Today’s News 10th March 2022

• Watch: John Mearsheimer & Ex-CIA Ray McGovern Discuss Why "Ukraine Is Going To Get Wrecked"
  Watch: John Mearsheimer & Ex-CIA Ray McGovern Discuss Why “Ukraine Is Going To Get Wrecked”

  A rare must-see panel discussion has been sponsored by Consortium News bringing together geopolitical heavyweights to offer their ‘outside-the-establishment norm’ perspectives on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the state of play in Europe and among NATO powers.

  Presented by the Committee for the Republic in Washington, the discussion features University of Chicago professor and international relations analyst John Mearsheimer, as well as ex-CIA Russia specialist Ray McGovern. It should be noted that McGovern’s CIA career spanned 27 years, which in the latter part included serving as the agency’s presidential briefer at the White House. WATCH:

  Also part of the discussion is Jack Matlock, last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, as well as Ted Postol, MIT professor of technology and international security. Additionally, Susan Eisenhower, grand-daughter of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was part of the panel. 

  A recently resurfaced lecture that Prof. Mearsheimer gave at the University of Chicago in 2015 has gone viral since the Russian invasion kicked off last month. On YouTube alone, for example, the over hour-long speech has racked up more than 17 million views. 

  The famous author and political science theorist had predicted at the time: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.” This tragedy for the Ukrainian people is playing out now, with little hope that ongoing rounds of Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks will halt the fighting.

  Analysis & prediction on Ukraine from 6 years ago:

  “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

  -John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the U. of Chicago, pic.twitter.com/kPQNH58o7G

  — Prodigal Son (@ThePr0diga1S0n) January 24, 2022

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  Writing at The American Conservative, columnist Rod Dreher said of his prior predictions: “Mearsheimer Told Us So — In 2014.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/10/2022 – 00:00

• Mapped: 200 Years Of Global Political Regimes, By Country
  Mapped: 200 Years Of Global Political Regimes, By Country

  Do civilians get a representative say in how the government is run where you live?

  While it might seem like living with a basic level of democratic rights is the status quo, as Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh details below, this is only true for 93 countries or territories today—the majority of the world does not enjoy these rights.

  It also might surprise you that much of the progress towards democracy came as late as the mid-20th century. This interactive map from Our World in Data paints a comprehensive picture of democratic rights across the globe.

  Which Countries Achieved Democracy First?

  The three famous first words in the U.S. Constitution—“We The People…”—paved the way for the birth of a federal democratic republic in 1789. This makes the United States of America the world’s oldest uninterrupted democracy today.

  That said, the classification system in the interactive map above provides a slightly different perspective. It draws from the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, and establishes four major classifications of political systems:

  1. Liberal Democracy
     Citizens have further individual and minority rights, are equal before the law, and the actions of the executive are constrained by the legislative and the courts.
     32 countries/territories in 2020

  2. Electoral Democracy
     Citizens have the right to participate in meaningful, free and fair, and multi-party elections.
     61 countries/territories in 2020

  3. Electoral Autocracy
     Citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature through multi-party elections; but they lack some freedoms, such as the freedoms of association or expression, that make the elections meaningful, free, and fair.
     64 countries/territories in 2020

  4. Closed Autocracy
     Citizens do not have the right to either choose the chief executive of the government or the legislature through multi-party elections.
     42 countries/territories in 2020

  Under the classification system used here, it’s arguable that Switzerland was the first country to achieve a fully liberal democracy status in 1849, followed by Australia in 1858.

  The Least Democratic Countries

  Our World in Data also looks at how the global population breaks down by political regime.

  The following chart demonstrates the share of the global population living under each type of regime since 1800, in relative or absolute terms.

  While the global population has increased tremendously in 200 years, so has the number of civilians living under stricter political systems. Today, 1.9 billion people live in closed autocracies, of which nearly 75% live in China alone.

  The major dip observed at the very end of the above chart comes from India. According to the data source, the nation flipped from electoral democracy to electoral autocracy status in 2019. As the second-most populous country, this change affected nearly 1.4 billion people.

  Finally, while the data in the above maps and charts ends in 2020, notable events have taken place in recent months that may affect the number of people living in different political regimes.

  The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid-2021 caused the country to slide into closed autocracy status, and as the current conflict in Ukraine/Russia heats up, it’s possible that more people may find themselves living under non-democratic regimes going forward.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 23:40

• Texas Elections Official To Resign After 1000s Of Uncounted Ballots Found
  Texas Elections Official To Resign After 1000s Of Uncounted Ballots Found

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  The Harris County elections commissioner is resigning after 10,000 uncounted ballots for last week’s primary were discovered, according to an announcement posted online on Monday.

  “Today I am submitting my resignation, effective July 1,” Isabel Longoria said in the announcement.

  “I think this date ensures that there is a presiding officer during the May and June elections and allows the election commission the time they need to find a replacement. I remain committed to the office and its mission and hope to aid in defeating harmful rhetoric to ensure successful elections in the future.”

  

  It’s not clear exactly why Longoria was resigning. The Harris County Republican Party in Texas recently filed a lawsuit against the commissioner after the 10,000 uncounted ballots were discovered.

  There were other issues with the primary election, including staffing problems, equipment issues, and longer-than-usual lines, according to local reports.

  “The buck stops with me to address issues for voters and I did not meet my own standard or the standard set by commissioners,” Longoria said Monday.

  Before Longoria’s statement, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said she had spoken with the commissioner about a “change in leadership,” Hidalgo told a Commissioners Court meeting last week.

  It came days after the Harris County Elections Office said that some 6,000 Democratic votes and 4,000 Republican votes weren’t counted and will be added to final tallies for last week’s primary.

  “While the votes were scanned into our tabulation computer, they were not transferred and counted as a part of the unofficial final results as they should have been,” the Harris County Elections Office said in a statement, blaming an “oversight” for why the votes weren’t counted in the county, which is home to Houston.

  March 1’s primary was the first Texas election that took place in the state under newer, tighter voting laws that were passed last year. Outside of Harris County, thousands of mail-in ballots were rejected across the state for not having new required information.

  On Monday, the Harris County Republican Party filed a lawsuit against Longoria and the elections office for committing the “worst elections fiasco in Texas history” after the ballots were found, uncounted.

  In an accompanying statement, the GOP described the incident as “another example of the serious mismanagement of Lina Hidalgo’s unqualified Elections Administrator.”

  Even the Democratic Party of Harris County released a statement calling for an investigation.

  “We called for a post-election review of all processes—there has not been any skirting of party responsibility, and we have been completely transparent in our desire to dig into the details of what went wrong and identify how to make corrections moving forward,” Harris County Democratic Party Chair Odus Evbagharu remarked.

  The Epoch Times has contacted the Harris County Elections Division for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 23:20

• Does This Mysterious Superyacht In Italian Port Belong To A Russian Oligarch?
  Does This Mysterious Superyacht In Italian Port Belong To A Russian Oligarch?

  A mysterious superyacht is docked in Marina di Carrara, a small Italian town on the Tuscan coast. Italian police have boarded the vessel, searching for clues and interviewing the ship’s captain to figure ownership, according to NYTimes. 

  Scheherazade, a 140-meter superyacht, is estimated to be worth around $700 million, has two helipads, a swimming pool, and gold-plated fixtures in the bathrooms. 

  

  Locals believe the yacht could be owned by a Russian oligarch or even Russian President Vladimir Putin. They’ve nicknamed it “Putin’s yacht.”

  Luxury motor yacht SCHEHERAZADE – absolute beast 😍🔥
  Built by @luerssenyachts in 2020.👌🏻

  Her exterior design is the work of Espen Oeino!🙌🏻

  She can accommodate up to 40 guests in 22 cabins.🎊

  Guess her length in the comments down below👇🏻

  🎥 @boatfromtheworld pic.twitter.com/GSyRIxofh1

  — Boatsters Black (@Boatsters) November 12, 2021

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   “Everybody calls it Putin’s yacht, but nobody knows whose it is,” Ernesto Rossi, a local interviewed by NYT. “It’s a rumor that’s been going around for months.”

  So @MarineTraffic was very helpful in helping us learn more about this superyacht. Here’s a track of the Scheherazade in 2021 – note the trip to Sochi (in the first week of July last year) pic.twitter.com/dgHA5Ft3Si

  — Mike Forsythe 傅才德 (@PekingMike) March 8, 2022

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  The ship’s captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, said Putin had ever been on the yacht. 

  “I have never seen him. I have never met him.” He noted the owner of the yacht is currently not under any sanction list though didn’t rule out that the person could be Russian, adding he couldn’t reveal the owner because of a “watertight nondisclosure agreement.”

  Captain Bennett-Pearce said Italian investigators had recently come aboard to examine the vessel’s certification documents. “They are looking hard. They are looking at every aspect,” he said. “This isn’t the local coppers coming down, these are men in dark suits.”

  On Monday, the captain was forced to hand over documents revealing the owner’s identity and was told by investigators it would be handled with “confidentiality.” 

  “I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will clear the vessel of all negative rumors and speculations,” he said.

  The investigation into the Scheherazade comes as the Biden administration made it very clear last week they will “seize the yachts, luxury apartments, and private jets” of Russian billionaires. Sanctions were announced by Western countries that have hit Russia’s economy hard and targeted Putin’s inner circle of oligarchs. 

  Even though some Russian superyachts and other assets of the oligarchs have been seized, there has been tremendous difficulty (see: here) of linking assets to oligarchs on the sanctions list (and even assets secretly controlled by Putin). 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 23:00

• Hopkins: Revenge Of The Putin-Nazis!
  Hopkins: Revenge Of The Putin-Nazis!

  Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  And they’re back! It’s like one of those 1960s Hammer Film Productions horror-movie series with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee … Return of the Putin-Nazis! Revenge of the Putin-Nazis! Return of the Revenge of the Bride of the Putin-Nazis! And this time they are not horsing around with stealing elections from Hillary Clinton with anti-masturbation Facebook ads. They are going straight for “Democracy’s” jugular!

  

  Yes, that’s right, folks, Vladimir Putin, leader of the Putin-Nazis and official “Evil Dictator of the Day,” has launched a Kamikazi attack on the United Forces of Goodness (and Freedom) to provoke us into losing our temper and waging a global thermonuclear war that will wipe out the entire human species and most other forms of life on earth!

  I’m referring, of course, to Putin’s inexplicable and totally unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a totally peaceful, Nazi-free country which was just sitting there minding its non-Nazi business, singing Kumbaya, and so on, and not in any way collaborating with or being cynically used by GloboCap to menace and eventually destabilize Russia so that the GloboCap boys can get back in there and resume the Caligulan orgy of “privatization” they enjoyed throughout the 1990’s.

  No, clearly, Putin has just lost his mind, and has no strategic objective whatsoever (other than the total extermination of humanity), and is just running around the Kremlin shouting “DROP THE BOMBS! EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES!” all crazy-eyed and with his face painted green like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now … because what other explanation is there?

  Or … OK, sure, there are other explanations, but they’re all just “Russian disinformation” and “Putin-Nazi propaganda” disseminated by “Putin-apologizing, Trump-loving, discord-sowing racists,” “transphobic, anti-vax conspiracy theorists,” “Covid-denying domestic extremists,” and other traitorous blasphemers and heretics, who are being paid by Putin to infect us with doubt, historical knowledge, and critical thinking, because they hate us for our freedom … or whatever.

  Let’s take a quick look at some of that “Russian disinformation” and “propaganda,” purely to inoculate ourselves against it. We need to be familiar with it, so we can switch off our minds and shout thought-terminating clichés and official platitudes at it whenever we encounter it on the Internet. It might be a little uncomfortable to do this, but just think of it as a Russian-propaganda “vaccine,” like an ideological mRNA fact-check booster (guaranteed to be “safe and effective”)!

  OK, the first thing we need to look at, and dismiss, and deny, and pretend we never learned about, is this nonsense about “Ukrainian Nazis.” Just because Ukraine is full of neo-Nazis, and recent members of its government were neo-Nazis, and its military has neo-Nazi units (e.g., the notorious Azov Battalion), and it has a national holiday celebrating a Nazi, and government officials hang his portrait in their offices, and the military and neo-Nazi militias have been terrorizing and murdering ethnic Russians since the USA and the Forces of Goodness supported and stage-managed a “revolution” (i.e., a coup) back in 2014 with the assistance of a lot of neo-Nazis … that doesn’t mean Ukraine has a “Nazi problem.” After all, its current president is Jewish!

  If a traitor mentions the Ukrainian Nazis, switch your mind off as quickly as you can and hit them with that thought-terminating cliché … “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UKRAINE IS JEWISH!” Or “EVERY COUNTRY HAS NAZIS!” That’s another good one!

  

  The other thing we need to look at, and dismiss, and never think about again, is the role the United Forces of Goodness played in orchestrating this mess, starting with how members of the US government stage-managed that coup in 2014, and how they funded and worked with known neo-Nazis — not secret, dog-whistling, half-assed Nazis, but big fat, Jew-hating, Sieg-heiling Nazis — to foment and eventually execute it. All that, of course, is just “Russian propaganda,” despite the fact that it has been thoroughly documented, not just by the usual “conspiracy theory outlets,” but by official mouthpieces of the Forces of Goodness, like the BBC, The Nation, and even The Guardian.

  

  If some Putin-Nazi traitor mentions these facts (or sends you links to the numerous articles documenting the 2014 coup), again, switch your mind off immediately and shout “ANCIENT HISTORY! ANCIENT HISTORY!” and then shoot yourself up with a massive “booster” of fact-checked Truth from the Forces-of-Goodness media. I recommend The Guardian and The New York Times, but if you want to go directly to the source, just follow Illia Ponomarenko of the Kyiv Independent on Twitter. I’m sure that Illia and his neo-Nazi Azov-Battalion “brothers in arms” will cleanse you of all that “disinformation” and “Putin-Nazi propaganda.”

  

  OK, that’s enough “inoculation” for now. We don’t want to expose ourselves to too much of that stuff, or we’re liable to end up supporting the wrong Nazis.

  Fortunately, the United Forces of Goodness (and Freedom) are censoring most of it anyway, and instead are feeding us sentimental stories, like the one about “the Ghost of Kyiv,” the completely fictional Ukrainian fighter pilot who shot down the entire Putin-Nazi Air Force while delivering pithy one-liners like Bruce Willis in the Die Hard films!

  As The New York Times explained, fake stories like that, or the one about the Snake Island martyrs who told the Russians to “go fuck themselves,” and then were genocided by a Putin-Nazi kill squad, but then turned up alive a few days later, are not disinformation, and even if they are, it doesn’t matter, because they’re good for morale!

  And that’s the important thing, after all. If we’re ever going to defeat these Putin-Nazis, and the imaginary apocalyptic plague, and Trump, and terrorism, and domestic extremism, and climate change, and racism, and whatever, we need to keep the Western masses whipped up into a perpetual state of utterly mindless, hate-drunk hysteria like an eternal episode of the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell’s 1984.

  It doesn’t really matter who the masses are being told to hate this week … the Russians, the Unvaccinated, the Terrorists, the Populists, the Assad-Apologists, the Conspiracy Theorists, the Anti-Vaxxers, the Disinformationists … or whoever. In the end, there is only one enemy, the enemy of the United Forces of Goodness, the enemy of the unaccountable, supranational global-capitalist empire (or “GloboCap” as I like to call it).

  This multiplicitous, Goldstein-like enemy of GloboCap is an internal enemy. GloboCap has no external enemies. It dominates the entire planet. It is one big global-capitalist world. It has been for the last 30 years or so. Most of us can’t quite get our heads around that bit of reality yet, so we still see the world as a competition between sovereign nation states, like the USA and Russia. It is not. Yes, there are still nation states, and they compete with each other (like corporations compete for advantage within the system they comprise), but the fundamental conflict of our age is a global counter-insurgency op.

  What we’ve been experiencing for the last 30 years, over and over, in many different forms, is a globally hegemonic power system carrying out a “Clear and Hold” operation. GloboCap has been gradually destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the post-Cold-War world, first, in Eastern Europe and the Greater Middle East, and, more recently, here at home in the Western nations. For those not familiar with the term “Clear and Hold” …

  “Clear and hold is a counter-insurgency strategy in which military personnel clear an area of guerrillas or other insurgents, and then keep the area clear of insurgents while winning the support of the populace for the government and its policies.”

  Take a minute and think about that. Think about the last two years. Think about the last 30 years. Seriously, just as an exercise, imagine GloboCap as an occupying army and the entire world as the territory it is occupying. Imagine GloboCap establishing control, targeting and neutralizing a variety of insurgencies … any insurgency, regardless of its nature, any and all resistance to its occupation, or lack of support for its “government and policies.” It does not matter who the insurgents are … diehard communists, Islamic fundamentalists, nationalists, populists … it makes no difference. The occupation couldn’t care less what they believe in or why they’re resisting. The objective of the op is to control the territory and get the populace on board with the new “reality.”

  Welcome to the new reality … a “reality” in which “history has stopped [and] nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” Yes, I know you are sick of me quoting Orwell, but, given the circumstances, I cannot help it. Just reflect on how seamlessly GloboCap segued from the Apocalyptic Pandemic narrative back to the Putin-Nazi narrative, which had seamlessly replaced the War on Terror narrative in the Summer of 2016, and how instantly the New Normals switched from hating “the Unvaccinated” to hating the Russians, and then scold me again for quoting Orwell.

  Look, I hate to disappoint Edward Norton and millions of other fanatical liberals, but the USA is not going to war with Russia, or not intentionally in any event. Russia has ballistic missiles with thermonuclear warheads on them. This isn’t a rerun of World War II. And it isn’t World War III, or the Cold War redux. That is not what is happening in the Ukraine.

  What is happening in Ukraine is, Russia is not playing ball. For some reason, it does not want to be destabilized, and restructured, and privatized by GloboCap. It is acting like a sovereign nation state … which it is, and isn’t, which paradoxical fact GloboCap is trying to impress on Russia, just as countries throughout the global-capitalist empire impressed it on us for the past two years, as Trudeau impressed it on those protesters in Ottawa when he cancelled their rights and went full-fascist.

  What is happening is, Russia is rebelling against GloboCap, and, unlike the other rebellious parties that GloboCap has been dealing with recently, Russia has thermonuclear weapons.

  I’m not trying to tell you who to root for. Root for GloboCap if you want. I’m just urging you, before you fly over to “Kyiv” and join the fight against the Putin-Nazis, or make a jackass of yourself on the Internet shrieking for nuclear Armageddon, or fire-bomb your local Russian restaurant, or beat the crap out of some Russian-looking person, to maybe take a moment or two and try to understand what is actually going on, and who the major players actually are, and where GloboCap’s efforts to “clear and hold” the entire planet are inexorably taking us.

