be filed beginning next week, with a decision coming perhaps as early as mid-May.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 20:20

• Tone-Deaf MSNBC Pundit Says Musk-Run Twitter Could Be Manipulated For Political Reasons
  Tone-Deaf MSNBC Pundit Says Musk-Run Twitter Could Be Manipulated For Political Reasons

  MSNBC‘s Ari Melber may be the most tone-deaf pundit on the planet, after suggesting an Elon Musk-Run Twitter could be ‘manipulated’ to change political outcomes in favor of Republicans by suppressing stories that might harm a conservative candidate – exactly what Twitter did to Donald Trump during the 2020 US election.

  

  “If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else,” said Melber. “And the rest of us might not even find out about it until after the election. Elon Musk says this is all to help people because he is just a free speech, philosophically clear, open-minded helper.“

  Watch what Jonathan Turley described as almost a clinical (if not comical) example of transference:

  Twitter manipulating the reach of stories for political reasons during an election? Nah, that could never happen.pic.twitter.com/fkls7RzDf3

  — Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) April 26, 2022

  To review, Twitter suppressed perhaps the biggest bombshell in US politics in October 2020 when it banned the New York Post for truthfully reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop – which contained revelations of shady Biden family business dealings involving Joe Biden.

  Yes, agreed.

  Thank you. https://t.co/zEGZ3RBEiw

  — Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC) April 26, 2022

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

  In addition to damning emails, the laptop also contained a cache of text messages, photos and financial documents which revealed that Joe Biden absolutely lied when he said he had no knowledge of Hunter’s dealings – and may have been collecting 10% of Hunter’s income.

  I fear Elon Musk could undermine the ideological diversity, equity and inclusion at Twitter which currently maintains a careful balance of 98.7% for one side. pic.twitter.com/I6JeTuTx9k

  — Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) April 25, 2022

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

  More via The Post Millennial:

  Emma Jo Morris, who broke the Hunter Biden laptop story in the Post, shared the Melber clip, saying “@AriMelber that would be crazy. Hey, similar thing actually already happened tho- next time you’re in New York I’ll show you this hard drive I got that belongs to Joe Biden’s corrupt son and that Twitter banned my reporting about 3 weeks before the last presidential election.”

  The New York Times, NPR, Politico and the Washington Post, worked to suppress the story, with the Times by publishing an article calling the report “unsubstantiated” in September 2021, then editing the story without publishing a formal correction notice.

  Recently, several of those same outlets have recently confirmed the legitimacy of the content of the laptop.

  A poll previously released by the Media Research Center showed that 16 percent of voters who were unaware of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal would have switched their minds and not voted for Joe Biden, had they known about it at the time.

  According to a December 2020 Rasmussen poll, a majority of Americans believed that the media purposely buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to influence the 2020 election.

  After the election, Hunter Biden revealed that he was under a federal investigation. Hunter Biden has been under investigation for failing to pay taxes since Joe Biden was US Vice President. In 2018, the inquiry expanded to investigate how Hunter’s international business dealings connected with President Biden’s political career. There are even reports that Hunter could be under as many as four investigations.

  Republicans have repeatedly criticized Twitter over alleged bias against users who politically lean conservative. Sen. Tom Cotton, (R-AR), was locked out of his account after tweeting about the Black Lives Matter riots in June 2020.

  During a 2019 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), questioned a Twitter executive regarding the alleged bias.

  Twitter admitted to me today that they have protocols they use to determine when speech is offensive. So release the protocols! Make them public. If you aren’t biased, what do you have to hide? pic.twitter.com/rEG94cq2Ly

  — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) April 10, 2019

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

  During the testimoney, Twitter Director of Public Policy and Philanthropy Carlos Monje Jr., apologized to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), for the company’s decision in October 2017 to block one of her campaign ads.

  The Libs of Tik Tok account, which highlights videos liberals post of themselves to the social media app TikTok, was locked out for “hateful conduct” by Twitter twice in one week. The company did not explain which tweet contained “hateful conduct.”

  Congressional Republicans such as Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), have been censored for tweeting on transgender issues.

  Twitter also banned President Donald Trump following the January 6 riot in 2021, but allows well known bigots, antisemites, dictators and users who’ve been accused of murder full access to tweet.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 20:00

• ATF Director Demotion Shows Who’s Really in Charge
  ATF Director Demotion Shows Who’s Really in Charge

  Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

  How much control does the anti-gun lobby have over the ATF? From the looks of the most recent shakeup at ATF HQ, a lot. 

  According to reports, the Biden administration has moved to demote Marvin Richardson. Richardson is the current acting director of ATF. The Biden admin intends to replace Mr. Richardson with Gary Restaino, the US Attorney from Arizona, until Biden’s nominee to head the ATF, Steve Dettelbach, is confirmed.

  

  Why the change in leadership? Well, the Biden administration has come under heavy criticism recently by gun control advocates in the New York Times and failed ATF director nominee David Chipman.

  In a March 4th article, the New York Times blasted Marvin Richardson for being “too friendly” with the firearms industry. This statement should be ironic to gun owners or anyone who follows our reporting on ATF.

  While the ATF isn’t necessarily “friendly” to gun owners, Richardson has attempted to work with the firearms industry from his side of the fence. In 2022, ATF made an appearance at SHOT show, the largest expo for the firearms industry, and took questions from the National Shooting Sports Foundation on how the firearms industry and ATF can work together to stop burglaries of gun shops, among other things.

  The New York Times used this interview to disparage Richardson, painting a picture of an agency under his leadership that is too friendly with the industry it’s supposed to be regulating.

  More recently, David Chipman was interviewed by Slate, where he criticized the ATF for having a “comfortable and cozy, non-confrontational, relationship with the gun industry.” Chipman also took the time to criticize the senator who sunk his confirmation, Angus King of Maine. Apparently, according to Chipman, Sen. King said, “you have to also understand that I can’t vote for you because you don’t have the endorsement of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is the lobby of the gun industry.” No wonder Chipman has it out for the NSSF. 

  It’s very interesting that before Mr. Richardson’s demotion, anti-gun groups, their allies in the media, and their key spokespeople all start to use the same talking points. John Feinblatt, the President of Everytown for Gun Safety (Michael Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun group), was quoted saying, “ATF needs a top-to-bottom overhaul, that starts with the administration making sure the agency has the resources and leadership it needs to regulate an industry that has consistently prioritized profits over public safety.”

  But why would anti-gun groups want ATF not to work in conjunction with the industry it is tasked with regulating? Wouldn’t that be comparable to asking the FAA not to work with Airlines? Federal Firearms License holders are not the ones out committing gun crimes or enabling them. In fact, in Richardson’s interview with NSSF, he admits that much of ATF’s best information to stop gun trafficking comes directly from FFLs.

  Could it be that the goal of anti-gun groups is to get rid of guns entirely? The answer, of course, is yes.

  This demotion announcement also follows President Biden’s half-baked “Ghost Gun” Rule, which seemingly did not go as far as the anti-gun lobby wanted. This is partly due to the enormous outpouring of comments from law-abiding gun owners and average citizens on the federal register.

  During Biden’s speech announcing this ghost gun rule, the President called on Congress to enact more gun control legislation. Likely because the ghost gun rule has shown the limits of how far executive fiat, or as Biden likes to call it- “Regulatory Authority,” can go without actual legislation to back it up.

  It’s obvious now that Mr. Richardson’s demotion stems directly from the wishes of gun control advocates, who in turn have pressured the Biden Administration. But it also shows that those same people, David Chipman, Gabby Giffords, and others, are the ones seeking control over the ATF itself.

  This pressure from gun control advocates is why Biden has nominated a no-name corporate lawyer, Steve Dettelbach, to head ATF and, in the meantime, has appointed Gary Restaino to fill in. Dettelbach serves as a milquetoast, unoffensive pick, meant only to get past the confirmation process, where he will lead the ATF however his handlers in the gun-control lobby wants. 

  Speaking to FOX News, former CIA analyst Buck Sexton had this to say about the change at ATF: “What you see here is the Biden administration wants someone running the ATF who is going to give them the soundbites — talking points that they want to make it seem like they’re taking action on crime in general, more specifically on gun control issues.”

  It’s evident from the moves that the Biden administration has been making with ATF that they intend to weaponize the agency into taking a very adversarial stance against gun owners. This hostile stance is precisely what the anti-gun lobby has wanted for years and something they almost accomplished with the nomination of David Chipman to head the ATF.

  Additionally, with 2022 being a midterm year, the Biden administration is looking for anything to raise their falling poll numbers. As we’ve reported previously, Biden and his allies in the corporate media have been waging a campaign on his lousy poll numbers, using topics like “ghost guns” and gun control as fodder as their inability to tackle any real issues affecting everyday Americans like soaring gas and food prices.

  

  While it certainly looks like Steve Dettelbach will have an uphill battle towards confirmation, it is likely that with or without a permanent director of the ATF, the agency is being weaponized against the firearms industry and law-abiding gun owners.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 19:40

• Biden Senior Adviser Called 'Squad' Members 'F**king Idiots' According To NYT Reporters
  Biden Senior Adviser Called ‘Squad’ Members ‘F**king Idiots’ According To NYT Reporters

  The Director of Public Engagement for the White House and senior Biden adviser Cedric Richmond called two members of the so-called ‘squad’ “fucking idiots,” according to a new book by a pair of New York Times reporters seen by Fox News.

