Today’s News 10th March 2023

• Kuroda Calls It A Career With A Whimper: BOJ Keeps Policy, YCC Band Unchanged
  Kuroda Calls It A Career With A Whimper: BOJ Keeps Policy, YCC Band Unchanged

  In the end, despite some expectations for fireworkers, Kuroda ended his central banking career with a whimper.

  

  On March 9-10, the BOJ held its Monetary Policy Meeting (MPM), and in a unanimous vote decided to maintain the status quo across all monetary policy parameters, including yield curve control (YCC) and asset purchase programs, in line with most expectations. The tolerable band for the 10-year JGB yield was also kept at plus/minus 50bp. The BOJ also maintained forward guidance, which is tied to the pandemic situation and states that it “expects short- and long-term policy interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels,” as expected.

  Ahead of the meeting, Goldman notes that “some market participants were of the view that the BOJ would eliminate YCC entirely or adjust it further at today’s MPM, as it was the last for Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, to alleviate the burden on the next governor, Kazuo Ueda.”

  The BOJ maintained its overall assessment of the economy at “has picked up as the resumption of economic activity has progressed while public health has been protected from COVID-19.” By category, the BOJ downgraded its assessment on exports and production, to “they have been more or less flat,” from “have increased as a trend.” On consumption, the assessment was unchanged as “increased moderately,” while the BOJ added “despite being affected by price rises” to its statement.

  Regarding the inflation outlook, the BOJ maintained the view that the CPI “is likely to decelerate toward the middle of fiscal 2023 due to the effects of pushing down energy prices from the government’s economic measures and to a waning of the effects of a pass-through to consumer prices of cost increases led by a rise in import prices.”

  Meanwhile, the government’s proposal to appoint Kazuo Ueda as the next BOJ governor and Shinichi Uchida and Ryozo Himino as deputy governors (each to five-year terms) has been formally approved following majority endorsements by the Lower House on March 9 and the Upper House on March 10. The new leadership will take up their roles after Governor Kuroda’s term expires on April 8, and the current deputy governors’ terms end on March 19.

  Japanese stocks maintained losses after the Bank of Japan reiterated an easing stance at its policy meeting. Market sentiment was hurt by the plunge in US bank shares on concern over the financial health of Silicon Valley Bank. The Topix Index fell 1.2% to 2,046.17 as of 12:35 p.m. Tokyo time, while the Nikkei declined 0.9% to 28,361.62. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. contributed the most to the Topix Index decline, decreasing 3.5%.

  According to Credit Agricole the yen will track US Treasuries as investors await the next monetary policy moves by the Bank of Japan under the leadership of incoming Governor, Kazuo Ueda.

  “JPY will continue to move inversely with UST yields. We would caution investors that further inversion of the UST yield curve could act as a cap on USD/JPY upside,” says David Forrester, strategist in Singapore adding that “Ueda will likely want to settle into the Governorship for a meeting or two before considering making any changes.”

  “The relatively short deliberation and unanimous vote really shows the BOJ didn’t want to change policy today” which is good: the last thing the market needs now is even more shocks.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 23:56

• Central Bank Digital Currency Is The Endgame, Part 1
  Central Bank Digital Currency Is The Endgame, Part 1

  Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

  Central bank digital currency (CBDC) will end human freedom. Don’t fall for the assurances of safeguards, the promises of anonymity and of data protection. They are all deceptions and diversions to obscure the malevolent intent behind the global rollout of CBDC.

  

  Central Bank Digital Currency is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, authoritarian social control mechanism ever devised. Its “interoperability” will enable the CBDCs issued by various national central banks to be networked to form one, centralised global CBDC surveillance and control system.

  Should we allow it to prevail, CBDC will deliver the global governance of humanity into the hands of the bankers.

  CBDC is unlike any kind of “money” with which we are familiar. It is programmable and “smart contracts” can be written into its code to control the terms and conditions of the transaction.

  Policy decisions and broader policy agendas, restricting our lives as desired, can be enforced using CBDC without any need of legislation. Democratic accountability, already a farcical concept, will become literally meaningless.

  CBDC will enable genuinely unprecedented levels of surveillance, as every transaction we make will be monitored and controlled. Not just the products, goods and services we buy, even the transactions we make with each other will be overseen by the central bankers of the global governance state. Data gathering will expand to encompass every aspect of our lives.

  This will allow central planners to engineer society precisely as the bankers wish. CBDC can and will be linked to our Digital IDs and, through our CBDC “wallets,” tied to our individual carbon credit accounts and jab certificates. CBDC will limit our freedom to roam and enable our programmers to adjust our behaviour if we stray from our designated Technate function.

  The purpose of CBDC is to establish the tyranny of a dictatorship. If we allow CBDC to become our only means of monetary exchange, it will be used enslave us.

  Be under no illusions: CBDC is the endgame.

  WHAT IS MONEY?

  Defining “money” isn’t difficult, although economists and bankers like to give the impression that it is. Money can simply be defined as:

  A commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. It is the medium in which prices and values are expressed. It circulates from person to person and country to country, facilitating trade, and it is the principal measure of wealth.

  Money is a “medium”—a paper note, a coin, a casino chip, a gold nugget or a digital token, etc.—that we agree to use in exchange transactions. It is worth whatever value we ascribe to it and it is the agreed value which makes it possible for us to use it to trade with one-another. If its value is socially accepted “by general consent” we can use it to buy goods and services in the wider economy.

  We could use anything we like as money and we are perfectly capable of managing a monetary system voluntarily. The famous example of US prisoners using tins of mackerel as money illustrates both how money functions and how it can be manipulated by the “authorities” if they control the issuance of it.