  I know, that’s a lot to ask these days, but I can’t help thinking about all those nukes, and the fallibility of human beings, and yes, all the non-Nazi Ukrainians who are going to needlessly suffer and die while we watch the action on TV, and root for our favorite characters to win, and so on … as if it were a fucking movie.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 22:40

• Arab Spring 2.0 Begins: Iraqis Take To The Streets In Protest Of Soaring Food Prices
  Arab Spring 2.0 Begins: Iraqis Take To The Streets In Protest Of Soaring Food Prices

  With commodity costs hitting daily record highs, and food prices far surpassing levels seen in the historic 2011 as a result of the collapse of Russian and Ukrainian food exports…

  

  

  … and Russia’s upcoming fertilizer trade ban…

  

  … an ever louder question on the lips of geopolitical strategists is when, not if, global protests over food will re-emerge and begin toppling unstable – or perhaps stable – governments across the world in a rerun of the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 when widespread public outrage started as a result of surging food prices.

  

  It appears that the answer is “now”, because as Al Jazeera reports, on Wednesday protests erupted in Iraq’s impoverished south over a rise in food prices that officials attributed to the conflict in Ukraine. Here, for the past week, the price of cooking oils and flour have skyrocketed in local markets as government officials have sought to address growing anger with various statements and measures.

  Today, the public frustration with these runaway prices finally boiled over, and more than 500 protesters gathered on Wednesday in a central square in the southern city of Nasiriya – a flashpoint of anti-corruption protests that gripped the country in 2019.

  “The rise in prices is strangling us, whether it is bread or other food products,” retired teacher Hassan Kazem told AFP news agency. “We can barely make ends meet.”

  

  On Tuesday, the Iraqi government announced measures to confront the increase in international prices. These included a monthly allowance of about $70 for pensioners whose incomes do not exceed one million dinars (almost $700), as well as civil servants earning less than 500,000 dinars ($343). The authorities also announced the suspension of customs duties on food products, basic consumer goods and construction materials for two months.

  Local trade ministry spokesman Mohamed Hanoun attributed the rise in cooking-oil prices to the conflict in Ukraine. Indeed, as we noted last week, a whopping 70% of Egypt’s wheat is in the form of Ukraine and Russian imports, imports which have now been indefinitely halted.

  

  The interior ministry announced it had arrested 31 people accused of “raising the prices of food commodities and abusing citizens”. A protester in Nasiriya on Wednesday denounced the “greed of traders who manipulate prices”.

  “There’s a major global crisis because Ukraine has a large share of [the world market in cooking] oils,” he said. On Tuesday, a protester was seriously injured in a demonstration in the central province of Babil that was marred by violence, a security source said.

  While some will be willing to brush this off as just another third world protest, recall that the 2011 Arab Spring had similar inauspicious beginnings until Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Dec 2010 and dying a few weeks later, in the process launching a cascade of uprisings across the MENA region, many of which led to bloody revolutions and unprecedented geopolitical upheaval.

  And while it might be viewed as entering the fringe zone of conspiracy theories, one should probably consider that a wave of violence may also have the blessing of the WEF nomenklatura: after all, a big part of the “Great Reset” is the efficient depopulation of broad swaths of the globe, and a second Arab Spring would be just what the billionaire overclass ordered.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 22:32

• Amid Ukraine War, China Threat Rises
  Amid Ukraine War, China Threat Rises

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

  As the world focuses on Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine—along with the climbing civilian death toll and growing refugee crisis—it’s also witnessing a seismic shift in the global geopolitical landscape.

  

  Russia’s actions in Europe have drawn the eyes of the United States and its allies to the West, as they did in decades past, as meanwhile a larger, more formidable force gathers strength in the East, setting its sights on dominating the Indo-Pacific, and then the world.

  For decades, the Chinese communist regime has been building its economic and military might so as to replace the United States as the sole superpower by mid-century. With the regime acknowledged by the U.S. administration as America’s primary threat, posing its ​​“greatest geopolitical test,” Washington has been shifting its resources and energy to the Indo-Pacific region in a bid to check Beijing’s rising influence there.

  But the escalating war in Eastern Europe is frustrating Washington’s plans, analysts say, even as the Biden administration insists that it can focus on two theaters—Europe and the Indo-Pacific—at the same time.

  “The revival of Cold War 1.0 (Moscow–Washington) taking oxygen majorly away from Cold War 2.0 (Beijing–Washington) is a blunder of historical proportions where the democracies are concerned,” Madhav Nalapat, a strategic analyst and vice chair of the India-based Manipal Advanced Research Group, recently told The Epoch Times.

  

  Nalapat pinned the blame on Washington and NATO for engaging in a series of strategic missteps that he believed culminated in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  Brandon Weichert, geopolitical analyst and author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower,” held the same view, chiding the Biden administration for choosing to return to “pre-Trump normal” with respect to its relations with Russia—that is, by adopting a policy that sought to “contain Russia” and put pressure on Moscow to be “a good democracy with human rights.”

  “Vladimir Putin believes that no more deals can be made with the United States, certainly not with neoliberal and neoconservative elites like Joe Biden, or even Lindsey Graham, running the show in Washington,” he said.

  “Under [former President Donald] Trump, this was our last exit ramp, before a real catastrophe happening”—the buildup of the Sino–Russian alliance, he said.

  The recent approach has effectively pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin into a corner, according to Weichert. And with no else to turn to, Putin chose to side with the Chinese Communist Party.

  But this outcome, he said, could have been averted. While Russa is by no means an ideal or natural partner, given the country’s human rights and military record, Weichert said, it has to be acknowledged that Moscow could have helped the U.S. administration in providing a valuable counterweight to Beijing.

  “If we could get the right leader in charge, we would be able to possibly break Russia away from China, because ultimately, Russia still doesn’t trust China,” he said. “And ultimately, Russia would prefer to continue to do business with the Europeans, and to still have positive relations, at least in space, and on nuclear matters with the Americans.”

  As this didn’t occur, Russia and China are deepening their relationship, in ways previously unseen. Two weeks before the invasion, as Russia was drawing heavy international criticism for its plans to attack Ukraine, Putin and Xi proclaimed a “no limits” partnership, a bilateral relationship “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.”

  This burgeoning partnership is worrisome, Weichert said, because the two countries decided not just to cooperate economically and militarily, but to work together in a “general ideological way.”

  “They’re starting to look at the ideological component—the component of autocracy, the concept of multipolarity—having many different powers in the world, as opposed to only the United States running the world, with spheres of influence,” he said.

  “That is something that Russia and the Chinese leadership for 30 years have talked about, but they never actually shared or coordinated with one another. Now we see the beginnings of that.”

  The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

  Distrustful Partners

  On the opening day of the Winter Olympics, Putin met with Xi in Beijing, displaying a united front against growing international condemnation of their respective regimes.

  According to a 5,000-word joint statement, the two leaders said there would be “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” between their countries.

  The statement also revealed that Putin and Xi had decided to support each other geopolitically: China denounced the enlargement of NATO, a key justification for Russia’s invasion, while Moscow backed Beijing’s claim that self-governing Taiwan was a part of China.

  The new partnership is, in fact, many years in the making, particularly after 2014 when Russia was hit with multiple sanctions over its annexation of Crimea. Since then, bilateral trade has gone up more than 50 percent and now China is the top destination of Russian exports.

  Russia is China’s second-biggest oil supplier behind Saudi Arabia, accounting for 15.5 percent of China’s total imports in 2021. Russia is also a major supplier of gas and coal to China.

  While the bond between Russia and China might appear strong on the surface, Weichert said that Putin must be fully aware of what the partnership would entail.

  “What’s going on now is, Russia under Putin is very aware that they are relatively weaker than China. And the closer that Putin gets to China, the more likely he’s going to become a second player—second fiddle to Xi Jinping’s juggernaut in China,” he said.

  “The last thing he wants to do is go from being sort of pushed around by the West to then switching over to the Chinese, and suddenly being subordinated or assimilated by China into their new growing high-tech empire of Eurasia.”

  

  In Weichart’s view, Putin has already tried to assert his dominance over Xi, when the Russian president decided to deploy Russian troops into Kazakhstan as peacekeepers in January.

  “I think Putin was trying to say, ‘Hey, Xi, we can work together to trade in Central Asia, but I’m the alpha male here, you work with me, not the other way around,’” he said.

  China has dramatically dialed up its influence in Central Asia—a region of former Soviet states where Russia holds much sway—in recent years, as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have all signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road).

  Beijing rolled out the initiative in 2013 to increase its economic and political clout worldwide by building up trade routes linking China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

  “The allies—China and Russia—are constantly going to be looking over each other’s shoulder even when they’re working together to push back American power projection, in Eurasia first and eventually throughout the world,” he said.

  Bigger Threat

  The most important factor making the Chinese regime a bigger threat than Russia is the size of the Chinese economy, according to Weichert.

  “The China threat is the longer-term strategic threat,” he said. “They’re the ones with the greater technology base. They’re the ones whose economy is right behind the size of America’s.”

  China is currently the world’s second-largest economy, trailing the United States. According to 2020 data from the World Bank, China’s economy is about 10 times bigger than Russia’s.

  The economic power behind the Chinese communist regime thus allows it to do things that Russia cannot, Anders Corr, principal at the New York-based political consultancy firm Corr Analytics, said.

  “China uses that economic power not only to build its military,” Corr, who is also a contributor to The Epoch Times, said. “China is able to use that economic power for political influence around the world.

  “So essentially, they’re able to bribe politicians, whether that’s directly by giving them bags of cash, or they’re able to bribe them through promises of aids, loans, and cheap loans.”