  

  According to the book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, Richmond was referring to leftist Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), during the 2020 election as the progressive wing of the Democratic party looked to be staging a mutiny – cutting off the party’s nose to spite its face.

  

  Richmond had been targeted by the progressive activist group the Sunrise Movement over his fossil fuel industry ties and was not too happy with Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and the other “Squad” members, going as far as to call them “f—ing idiots.”

  Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti also had words for “the Squad,” albeit less harsh than Richmond, telling a Capitol Hill Biden ally that the “problem with the left is they don’t understand that they lost.” -Fox News

  The new book also highlights first lady Jill Biden’s anger over Kamala Harris being tapped for VP despite attacking Joe Biden during the 2019 Democratic primary debates.

  “There are millions of people in the United States,’ she began, according to the book. “‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe,'”

  Unfortunately for Dr. Jill, Ron Klain – Biden’s current Chief-of-Staff, was behind Kamala’s rise.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 19:20

• How 22 Celebrities Reacted When They Learned That Elon Musk Had Just Bought Twitter…
  How 22 Celebrities Reacted When They Learned That Elon Musk Had Just Bought Twitter…

  Authored by Michael Snyder,

  He did it! 

  Elon Musk actually bought Twitter, and I am absolutely thrilled. 

  It is about time that one of these billionaires did something good with their money.  The major social media platforms are where we all used to go to debate the issues of our day, but in recent years a wave of extreme censorship has changed everything.  Now Elon Musk has liberated Twitter, and that is a victory that we should all celebrate. 

  

  Without the ability to speak freely, our system of government simply cannot work.  So I am very hopeful that Musk will follow through on the promises that he is now making.  In the statement that was released announcing the purchase, he made some pretty bold pronouncements…

  “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk.

  “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

  A great place to start would be to remove all shadow bans.

  My account has been under a shadow ban for so long that I can’t even remember what it was like to have a normal account.

  

  Needless to say, countless other Twitter users are also looking forward to brighter days ahead.  Meanwhile, hordes of pro-censorship denizens are absolutely horrified by what just transpired. 

  

  The following is how 22 celebrities reacted when they learned that Elon Musk had just bought Twitter…

  Tucker Carlson

  We’re back.

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 25, 2022

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

  Ice Cube

  Free at last! @elonmusk take off my shadow ban homie…

  — Ice Cube (@icecube) April 25, 2022

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

  CNN’s Brian Stelter

  CNN’s @brianstelter on Musk’s Twitter takeover:

  “If you get invited to something where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party or are you going to decide to stay home?”pic.twitter.com/uymSPHgY2w

  — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 25, 2022

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

  Marc Andreessen

  WHO DID THIS pic.twitter.com/M7mIOr1hLm

  — Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) April 25, 2022

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

  John Rich

  🙂 pic.twitter.com/zNcwsNdzem

  — John Rich (@johnrich) April 25, 2022

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

  Senator Marsha Blackburn

  Today is an encouraging day for freedom of speech. I am hopeful that Elon Musk will help rein in Big Tech’s history of censoring users that have a different viewpoint.

  — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) April 25, 2022

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

  Jimmy Failla

  Elon Musk is buying Twitter and everyone freaking out drives a Tesla. There’s never been a dumber time to be alive.

  — Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) April 25, 2022

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

  Tim Allen

  The little twitter bird has a new owner. Wonder how long it will take for the new shadow ban council to prevent me from saying stuff like: Hunter Biden laptop. Or even more provocative: Tesla in-car fart app? (Love it when driving my Mom.)

  — Tim Allen (@ofctimallen) April 25, 2022

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

  Erick Erickson

  We need to thank all the progressives who bought Teslas for making this possible.

  — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) April 25, 2022

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

  Avi Yemini

  I’m GAINING followers for a change.

  Thank you, Elon Musk!

  — Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) April 26, 2022

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

  New York Times Columnist Charles M. Blow

  Looks like I’m about to say goodbye to Twitter as well. I’ve been pulling back a bit from social media anyway. This will be just the push I need to go all the way on this app. https://t.co/QkwIsYy6zS

  — Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) April 25, 2022

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

  Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene

  Prepare for blue check mark full scale meltdown after @elonmusk seals the deal and I should get my personal Twitter account restored. pic.twitter.com/MKBQvHCoAH

  — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) April 25, 2022

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

  Jack Posobiec

  And here. We. Go. https://t.co/JuuedCw9Jh

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 25, 2022

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

  Journalist Michael Tracey

  Dark days ahead. There is only one man who should be celebrating Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter — Vladimir Putin. My latest in the New York Times:

  — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 25, 2022

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

  Texas Governor Greg Abbott

  .@elonmusk. Bring Twitter to Texas to join Tesla, SpaceX & the Boring company.

  — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 25, 2022

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

  Matt Oswalt

  people worried Elon Musk will ruin Twitter, a website whose major accomplishments over 16 years are creating then destroying Chrissy Teigen and getting Brooklyn Nine-Nine a 6th season

  — Matt Oswalt (@MattOswaltVA) April 25, 2022

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

  Congressman Lance Gooden

  Elon Musk is buying Twitter.

  CNN+ is shutting down.

  Disney is being reined in.

  It’s a bad time to be woke.

  — Lance Gooden (@Lancegooden) April 25, 2022

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

  Mike Drucker

  If Elon Musk buys Twitter, I’m never signing in again until five minutes later when I’m bored and open the app without thinking

  — Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) April 25, 2022

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

  Ice T

  It would kinda dope if Musk bought Twitter and just shut it off…. Lol

  — ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) April 25, 2022

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

  Dave Portnoy

  Instagram next! https://t.co/ryrK8dVXYt

  — Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) April 25, 2022

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

  Jack Dorsey

  In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.

  — jack⚡️ (@jack) April 26, 2022

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

  Elon Musk

  I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

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

  And then there’s this…

  The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022

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

  *  *  *

  It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 18:20

• Bolsonaro Asks WTO Not To Sever Russian Trade As 27 Fertilizer Ships Inbound 
  Bolsonaro Asks WTO Not To Sever Russian Trade As 27 Fertilizer Ships Inbound 

  The latest example of G-20 countries not bowing down to US pressure to halt trade relations with Russia comes from South America. 

  On Tuesday, in response to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s request for Brazil to increase more food exports, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro asked the WTO not to sever trade flows with Russia. He said there are 27 Russian vessels hauling fertilizer to Brazil. 

  Now, why would Bolsonaro go against the wishes of the US and EU politicians to eliminate trade with Russia? 

  Well, the South American country imports more than 85% of its fertilizer demand. Russia is its top supplier, and Belarus provides 28% of the total. 

  Restraining fertilizer consumption would be absolutely disastrous, crush harvest yields, and threaten the world’s food security. The country is a top exporter of coffee, sugar, soybeans, manioc, rice, maize, cotton, edible beans, and wheat. 

  This is more evidence that G-20 countries, such as Brazil, India, and China, widely known as BRICs, disregard US pressure to halt trade with Russia. Many of these countries are dependent on Russia and Belarus for commodities. In one chart, here is Russia’s commodity reach:

  

  Defiant G-20 countries imply the old economic order, in which the dollar’s centrality to global trade remains king, is fading. Numerous countries are already trading outside the dollar system (see & here) because Western sanctions isolated Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. This has given rise to commodity-based currencies. 

  It remains to be seen if South American traders will use a Brazilian real-Russian ruble payment system for the fertilizer purchases. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 18:00

• Ron Paul: The Ukraine War Is A Racket
  Ron Paul: The Ukraine War Is A Racket

  Via The Ron Paul Institute For Peace & Prosperity, 

  “War is a racket,” wrote US Maj. General Smedley Butler in 1935. He explained: “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. .”It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

  Gen. Butler’s observation describes the US/NATO response to the Ukraine war perfectly.

  The propaganda continues to portray the war in Ukraine as that of an unprovoked Goliath out to decimate an innocent David unless we in the US and NATO contribute massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine to defeat Russia. As is always the case with propaganda, this version of events is manipulated to bring an emotional response to the benefit of special interests.

  

  One group of special interests profiting massively on the war is the US military-industrial complex. Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes recently told a meeting of shareholders that, “Everything that ‘s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DOD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business.”

  He wasn’t lying. Raytheon, along with Lockheed Martin and countless other weapons manufacturers are enjoying a windfall they have not seen in years. The US has committed more than three billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine. They call it aid, but it is actually corporate welfare: Washington sending billions to arms manufacturers for weapons sent overseas.

  By many accounts these shipments of weapons like the Javelin anti-tank missile (jointly manufactured by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) are getting blown up as soon as they arrive in Ukraine. This doesn’t bother Raytheon at all. The more weapons blown up by Russia in Ukraine, the more new orders come from the Pentagon.

  Former Warsaw Pact countries now members of NATO are in on the scam as well. They’ve discovered how to dispose of their 30-year-old Soviet-made weapons and receive modern replacements from the US and other western NATO countries.

  While many who sympathize with Ukraine are cheering, this multi-billion dollar weapons package will make little difference. As former US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter said on the Ron Paul Liberty Report last week:

  “I can say with absolute certainty that even if this aid makes it to the battlefield, it will have zero impact on the battle. And Joe Biden knows it.”