  Tins of mackerel are small and robust and can serve as perfect exchange tokens (currency) that are easy to carry and store. When smoking was banned within the US penal system, the prisoners preferred currency, the cigarette, was instantly taken out of circulation. As there was a steady, controlled supply of mackerel cans, with each prisoners allotted a maximum of 14 per week, the prisoners agreed to use the tinned fish as a “medium of economic exchange” instead.

  The prisoners called in-date tins the EMAK (edible mackerel) as this had “intrinsic” utility value as food. Out-of-date fish didn’t, but was still valued solely as a medium of exchange. The inmates created an exchange rate of 4 inedible MMAKs (money mackerel) to three EMAKs.

  You could buy goods and services in the Inmate Run Market (IRM) that were not available on the Administration Run Market (ARM). Other prison populations adopted the same monetary system, thus enabling inmates to store value in the form of MAKs. They could use their saved MAKs in other prisons if they were transferred.

  Prisoners would accept payment in MAKs for cooking pizza, mending clothes, cleaning cells, etc. These inmate service providers were effectively operating IRM businesses. The prisoners had voluntarily constructed a functioning economy and monetary system.

  Their main problem was that they were reliant upon a monetary policy authority—the US prison administration—who issued their currency (MAKs). This was done at a constant inflationary rate (14 tins per prisoner per week) meaning that the inflationary devaluation of the MAKs was initially constant and therefore stable.

  It isn’t clear if it was deliberate, but the prison authorities eventually left large quantities of EMAKs and MMAKs in communal areas, thereby vastly increasing the money supply. This destabilised the MAK, causing hyperinflation that destroyed its value.

  With a glut of MAKs available, its purchasing power collapsed. Massive quantities were needed to buy a haircut, for example, thus rendering the IRM economy physically and economically impractical. If only temporarily.

  

  Perfectly usable “money”

  THE BANKERS’ NIGHTMARE

  In June 2022, as part of its annual report, the BIS published The future monetary system. The central banks (BIS members) effectively highlighted their concerns about the potential for the decentralised finance (DeFi), common to the “crypto universe,” to undermine their authority as the issuers of “money”:

  [DeFi] seeks to replicate conventional financial services within the crypto universe. These services are enabled by innovations such as programmability and composability on permissionless blockchains.

  The BIS defined DeFi as:

  [. . .] a set of activities across financial services built on permissionless DLT [Distributed Ledger Technology] such as blockchains.

  The key issue for the central bankers was “permissionless.”

  A blockchain is one type of DLT that can either be permissionless or permissioned. Many of the most well known cryptocurrencies are based upon “permissionless” blockchains. The permissionless blockchain has no access control.

  Both the users and the “nodes” that validate the transactions on the permissionless blockchain network are anonymous. The network distributed nodes perform cryptographic check-sums to validate transactions, each seeking to enter the next block in the chain in return for an issuance of cryptocurrency (mining). This means that the anonymous—if they wish–users of the cryptocurrency can be confident that transactions have been recorded and validated without any need of a bank.

  Regardless of what you think about cryptocurrency, it is not the innumerable coins and models of “money” in the “crypto universe” that concerns the BIS or its central bank member. It is the underpinning “permissionless” DLT, threatening their ability to maintain financial and economic control, that preoccupies them.

  The BIS more-or-less admits this:

  Crypto has its origin in Bitcoin, which introduced a radical idea: a decentralised means of transferring value on a permissionless blockchain. Any participant can act as a validating node and take part in the validation of transactions on a public ledger (ie the permissionless blockchain). Rather than relying on trusted intermediaries (such as banks), record-keeping on the blockchain is performed by a multitude of anonymous, self-interested validators.

  Many will argue that Bitcoin was a creation of the deep state. Perhaps to lay the foundation for CBDC, or at least provide the claimed justification for it. Although the fact that this is one “conspiracy theory” that the mainstream media is willing to entertain might give us pause for thought.

  Interesting though this debate may be, it is an aside because it is not Bitcoin, nor any other cryptoasset constructed upon any permissionless DLT, that threatens human freedom. The proposed models of CBDC most certainly do.

  CBDC & THE END OF THE SPLIT CIRCUIT IMFS

  Central banks are private corporations just as commercial banks are. As we bank with commercial banks so commercial banks bank with central banks. We are told that central banks have something to do with government, but that is a myth.

  Today, we use “fiat currency” as money. Commercial banks create this “money” out of thin air when they make a loan (exposed here). In exchange for a loan agreement the commercial bank creates a corresponding “bank deposit”—from nothing—that the customer can then access as new money. This money (fiat currency) exists as commercial bank deposit and can be called “broad money.”

  Commercial banks hold reserve accounts with the central banks. These operate using a different type of fiat currency called “central bank reserves” or “base money.”

  We cannot exchange “base money,” nor can “nonbank” businesses. Only commercial and central banks have access to base money. This creates, what John Titus describes—on his excellent Best Evidence Channel—as the split-monetary circuit.

  Prior to the pseudopandemic, in theory, base money did not “leak” into the broad money circuit. Instead, increasing commercial banks’ “reserves” supposedly encouraged them to lend more and thereby allegedly increase economic activity through some vague mechanism called “stimulus” .

  Following the global financial crash in 2008, which was caused by the commercial banks profligate speculation on worthless financial derivatives, the central banks “bailed-out” the bankrupt commercial banks by buying their worthless assets (securities) with base money. The new base money, also created from nothing, remained accessible only to the commercial banks. The new base money didn’t directly create new broad money.

  This all changed, thanks to a plan presented to central banks by the global investment firm BlackRock. In late 2019, the G7 central bankers endorsed BlackRock’s suggested “going-direct” monetary strategy.