  

  Western officials and experts have criticized China for exporting corruption through BRI or sustaining corruption in BRI-participating nations. The program also has been described as a form of “debt-trap diplomacy,” which saddles developing countries with unsustainable debt burdens, potentially forcing those nations to transfer strategic assets to Beijing.

  China Merchants Port Holdings is now running Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port on a 99-year lease, after the South Asian country was unable to service a $1.4 billion loan for its construction in 2017. Seizing the port has allowed Beijing to gain a key foothold in the Indian Ocean.

  Critically, the Chinese regime has a unique advantage in the West arising from its sprawling business ties between Western firms, eager to gain a greater pie of the lucrative Chinese market. As a result, Beijing has been able to build clout in the United States and elsewhere, through its own elites—a strategy known as “elite capture.”

  “The Chinese Communist Party has done a great job of basically enlisting the elites of the free world. And so a lot of their wealth is tied up in this relationship with China,” Robert Spalding, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and retired Air Force brigadier general, told The Epoch Times.

  The regime, “by entwining themselves into the fortunes of the elites,” is then able to “push on them and lean on them,” Spalding said. “This is a problem.”

  

  Taiwan

  The Chinese regime’s other threat, which has worldwide implications, is its desire to take over Taiwan, a de facto entity Beijing claims as part of its territory. The island, home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker TSMC, produces about 63 percent of the world’s semiconductor chips, compared to the 12 percent produced by U.S. chipmakers.

  Seizing Taiwan would give China control over the island’s chip manufacturing facilities, potentially allowing Beijing to block other nations from buying the critical technology, which is used to power nearly all electronics from cars to missile systems.

  “I think China does definitely have its eye on Taiwan. China will be watching what we do, what Russia does in terms of Ukraine as a lesson that it can take home, in terms of its strategy for Taiwan,” Corr said.

  “So I think that if we don’t truly punish Russia in a serious way, we will be giving the green light to China to do the same thing to Taiwan.”

  Complicit?

  As the Ukraine war drags on, Beijing has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia for its aggression, nor label the attack as an “invasion.” It has also rejected joining the West in imposing financial sanctions against Moscow, describing such a move as lacking legal basis.

  Such signs of tacit support have caused some to suggest that Beijing had played a larger role than it appeared on the surface in facilitating Russia’s assault.

  “Moscow is so much under the thumb of Beijing,” Corr said, adding “which makes me think that in the current case of the invasion of Ukraine, it is so not in the interests of Russia … to make itself an international pariah and focus of the world’s attention.”

  He added: “That makes me suspect that it’s possible Beijing had asked Putin to do this or encouraged Putin to do this in some way. So I think we have to consider that as a possibility.”

  Indeed, there is piling evidence that Beijing knew of Moscow’s military plans prior to the invasion and had discussed it with Russian officials.

  Senior Biden administration officials shared intelligence with top Chinese officials about the Russian military buildup near Ukraine, according to a Feb. 25 report by The New York Times. The intelligence-sharing lasted more than three months, the report said, citing unnamed U.S. officials. But China ignored the repeated U.S. warnings, and instead turned around to tell Moscow what it had learned from Americans and that it wouldn’t interfere with Russia’s plans.

  A Western intelligence report, first covered by The New York Times on March 2, indicated that senior Chinese officials asked senior Russian officials to wait until after the end of the 2022 Winter Games before invading Ukraine. The request happened in early February, but it is unclear from the report whether Xi and Putin talked about it during their meeting in Beijing.

  Regardless of the level of Chinese involvement, the invasion ultimately served to achieve Beijing’s aims, noted lawmakers and experts.

  Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) recently told EpochTV’s “China Insider” program that the invasion was a “distraction,” shifting U.S. attention away from the Pacific.

  “In China’s view, it serves as a way of siphoning off resources that can be used in other areas,” Buck said.

  For Corr, the invasion would distract people from paying attention to China’s problems, such as the genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region and the expansion of artificial islands in the South China Sea.

  Gary Bai contributed to this article. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 22:00

• Cooking Oil Shortage Sparks Panic Buying In Indonesia
  Cooking Oil Shortage Sparks Panic Buying In Indonesia

  Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter of cooking oil, will reduce exports of edible oils as a domestic shortage sparks panic hoarding among households, a sign of rising protectionism around the world as countries deal with record-high food prices, according to Bloomberg. 

  Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi announced new rules Wednesday for palm oil exporters to increase domestic shipment volumes from 20% to 30% to ensure local consumers have access to affordable cooking oil.

  The move by the Indonesian government comes as dwindling cooking oil supplies has unleashed record high prices. Togar Sitanggang, vice chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki), said in a pre-recorded speech at a conference that households are panic buying edible oils as a shortage emerges. They’re buying more than they need worsening the shortage, he said. 

  Palm oil for May delivery in Malaysia soared 10% to $1,687 per ton, a new record high for the contract and most active contract with the largest daily gain since 2001. Palm and soybean oil also rose to a record in Chicago. 

  

  “All those who were short in the market have had their hearts pulled out,” said Dorab Mistry, a veteran trader and director at Godrej International Ltd. “This is a knee-jerk reaction. I don’t think these prices are sustainable.”

  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown global food supply chains into disarray. Governments worldwide are beginning to take proactive measures that are considered protectionist to safeguard domestic food supplies. On edible oils, Ukraine and Russia export about 80% of sunflower oil and a quarter of the world’s wheat — as we’ve noted, shipments from the region have been halted or limited due to conflict or sanctions. Compound snarled supply chains and food shortages from the COVID era with the latest disruption, and it appears record-high food prices will be sticking around. 

  

  Food protectionism is also happening in Hungary, Argentina, Turkey, and Moldova. The world is on a collision course of high prices and shortages could trigger social instabilities in these emerging market economies.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 21:40

• US Won't Give Poland's Jets To Ukraine Over Concerns Putin Would See Move As "Escalatory"
  US Won’t Give Poland’s Jets To Ukraine Over Concerns Putin Would See Move As “Escalatory”

  By Zachary Stieber of the Epoch Times

  

  The United States won’t act on a proposal from Poland to take fighter jets from the ally and transfer them to Ukraine because of concerns Russian officials would view the move as “escalatory,” a U.S. official said March 9.

  “The intelligence community has assessed the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory, and could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” John Kirby, the U.S. Department of Defense’s spokesman, told reporters in Washington.

  Based on the assessment, with which Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin concurs, the military assesses the transfer as “high-risk” and will not carry it out, at least for now.

  The proposal from Poland was Polish officials would transfer jets to the United States, which could then send the jets to Ukraine. Poland’s government also called on NATO allies to send jets to U.S. bases. But U.S. officials quickly rejected the proposal, though they had not detailed the intelligence assessment until Wednesday.

  Kirby also framed the decision as in Ukraine’s best interests, arguing that Ukraine would benefit more in the conflict with Russia by receiving anti-armor and air defense weapons.

  While Russia’s air force has significant capabilities, air assaults have been met with resistance in the air and on the ground, according to U.S. officials. Additionally, the Ukrainian Air Force was also said to have several squadrons of fully capable aircraft already, and a U.S. assessment concluded “giving them more is not likely” to make a big impact, according to Kirby.

  Austin conveyed the position to Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak in a call and also spoke with a top Ukraine official about similar matters.

  U.S. officials had previously said Poland was welcome to transfer planes to Ukraine directly and Kirby said each nation “can decide for themselves what they want to do.”

  Ukraine’s public position is that getting fighter jets would help tremendously against Russia, which invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24.

  “That’s absolutely the way we see it,” Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, said on Sky News on Wednesday when asked if jets would give Ukraine the advantage it needs.

  “All the tactical means you are talking about, they can be covered if we have at least not superiority, but at least control over our skies,” he added.

  Ukraine prefers older jets because its pilots are trained to work with them. Around the same time, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters in Washington said she was asked by Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky for help getting planes.

  The updates came hours after Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, said Poland would only provide jets to Ukraine directly if all NATO members agree, as Russian officials have threatened countries that undertake such moves.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 21:35

• A Recession Unlike Any Other
  A Recession Unlike Any Other

  Submitted By Michael Pento

  The U.S. economy is already deteriorating due to the humongous fiscal and monetary cliffs. These cliffs are now being compounded by the war in Eastern Europe and near record-high inflation. And, the Fed’s “PUT” is much lower and smaller in size than Wall Street believes.

  

  The war in Ukraine will exacerbate the negative supply shocks that are already in place due to COVID-19. Worsening bottlenecks will combine with rising inflation to produce a contraction in global growth. Russia produces 12 percent of the world’s oil supply and exports 18 percent of the world’s wheat consumption. Ukraine accounts for 25 percent of global wheat production. Sanctions and war will serve to slow the economy further and send prices for these vital commodities even higher.

  But the upcoming recession will be extraordinarily unique. Not only will it occur while inflation is at a multi-decade high, it will be the first U.S. economic contraction to take place while the Federal Reserve had its target interest rate at or near zero percent. For comparison, look at how much room the Fed had to reduce borrowing costs during previous economic contractions.

  The following historical data indicates the level of the Fed Funds Rate just prior to the outset of all 10 U.S. recessions since WWII: 1957 3.5 percent, 1960 4.0 percent, 1969 10.5 percent, 1973 13.0 percent, 1979 16.01 percent, 1981 20.61 percent, 1989 10.71 percent, 2000 6.86 percent, 2007 5.31 percent, and 2019 2.45 percent.