  What we do see is that Russians are capturing modern US and NATO weapons by the ton and even using them to kill more Ukrainians. What irony. Also, what kinds of opportunities will be provided to terrorists, with thousands of tons of deadly high-tech weapons floating around Europe? Washington has admitted that it has no way of tracking the weapons it is sending to Ukraine and no way to keep them out of the hands of the bad guys.

  War is a racket, to be sure. The US has been meddling in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, going so far as overthrowing the government in 2014 and planting the seeds of the war we are witnessing today. The only way out of a hole is to stop digging. Don’t expect that any time soon. War is too profitable.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Russia Expels 40 German Diplomats In Retaliation For "Unfriendly Decision"
  Russia Expels 40 German Diplomats In Retaliation For “Unfriendly Decision”

  Russia announced Monday it is expelling 40 German diplomats in a stunning tit-for-tat move given the huge size of the group of officials being booted from Russian soil. The Kremlin said it’s a response to the “unfriendly decision” of Berlin to earlier in the month expel Russian diplomats due to the invasion of Ukraine.

  In its latest statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned Germany’s ambassador to deliver a written note “declaring persona non grata 40 employees of German diplomatic institutions in Russia as part of a symmetrical response.”

  

  The ministry later affirmed that “A strong protest was made to the head of the German diplomatic mission in Moscow in connection with the openly unfriendly decision of the German government.”

  The families of the 40 are also expected to leave the country, meaning this will impact at least 100 Germans currently in Russia. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock blasted the move as “in no way justified” but admitted that it was “expected” due to the German government’s prior anti-Russia move.

  Germany’s initial decision to expel what it described as a “significant number” of Russian diplomats was due to the “unbelievable brutality” of the Russian military, in a statement issued earlier in April.

  Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz has meanwhile been accused of slowing NATO’s response to the Ukraine crisis by refusing to approve sending tanks and other heavier weaponry…

  Germany’s position is a double blow to the West: Olaf Scholz refuses to support calls for an embargo on Russian energy and refuses to send tanks to Ukraine, which it desperately needs https://t.co/h7N58xFA4X

  — The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 24, 2022

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

  Baerbock had justified Germany’s prior punitive action against Russian officials based on accusing them of being “spies” and not diplomats.

  Baerbock said Monday that the 40 Russian diplomats previously expelled by Berlin “did not serve diplomacy for a single day”. But she characterize this new Kremlin move against German diplomats as unwarranted because they had “not done anything wrong.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 02:45

• French Election Exposes The Conflict Running Through All Western Societies
  French Election Exposes The Conflict Running Through All Western Societies

  Authored by Yves Mamou via The Gatestone Institute,

  • This French presidential election is a good illustration of the conflict that runs through all Western societies, namely the fight between the mobile and the rooted, between globalists and nationalists, between progressive elites and common citizens, between those who feel good everywhere and those who feel good where they were born.

  • Since the late 1980s, all French political life has been built on a fiction. In France, anyone who opposes the progressive establishment, anyone who opposes immigration policy, anyone who criticizes, say, the violence — or the suppression of women and free speech — in Islam, is considered the equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s nephew.

  • During the two weeks preceding the second round of the just-concluded presidential election, all observers had the feeling that in France, a titanic metaphysical battle was taking place between Good and Evil.

  • The public service radio certified every five minutes that Marine Le Pen was “extreme right” (meaning “racist” and “Nazi”).

  • [T]he exhibition of voting intentions in favor of Macron “was kind of a farce”. All these personalities who express themselves on the vote, do not seek to “share an opinion… but to exhibit their perfect morality”. For these people, “to think right is to think well. And to think well means to think like them”. — Julia de Funes, author, Le Figaro, April 15, 2022.

  • In France there is “a single party and if you are not part of it, you are a fascist, a racist, a xenophobe!” — Michel Onfray, author, Twitter, April, 21, 2022.

  The globalists have won.

  Emmanuel Macron was re-elected President of the French Republic on April 24, 2022 with an estimated 58% of the votes. Marine Le Pen, his challenger, got only 42% of the votes.

  

  This French presidential election is a good illustration of the conflict that runs through all Western societies, namely the fight between the mobile and the rooted, between globalists and nationalists, between progressive elites and common citizens, between those who feel good everywhere and those who feel good where they were born.

  But in France, this classic conflict between the top and the bottom of society is not perceived as such. Since the late 1980s, all French political life has been built on a fiction. In France, anyone who opposes the progressive establishment, anyone who opposes immigration policy, anyone who criticizes, say, the violence — or the suppression of women and free speech — in Islam, is considered the equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s nephew.

  This strange situation was created in the late 1980s by France’s socialist president, François Mitterrand. To divide the right and prevent them from returning to power. Mitterrand promoted, through the state-owned radio and television corporations, a microscopic far-right party, the National Front, the first that actually dared to speak out against immigration.

  From the middle of the 1980s until now, the media and the “left” together manufactured an industrial-strength shame machine to stigmatize as “racist” and “Nazi” anyone who dared to raise his voice on issues of immigration or the arguably less-sympathetic aspects of Islam.

  During the two weeks preceding the second round of the just-concluded presidential election, all observers had the feeling that in France, a titanic metaphysical battle was taking place between Good and Evil.

  The daily Le Monde sought out veteran sociologists such as Edgar Morin to assert that France was facing a “historic risk” if its citizens were losing their minds and voted for Marine Le Pen. In another article, Le Monde quoted Prefects (representatives of the state in all regions of France) who “themselves draw parallels” between a possible election of Marine Le Pen and the invasion of France by the Nazis in 1940.

  Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin explained that with Marine Le Pen, “the rich may lose weight, but the poor may die”.

  Some left-wing media outlets, such as L’Obs, raised the spectre of nuclear war. “If Marine Le Pen were elected, “48,000 Hiroshimas” would become possible.

  The public service radio certified every five minutes that Marine Le Pen was “extreme right” (meaning “racist” and “Nazi”).

  And the leftists of the Canard Enchainé headlined, “neither Marine, nor Le Pen”. Even Charlie Hebdo featured on its cover, “Sunday, let’s get rid of that” (meaning Le Pen)

  NGOs of course were on deck. The Licra, an anti-racist NGO, declared that the victory of Le Pen would mean “the liberation of xenophobia and racism”. The League of Human Rights called for “demonstrations against the extreme right”. And the NGO SOS Racism added that Le Pen’s victory would mean “the establishment of a French-style apartheid”.

  The Archbishop of Strasbourg called for a vote for Macron, although the French Bishops’ Conference magnanimously left Christians free to “vote according to their conscience”. The Protestant Federation of France warned against the Le Pen’s National Rally Party, while Jewish organizations (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France and the rabbis of the Consistory) called to “put up a barrier” against Le Pen.

  The Rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, of course, called for voting in favor of Macron in the name of the fight against “malicious forces that call for the banishment of Muslims” and the Rassemblement des Musulmans de France (close to Morocco) explained that “only a vote for Emmanuel Macron allows our country to preserve the principles of the republic”.

  About 50 sports stars — all those athletes who see no problem in going to the Winter Olympics in Beijing or kicking a ball in Qatar ,where thousands of workers died while building of air-conditioned stadiums — signed a vibrant call to block the National Rally Party and to defend “Republican values”.

  After the athletes, came the artists. Nearly 500 actors, singers, directors, producers and dancers called to “block Marine Le Pen… whose program remains that of xenophobia and inward-looking attitude.

  The unions followed. While Le Pen came out on top in the first round of the presidential election in all blue-collar area, while she was the candidate of the Yellow Vests and the French working classes, the two largest trade union organizations, CFDT and CGT, called to “make a barrage” against Le Pen. The leaders of these two unions even signed an op-ed together, explaining that “Marine Le Pen is a danger for all workers.”

  The environmentalist and feminist Alice Coffin tweeted that Le Pen was preparing to “assassinate” all feminists.

  The author Julia de Funes was astonished in Le Figaro by this outpouring of opinions, and remarked that the exhibition of voting intentions in favor of Macron “was kind of a farce”. All these personalities who express themselves on the vote, do not seek to “share an opinion… but to exhibit their perfect morality”. For these people, “to think right is to think well. And to think well means to think like them”.

  Another author, Michel Onfray, noted on Twitter that in France there is “a single party and if you are not part of it, you are a fascist, a racist, a xenophobe!”

  These debates prevented — but perhaps it was their function — the real problems from being covered by the media and politicians – such as Muslim mass-immigration (2 million more Muslim immigrants under the Macron presidency); the creeping Islamization of the suburbs ; the rampant lawlessness and lack of security (an assault occurs every 44 seconds and the police are confronted with refusals to comply every 30 minutes); the abuse of power by the European Union’s courts of justice; the authoritarian drift of the European Commission; Macron’s authoritarian and terrorizing management of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the violence he wielded against the Yellow Vests –none of these subjects was ever addressed during the presidential campaign.

  Now that the results of the presidential election are known, the media bubble may revert to how it was before the titanic metaphysical battle. The first observation that can be made is that the French political landscape is now entirely upended. The classic parties were swept away. The Socialist Party, which dominated the political scene since the 1980s, got only 1.75% of the votes at the first round of the presidential election and Les Républicains, on the right, won only 4.78% of the votes.