  BlackRock said that the monetary conditions that prevailed as a result of the bank bail-outs had left the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) “tapped out.” Therefore, BlackRock suggested that a new approach would be needed in the next downturn if “unusual circumstances” arose.

  These circumstances would warrant “unconventional monetary policy and unprecedented policy coordination.” BlackRock opined:

  Going direct means the central bank finding ways to get central bank money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders.

  Coincidentally, just a couple of months later, the precise “unusual circumstances,” specified by BlackRock, came about as an alleged consequence of the pseudopandemic. The “going direct” plan was implemented.

  Instead of using “base money” to buy worthless assets solely from commercial banks, the central banks used the base money to create “broad money” deposits in commercial banks. The commercial banks acted as passive intermediaries, effectively enabling the central banks to buy assets from nonbanks. These nonbank private corporations and financial institutions would have otherwise been unable sell their bonds and other securities directly to the central banks because they can’t trade using central bank base money.

  The US Federal Reserve (Fed) explain how they deployed BlackRock’s ‘going direct’ plan:

  A notable development in the U.S. banking system following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rapid and sustained growth in aggregate bank deposits [broad money]. [. . .] When the Federal Reserve purchases securities from a nonbank seller, it creates new bank deposits by crediting the reserve account of the depository institution [base money] at which the nonbank seller has an account, and then the depository institution credits the deposit [broad money] account of the nonbank seller.

  This process of central banks issuing “currency” that then finds its way directly into private hands will find its ultimate expression through CBDC. The transformation of the IMFS, suggested by BlackRock’s “going direct” plan, effectively served as a forerunner for the proposed CBDC based IMFS.

  THE “ESSENTIAL” CBDC PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

  CBDC will only be “issued” by the central banks. All CBDC is “base money.” It will end the traditional split circuit monetary system, although proponents of CBDC like to pretend that it won’t, claiming the “two-tier banking system” will continue.

  This is nonsense. The new “two-tier” CBDC system is nothing like its more distant predecessor and much more like “going direct.”.

  CBDC potentially cuts commercial banks out of the “creating money from nothing” scam. The need for some quid pro quo between the central and the commercial banks was highlighted in a recent report by McKinsey & Company:

  The successful launch of a CBDC involving direct consumer and business accounts could displace a material share of deposits currently held in commercial bank accounts and could create a new competitive front for payment solution providers.

  McKinsey also noted, for CBDC to be successful, it would need to be widely adopted:

  Ultimately, the success of CBDC launches will be measured by user adoption, which in turn will be tied to the digital coins’ acceptance as a payment method with a value proposition that improves on existing alternatives. [. . .] To be successful, CBDCs will need to gain substantial usage, partially displacing other instruments of payment and value storage.

  According to McKinsey, a thriving CBDC would need to replace existing “instruments of payment.” To achieve this, the private “payment solution providers” will have to be on-board. So, if they are going to countenance displacement of their “material share of deposits,” commercial banks need an incentive.

  Whatever model CBDC ultimately takes, if the central bankers want to minimise commercial resistance from “existing alternatives,” so-called public-private partnership with the commercial banks is essential. Though, seeing as central banks are also private corporations, perhaps “corporate-private partnership” would be more appropriate.

  McKinsey state:

  Commercial banks will likely play a key role in large-scale CBDC rollouts, given their capabilities and knowledge of customer needs and habits. Commercial banks have the deepest capabilities in client onboarding [adoption of CBDC payment systems] [. . .] so it seems likely that the success of a CBDC model will depend on a public–private partnership (PPP) between commercial and central banks.

  Accenture, the global IT consultancy that is a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance global digital identity partnership, agrees with McKinsey.

  Accenture declares:

  Make no mistake: Commercial banks have a pivotal role to play and a unique opportunity to shape the course of CBDC at its foundation. [. . .] CBDC is developing at a much faster pace than that of other payment systems. [. . .] In the U.S. at least, the design of a CBDC will likely involve the private sector, and with the two-tier banking system set to remain in place, commercial banks must now step up and forge a path forward.

  

  [click to enlarge]

  WHAT MODEL OF CBDC?

  By creating the new concept of “wholesale CBDC,” the two-tier fallacy can be maintained by those who think this matters. Nonetheless, it is true that a wholesale CBDC wouldn’t necessarily supplant broad money.

  The Bank for International Settlements (BIS)—the central bank for central banks—offers a definition of the wholesale CBDC variant:

  Wholesale CBDCs are for use by regulated financial institutions. They build on the current two-tier structure, which places the central bank at the foundation of the payment system while assigning customer-facing activities to PSPs [non-bank payment service providers]. The central bank grants accounts to commercial banks and other PSPs, and domestic payments are settled on the central bank’s balance sheet. [. . .] Wholesale CBDCs and central bank reserves operate in a very similar way.

  Wholesale CBDC has some tenuous similarities to the current central bank reserve system but, depending upon the added functionality of the CBDC design, increases central bank ability to control all investment and subsequent business activity. This alone could have an immense social impact.

  The BIS continues:

  [. . .] a more far-reaching innovation is the introduction of retail CBDCs. Retail CBDCs modify the conventional two-tier monetary system in that they make central bank digital money available to the general public, just as cash is available to the general public as a direct claim on the central bank. [. . .] A retail CBDC is akin to a digital form of cash[.] [. . .] Retail CBDCs come in two variants. One option makes for a cash-like design, allowing for so-called token-based access and anonymity in payments. This option would give individual users access to the CBDC based on a password-like digital signature using private-public key cryptography, without requiring personal identification. The other approach is built on verifying users’ identity (“account-based access”) and would be rooted in a digital identity scheme.

  It is “retail CBDC” that extends central bank oversight and enables it to govern every aspect of our lives. Retail CBDC is the ultimate nightmare scenario for us as individual “citizens.”