  In addition, the swoon in GDP will occur after the Fed has just finished printing $4.5 trillion over the past two years and with the national debt vaulting over $30 trillion due to the massive increase in government deficits in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such borrowing helped send the government’s debt to GDP ratio soaring to 125 percent. For perspective, that ratio was just 53 percent back in 1960, and only 58 percent as recently as 2000.

  Inflation is destroying real wages, and rising borrowing costs are destroying consumers’ ability to consume. Consumption is 70 percent of GDP, and that means the rate of economic growth is set to plunge. This would normally spur the government into remediative action. But the fact remains that the ability of the Treasury and Federal Reserve to turn around a recession expeditiously by borrowing trillions of dollars and having that debt monetized by the Fed has become greatly fettered this time around.

  Fed Chair Jerome Powell is in a conundrum that is mostly of his own making; and from which there is no innocuous outcome. If the Fed gets overly concerned about slowing GDP due to the conflict in Ukraine, it could, for the most part, shelve its plans to raise rates and the planned reduction in the size of its balance sheet. But that would risk propelling inflation even further away from Powell’s stated 2 percent target, which he has exceeded by 3.75 times. Inflation expectations could then rise intractably from there. In other words, doing nothing isn’t a viable option for Powell—not with inflation running at a 40-year high and the WTI oil price vaulting above $110 per barrel.

  Commodities are indeed soaring, but the inflation doesn’t end there; rents have soared by 20 percent year over year, which is closer to the actual rate of inflation, rather than the massaged 7.5 percent CPI reported by the Labor Department. If inflation were to continue to increase even close to that rate, it would push those in the middle class into the lower class; and those in the lower class into poverty. Of course, this would end up destroying markets and the economy anyway. It could also put at risk confidence in the U.S. dollar and sovereign bond market.

  Therefore, the Fed is now forced to combat inflation whether it really wants to or not. At the nucleus of the inflation issue is runaway owners’ equivalent rent costs, which at 30 percent, make up the greatest weighting in the CPI metric. But to tackle owner’s equivalent rent inflation, Powell must first pop the record-setting real estate bubble. The negative ramifications of accomplishing this task for the banking system and economy will be enormous.

  Nevertheless, if Powell prosecutes his plan to raise rates six or more times this year—just as the Fed destroys the money supply by shedding a trillion dollars in Treasuries and Mortgage-backed Securities—the upcoming recession could quickly morph into a depression.

  So, which is it, Powell? Keep monetary policy loose and risk an intractable rise of inflation and the complete loss of confidence and credibility of the central bank. Or tighten monetary policy enough to deflate the massive bubbles in bonds, real estate, and equities. Either strategy is now destined to end in disaster for the market and economy.

  Such are the consequences derived from the Fed counterfeiting trillions of dollars for the purpose of distorting and obliterating free markets.

  The bottom line is this: the view of Pento Portfolio Strategies is that the Fed will now be forced to tighten monetary policy into one of the greatest decelerations of economic growth and earnings ever. A great defense is always a requirement in a winning portfolio strategy.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 21:20

• Elizabeth Warren Wants ‘’Windfall Tax’’ On Oil Profits
  Elizabeth Warren Wants ‘’Windfall Tax’’ On Oil Profits

  On one hand the Biden administration is offering an olive branch to US shale producers, whose oil it desperately needs to offset near record high oil prices. On the other, Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren are hinting at the fire and brimstone the Congress hopes to unleash on US oil companies (before November, as the Democrats face a historic loss at the midterm elections).

  As prices at the pump continue to rise for Americans, and as U.S. President Joe Biden warns oil and gas companies about price-gouging to take advantage of profits from the fallout of the Russia-Ukraine war, Senator Elizabeth Warren reveals she is gearing up to propose a new windfall tax on oil profits, OilPrice reports.

  “Big Oil’s first priority is to maximize profits,” Warren said in a Tweet on Wednesday. “We can’t let them use Putin’s invasion as an excuse to pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits.”

  Warren said she was working with Senate Democrats on the new tax proposal, which may or may not end up being included in President Biden’s revised plans. 

  The bill would target windfall profits, sudden and usually large profits for oil companies in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

  “Look, we get it, supply and demand, that prices go up. But profit margins should not go up,” Warren told MSNBC on Tuesday. “That’s just oil companies gouging when they do that.”

  The U.S. national current average for gas prices as of Wednesday is $4.252, up from $4.171 yesterday and $3.656 a week ago, according to AAA. 

  

  Attorneys General in multiple states have been warning consumers about price-gouging. 

  Could the bill possibly earn bipartisan support? 

  East Bay Congressman John Garamendi, one of the figures set to investigate claims of price gouging, said that while no one had reached out to Republicans yet, he expected those in “urban and suburban areas” due to rising gas prices, but he expected strong opposition from those in the oil patch. 

  Shareholders of American oil companies are getting rewarded for the first time, and that “windfall” tax represents long overdue dividends for investors who got taken for a ride in the first shale boom and are only now reaping the rewards. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 21:12

• Will There Be A Military Draft? Interest Surges Online 
  Will There Be A Military Draft? Interest Surges Online 

  Interest in the “draft” and “Russian nuclear weapons” surged online since Russia invaded Ukraine. Last month Russian President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces into “special combat readiness.” He warned days ago, if the West imposes a ‘no-fly’ zone over Ukraine, it will lead to further conflict. 

  So with World War III trending online, many young men wonder if they will be suddenly called up to fight against the Russians. The google search term “Will I get drafted” just soared to a record high.

  

  The interest in being drafted surpassed the time in early 2020 when a US drone strike in Iraq killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, prompting concerns for war which crashed the Selective Service System’s website that maintains a database of Americans eligible for a draft.

  There have yet to be problems with the Selective Service System website, as far as we know. For those wondering, 18 to 25 years old must register with the Selective Service System. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 21:00

• JPMorgan Bails Out Chinese Nickel Giant Facing Billions In Losses From Record Margin Call
  JPMorgan Bails Out Chinese Nickel Giant Facing Billions In Losses From Record Margin Call

  Two days ago we reported that while “plain vanilla” commodity producers such as coal giant Peabody had no choice but to pay up on their commodity margin calls (which they funded with an expensive, 11%, Goldman credit facility), others such as Chinese giants were magically exempt from mandatory payments in the billions.

  Extending on our observation earlier this week that the record surge in commodities, such as nickel, would – ironically – cripple producers who despite being long physical commodities in the spot market are also short in the futures market as a hedge, and it is these hedges that are causing unprecedented waterfalls of cascading short squeezes at this moment as producers scramble to find the cash to satisfy variation margins…

  *NICKEL JUMPS 12%, EXTENDING RECORD RALLY ON SHORT SQUEEZE

  ironically, this will bankrupt producers

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 8, 2022

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

  … earlier this week we learned that Chinese nickel titan Tsingshan Holding Group, the world’s largest producer of the metal, controlled by Xiang Guangda – known as “Big Shot”, or is that “Big Short” – faced billions of dollars in trading losses after Russia’s war in Ukraine set off an unprecedented rise in the price of nickel, and which soared by a record 250% in two days.

  

  As further detailed yesterday, the paper loss stood at $8 billion on Monday – the result of holdings of about 100,000 tons of nickel on the LME – before a violent rush higher in nickel prices led the London Metal Exchange to suspend trading in the metal on Tuesday after it hit a record $101,365 per metric ton up from $20,175 in January. The exchange has since said it anticipates trading won’t resume before Friday (for more see “An LME Member Has Defaulted On Billions In Margin Calls, But The LME Doesn’t Want To Declare Default“)

  According to the WSJ, Tsingshan’s founder, Xiang Guangda, told a Chinese media outlet that “there have been some moves by foreigners,” and that it is in active negotiations with relevant parties, without specifying who they were and what was being negotiated.

  Xiang was also quoted saying that “relevant government departments and leaders are all very supportive of Tsingshan. Tsingshan is a solid Chinese enterprise and our positions and operations do not have problems,” according to the report in Yicai, a financial-news outlet.

  Needless to say, the fact that the LME is now owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, whose biggest shareholder is the Hong Kong government which for the past two years has been a puppet of China, did not hurt Xiang, whose empire would have been bankrupted had the LME forced him to make payment on his margin call. None other than outgoing LME chief executive Matt Chamberlain admitted as much.

  LME chief executive Matt Chamberlain told @BloombergTV this morning that if the exchange hadn’t cancelled trades, several brokers would have struggled to survive

  — Jack Farchy (@jfarchy) March 9, 2022

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

  Long story short: if you are a small nobody and your margin call will wipe out just you, nobody will think twice to margin you out; on the other hand if you are a Chinese tycoon whose default will ruin not just him but lead to massive losses for all LME members and also drag down more than one broker in the process (as Russell Clark explained earlier), well then… the rules can certainly be bent.

  And sure enough, on Wednesday morning, two days after Xiang was supposed to be in default buried by billions in margin calls, Bloomberg reports that he has successfully secured “a package of loans from local and international banks to help it meet a wave of margin calls.”

  According to the report, Tsingshan Holding has won credit promises from – drumroll – none other than JPMorgan Chase, and one of China’s largest banks, China Construction Bank, in meetings that ran into the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning. Some of the terms, such as how much extra collateral Tsingshan needs to pledge, are still under discussion, Bloomberg’s sources said.

  Since JPMorgan’s assistance alone was not enough, Chinese authorities also directed Tsingshan’s domestic banks to offer more credit lines to the company, with the bulk of the new capital going toward satisfying the margin calls on its existing positions on the London Metal Exchange.