  From now on, three new political formations share the electoral terrain, all three around a central figure:

  1. the La République en Marche is Macron’s party (the largest number of voters: 9.8 million voters, 27.8% of the votes in the first round). It was created in 2016 and its electorate is composed of the beneficiaries of globalization, some of the French Muslims and retirees who usually vote for the party in power.

  2. The second largest party in France is the National Rally, centered around Le Pen (8.1 million votes, 23.15% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election). The RN is the party of the non-Muslim working class, the party of the poor people and the middle classes who are attached to the croissant-baguettes “French way of life”. The RN represents the “somewheres” fighting against the “anywheres”. If we add to the RN, the votes collected by Éric Zemmour (2.4 million votes, 7%), the RN equals the party of Macron.

  3. The third party in France is La France Insoumise, built around the thundering personality of Jean-Luc Mélenchon (7.7 million votes; 21.95% of the vote on the first round). Mélenchon is a former socialist who wanted to ban the Islamic veil and who, in 2015, in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attack that year on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, denounced Islamic fanaticism as his main enemy. Less than five years later, however, in 2019, Mélenchon made an about-face and demonstrated on the side of Islamic organizations. Since then, he has multiplied his attacks against police officers accused of “racist behavior”, against secularism which “must not be a state atheism” — ether against the “persecution of Muslims” or for “the freedom to wear the veil“. Today, the main collaborators of Mélenchon are Islamists, leftists and Woke personalities. A recent IFOP poll confirmed that 70% of French Muslims voted for Mélenchon.

  On the evening of his elimination from the first round of the presidential election, Mélenchon called several times not to vote for Le Pen. Perhaps he was heard. The Islamists who carried Mélenchon might have joined forces with the globalists who carried Macron. Both defeated the nationalists who supported Le Pen.

  The nationalists, the French “somewheres”, have become a minority in their own country.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/26/2022 – 02:00

• Black Markets Thriving In China As Punishing COVID Lockdowns Evoke Planned Economy Of The Past
  Black Markets Thriving In China As Punishing COVID Lockdowns Evoke Planned Economy Of The Past

  Chinese stocks got slammed overnight as rumors about a potential lockdown in Beijing have sent people scrambling for food and other necessities (many items, like fruit, coffee and even disposable diapers are now considered “frivolous” under the terms of the lockdown in Shanghai). Meanwhile, the situation in Shanghai, having entered its 4th week (and even longer in the eastern part of the city), has spurred a level of need that is not only leaving citizens desperate – but also reminding many of the bad old days when central planning was the status quo in China, creating an environment that allowed black markets to flourish.

  

  Indeed, as the New York Times reports, black markets are flourishing once again in the lockdown era, but this time around businesses are the main participants as they scramble to find ways to meet their customers needs while complying with impossibly strict CCP measures.

  As a result, the costs of purchasing certain essential items – including day passes to travel on Shanghai’s mostly deserted streets, are costing businesses the equivalent of $2,000 per day, costs that are being passed down to consumers.

  Because of Covid restrictions, commercial trucks have a hard time delivering food and household goods to Shanghai. Inside the city, only vehicles with passes are allowed on the road.

  On the black market, some operators are willing to pay $2,000 for a day pass. The cost is then priced into the groceries they sell to the residents.

  One owner of a logistics company who spoke to the NYT said the situation in China is so bad, it’s without precedent.

  “I’ve been in the logistics business for 28 years,” Mr. Yang, 47, said in an interview. “But I’ve never seen a mess like this. There were numerous emergencies to deal with.” He estimates that he lost tens of thousands of dollars in March.

  For those who are wondering why China’s leadership is choosing to inflict so much pain on its population after confirming such a relatively small number of cases and deaths, the NYT reminds us of President Xi’s latest position on the lockdowns – which has been, essentially, to double down.

  But Mr. Xi has not budged from his zero Covid position. “Perseverance is victory,” he said on April 13. The state media, provincial party secretaries and lower-level government officials all know who is in charge and are eager to show their loyalty. Many local officials are escalating pandemic-control measures so they don’t risk an outbreak that could put their positions in danger.

  Adding what seems like another helpful piece of context, the NYT confirms that companies in Shanghai can’t really operate right now unless they can create a “closed loop” system – which would mean forcing workers to live at work, something we have already described in detail.

  Some factories in Shanghai, such as Tesla and some of its suppliers, have resumed production. But they must follow a set of complicated and expensive pandemic-control measures, including creating what’s called a closed-loop management system in which workers live on-site and test regularly for the virus.

  Not many companies are willing or able to do this. One senior executive of a major logistics company told me that they have only a few thousand delivery workers back on the job in Shanghai because they lack the capacity to provide lodging for so many workers. That’s significantly lower than the more than 60,000 delivery workers the company had in peak seasons in the past few years.

  As they struggle to deal with a government that’s totally unsympathetic to their plight, business owners are quietly wondering how much longer they could hold out without completely draining their cash reserves.

  The chief executive of a high-flying consumer brand is also wondering how long her company’s cash can last. The company raised $100 million last year and had ambitious expansion plans, she said in an interview. But nearly a third of her company’s 150 retail stores had to shut their doors in locked-down cities. Their online sales, which weren’t hurt in 2020, are suffering now because many cities shut the highway exits, halting e-commerce deliveries.

  Finally, as the Shanghai lockdown drags on, people are growing increasingly worried about not just the spread of lockdowns, but the spread of the economic stressors that they are creating.

  John Ji, a real estate developer in Nanjing of Jiangsu Province, is anxiously watching the lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities. He believes that many people will lose their jobs and have difficulty paying mortgages. When nobody can afford housing, he asked, who will buy his apartments?

  The results could be truly devastating.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 23:20

• Marxists Seek To Destabilize American Society Through Sexualization Of Young People: Expert
  Marxists Seek To Destabilize American Society Through Sexualization Of Young People: Expert

  Authored by Hannah Ng and David Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Young people in the United States are being subjected to communist-style sexualization, according to author and expert James Lindsay.

  

  The goal is to destabilize society to make it ripe for communists to grab power, Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody,” recently told EpochTV’s “China Insider” program.

  And their plan has been afoot for more than a century.

  “This is a deliberate program that Marxists have employed since at least the 1910s, starting in Hungary, to try to sexualize children to cause sexual and gender confusion so that they become political activists on behalf of some other agenda,” he said.

  Lindsay pointed to Georg Lukacs, a devout Hungarian Marxist who served as deputy commissar of education in 1919 during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. He introduced sex education to children at the elementary level, he said.

  “[Lukacs] sexualized the children of Hungary in order to separate them from their family,  to separate them from their religion, their nation and their culture,” Lindsay said. “Essentially getting children … all into these ideas so that when they go home, they would tell their parents, ‘you know, things have changed, or the Bible is wrong, or whatever our religion is wrong, our traditions are wrong.’”

  Next came Herbert Marcuse, a prominent member of the Frankfurt School, who focused his efforts on “trying to free sexual energy,” according to Lindsay. Marcuse in his 1965 work “Eros and Civilization” applied Marxist ideology to delve into these topics, becoming the intellectual basis for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. This in turn led to the comprehensive sexual education programs that are in American schools today, Lindsay noted.

  Later on, in the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of the “post-structural feminism” movement. These feminist activists used postmodern theory to advocate the notion that gender was socially constructed, and that sex roles are a form of oppression, according to the expert.

  “They used postmodern theory to break down all boundaries whatsoever—not just the idea of gender being a social construct, but sex and sexuality and everything becoming socially constructed, as well,” he said.

  “And those people have basically taken over.”

  Modern-day Marxists “focus more on gender and on the social fluidity of these concepts than you would have seen 100 years ago from older school Marxists. But the general thrust is the same,” he added.

  Meanwhile, with young people as their target group, Marxists find a population who are highly vulnerable and impressionable, Lindsay noted, as they’re at a stage of their lives when “they’re trying to find their identity, they’re trying to go grow up, and go through puberty and discover what it means to be who they are.”

  As a result, young people are being victimized. “They’re being injected full of all of these ideas about the fluidity of their gender, the fluidity of their sex, the socially constructed nature of sexuality. And it’s actually victimizing those people in particular,” he said.

  “Meanwhile, they [activists] hide behind saying that this is actually about protecting LGBT people, who are also being victimized,” he said.

  The Marxist movements back then and nowadays all share the same goal, noted Lindsay, which is “to soften children up to get them to be more accepting of the gender and sexual instruction that’s going on in their schools.”

  “So the purpose is actually to weaken and destabilize in the short term, so that power can be seized,” he said. “And then it’ll be up to whoever’s in charge to decide what they think is acceptable and not acceptable afterward.”

  With children being inundated by such Marxist ideas from all angles, especially when “the schools are doing a terrible job, are failing at educating our students,” Lindsay stressed that this places more responsibility on parents.

  “They’re having to take up the role of actually educating … their children, first of all. And then second of all, they’re also having to de-program their kids about what they’re learning about race, about history, about sex, about … sexuality and gender,” he said.

  The situation, Lindsay said, is also forcing parents to have conversations about sex and sexuality with their children at far younger ages than parents think is appropriate, as the schools and the media are dragging them into having these conversations.