  While the BIS outlines the basic concept of retail CBDC, it has thoroughly misled the public. Suggesting that retail CBDC is the users “claim on the central bank” sounds much better than acknowledging that CBDC is a liability of the central bank. That is, the central bank always “owns” the CBDC.

  It is a liability which, as we shall see, the central bank agrees to pay if its stipulated “smart contract” conditions are met. A retail CBDC is actually the central bank’s “claim” on whatever is in your CBDC “wallet.”

  The BIS assertion, that CBDC is “akin to a digital form of cash,” is a lie. CBDC is nothing like “cash,” save in the remotest possible sense.

  Both cash, as we understand it, and CBDC are liabilities of the central bank but the comparison ends there. The central bank, or its commercial bank “partners,” cannot monitor where we exchange cash nor control what we buy with it. CBDC will empower them to do both.

  At the moment, spending cash in a retail setting—-without biometric surveillance such as facial recognition cameras—is automatically anonymous. While “token-based access” retail CBDC could theoretically maintain our anonymity, this is irrelevant because we are all being herded into a retail CBDC design that is “rooted in a digital identity scheme.”

  The UK central bank—the Bank of England (BoE)—has recently published its envisaged technical specification for its CBDC which it deceptively calls the Digital Pound. The BoE categorically states:

  CBDC would not be anonymous because the ability to identify and verify users is needed to prevent financial crime and to meet applicable legal and regulatory obligations. [. . .] Varying levels of identification would be accepted to ensure that CBDC is available for all. [. . . ] Users should be able to vary their privacy preferences to suit their privacy needs within the parameters set by law, the Bank and the Government. Enhanced privacy functionality could result in users securing greater benefits from sharing their personal data.

  Again, it is imperative to appreciate that CBDC is nothing like cash. Cash may be preferred by “criminals” but it is more widely preferred by people who do not want to share all their personal data simply to conduct business or buy goods and services.

  The Digital Pound will end that possibility for British people. Just as CBDCs in every other country will end it for their populations.

  The BoE model assumes no possible escape route. Even for those unable to present state approved “papers” on demand, “varying levels of identification” will be enforced to ensure that the CBDC control grid is “for all.” The BoE, the executive branch of government and the judiciary form a partnership that will determine the acceptable “parameters” of the BoE’s, not the users, “privacy preferences.”

  The more personal identification data you share with the BoE and its state partners, the sweeter your permitted use of CBDC will be. It all depends upon your willingness to comply. Failure to comply will result in you being unable to function as a citizen and ensure that you are effectively barred from mainstream society.

  If we simply concede to the rollout of the CBDC, the concept of the free human being will be distant memory. Only the first couple of post CBDC generations will have any appreciation of what happened. If they don’t deal with it, the future CBDC slavery of humanity will be inescapable.

  This may sound like hyperbole but, regrettably, it isn’t. It is the dictatorial nightmare of retail CBDC that we will explore in part 2, alongside the simple steps we can all take to ensure the CBDC nightmare never becomes a reality.

  Part Two of this series is available on Iain’s SubStack.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 23:40

• Beware The Nonresponsive Response To Tucker Carlson
  Beware The Nonresponsive Response To Tucker Carlson

  Authored by Chris Bray via American Greatness,

  This is such a great moment. I just realized what Tucker Carlson versus “the swamp” teaches us. I’m going to suggest that you ask yourself a single question and see if you can answer it, but give me a minute to get there.

  

  So, if a girlfriend says to her boyfriend, “I know you went home with Tiffany after her shift on Thursday night, and you had sex with her in her living room three times,” and then the boyfriend starts screaming and waving his arms around and shouting, “Oh right! You think I just go around having sex with everyone all the time! You’re so crazy!” Then, in fact, that boyfriend went home with Tiffany after her shift on Thursday night, and he had sex with her in her living room three times. Compare this possible response: “I was with Brian on Thursday night, hanging out at the gas station and listening to Yo La Tengo on our headphones, and I haven’t seen Tiffany since that thing at the dog park.” Right?

  Now, without revisiting details, Tucker Carlson made three claims when he aired January 6 footage on his Fox News program Monday night:

  1) The Viking-horned Jacob Chansley, who was charged with “violent entry” to the Capitol, and who was later depicted as having fought his way through the building to storm the Senate chambers, in fact walked the hall calmly in the company of police officers who didn’t try to stop him, and who in fact tried to open doors for him.

  2) Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who was depicted by the January 6 committee as a coward who ran, alone, from the mob, in fact, followed police directions and left an area with many other legislators.

  3) Officer Brian Sicknick, who has repeatedly been depicted as an officer who was murdered by violent insurrectionists in the Capitol on January 6, can be seen walking around unharmed in the Capitol after he is supposed to have been killed.

  Also, Carlson explicitly said that some people were violent at the Capitol on January 6.

  So watch what the political class is saying about Carlson’s broadcast:

  Republican Senator Thom Tillis reacts to Tucker Carlson releasing never before seen J6 footage:

  “I think it’s bullsh*t.”

  Welcome to the DC Uniparty. pic.twitter.com/jenVBLeYxH

  — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 7, 2023

  Thom Tillis isn’t responding to Carlson’s narrow, specific fact claims; he’s responding to his cartoon version, steamrolling details and flattening the thing he’s supposedly talking about. George W. Bush was especially fond of this maneuver, but most politicians use it all the time: “Some say,” they say, and then say something that no one is saying, and then pretend to respond to it. “Some say we should let the terrorists win, but Americans know that’s an irresponsible view.” If you respond to your critics by not responding to your critics but instead respond by inventing their position so you can attack your own rhetorical creation, you can’t respond to your critics.