  So what do the banks get in exchange for their generous bailout loans?

  Well, with large nickel production facilities in Indonesia and China, coupled with surging prices and strong demand, the firm’s owner, Xiang Guangda, told bankers at the meetings that he’s confident his company can meet its obligations.  He’s also reviewing his hedging strategy and is considering exiting the bets against nickel, which in light of the catastrophic outcome is probably not a bad idea.

  As reported previously, on Monday CCBI Global Markets, one of Tsingshan’s brokers, failed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in margin calls on its nickel positions. The LME refrained from putting it into default, giving it more time to pay. The broker was able to settle the margin calls on Tuesday after several clients, including Tsingshan, got loans to cover their positions.

  As for Tsingshan itself, we now wait until Friday when the LME restarts nickel trading to see if Jamie Dimon’s generosity prevented the collapse of one of the pillars of China’s commodity empire. If so, expect the price to collapse. If not, all bets may be off and Pozsar’s “worst case scenario” will be in play.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 20:44

• Wisconsin Special Counsel Alleges Massive Misconduct In 2020 Election
  Wisconsin Special Counsel Alleges Massive Misconduct In 2020 Election

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Special Counsel Michael Gableman says in a 136-page interim report that he has uncovered numerous instances of alleged lawbreaking in Wisconsin in the 2020 election.

  

  The former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court was hired last summer by the Republican Speaker of the State Assembly, Robin Vos, to investigate suspected election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

  In the report released March 1, Gableman wrote that his investigation uncovered instances of numerous mentally incompetent nursing home residents, non-citizens, and ineligible felons casting votes.

  He cited the use by municipal and county clerks of unstaffed absentee ballot drop-boxes, in violation of state law.

  Laws were also allegedly violated when the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) allegedly exceeded its authority by ordering local election officials to disregard state statutes that regulate absentee voting.

  The Special Counsel raised concerns that private money influenced municipal officials in the state’s five largest cities to “disfavor” many of their own citizens, as well as the vast majority of state residents, by spending millions of dollars of grant money on voter registration drives, absentee voter efforts, and Get-Out-The-Vote campaigns designed to serve certain favored, and specifically targeted, racial groups, in violation of the equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitution.

  

  Gableman offered a list of suggested reforms designed to restore public confidence in Wisconsin elections.

  Among Gableman’s recommendations was a call to abolish the WEC, prohibit outside money and personnel from participating in election administration, and improved training to better acquaint local election officials with their powers, duties, and rights.

  He also laid out the legal rationale for decertifying the state’s 10 electors who voted for Democrat Joe Biden.

  Biden was declared the winner of Wisconsin’s popular vote by six-tenths of one percent, or 20,000 votes.

  Relying on the common law principle that fraud or illegality invalidate results under an illegal or fraudulent process, Gableman asserted that the state legislature had the constitutional plenary power to decertify the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin because state laws were broken.

  Democrat Governor Tony Evers released a statement the day the Special Counsel’s Report came out, saying: “This circus has long surpassed being a mere embarrassment to our state … Every day this effort continues, it is an increasingly dangerous and ongoing threat to our democracy.”

  Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who has sued to block, or curtail, subpoenas issued by the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC), said in a March 1 statement that Gableman’s report was a “full-throated attack on democracy” and an attempt to “overturn the will of the voters.”

  Kaul said that Republican state legislators “have an obligation to our democracy to condemn, and end, this preposterous fake investigation.”

  The OSC report detailed instances of what it called “obstruction” on the part of some state officials and private interest groups, which have filed nine lawsuits against the OSC and snowed it under with what it calls “dilatory,” “frivolous,” and “voluminous” public information requests.

  

  Gableman alleges in his report that Democrat political operatives, paid for by grants from the Zuckerberg-funded non-profit Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), all but took over administration of the 2020 election in five of Wisconsin’s largest cities.

  According to OSC’s report, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged in the spring and summer of 2020, CTCL donated nearly $8.8 million to county clerks and municipal election administrators throughout Wisconsin.

  The stated purpose of the grant funding was to help ensure that communities had enough money to be able to conduct elections in accordance with public health safety guidelines.

  Five of Wisconsin’s largest cities—Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha—received a total of $6.3 million in grant funding, ostensibly to purchase PPE and other health-related equipment, such as plexiglass barriers and hand-sanitizer.

  The grants were conditioned on the five cities agreeing to guidelines of the Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan (WSVP).

  Gableman alleged that WSVP was little more than a partisan campaign program designed to maximize voter registration and turnout in heavily minority-populated precincts.

  The report states that the Wisconsin Elections Commission supported the WSVP Get-Out-The-Vote program, an action Gableman asserts is not part of the agency’s mission.

  How Did the Five Cities Spend the Grant Money?

  The cities used grant funds to pay for curbside voting tents, mobile polling places operated out of trucks, and for a drive-thru voting window at one city hall.

  The cities spent grant money on voter education, a multi-media advertising and phone blitz, geo-fencing (a computer technique used to pin-point particular areas of geographic and demographic interest) and they paid for personnel called “voter navigators” (also known as ballot harvesters), whose job was to shepherd a prospective voter through the process of voting.

  The municipalities purchased and installed in strategic locations, unstaffed absentee ballot drop-boxes in violation of Wisconsin law.

  The OSC report presented data showing that the city of Green Bay spent eight-tenths of one percent of its $1 million in grant funding on PPE and health equipment.

  Green Bay spent $50,000 for ballot drop-boxes and purchased a couple of new Ford trucks. The city paid a public relations firm $150,ooo for a voter outreach campaign.

  The public relations campaigns in each city zeroed in on preferred racial groups, which, coincidentally matched the demographic profile of Biden voters, according to the OSC report.

  The report said the cities’ actions were discriminatory and “disfavored” city and state residents who did not fit the targeted profile, raising issues of unequal treatment under the law.

  CTCL and other private workers, called “grant mentors,” along with many volunteers, worked for weeks assisting city election officials and county clerks in conducting the 2020 presidential election.

  What kind of assistance did the CTCL-supplied workers provide?

  According to the OSC report, representatives of private organizations participated in much of the planning and administration of the election.

  Tasks they performed included, curing defective mail-in ballots, challenging voted ballots, verifying photo ID, setting up voting equipment and vote counting centers, training volunteers, and writing instructions controlling the activities of count observers

  Workers provided by private organizations assigned inspectors for polling places and vote counting centers, transported ballots to city hall and counting centers, issued a purchase order, made decisions whether or not to accept ballots after 8 p.m. on Election Day, participated in the counting of ballots, and set up wireless digital networks in polling places, clerks’ offices, and other buildings, according to the report.

  The OSC report stated that local election officials, made beholden to private organizations by grant funding, could be susceptible to leverage pressuring them to do things in violation of their oath of office.

  Other Alleged Offenses and Abuses by State and Local Election Officials

  The special counsel alleged that rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide in many of Wisconsin’s 6,875 nursing homes (housing 92,000 residents) during the 2020 election.

  When visited by OSC investigators, many nursing home residents who are on record as having voted absentee in the election, were unaware of their surroundings, what year it was, or to whom they were speaking.

  Some nursing home residents who purportedly voted had been adjudicated by a court to be mentally incompetent and whose voting rights had been taken away.

  Wisconsin election laws require that a nursing home resident desiring to vote absentee must be visited by a Special Voting Deputy (SVD) designated by the local clerks or election boards to assist the resident and supervise the application and voting process.

  Under the statute, only the resident’s immediate family, or an SVD, can have any contact with the ballots. They are never to be mailed.

  

  In June 2020, for reasons of public health, the Wisconsin Elections Commission directed all clerks to handle nursing home voting according to the rules governing ordinary mail-in voting, thereby disrupting the strictly limited chain of custody of residents’ ballots—a direct violation of Wisconsin law.

  The result was thousands of application forms, ballot envelopes, and ballots were illegally handled by nursing home employees, according to the report.

  The report alleges nursing home administrators and staff members illegally assisted residents in marking their ballots. Some family members have reported suspected cases of staff forging the voter’s signature.

  According to the OSC, the result was an “improbably high” voting rate, with many nursing homes reporting that 100 percent of their residents voted in the 2020 election.

  Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said in a statement: “The integrity of the November 2020 election, and of the WEC, has been shown time, and time again, through court cases and previous investigations.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 20:40

• Congress Claims Amazon Potentially Obstructed Justice
  Congress Claims Amazon Potentially Obstructed Justice

  Over the years, Amazon has faced multiple investigations into whether its platform implicitly favors its own products. Back in 2020, WSJ published a series about Amazon’s use of its proprietary data collected on third-party sellers, and how the company used this information (which it doesn’t share with its competitors) to produce its own rival products.

  

  At a time when Democrats (and many Republicans) are eager to weaken the economic strength of consumer-facing tech behemoths like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta, there are few better options for accomplishing this than litigation, or criminal prosecution. A bipartisan team of lawmakers is trying very hard to make the latter happen. According to WSJ, two Congressmen have sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to investigate the Seattle-based tech giant Amazon’s refusal to provide information that lawmakers had sought as part of a Judiciary Committee subcommittee probe into Amazon’s competitive practices.

  What’s more, the letter accuses Amazon of deliberately trying to thwart investigators looking into potential “criminal conduct”.

  Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the Committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the congressional letter says. “For this, it must be held accountable.”

  The letter says it is alerting the Justice Department to “potentially criminal conduct by Amazon and certain of its executives,” though it doesn’t specify which individuals.