  “The job that parents have right now is enormously harder than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he said.

  “But I stress this has been going on pretty rampantly at least over the last decade anyway. And so primarily, parents are just now becoming aware that this is being taught to their children in such a large quantity.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 23:00

• Indonesia Allows Some Palm Oil Exports After Ban, Sends Prices On Rollercoaster 
  Indonesia Allows Some Palm Oil Exports After Ban, Sends Prices On Rollercoaster 

  Palm oil futures slid Monday after Indonesia’s export ban on cooking oil last Friday will not be as strict as previously feared. 

  On Friday, Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, announced an export ban of all cooking oil and palm oil products beginning April 28. However, those who are in the know told Bloomberg that bulk and packaged RBD palm olein, a highly refined form of palm oil used in cooking and baking, will only be subjected to the ban. 

  

  People familiar with the matter said exports of crude palm oil and RBD palm oil will still be available for export. RBD olein accounts for nearly 40% of Indonesia’s total palm oil exports. 

  

  Palm oil for July delivery soared as much as 9% last Friday to 6,800 ringgit a ton and has since given up all gains and some. 

  

  Friday’s announcement came as a shock to many traders. One trader said, “news will certainly create mayhem.” 

  “Details are still scant for now, and traders are reacting on speculation that the impact of the Indonesian ban may be less than initially thought,” David Ng, senior trader at IcebergX Sdn. in Kuala Lumpur, said on Monday. It’s a slight relief but still may cause headaches worldwide. A ban on RBD palm olein, primarily used as cooking oils and for industrial frying of processed foods, could continue to tighten supply globally. 

  The Ukraine conflict has roiled the global edible oil market. The Black Sea region accounts for 76% of world sunoil exports. Indonesia’s move adds to the growing food protectionism as they ensure edible oil supply in domestic markets is ample to mitigate high food prices and inflation riots. 

  Sathia Varqa, the owner of Palm Oil Analytics in Singapore, said high palm oil prices, high demand, and shortages of edible oils at supermarkets are the reasons the government opted for the export ban on bulk and packaged RBD palm olein products. 

  Even though the ban is not as worse as previously thought, other parts of the world, such as Europe, have already begun to ration edible oils as the world supplies are quickly dwindling. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 22:40

• Europe Buys Abu Dhabi Crude To Replace Russian Barrels
  Europe Buys Abu Dhabi Crude To Replace Russian Barrels

  By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

  Abu Dhabi crude is preparing to make its way to Europe for the first time in two years as the European Union seeks replacements for Russian oil, Reuters reports.

  

  In May 2020, a shipment of Abu Dhabi crude was loaded for Italy, and there have been so shipments since, according to Arab News, citing Refinitiv Eikon data.

  According to Reuters, citing shipping reports, France Total Energies has “provisionally chartered a tanker” to load Abu Dhabi crude in early May, bound for Europe. A total of 1 million barrels of Murban crude–one of three Abu Dhabi grades–will be loaded provisionally, bound for Britain in the first week of May.

  Arab News reports that three Abu Dhabi grades–Murban, Das and Upper Zakum–will be increasingly replacing Russian oil for Europe in the coming months.

  This will divert some Abu Dhabi crude from Asia, but India has already been refraining from higher-priced Saudi and UAE crude and taking advantage of highly discounted Russian crude. 

  The European Union has been grappling with a decision to ban Russian oil, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that the bloc cease importing oil and gas from the Kremlin. 

  Supplies have become even more risky with the outbreak of a fire Monday at oil storage facilities in Bryansk, near Russia’s border with Ukraine, with Moscow claiming that the fire was the result of a Ukrainian missile strike.

  The oil depot in question is dangerously close to the Druzhba pipeline, which feeds Russian crude into Europe. It remains unclear whether the pipeline, operated by Transneft, has been affected.

  The Druzhba pipeline is responsible for transporting some one-fifth of Europe’s imports of Russian oil. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 22:20

• Why Are Rare Hepatitis Cases Rising In Children?
  Why Are Rare Hepatitis Cases Rising In Children?

  At least 169 children aged one month to 16 years-old have contracted cases of acute hepatitis in an outbreak spanning at least 11 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

  

  Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver, which filters the blood, helps fight infections and processes nutrients.

  At least one child is dead and 17 have required liver transplants from the disease. The majority of the cases, 114, were reported in the United Kingdom, while 13 were from Spain, 12 from Israel, nine in the USA, and a smaller number of cases in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, France, Romania and Belgium.

  Most of the cases had no fever, nor any of the common viruses that typically cause acute viral hepatitis, such as adenoviruses, which cause hepatitis A, B, C, D and E.

  “It is not yet clear if there has been an increase in hepatitis cases, or an increase in awareness of hepatitis cases that occur at the expected rate but go undetected,” said the WHO. “While adenovirus is a possible hypothesis, investigations are ongoing for the causative agent.”

  According to the Saturday statement, the clinical syndrome “among identified cases is acute hepatitis (liver inflammation) with markedly elevated liver enzymes,” with many suffering gastrointestinal issues such as diarrhea, abdominal pain and vomiting “preceding presentation with severe acute hepatitis” along with increased levels of liver enzimes or alanine aminotransaminase and jaundice.

  Hepatitis symptoms:

  • dark urine.
  • pale, grey-coloured poo.
  • itchy skin.
  • yellowing of the eyes and skin (jaundice).
  • muscle and joint pain.
  • a high temperature.
  • feeling and being sick.
  • feeling unusually tired all the time.
  • loss of appetite.
  • tummy pain.

  Most of the cases did not present with a fever, according to the WHO, which added that an investigation needs to focus on factors such as “increased susceptibility amongst young children following a lower level of circulation of adenovirus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential emergence of a novel adenovirus, as well as SARS-CoV-2 co-infection.”

  What else could be at play here?

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 22:00

• Media’s Collusion With Executive Branch Destroyed Trust In Public Health: Dr. Ben Carson
  Media’s Collusion With Executive Branch Destroyed Trust In Public Health: Dr. Ben Carson

  Authored by Masooma Haq and Roman Balmakov via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In the wake of a court decision to end federal mask mandates, Dr. Ben Carson, former U.S. secretary of the Housing and Urban Development and chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said he is glad there are checks and balances in our system of government but in order to truly restore trust in public health agencies, the mainstream media needs to be held accountable for colluding with the executive branch.

  “What we’ve done is we’ve gotten into a system where we have the media in cahoots with the executive branch, sort of overlooking all the other safeguards that we have in our system,” Carson told The Epoch Times.

  “And as a result of that, what we’ve done has completely destroyed the trust of the people in the CDC, the NIH, the government health system. It’s going to take a very long time to get that trust back.”

  

  A Trump-appointed district judge struck down federal mask mandates in a ruling on Monday, saying that the CDC exceeded its authority with the mask mandate and inappropriately did not seek public comment before imposing the order.

  In addition, Carson said the Biden administration’s decision to end the CDC health rule, Title 42—which limits the entry of illegal immigrants into the country during the pandemic—but at the same time having its health agency heads calling to keep mask mandates for U.S. citizens doesn’t make sense and is divergent thinking.

  “There is no justification for getting rid of Title 42 on the one hand, and telling us we need to extend the mask mandates,” said Carson, adding that the public has to push back for agencies to actually follow the science, instead of ideology.

  “If you have an executive branch that just begins to dictate, without any pushback, we’ve got to a very bad place. It’s too bad that a federal court system had to come in and bring some common sense into the discussion,” said Carson. “But the fact of the matter is, we all know, from multitudinous data, that the masks aren’t doing very much, particularly in things like airplanes that already have HEPA filters.”

  The neurosurgeon said common sense and scientific data should drive public health policies, including a broad range of treatments for COVID-19 and not just vaccinations.

  “[Hydroxychloroquine] was roundly criticized by our government officials. So was ivermectin and some other therapeutics that work perfectly fine in other parts of the world. Why would they work in other parts of the world and not work here?” said Carson. “Why is it, in Western Africa, there’s almost no COVID? Because they take hydroxychloroquine as an anti-malarial. Why in southern India is there almost no COVID? Because they take ivermectin. Maybe they’re not taking it specifically for COVID, but look at the results.”

  Carson said he would have liked to see therapeutics developed alongside vaccination for adults who wanted to voluntarily get them, but said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had a rule that prevented the rushed development of vaccines if early treatment was available.

  

  “We also had an FDA rule that said, we cannot issue an emergency use authorization for the vaccine if you have another effective therapy,” said Carson. “Well, of course, you have to say those [therapeutics] aren’t effective so you can do it. You know, that doesn’t make any sense. Why not be able to travel down several avenues simultaneously to find the most effective means of taking care of our population?”

  Carson said that the FDA law must be abolished so treatments at all stages of a disease can be used and for transparency to be brought back to the public health agencies. He wants citizens to be allowed to make informed decisions about their health.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 21:40

• Prominent COVID Doctor Accused Of $1.5 Million Healthcare Fraud
  Prominent COVID Doctor Accused Of $1.5 Million Healthcare Fraud

  A prominent Maryland doctor in charge of COVID-19 testing at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport and elsewhere has been accused by federal prosecutors of overcharging Medicare and other insurers by more than $1.5 million.