  So ask yourself one thing: In all the post-broadcast ranting about the Tucker Carlson Menace—and let’s not kid ourselves, he may invade Poland at any moment—how many politicians and media figures have you heard specifically addressing Carlson’s three narrow fact claims about Chansley, Hawley, and Sicknick?

  When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response. It’s chaff, and it’s meant to cloud the air.

  How many times have we seen this maneuver? Q: You said the vaccines were 100 percent effective, and that everyone who gets them immediately becomes a dead end for the virus. Was that true? A: Ohh, I know that some people are anti-vaxxers who don’t believe in science, but I don’t have any patience for these conspiracy theories.

  It’s topic-shifting, quite thinly disguised. Again: When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response.

  But finally, one person actually did offer a specific response to one of Carlson’s specific claims, and it’s a response that swallows its own tail. The Washington Post quotes a memo from Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, disputing the story about Chansley:

  The claim by Carlson that Capitol Police served as ‘tour guides’ for Jacob Chansley, the horn-wearing ‘QAnon Shaman,’ was ‘outrageous and false,’ Manger wrote. He said that Capitol Police were badly outnumbered on Jan. 6, and that, ‘Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.’

  [….]

  Some of the video aired by Carlson showed Chansley being accompanied by several Capitol Police officers as they walked through the hall during the riot. One of the officers was previously featured in a 2021 HBO documentary, ‘Four Hours at the Capitol,’ and said that ‘The sheer number of them compared to us, I knew ahead there was no way we could all get physical with them, so I took it upon myself to try to talk to them.’ The officer is then seen on video walking behind Chansley as Chansley walks into the Senate Chamber.

  We didn’t do that; also, we did do that, but it was a tactic. If the police didn’t try to stop Chansley from entering the Capitol and the Senate chambers because they felt outnumbered and were trying to prevent a confrontation, then the police didn’t try to stop Chansley from entering the Capitol and the Senate chambers. The thing presented as a claim that Carlson lied about concedes the exact thing that Carlson claimed, but then tries to explain it, but still just ends up conceding it. Take it from the Washington Post, in a supposed debunking: An officer said that he just talked to Chansley; then he walked into the Senate chambers with him.

  That’s what happened, and no one actually claims otherwise.

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

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 23:00

• Australia To Buy 5 US Nuclear-Powered Submarines In Deal To Counter China
  Australia To Buy 5 US Nuclear-Powered Submarines In Deal To Counter China

  In a major expansion and overhaul of its navy, Australia is planning to buy up to five US Virginia class nuclear powered submarines beginning in the next decade, Reuters and others are reporting. US as well as European officials have disclosed the future deal as part of a “landmark defense agreement between Washington, Canberra and London, four U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in a deal that would present a new challenge to China.”

  The impending agreement is seen as central to the relatively new AUKUS partnership, and the major sub deal is expected to be announced when President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet in San Diego Monday.

  

  When the partnership was first announced and formalized eighteen months ago, President Biden said of it, “We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” and that “We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.”

  The nuclear submarines at center of the expected deal cost $3 billion each and will initially be built in Virginia and Connecticut. But sources say other submarines could be built in the UK and Australia while utilizing US technology and assistance. 

  The AUKUS partnership has multiple defense components components, chief among them the development of the nuclear submarine capability for Australia. This has been known since the AUKUS agreement was announced in Sept. 2021, but this week marks the first time specifics have been revealed.

  Other components include security cooperation in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and undersea capabilities. While the US, the UK and Australia already take part in common security arrangements, and all three participate in the Five Eyes alliance, an intelligence-sharing arrangement that also includes Canada and New Zealand, the AUKUS security structure provides for the technology cooperation needed to share nuclear submarine technology and other common efforts in a region where China poses growing security concerns.

  But Western leaders while discussing AUKUS have taken pains to avoid calling out China directly, but it’s clearly aimed at countering Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, and certainly China sees it as directly impacting its own defense priorities – and has accused Australia of severely violating prior commitments to not introduce nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to its military.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 22:40

• COVID Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts
  COVID Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts

  Authored by Ramesh Thakur via The Brownstone Institute,

  At first slowly but in recent weeks with seemingly gathering pace, two trends have emerged.

  

  On the one hand, many of the core claims behind lockdowns, masks, and vaccines are unravelling and the prevailing narrative has been in retreat on all three fronts.

  But there is still a long way to go, as indicated by the cussed refusal of the Biden administration to let Novak Djokovic play at Indian Wells.

  On the other hand, the explosive lockdown files in the UK have blown apart the official narrative. We the sceptics were right in our dark suspicions of the motives, scientific basis, and evidence behind government decisions, but even we did not fully grasp just how venal, evil, and utterly contemptuous of their citizens some of the bastards in charge of our health, lives, livelihoods, and children’s future were. “Hell is empty, And all the devils are here” (Shakespeare, The Tempest) indeed. They will have to build a new circle of hell to accommodate all the perpetrators of evil let loose upon the world since 2020.

  A mistake is when you spill coffee or take the wrong exit ramp off the highway. Lockdown was a policy pushed hard by politicians and health chiefs even against scientific dissent and substantial public opposition, using tools from every tyrants’ playbook of disinformation and lies whilst attacking and censoring truth. The depth of public opposition went unrecognized because the fear-peddling media colluded in not reporting on protests.

  Genuine mistakes were few and are forgivable. Most were deliberate distortions of reality, outright falsehoods, and a systematic campaign to terrorize people into compliance with arbitrary diktats interspersed with efforts to vilify, silence, and cancel all critics by using the full powers of the state to co-opt, bribe, and bully. All in pursuit of the most maddening public policy insanity of modern times because it ignored existing canons of pandemic planning in blind panic just when calm was most needed. To call lockdown a mistake is to trivialize the shock to society.