  The letter represents a revival of tensions between Amazon and lawmakers who conducted a 16-month antitrust investigation of Congress, which resulted in the October 2020 report that criticized all four companies, but their take on Amazon was particularly contentious.

  The biggest issue for Amazon  was its responses (or lack thereof) to lawmakers’ inquiries about how it uses the data of third-party sellers on its platform when creating private-label products, and how it treats those Amazon brands in its search results.

  At one point, Committee members asked Amazon to produce evidence to support its denials, including a report from the investigation Mr. Bezos had referenced.

  In meetings with congressional staff and written testimony, Amazon or its lawyers refused to produce the investigation report and other documents.

  This isn’t the first time one of these anti-trust letters has been sent to the DoJ regarding Amazon.

  In October, committee members sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy urging the company to provide “exculpatory evidence” surrounding its private-label business practices and its use of third-party sales data.

  Amazon has a reason for being secretive. Amazon “has refused to turn over business documents or communications that would either corroborate its claims or correct the record,” the letter says. “And it appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results—subjects of the Committee’s investigation.”

  The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline and committee members Reps. Ken Buck, Matt Gaet and Pramila Jayapal.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 20:20

• "It's Appalling": In Hilarious Reversal, Biden Admin Now Slams Shale For Not Raising Output
  “It’s Appalling”: In Hilarious Reversal, Biden Admin Now Slams Shale For Not Raising Output

  It was just last June when we asked if “ESG will trigger energy hyperinflation“, explaining that the progressives’ ESG agenda, “is unwinding the shale oil revolution. As recent events at Exxon and Shell have shown, the pressure on oil companies to reduce oil and gas exploration and adapt their business models has increased significantly over the past few months” (incidentally the answer to our rhetorical question was “yes”).

  We added that “ESG is a negative supply shock that internalizes the climate cost of the production of goods and services. This negative supply shock will be inflationary until technological progress absorbs these costs. That could take years.  Moreover in Europe, it could garner enough of political support to justify a more aggressive fiscal policy despite the constraints at the German or EU levels.”

  Meanwhile, the impact of ESG on oil companies has been to depress Capex spending to the lowest level in decades, leaving the energy sector entirely unprepared for any energy price spike, as it simply did not have the capacity to pump as much oil as may be needed.

  

  And while the White House, and especially the ultra-progressive wing of the US socialist party was delighted with the slow, steady destruction of the energy sector, whose profit contribution to the S&P had collapsed to the lowest on record…

  

  … now that gas prices are the highest on record and the Biden administration is flailing, its approval rating crushed by soaring gas prices and desperately pointing the finger at Putin or any other feces that will stick to the wall, suddenly the president is going for a full U-turn and hoping that everyone has been sufficiently neuralized to forget that on the very first day of his administration, the 79 year old president ordered the closure of the Keystone XL pipeline (in a hilariously titled Executive Order called “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis“) and froze new drilling leases while pushing for disastrous initiatives that centered on clean energy.

  So fast forward to today when ignoring over one year of catastrophic policies, the U.S. State Department’s senior energy security adviser Amos Hochstein – seeing the freefall in White House approval ratings – turned that tables hoping that most Americans are idiots instead of only half, and said that shale companies choosing not to reinvest massive profits into higher production growth at a time of war is “appalling.”

  Hammered by policies that discourage evil investments boosting “fossil fuel” output, and under pressure from activist investors to boost cash flows after a decade of weak returns, many publicly traded explorers are limiting production growth to no more than 5%. But that is suddenly at odds with the Biden administration’s efforts to curb soaring inflation and energy prices at home.

  So after a year of trying to defang domestic energy companies, the White House – whose Fed Vice Chair candidate Sarah Bloom Raskin even went so far as suggesting to starve energy companies of capital – is now asking producers to raise oil supply to replace Russian crude flows after Biden banned oil imports from the country.

  In other words, while yesterday it was Putin’s fault, now it is the fault of shale companies according to an administration that will always find blame anywhere it looks except its own devastating policies.

  Shale producers are “out there saying they can’t produce more because their financiers are not allowing them to,” Amos Hochstein said in an interview at CERAWeek by S&P Global in Houston Wednesday. “I find that to be appalling. We’re in the middle of a war, consumers are paying, the American economy is paying and the profits from $130 oil or $120 oil should be reinvested back in the United States.”

  Actually, Amos, if the S in USA stood for socialist, you might have some grounds for that idiotic statement. However, as long as the country is capitalist – and last time we checked it still was – and as long as the government is Democrat (which it will be until November’s landslide) and seeking to bankrupt the very companies that it now so desperately needs, such appeals are moronic at best. Oh, and last time we checked, it was the Biden family that is at war – the same family whose “brilliant” scion, Hunter, once advised Ukraine on its energy policies – not the country. So maybe the Biden family can reinvest some of its Ukraine profits into a war that it so desires.

  Amos’ socialist appeals aside, independent oil producers remain disinclined to invest unless the administration takes steps to correct its anti-fossil fuel environment that raises their cost of capital (which won’t happen, especially with midterm elections coming up). They have asked Biden to throw his weight behind the sector, by reopening federal lease sales, backing pipelines and speeding up liquefied natural gas export permits. So far, nothing but silence.

  “There’s this notion out there in the media and elsewhere that the administration is somehow blocking the industry from producing more,” Hochstein said. “That is just not true.”

  Actually it is and even thought Biden himself recently said “it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production”, the following thread by Drew Holden explains why the president is lying.

  🧵THREAD🧵

  President Biden recently said “it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.”

  I figure the fact checkers likely won’t touch this one, so I did the homework.

  Biden’s claim isn’t true. I explain. ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/dLfbeP7WFt

  — Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022

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

  But never let truth stand in the way of a flailing regime which is so desperate it sent not one but two of its henchmen to the CERAWeek S&P global energy conference in Houston, where in addition to Hochstein, the top U.S. energy official openly called on oil and natural gas producers to boost supply.

  “We are on a war footing,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told a packed ballroom at the CERAWeek conference on Wednesday.

  “We are in an emergency, and we have to responsibly increase short-term supply where we can right now to stabilize the market and to minimize harm to American families,” Granholm said.

  In a desperate attempt to appease a sector that the Biden admin was on true “war footing” against for the better part of a year, Granholm offered an olive branch to the industry that President Joe Biden once shunned, saying the country is “eternally grateful” to oil and gas companies for powering the nation for the past century — and hopes they will continue doing so for the next 100 years with zero-carbon technology.

  Her comments come after oil executives at the biggest energy summit in the Americas spent the week criticizing the White House for asking OPEC countries to raise output, rather than domestic producers. The largest independent shale companies have said they won’t accelerate growth without long-term support from Biden, even as oil prices surge to the highest levels since 2014.

  But for that to happen, the loudest democrat mouths, AOC and her gal pals, would need to be shut up, and that just won’t happen without the Democrat party splitting in two: one merely centrist socialist, and one radical communist faction.

  “Right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand,” Granholm said, adding that boosting short-term oil supplies isn’t at odds with the administration’s commitment to clean energy. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said… although she may want to check if that is also true for her boss.

  Finally, as OilPrice explains, even if the US shale sector decides on a truce with an administration that would have gladly watched it crash and burn, it still can’t replace Russian oil in the short term as commodity intelligence firm Kpler said on Tuesday.

  Russia exports around 5 million bpd of crude and 2.8 million bpd of refined products. According to Kpler’s estimates, Russian crude oil exports could drop by as much as 1.5 million bpd from April onwards.

  But U.S. shale will not be able to fill the gap over the next few months, despite its flexibility and reactivity to market conditions, Alex Andlauer, Senior Global Energy Analyst at Kpler, notes. A lack of equipment is the key reason why the U.S. shale patch cannot replace the loss of Russian crude, Andlauer added.

  “If there had been no shortage in workers, trucks, sand and completions equipment, the upside for June (three months process) would have been small anyway, at around +130 kbd, or less than 10% of what we expect Russian crude exports could lose next month,” he wrote.

  Shale executives also think the U.S. cannot offset lost Russian barrels. Scott Sheffield, chief executive at Pioneer Natural Resources, the biggest oil producer in the Permian, says U.S. producers will not be able to replace Russian oil this year. In the event of a Russian embargo—which Sheffield supports—oil could jump to $150 and even $200 per barrel, the executive said in an interview with the Financial Times last week.

  The U.S. shale patch would need several months to raise production sharply, even if it started drilling many new wells now, Pioneer’s CEO noted. Labor, sand, and equipment shortages are already expected to constrain growth in U.S. shale this year, Sheffield and other U.S. oil executives said last month.

  In short, the Biden admin will have to be waving the neuralizer a whole lot more to make everyone forget that the energy hyperinflation observed today is just as much its fault as it is due to the war in the Ukraine. And speaking of forgetting, maybe it can also erase the memories of all those “81 million” voters who have put America in the worst stagflationary shock since the 1970s energy  crisis.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 20:00

• Elon Musk Asks Federal Judge To Vacate His 2018 Fraud Settlement With The SEC
  Elon Musk Asks Federal Judge To Vacate His 2018 Fraud Settlement With The SEC

  In what is likely a sign that things aren’t going great between the SEC and Elon Musk, it was reported this week that Tesla’s CEO was trying to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to vacate his 2018 fraud settlement with the agency. 

  Musk asked a federal judge to throw out the settlement this week, the WSJ reported, in a motion filed in Manhattan federal court.

  Musk’s lawyers argued that the settlement, which famously required Musk to run his Tweets past a “Twitter sitter” as a consequence of faking an $80 billion buyout for Tesla, “has become unworkable”.