  

  Ron Elfenbein, 47, who was presented an award last August by Gov. Larry Hogan for his efforts during the pandemic, allegedly overbilled for COVID-19 tests in combination with “more lucrative, but medically unnecessary” services, according to a grand jury indictment reported by the Washington Post, which notes that these services “were purportedly of a 30-minute or longer duration, or involving moderate or high levels of medical decision-making, but did not in fact occur as represented.”

  The indictment alleges Elfenbein knew many patients were being seen for less than five minutes but directed staffers to bill for the higher-level services anyway, saying they were “the ‘bread and butter’ of how we get paid.”

  …

  The indictment, which charges Elfenbein with three counts of health-care fraud, identifies him as an owner and medical director of Drs ERgent Care, a company that also does business under the names First Call Medical Center and Chesapeake ERgent Care.

  According to Elfenbein’s lawyer, Mikle Lawlor, “In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Ron Elfenbein rallied his doctor’s office in a time of global fear, to be a leading provider of coronavirus testing and treatment in the community,” adding ” … A trial in this case will prove not only that Dr. Elfenbein is innocent of the charges hastily brought by the government, but that during a time of unprecedented need, Dr. Elfenbein and his staff saved the lives of numerous Marylanders.”

  The indictment identifies Elfenbein with three counts of healthcare fraud, and identifies him as an owner and medical director of a company called “Drs ERgent Care,” which also does business under “First Call Medical Center and Chesapeake ERgent Care.”

  Cute.

  Read about the entire tangled web here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 21:20

• Harvard Astrophysicist Says Alien-Tech Crashed Into The Pacific Ocean, And Now He Wants To Recover It
  Harvard Astrophysicist Says Alien-Tech Crashed Into The Pacific Ocean, And Now He Wants To Recover It

  Authored by Katie Hutton via TheMindUnleashed.com,

  A leading astrophysicist is devising a plan to send a team to the Pacific Ocean’s depths in search of what he thinks to be advanced extraterrestrial technology. 

  

  Astrophysicist Avi Loeb thinks that an interplanetary object that crashed into the Earth in 2014 was some kind of spaceship. His thesis is controversial in the science community.

  According to information released last week by the United States Space Command (USSC), the object indeed came from another star system. The projectile – which sped across the sky off the shore of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea – was determined to be a meteor by the agency.

  According to the New York Post, Prof. Loeb, on the other hand, isn’t having any of it. In a statement issued on Wednesday, he suggested that the item may have been created by extraterrestrials.

  “Our discovery of an interstellar meteor heralds a new research frontier,” the Harvard astronomer wrote in a piece for The Debrief. 

  “The fundamental question is whether any interstellar meteor might indicate a composition that is unambiguously artificial in origin. Better still, perhaps some technological components would survive the impact.”

  After spending decades researching astronomy, Prof. Loeb has lately turned his attention to the possibility that life exists somewhere other than Earth. Severe criticism has been leveled at him by others in his field for his alien theories, which have garnered widespread attention.

  Prof. Loeb, while working with a Harvard student, was the astronomer who, a few years ago, determined that the object was interstellar. After doing their investigation, the duo wrote a paper about it, but they were told not to publish it since they had utilized classified government data.

  Following the confirmation of their suspicion by the USSC on April 7, Loeb has called for an expedition to locate whatever is left of the interstellar object.

  According to the Post, It was highlighted in his article that a recovery trip may be accomplished by utilizing “scooping” magnets to examine the 10 square kilometer area of the Pacific Ocean where the item is believed to have landed.

  “My dream is to press some buttons on a functional piece of equipment that was manufactured outside of Earth,” Loeb says.

  Prof. Loeb has said on several occasions that Oumuamua – an interstellar object that raced past the Solar System in 2017 – was technology sent by extraterrestrials, which we wrote about in The Mind Unleashed here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 21:00

• FBI May Have Made Off With $500 Million In Lost Civil War Gold, Treasure Hunter Group Alleges
  FBI May Have Made Off With $500 Million In Lost Civil War Gold, Treasure Hunter Group Alleges

  A group of treasure hunters is suing the Department of Justice over “several tons of buried Civil War-era gold” that they claim the FBI may have found and made off with. The haul was supposedly lost or stolen during the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, according to local lore.

  The group is called Finders Keepers – and they they wrote in a court filing last week that the FBI has failed to turn over records on its search for the gold. Previously, these records were said to have included 17 videos, but the government is now claiming only 4 such videos exist. 

  The FBI took place in a March 2018 dig at the supposed site of the gold, but claims they came up with nothing.

  Anne Weismann, Finders Keepers’ lawyer, told CBS: “This raises the obvious question of whether videotapes were destroyed in the interim.” Weismann is trying to have a court order the FBI to explain the discrepancy in videos. 

  

  A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. declined to comment to CBS.

  Weissman wrote: “Its behavior points to one conclusion: The FBI does not want to acknowledge publicly or to plaintiff that it located gold at the Dent’s Run site in March 2018.”

  Finders Keepers has been claiming that the FBI has acted suspiciously about the dig for the last four years. The group is trying to find the videos, which Weismann believes “would confirm the truth or falsity of this claim”.

  The DOJ says they can turn over records starting at the end of May, in monthly tranches of 500 pages. The DOJ says there is a total of 2,400 pages of records and 1,000 photos regarding the March 2018 dig. 

  The 1863 shipment of Union gold that was supposedly lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia has been investigated by Finders Keepers for years. The treasure hunters said they “led the FBI to a remote site 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh where they say their instruments detected a large hunk of metal”.

  According to the CBS report, the FBI’s contractor said they detected a “9-ton metallic mass suggestive of gold”.

  Finders Keepers accompanied the FBI on their dig but said they were confined to their car during the process. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 20:40

• Airlines Offering Refunds To Passengers Concerned About Flying With Unmasked Travelers
  Airlines Offering Refunds To Passengers Concerned About Flying With Unmasked Travelers

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

  Airline passengers who are concerned about flying alongside unmasked people will now be offered refunds, among other things, after a federal judge last week struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) mask mandate on public transport.

  

  United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told the “TODAY” show on April 21 that the airline will be flexible with customers who are immunocompromised and who do not want to fly alongside passengers who are not wearing face coverings.

  “All of our customers should feel free to wear a mask and many of them are,” Kirby said. “For customers like that, that are immunocompromised or that have other concerns or issues … we are working with those customers if they really don’t want to fly to find them another option, give them a credit, or if they just don’t ever want to fly again, [we are] actually willing to give them a refund.”

  A United spokesman told The Associated Press that customers, except those on the lowest-priced “basic economy” fares are able to delay their travel plans for any reason without having to pay an extra fee. The spokesman added that passengers with special circumstances should call the airline’s customer service number.

  Meanwhile, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom told AP that while his company hasn’t yet seen many refund requests following the mask mandate removal, it is assessing its policies and asking passengers to contact the airline’s reservations office, adding that, “we will make sure that we accommodate them in an appropriate fashion.”

  

  An American Airlines spokeswoman pointed to the airline’s policy which allows refunds for refundable tickets and credit for the value of unused non-refundable tickets. But customers who have purchased a less pricey “basic economy” ticket since April 1 will not be entitled to a refund or ticket change, the spokeswoman explained.

  A Delta Air Lines spokesman said customers who want to cancel their upcoming trip in light of the mask mandate removal need to get in touch with the airline, noting that decisions on how to handle these requests will be made on a case-by-case basis.

  Elsewhere, Alaska Airlines said in a statement that it respects customers’ decision to continue wearing masks onboard flights.

  The flight carrier said it would “work with guests on a case-by-case basis if they’re not comfortable flying,” according to Simple Flying, while Southwest Airlines will continue to allow all passengers to cancel tickets and receive flight credit instead.

  The move by airlines comes after U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled on April 18 that the CDC failed to justify its decision to impose the mandate and had exceeded its authority.

  It also, inappropriately, did not seek public comment before imposing the order, Mizelle said, noting that public comment, in this case, is necessary because the mandate would “constrain their choices and actions via threats and civil and criminal penalties.”

  The Justice Department announced on April 20 that it is appealing the ruling.

  Elsewhere during Kirby’s interview with “TODAY,” the United CEO pointed to HEPA filters onboard flights that remove around 99.97 percent of particles in the air, noting that a plane is “literally one of the safest places you can be.”

  Kirby added that he believes mask mandates on flights will be unlikely to come back anytime soon, saying that the Justice Department’s appeal “is mostly about jurisdiction.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 20:20

• Japan To Spend Billions To "Ease Inflationary Pain" Caused By Spending Billions
  Japan To Spend Billions To “Ease Inflationary Pain” Caused By Spending Billions

  How stupid are today’s monetary and fiscal policies (and not just the batshit insanity that is Helicopter money, a/k/a MMT?) So stupid that in Japan, the government is about to spend billions to “ease inflation pain” that is the result of… spending billions.

  According to the Nikkei, Japan plans to spend 6.2 trillion yen ($48.2 billion) on – get this – gasoline subsidies, low-interest loans and cash assistance “to alleviate the pain of consumers and small businesses facing rising prices”, which were caused by, well, massive government spending.