  Before coming to that, a few preliminary observations to summarize where we are at.

  What is Now Known and Generally but Not Universally Admitted

  Covid is now endemic. It will circulate throughout the world and keep returning with mutating variants. People who have been infected and/or vaccinated can contract and transmit it. Consequently we have little choice but to learn to live with it. What is important is to make sure the right policy lessons are learnt so that never again, neither for a novel coronavirus nor for any other infectious disease, do we go down the path of public policy insanity to lock up an entire city or country with the discovery of 1-10 cases and bring all social, cultural and economic activity to a shuddering halt – or give total power and control to sociopaths and psychopaths.

  Meanwhile what is particularly striking is just how many suspicions voiced by sceptics from early 2020 onwards and mocked as conspiracy theories have turned into plausible claims and accepted facts:

  1. The virus may have originated in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology;

  2. Covid modeling was dodgy and dressed up outliers as reasonable case scenarios;

  3. Lockdowns don’t work;

  4. Lockdowns kill through perverse consequences and inflict other damaging harms, including interruptions to critical life-saving children’s immunization campaigns in developing countries;

  5. School closures are particularly bad policy. They did not curb transmission but they did cause long-term harm to children’s education, development and emotional well-being;

  6. Masks are ineffective. They stop neither infection nor transmission;

  7. Infection confers natural immunity at least as effective as vaccination;

  8. Covid vaccines do not stop infection, hospitalization, or even death;

  9. Covid vaccines do not stop transmission;

  10. The safety of vaccines using new technology had not been definitively established, neither for the short term nor for the long term;

  11. Vaccine harms are real and substantial but safety signals have been summarily dismissed and ignored;

  12. mRNA vaccines are not confined to the arm but spread rapidly to other parts, including reproductive organs, with potentially adverse consequences for fertility and births;

  13. The harm-benefit equation of vaccines is, like the disease burden itself, steeply age-differentiated. Healthy young people did not need either initial or booster doses;

  14. Vaccination mandates don’t increase vaccine take-up;

  15. Vaccine mandates can fuel cross-vaccine hesitancy;

  16. Suppression of sceptical and dissenting voices will lessen trust in public health officials, experts and institutions, and possibly also in scientists more generally;

  17. Estimates of “Long Covid” were inflated (CDC estimate of 20 percent of Covid infections against UK study’s estimate of 3 percent) by using generalized, non-specific symptoms like mild fatigue and weakness;

  18. Health policy interventions involve policy trade-offs just like all other policy choices. Cost-benefit analysis is therefore an essential prerequisite, not an optional add-on.

  The Lockdown Files

  The last three years have seen lives lost in the millions with tens of millions more yet to be accounted for in the coming years, civilized lifestyles destroyed, previously inviolate freedoms shredded, civil liberties turned into privileges to be granted on the whim of bureaucrats, law enforcement officers corrupted into street thugs brutalizing the very people they are sworn to serve and protect, businesses destroyed, economies wrecked, bodily integrity violated.

  The Lockdown Files, a treasure trove of over 100,000 WhatsApp messages in real time between all the principal policymakers on Covid in England while Matt Hancock was the Secretary of Health (2020–26 June 2021), offer an unparalleled and gripping window into the amoral and cynical arrogance circulating in the corridors of power. The daily drip-feed of revelations in the Telegraph is akin to watching with fascinated horror a slow-motion train wreck. Schadenfreude doesn’t come any more delicious. 

  The files are littered with flippant remarks, mocking comments and contempt for citizens. Among the revelations about the Johnson government:

  • The government knew there was no “robust rationale” for including children in the “rule of six” (the maximum number of people who could meet at any given time), but backed the controversial policy anyway.

  • Facemasks were introduced in secondary schools in England after Johnson was told it was “not worth an argument” with Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon over the issue, despite England’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chris Whitty saying there were “no very strong reasons” to do so. In other words, political calculations were knowingly prioritized over schoolchildren’s needs.

  • A plan to lift restrictions were dropped after Johnson was told it would be “too far ahead of public opinion.”

  • Consultants were paid over £1 million a day for more than a year on the totally ineffectual test and trace program, turning the scheme into the embezzlement of public funds to line private pockets.

  We now know just how punch drunk on tyranny the political, bureaucratic, scientific, and journalist class was during the pandemic. The ruling elites, when liberated from democratic accountability and media scrutiny, morphed seamlessly into morally cavalier and inhumane petty tyrants. Averse to alternative ways of thinking outside the echo chamber, they developed neuralgia to any idea that might challenge lockdown fanaticism.

  Lockdown sceptics like the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) who argued for the elderly and frail to be protected were demonized as dangerous “Covid deniers” who wanted to “let it rip” in a callous and cruel strategy of herd immunity. But government officials whose policies had a direct, catastrophic impact on the health of the elderly and frail were treated as heroes and unimpeachable voices of moral authority.

  Sociopath, Psychopath, or Both?

  Among the revelations about Hancock:

  • More than 40,000 residents of care homes in England died with Covid. Hancock was advised by Whitty in April 2020 to test everyone entering the care homes. He rejected the advice because testing capacity was limited and, for political (PR) reasons, he prioritized reaching his grandiose, self-imposed target of 100,000 daily tests in the lower risk general community over protecting the care home residents, despite repeated claims of having thrown a “protective ring” around the homes. Patients discharged into care homes from hospitals were tested but not those coming in from the community. That is, “focussed protection” of the GBD was the right way to go. Instead Hancock rubbished the GBD and belittled its three eminent epidemiologist authors.