  And in a sign that the SEC is currently a fly in Musk’s ointment, his lawyers said that the regulator was using the settlement to make “round after round of demands for voluminous, costly document productions, with no signs of abatement.”

  Additionally, Musk called into question the SEC’s original claims that he defrauded shareholders in 2018. 

  “I never lied to shareholders. I would never lie to shareholders. I entered the consent decree for the survival of Tesla, for the sake of its shareholders,” Musk said, claiming he felt “pressured” to settle with the SEC and put the matter behind him.

  

  Donna Nagy, a law professor at Indiana University, told the WSJ: “It is exceedingly difficult to convince a federal court to terminate a consent decree. The showing required is very high and there is very recent precedent in an analogous area.”

  Recall, just days ago, we wrote that the SEC was probing Musk and his brother, Kimbal, over trades they executed in November 2021. 

  The investigation began one day after Kimbal Musk sold $108 million in stock – which occurred one day before the Tesla CEO polled his Twitter users, on November 7 – just as the Russell and cryptos peaked – asking whether or not he should sell 10% of his stake in the company.

  That vote then set Musk in motion to sell far in excess of $10 billion in stock, representing about 10% of his stake in Tesla. The Tesla CEO claimed the sale was a way to cover taxes for potential new capital gains laws.

  After Elon started selling stock, Tesla’s stock price fell 33%. 

  Regulators are reportedly probing whether or not Elon may have told his brother Kimbal about his planned Tweet and, if so, if Kimbal knowingly traded ahead of the event. 

  Kimbal’s trading might “violate rules that generally prohibit employees and board members from trading on material nonpublic information”, the Journal reported. Kimbal’s shares were not sold pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan, which would have dictated that he could sell at a predetermined interval.

  The probe is not guaranteed to result in an enforcement action.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 19:40

• 'Forget About COVID', They Say…
  ‘Forget About COVID’, They Say…

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with Covid.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years. 

  There are two ways to be over Covid. 

  One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: declare the war won and move on. For political reasons. 

  Deaths attributed to Covid nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year.

  But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail. 

  

  Rationality is back! In that sense, it’s good to forget about Covid if it means living life normally and behaving with clarity about what does and does not work to mitigate a virus. The Democrats decided that the hyper-restrictionist ways were risking political fortunes. Hence, the line and the talking points needed to change. 

  Another way to get over Covid is to forget completely about the last two years, especially the astonishing failures of compulsory pandemic controls.

  Forget about the school closures that cost a generation two years of learning.

  Forget that the hospitals were largely closed to people without a Covid-related malady.

  Forget about the preventable nursing-home deaths.

  Forget that dentistry was practically abolished for a few months, or that one could not even get a haircut. 

  Forget the stay-at-home orders, the church and business closures, the playground and gym closures, the bankruptcies, the travel restrictions, the firings, the crazed advice for everyone to mask up and physically separate, the record drug-related deaths, the mass depression, the segregation, the brutalization of small business, the labor-force dropouts, the forced stoppages of art and culture, and the capacity limits on venues that forced weddings and funerals to be on Zoom. 

  Forget about a closer look at the bogus mathematical models, vaccine trials, the circumstances behind the Emergency Use Authorizations, the adverse effects, the inaccuracies of the PCR test, and misclassification of deaths, the billions and trillions of misdirected funds, the division of all workers between essential and nonessential, and the millions who were forced to get jabs they did not want. 

  Forget about the possibility of a lab leak, the role of China, the deadly use of ventilators, the neglect of therapeutics, the near-banning of all talk of natural immunity, the overselling of the vaccine, the lost religious holidays, the lonely deaths due to the blocking of loved ones from hospitals, the censorship of science, the manipulated and hidden CDC data, the payments to the major media, the symbiotic relationship between government and Big Tech, the demonization of dissent, and the abuse of emergency powers. 

  Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore! 

  Who precisely benefits from this method of being “over Covid?”

  The unrepentant hegemon that gave us this disaster to begin with. They want to be in the clear. They don’t just desire to be exonerated; they don’t want to be judged at all. They want to be unaccountable. The best path toward that end is to foster public amnesia. 

  I don’t just mean the Democrats. This calamity all began under a Republican president who still retains folk-hero status. Plus all Republican governors except one (Kristi Noem of South Dakota) bought into the initial lockdowns. They don’t want to talk about it either. 

  There is a vast machine extant that desperately wants everyone to forget. Not even forgive, just forget. Don’t think about the old thing. Think about the new thing instead. Don’t learn lessons. Don’t change the system. Don’t uproot the bureaucracies or examine why the court system failed us so miserably until it was too late. Don’t seek more information. Don’t seek reforms. Don’t take away powers from the CDC and NIH, much less Homeland Security. 

  Meanwhile, we live amidst a crisis without precedent. It affects health, economics, law, culture, education, and science. Nothing has been left untouched. The end of travel augmented every preexisting international tension. The wild government spending and the monetary accommodation of the ballooning debt, in addition to supply chain breakages, are all directly responsible for record levels of inflation. It’s much easier to blame Putin than it is to look at the failed policies of the US and many other governments in the world. 

  There are so many remaining questions. My own estimate is that we know about 5% of what we need to know to make sense of this whole disaster. What precisely were Fauci, Collins, Farrar, Birx, and the whole gang doing in February 2020 when they weren’t looking for early treatments? 

  Why did so many prominent epidemiologists completely reverse their stated views on lockdowns? They flipped from being largely skeptical of coercive measures on March 2, 2020, to fully embracing the most egregious measures only a few weeks later. Moreover, there was clearly a conspiracy emanating from the top to smear dissenting scientists who later said that the lockdowns were causing vastly more harm than good. The people behind the Great Barrington Declaration were targeted by government and media for professional ruin. 

  When did the vaccine companies get rolled into the mix and under what terms? We need to know the when and why of the questioning and denial of natural immunity. Who was involved in this egregious and wholly inaccurate attempt to stigmatize those who rejected the vaccine? Where were the trials for generic therapeutics that the NIH is supposed to fund? 

  Why in general did an entire establishment choose panic, lockdown, and mandate over calm and the traditional practice of public health? 

  I have my own questions.

  What were the conditions and the messages that led the New York Times to use its podcasts and printed pages (February 27 and 28, 2020) to spread absolute panic?

  This institution had never done this before in any previous pandemic. Why did it choose this path even weeks before Fauci and Birx started lobbying Trump to pull the trigger? 

  To put a fine point on it: how much money was involved? 

  What we need is a full timeline with every detail for two years. We need reparations for the victims. We need to take powers away from hundreds and thousands of leading politicians, scientists, public health officials and media executives. 

  What changed pandemic panic to a new calm is the force of public opinion. God bless the protestors, polls, and truckers. That is a great improvement but there is a long way to go to rekindle the love of liberty that can protect us next time. It’s not about left and right. We need a new understanding of public health, bodily autonomy, and essential liberties. 

  Some people want global amnesia and otherwise no change in the regime, no follow-up, no investigations, no connecting dots, no justice, no answers to burning questions. 

  And consider this.

  If we are so over Covid, why are people still being fired for not being vaccinated, including people with superior natural immunity? Why have the fired not been rehired? Why the masks on planes, trains, and buses? Why the continued quarantine rules? Why the restrictions on international travel? Why are children still forced to cover their faces? Why must everyone who wants to see a Broadway play be forced to cover up their smiles? 

  The remnants of restrictions, mandates, and impositions are there to serve as a reminder of the prevailing ruling-class attitude toward their policy choices. There are no regrets. They have done everything right. And they still have their thumb on you. 

  That is intolerable. By all means, forget about Covid and live life as normally as possible in defiance of those who live to foster fear. But, never forget the disastrous Covid restrictions that created such destruction. We cannot let anyone off the hook, much less pretend that the policy disaster that created billions of personal tragedies never happened. 

  The world we live in today – with worse health, economic dislocations, demoralized and undereducated children and youth, segregations and censorships, the unquestioned ubiquity of rules manufactured by the undemocratic administrative state, the instability and fear that comes with no longer trusting the system – is a far cry from the one that existed only a few years ago. We need to know why, how, and who. There are millions of questions that cry out for answers. We must have them. And we need to work to recover, rebuild, and insure it will never happen again. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 19:20

• A Bomb Cyclone Could Wallop Northeast With Heavy Snow 
  A Bomb Cyclone Could Wallop Northeast With Heavy Snow 

  Despite the unseasonably warm temperatures in the eastern US earlier this week, winter isn’t over with eleven days left in the season. 

  AccuWeather forecasters warn a potential ‘bomb cyclone’ could unleash accumulating snowfall from the central Appalachians to the interior Northeast on Friday through Saturday. 

  “Confidence is growing for a significant storm that will bring wide-reaching impacts,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Alex DaSilva said.

  The end-of-the-week storm will take aim at the Eastern Seaboard and is expected to undergo rapid strengthening, perhaps reaching bomb cyclone status. 

  “Winds across the entire Northeast and mid-Atlantic will be very gusty Saturday and Saturday night,” DaSilva said. 

  AccuWeather meteorologists are still determining the rain-snow line, but models already suggest somewhere around Interstate 95. 

  

  In the interior Northeast, accumulating snowfall is expected. 

  “It is within this Appalachian zone that the air will be cold enough at the onset of precipitation, or turn colder dramatically during the event, for mostly snow to fall, with accumulations ranging from a few inches to a foot or more,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.

  

  Nothing is locked in as meteorologists will likely be more definite in their forecasts on Thursday evening. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/09/2022 – 19:00

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