  

  The government frames the economic package, to be compiled as early as Tuesday, as comprehensive relief measures. But critics – at least those who refuse or fail to see the real monetary elephant in the room – see them as a short-term remedy, especially as other countries tackle more fundamental changes on energy and other key economic factors in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  To pay for the package, the government will request 2.7 trillion yen under a supplementary fiscal 2022 budget to be drafted by the end of the current parliamentary session. It will secure another 1.5 trillion yen from its reserve funds. Together with private-sector contributions, the entire package is expected to total 13.2 trillion yen.

  The largest portion of the government’s spending – 1.5 trillion yen – will fund the response to surging crude oil prices. To limit the increase in gasoline prices, the government will raise its maximum subsidy to oil distributors to 35 yen per liter from 25 yen and extend the program until the end of September.

  The new package includes around 2 trillion yen in measures that were already planned and budgeted for, including efforts to boost the profile of tourist destinations. According to the Nikkei, there is concern that they include ones that have little to do with inflation but apparently not enough concern that the “solution” to the inflationary problem will lead to even more inflation.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 20:00

• The Real Victim Of Shanghai's COVID Lockdown? Intra-Asia Trade Pipeline
  The Real Victim Of Shanghai’s COVID Lockdown? Intra-Asia Trade Pipeline

  By Lori Ann LaRocco of FreightWaves

  The slothlike trade moving out of Shanghai has created a short supply of raw materials traveling on the all-important intra-Asia trade route. Countries that make up this trade pipe — Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Cambodia — have factories waiting on crucial raw materials needed to finish goods ranging from apparel and footwear to furniture.

  This pipeline saw an expansion in the trade as more American importers diversified their manufacturing out of China as a way to work around the China tariffs. 

  But what this pandemic has revealed is even with this “manufacturing diversification,”  the dependency on China has never been fully severed. Major raw materials such as jute, cotton, silk, wool and manmade fibers used by the textile and apparel industry are sourced in China. 

  These raw materials are components in yarns, fabrics, fasteners, threads, pockets, shoulder pads and waistbands. In addition, trimmings (buttons, zippers, etc.), leather and rubber soles (for shoes) are made in China and transported to intra-Asian factories. 

  Thus, if a box of zippers is on the floor of a closed Chinese manufacturing plant or a part of the “lucky” 666 and a truck can’t pick up that box due to restrictions, the consumer is out of luck.

  “We fear that the Shanghai lockdown is impacting the intra-Asian business more than Asian exports,” said Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at Xeneta.

  Data details lack of demand

  Data from Xeneta shows the drop in the short-term contracts of containers on the intra-Asia trade. Pricing is a reflection of demand — or in this case, the lack of demand.

  

  Not only are we worried about slowdowns in major production centers and at the world’s busiest ports, we are worried about the impact of lockdowns on the movement of both materials and finished products between China and other key Asian supplier countries,” said Nate Herman, senior vice president, policy, American Apparel & Footwear Association.

  In addition to critical finishing products, chemicals are transported. Jeremy Pafford, head of North America, market development, Independent Commodity Intelligence Services, tells American Shipper one example is the chemical material used in making clothes is polyester yarn. 

  “Because of the shutdowns, polyester yarn inventories in China have surged as factories that would use the yarn have shut down,” Pafford said. “That has helped pressure regional prices downward up to 10% in some regions and sets up a need for polyester yarn producers to lower operating rates if more textile factories don’t reopen soon.”

  Pafford said because China is the chemical manufacturing hub of Asia, the shutdowns have direct effects on producers and buyers in adjacent regions.

  “These shutdowns bring a loss of demand and lower chemical prices regionally at a time when upstream costs for feedstock crude oil and natural gas are high,” he said. “Producers in the supply chain are facing pressures.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 19:40

• GM To Produce "Electrified Corvette" Next Year 
  GM To Produce “Electrified Corvette” Next Year 

  General Motors President Mark Reuss disclosed to CNBC’s Phil LeBeau that an electrified Chevrolet Corvette will be produced in 2023. 

  The Chevrolet Corvette, also known as the ‘Vette,’ is an iconic American sports car with over 60 years of production and eight design generations. Reuss said the automaker would make two versions, one that is electrified and the other that has an internal combustion engine. 

  

  He didn’t give specifics when the all-electric Corvette would be released. 

  “We will have an electrified Corvette next year. It’s coming very quick,” Reuss told LeBeau during an interview on “Squawk Box.”

  $GM will sell an electric version of the Corvette. ⁦@GMdudeinNA⁩ President Mark Reuss says it’s time to add an electric ‘vette to the stable. Timing on fully electric ‘vette TBD. And yes, ⁦@GM⁩ will continue selling internal combustion engine versions as well. pic.twitter.com/oi0T4jkept

  — Phil LeBeau (@Lebeaucarnews) April 25, 2022

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

  General Motors continues its push into EVs. The company confirmed earlier this year that a $30,000 Equinox EV and a Blazer EV would arrive in 2023. The Hummer EV is scheduled for launch in the fall.

  EVs have been growing in popularity, yet production could be hampered due to a shortage of lithium and other essential industrial metals for battery-making. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 19:20

• Censorship And Propaganda Threatens Our Freedom
  Censorship And Propaganda Threatens Our Freedom

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  Censorship is in many ways a reverse form of propaganda. It is not a mistake or oversight that many mainstream media outlets give their audience little ability to give feedback. They go out of their way to avoid anything that might dispute their narrative. While it could be argued the lack of a comment area or feature linked to an online format is often just an omission it could be something more and far more sinister. The lack of debate on whether America should be involved in the current dispute in Ukraine highlights how propaganda can dictate policy.

  

  They Don’t Want Your Opinion

  Propaganda tends to become a self-feeding loop that plays a huge role in shaping public opinions. The lack of a feedback loop is a tool to reinforce the idea there is no objection or criticism of the article or statement and everyone accepts its conclusions. I contend the subtle omission of a comment section online is often to quell dissenting voices and not because it simplifies the format.

  The definition of censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such views or material have been deemed objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or “inconvenient”. Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, or corporations. This does include mainstream media. 

  Censorship has a huge role in driving the fear of speaking out. By its nature censorship often implies those being silenced are trying to say something very wrong. I consider censorship and mainstream media’s role in it as part of the self-feeding propaganda loop that plays such a huge role in shaping public opinion.  This tends to result in those in the leadership positions that control the media slowly hacking away at the constitutional rights of the individual by furthering the idea it is all “for the greater good.“

  The idea of having a press that is free to cover the news is linked to the idea it will be fair and such a freedom comes with a degree of responsibility. A common example is how freedom of speech should give someone the right to speak their mind but not scream fire in a crowded theater. This can slip into an argument as to the duty of the media in presenting as unbiased a view of events as possible. This is complicated by the fact many news outlets have moved more towards an entertainment format rather than presenting the cold hard facts and in that regard, sensationalism draws viewers.

  

  Propaganda Shapes Public Opinion!

  Call it what you want, propaganda or fake news, it is more or less the same thing and we are bombarded with it on a daily basis. This will continue to expand in the future considering the many new tools at the disposal of those wishing to both control and deceive us. Already fake news and false flags have left many of us having a difficult time deciding what is real. To make matters worse the rapidly growing ability of computers to generate human images is about to take this to a whole new level as this deceptive and potentially dangerous area of technology starts to become horribly abused. 

  It could be argued, that mainstream media has become a polarizing force that stirs the pot of social unrest. By promoting polarization America’s media has made it impossible for the people to unite and regain any control over Washington. I would not be surprised if those in control are not giddy over this and the problems Facebook has created by playing fast and loose with data from its followers. Facebook by crossing the line and abusing the trust of those with accounts and information posted on  its platform has taken a great deal of pressure off of the mainstream media to do a better job.  

  The sad reality is that “Power To The People” is dead because we, as a people are so divided and unable to agree on anything. Still, even more unsettling is the relationship so many large companies have made with the government. Anyone who doesn’t believe that countries use psychological warfare and propaganda to sway the opinions of people both in and outside of their country is naive. Sadly, this is a huge factor in our deployment of the military and the endless wars that benefit those building the weapons of death.

  

  An Example Of The Lies We Are Fed

  Propaganda is a powerful tool that has resulted in many wars that enrich those who make weapons at the expense of those called upon to give their blood. The fact that behemoth Amazon has intertwined business interests with the CIA, NSA, and several other “Deep State” government agencies is a monument to our having lost control of the massive part of our government that spies on us and spins the narratives to which we dance. The fact Amazon’s former CEO, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post, America’s most influential newspaper, should send shivers down the back of those believing in freedom and limited government. Simply put, this has taken propaganda to a whole new level and unleashed a force that none of our institutions can resist.

  Today many people get the majority of their news over the internet. While this has made a huge difference in how news is distributed and how we receive the news, the reality is that much of the content remains controlled by a few strong players that are driven by an agenda of self-interest. It could be argued that the media has a moral obligation to provide more of a “public forum” if they want the right to call themselves “free and balanced” but if anything the noose is slowly tightening around those wishing for such a voice. Banning certain ideas and speech only tightens governments’ ability to control the masses.