  • Social care minister Helen Whateley told Hancock that stopping visits to care homes by spouses was “inhumane” and risked the elderly residents “just giving up” after prolonged isolation, but he refused to budge.

  • He rejected advice in November 2020 to shift from 14-day Covid quarantine for people who had been in close contact with anyone infected, to five days of testing because it would “imply we’ve been getting it wrong.” Talk of a sunk cost fallacy. Over 20 million people in total were told to self-isolate even if they had no symptoms. God I feel vindicated for refusing flatly to join Australia’s clunky test and trace program.

  • In a discussion on how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions, Hancock suggested “We frighten the pants off everyone” and Project Fear was born. Simon Case, Britain’s most senior civil servant, said the “fear/guilt factor” was “vital” in “ramping up the messaging” during the third lockdown in January 2021.

  • Informed of the emergence of the alpha/Kent variant in December 2020, Hancock and his aides canvassed the ideal time to “deploy” the new variant in order to sustain public fear of the virus to ensure continued compliance with directives.

  • A member of his team asked if they could “lock up” Nigel Farage after he tweeted a video of himself at a pub in Kent, because the troublesome politician was such a thorn in the government’s side.

  • Hancock and Case mocked people forced to isolate in quarantine hotels, joking about returning travelers being “locked up” in “shoe box” rooms. Case wished he could “see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a premier inn shoe box.” Informed by Hancock that 149 people had entered “Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will,” Case replied: “Hilarious.”

  • Hancock fought furious internal battles to hog the vaccine media limelight. He preened about his pictures in the media and boasted how the pandemic could propel his career “into the next league.”

  • He told other ministers to “get heavy with the police” to enforce lockdown restrictions and then boasted that “The plod got their marching orders.” This raises questions about the legality of interfering with the operational instructions of police.

  • Intoxicated by his own brilliance and infallibility, Hancock attacked vaccine czar Dame Kate Bingham, the chief of the National Health Service (NHS) Lord Stevens, and CEO of the Wellcome Trust (and now top scientist at the WHO) Sir Jeremy Farrar.

  • He schemed with his aides, with the help of a secret spreadsheet, to deny rebellious party MPs funding for pet projects in their constituencies if they did not fall in line, including a new centre for disabled children and adults.

  I can relate therefore to this online comment on one of these stories in the Telegraph: “Hancock was intellectually stunted pondlife before the pandemic and still is now, but with more slime and a bit of a stink to him.” Or, to put it in more technical language: Hancock comes across as an ego-driven total f…wit.

  The state criminalized quotidian activities like sitting on a bench in the park, walking on the beach and meeting with extended family. Public health messaging was weaponized to normalize and sacralize spirit-sapping levels of social isolation. Even East Germany’s Stasi did not stop the elderly from hugging their grandchildren. Elderly patients were forced to die alone and surviving family members were banned from saying final farewells and denied the solace of a full funeral.

  Hancock was able to get away with exercising his lust for power because his prime minister, Boris Johnson, proved to be lazy, weak, and vacillating. The vivid description of Johnson by fired top aide Dominic Cummings – an out of control “shopping trolley” lurching from side to side in a supermarket aisle, depending on who he last talked to – has been amply validated by the leaked files. The instinctual libertarian rapidly morphed from a lockdown sceptic into a zealot.

  Lessons

  The Lockdown Files confirm that politics informed the policymakers in most of the key decisions on how to manage the pandemic. Accordingly, while medical specialists can debate the technical details of different medical approaches, policy specialists should be among the lead assessors in evaluating the justifications for and results and effectiveness of the policy interventions.

  The existing frameworks, processes and institutional safeguards under which liberal democracies operated until 2020 had ensured expanding freedoms, growing prosperity, an enviable lifestyle, quality of life and educational and health outcomes without precedent in human history. Abandoning them in favour of a tightly centralized small group of decision-makers liberated from any external scrutiny, contestability, and accountability produced both a dysfunctional process and suboptimal outcomes: very modest gains for much long-lasting pain. 

  The sooner we return to the conviction that good process ensures better long-term outcomes and acts as a check against suboptimal outcomes alongside curbs on abuses of power and wastage of public funds, the better.

  Interventions rooted in panic, driven by political machinations, and using all the levers of state power to terrify citizens and muzzle critics in the end needlessly killed massive numbers of the most vulnerable while putting the vast low-risk majority under house arrest. The benefits are questionable but the harms are increasingly obvious. The Johnson government in general and Hancock in particular revalidate Lord Acton’s astute observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

  They weren’t following the science but Hancock’s ego and career ambitions. He exploited Johnson’s “stonking” laziness and shallowness. The Lockdown Files reveal a government gone rogue that viewed and treated the people as enemies. The UK, US, and Australia don’t need an inquiry strung out over years, focused on small details to the neglect of the big picture, with the tame conclusion that lessons will be learnt but blame cannot be apportioned. Instead we need criminal charges, and the sooner the better.

  Britain’s top civil servant acted more like a partisan political hack than an apolitical, neutral and loyal-to-the-elected-government of the day civil servant. Case’s bias, immaturity, poor judgment, and unwillingness to support the PM with accurate, balanced, and impartial information were such as to warrant instant sacking. His hubris is such that he is yet to submit his resignation despite the publication of these appalling exchanges with Hancock who had effectively taken over the government. 

  The fact that as the “absolutely cringe-worthy” revelations came tumbling out, PM Rishi Sunak insisted Case has his confidence reflects poorly on Sunak’s judgment.

  Flawed process produced bad outcomes. 

  In a modern-day version of sacrificing virgins to appease the viral gods, the young have lost many more years of their life to buy a few more lonely, miserable months for the infirm old. 

  If the vast sums thrown at Covid had been redirected to the leading killer diseases and upgrades to public health infrastructure, using the standard quality-adjusted life years (QALY) metric, many million deaths would have been averted around the world over the coming decades. 