  Many of us out beyond the beltway in the backwaters and wilds of America have grown to feel the media has a casual relationship with the truth. In many ways, the media controlled by a few power brokers has become viewed more as a tool of the establishment than the protector of the people and defender of our rights. America’s forefathers never intended such unholy forces to guide our opinions. This could explain why the press is often held in such low esteem by the very public that relies on them for information. Coverage filled with subtle digs or comments and even subliminal messages taints the premise media is fair. During interviews, we often get an opportunity to witness examples of just how badly you can treat a guest invited to answer questions when they resist the narrative being pushed. 

  This often results in over-the-top efforts to put words in someone’s mouth and take statements out of context. These words are then spun in the most harmful ways. If the guest represents views differing from the interviewer what we often see is an ambush. If a guest is favored or their views are endorsed it is often as though they had written the softball questions asked of them or as if they had been given the questions in advance or controlled the interview. All this can then be backed up by a series of scripted statements that all loop back around to support a hard or subliminal message.

  With the biased coverage of current events being very common, it is little wonder that Americans question the honesty of the media whose ranks appear to have become filled with opportunists and bums dressed as a journalist. The fact is we often don’t agree with everything we view or read so “implied agreement” is not valid. Even including a simple thumbs up or down box at the end of an article would at least give readers a place to weigh in. Next time you are boiling mad or disagree with how an article is characterizing an event I urge you to take the time to see if the source has provided you with an opportunity to present your view. I would not be surprised if they have not.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 19:00

• "You Are Throwing Me Under The Bus" – Musk Rages At Saudi Wealth Fund Head In Tweets Exposed By 'Funding Secured' Lawsuit
  “You Are Throwing Me Under The Bus” – Musk Rages At Saudi Wealth Fund Head In Tweets Exposed By ‘Funding Secured’ Lawsuit

  In the latest batch of private communications belonging to Elon Musk revealed in recent days, a court filing exposed text messages between Tesla’s CEO and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, showcasing Musk berating him for failing to confirm his story about whether they had actually discussed taking Tesla private.

  Musk is presently being sued by Tesla shareholders who claim that he defrauded them with his now infamous “funding secured” tweet sent in August 2018.

  The exact communications between Musk and Al-Rumayyan are quoted deep in the court filing, which stretches to more than 120 pages, and which landed on Friday. It contains a large trove of Musk’s texts, but the main ones being quoted by the press involve his conversation PIF, where he berates Al-Rumayyan for not supporting his claim that the PIF had discussed taking Tesla private. According to details fleshed out in the filing, while the PIF did express some interest during a meeting between the two sides, they never got into specifics.

  When representatives of the fund refused to confirm Musk’s version of events to Bloomberg News, Musk was furious, and he let his displeasure be known in a text where he cited the article and accused the Al-Rumayyan of “throwing me under the bus”.

  Here are a few key excerpts from Musk’s from the filing:

  • “I read the article. It is weak sauce and still makes me sound like a liar. It is filled with equivocation and in no way indicates the strong interest you conveyed in person,” Musk texted, the documents show.
  • “I will not work with an organization who’s [sic] public statement to the media do not match their private statements to me and my team.”
  • “You are throwing me under the bus,” he added late.
  • “You said that you were the decision-maker for PIF, that you had wanted to do the Tesla take private deal for two years, and that this was supported directly by the Crown Prince.”
  • “You said you were definitely interested in taking Tesla private and had wanted to do so since 2016…I’m sorry, but we cannot work together.”

  In various responses, Al-Rumayyan texted back that he couldn’t commit to a deal because the fund hadn’t seen any specifics (one of which allegedly mentioned by the fund was Tesla building out production capacity in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in line with the Crown Prince’s initiative to diversify its economy. 

  After Musk declared that Tesla and the PIF couldn’t work together, Al-Rumayyan responded: “It’s up to you Elon.”

  When one twitter account aggregated some of the quoted texts, Musk again insisted that his version of events was correct, as he had during a Ted Talk earlier this month where he insisted that “funding was indeed secured” and that he had settled with the SEC only after being backed into a corner.

  The head of Saudi PIF committed unequivocally to take Tesla private with me, as witnessed by the Tesla CFO and several others. That is why I said funding was secured.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

  Musk abandoned his push to take the company private later in the month, writing eventually that the better path would be for Tesla to remain public.

  Perhaps the biggest irony here is that PIF dumped the vast majority of its Tesla holdings in 2020, missing out on the stocks stellar post-pandemic performance.

  Amusingly, the SEC argued in court just last month that Musk shouldn’t be let out of his infamous “twitter sitter” consent decree, which (at least in theory) required that somebody review his tweets before he would be allowed to publish them.

  Readers can find the full document (coming in at more than 120 pages) below:

  gov.uscourts.cand.330489.403.0 by Joseph Adinolfi on Scribd

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 18:40

• Scientists Discover Heart Inflammation More Prevalent Among Vaccinated Than Unvaccinated: Study
  Scientists Discover Heart Inflammation More Prevalent Among Vaccinated Than Unvaccinated: Study

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Heart inflammation requiring hospital care was more common among people who received COVID-19 vaccines than those who did not, according to a new study of tens of millions of Europeans.

  

  Rates of myocarditis or pericarditis, two types of heart inflammation, are above the levels in an unvaccinated cohort, pegged at 38 per 100,000 after receipt of a second dose of a vaccine built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in males aged 16 to 24—the group studies have shown are most at risk of the post-vaccination condition—researchers with health agencies in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway found.

  “These extra cases among men aged 16–24 correspond to a 5 times increased risk after Comirnaty and 15 times increased risk after Spikevax compared to unvaccinated,” Dr. Rickard Ljung, a professor and physician at the Swedish Medical Products Agency and one of the principal investigators of the study, told The Epoch Times in an email.

  Comirnaty is the brand name for Pfizer’s vaccine while Spikevax is the brand name for Moderna’s jab.

  Rates were also higher among the age group for those who received any dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, both of which utilize mRNA technology. And rates were elevated among vaccinated males of all ages after the first or second dose, except for the first dose of Moderna’s shot for those 40 or older, and females 12- to 15-years-old.

  Researchers pulled data from national health registers, analyzing 23.1 million people aged 12 or older. The analysis was of data from Dec. 27, 2020, to incidence of myocarditis or pericarditis, or the end of the study time period, which was Oct. 5, 2021.

  “The risks of myocarditis and pericarditis were highest within the first 7 days of being vaccinated, were increased for all combinations of mRNA vaccines, and were more pronounced after the second dose,” researchers wrote in the study, which was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association following peer review.

  Moderna and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment.

  Some previous studies have indicated that the risk of heart inflammation is higher from the companies’ vaccines, or certain doses of the vaccines, than from COVID-19 itself.

  Others have concluded the opposite, including a recent non-peer-reviewed study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though that is one of the papers that has estimated a higher rate of post-vaccination heart inflammation.

  Authorities in the United States and many European countries continue recommending vaccination for virtually every eligible person, regardless of age, health condition, or prior infection.

  The Nordic countries, however, halted use of Moderna’s vaccine in 2021 for youth and young adults due to concerns over post-vaccination heart inflammation.

  Ljung said he could not answer whether the results mean some people should consider only a single dose, or no doses, of a COVID-19 vaccine because the Swedish Medical Products Agency doesn’t give those types of recommendations.

  In a press release promoting the study, researchers said that occurrence of the heart inflammation is “very rare” and claimed that “the benefits of these vaccines to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 and death outweigh the risks of side effects.”

  Dr. Peter McCullough, the chief medical adviser for the Truth for Health Foundation and a cardiologist who is seeing patients with post-vaccination heart inflammation, disagreed.

  “In cardiology we spend our entire career trying to save every bit of heart muscle. We put in stents, we do heart catheterization, we do stress tests, we do CT angiograms. The whole game of cardiology is to preserve heart muscle,” McCullough told The Epoch Times. “Under no circumstances would we accept a vaccine that causes even one person to stay sustain heart damage. Not one. And this idea that ‘oh, we’re going to ask a large number of people to sustain heart damage for some other theoretical benefit for a viral infection,’ which for most is less than a common cold, is untenable. The benefits of the vaccines in no way outweigh the risks.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 18:20

• Over $13 Million In 'Bored Ape' NFTs Stolen By Hackers
  Over $13 Million In ‘Bored Ape’ NFTs Stolen By Hackers

  Millions in ‘Bored Ape’ NFTs were stolen after hackers breached the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, then advertised a fake distribution of NFTs known as an ‘airdrop’ – which tricked users into clicking a malicious link that gave control over their wallets to the hackers, according to CoinDesk.

  

  “There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links or link your wallet to anything,” the NFT project tweeted.

  🚨There is no mint going on today. It looks like BAYC Instagram was hacked. Do not mint anything, click links, or link your wallet to anything.

  — Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) April 25, 2022

  The stolen NFTs include several pieces from Yuga Labs, the firm behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

  According to CoinDesk, the value 54 of the NFTs scammed (24 Bored Apes and 30 Mutant Apes) is around $13.7 million.

  “The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the Bored Ape Yacht Club website, where a safeTransferFrom attack asked users to connect their MetaMask to the scammer’s wallet in order to participate in a fake Airdrop,” said a spokesperson. “At 9:53am ET, we alerted our community, removed all links to Instagram from our platforms and attempted to recover the hacked Instagram account.”

  The company added that it’s investigating how the account was compromised.

   

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

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/25/2022 – 18:00