  If we fail to heed the lessons of the last three years, we will indeed be condemned to repeat them, not just for new pandemics of infectious diseases but also for other crises like the “climate emergency.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 22:20

• Pentagon Alleges Russia Supplying Fuel For Chinese Nuclear Warheads
  Pentagon Alleges Russia Supplying Fuel For Chinese Nuclear Warheads

  The Pentagon has voiced concern over “troubling” reports of increasing cooperation between Russia and China on Beijing’s efforts to build new nuclear warheads. On Wednesday and Thursday the US Department of Defense (DOD) circulated the claims to the point of making an official accusation.

  “It’s very troubling to see Russia and China cooperating on this,” John F. Plumb, assistant defense secretary for space policy, said before a Wednesday House Armed Services’ strategic forces subcommittee hearing. “They may have talking points around it, but there’s no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons. So I think the [Defense] Department is concerned. And of course, it matches our concerns about China’s increased expansion of its nuclear forces as well, because you need more plutonium for more weapons,” Plumb added. However, as of Thursday the DOD still seemed confused as to precisely what’s being alleged here…

  CORRECTION: Russia Reportedly Supplying Enriched Uranium to China

  — Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) March 9, 2023

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

  During the testimony Plumb referenced China diversifying its high tech weapons arsenal with help from Moscow, including high-altitude surveillance balloons and even nuclear-tipped hypersonic missiles.

  Speaking on his area of expertise, Plumb said, “China is engaged in a significant and fast-paced expansion and diversification of its nuclear forces. Also, Russia and China view space as a warfighting domain.”

  Congress members called for the administration to disrupt the weapons technology sharing relationship between China and Russia: 

  Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn said he hoped the Biden administration would take steps to halt the Rosatom uranium transfers.

  “I’m hopeful that we will see a comprehensive strategy from the administration to break this relationship — and ideally shatter Rosatom,” the Colorado Republican said.

  The accusations come dangerously at a moment the New START arms treaty has practically collapsed, after Moscow pulled out last month, with Putin declaring his country is suspending participation. 

  On the issue of the defunct nuclear treaty, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado said, “It is curious that we provide Russia with this benefit under the treaty when Russia is no longer reciprocating” – in reference to the exchange of treaty-required nuclear information.

  Increasingly Washington hawks are viewing the Russian and China ‘threats’ as intertwined. Just at a point the Ukraine war recently hit the one-year mark, the US administration really dialed up the pressure on Beijing, also in the context of the ‘spy balloon’ incidents.

  

  The China-Russia relationship has also been under the microscope given US intelligence allegations Beijing leadership is mulling transferring weapons to Russia. Last Sunday, for example, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told NBC’s Meet the Press that if this happened, there would be an “inexhaustible source of weapons” for Russia to use in its ongoing offensive against Ukraine.

  “The problem with China entering this is because you’ve got the West giving weapons to Ukraine,” Turner said. “You’ve got Russia depleting their stores. We obviously — the West together have an ability to impact Ukraine greater than Russia alone does.”

  All of this adds color to these current alarmist “reports say” accusations and headlines over plutonium and uranium being transferred to China. It’s all geared toward piling the pressure on Beijing over its ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 22:00

• Biden Admin Evaluating Mass Poultry Vaccination Amid Persistent Bird Flu Outbreak
  Biden Admin Evaluating Mass Poultry Vaccination Amid Persistent Bird Flu Outbreak

  Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Biden administration is considering the mass vaccination of the poultry population in response to an ongoing outbreak of avian flu that has killed off millions of birds and has helped spike egg and poultry costs.

  

  There are some existing vaccines for farm birds, but U.S. Agriculture Department spokesman Mike Stepien told The New York Times that no vaccination effort has been authorized and the department is unsure if the existing vaccines will be effective against the current strain of H5N1 bird flu. Erica Spackman, a researcher for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, told the newspaper that scientists are researching new vaccine candidates to help curb the ongoing bird flu outbreak.

  Thus far, the Biden administration has made no decision to impose a poultry vaccine mandate.

  “There are a range of options the United States regularly considers when there is any outbreak that could affect the security and safety of the United States’ food supply,” the White House National Security Council told news outlets on Monday. “Right now, we are focused on promoting and enhancing high-impact biosafety practices and procedures.”

  Instead of a bird flu vaccine program, many farmers have instead been culling millions of their livestock. At least 52.3 million birds were killed off throughout the United States in 2022.

  “The Department of Agriculture continues to respond quickly whenever the virus is detected among bird populations,” the National Security Council said on Monday.

  Bird Flu Risks

  Bird flu can be deadly. An 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died last month after becoming infected with H5N1.

  Bird flu can spread to humans through direct contact between a person and a farm bird or between a person and a contaminated surface. Bird flu contaminants can also spread through droplets or dust particles that a farm bird could kick up when it flaps its wings.

  For now, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention assesses that the risk of H5N1 spreading to humans remains low. That said, disease researchers have heightened concerns over growing numbers of infections among wild birds and some mammal species and the possibility the virus could evolve to spread more easily between people.

  Vaccine Program Would Have Trade-Offs

  Vaccinating millions of farm birds could be a complicated endeavor, and while a vaccine program may be able to slow or prevent the spread of the bird flu, it could also trigger trade bans.

  “We don’t have any assurance that any of our trading partners would accept our products if we began vaccinating any birds,” Julie Gauthier, the USDA veterinary service’s assistant director for poultry health, told Lancaster Farming in October.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 21:40

• Democrat Bill In Baltimore Would Prevent Anyone Under Age 25 From Facing Felony Murder Charges
  Democrat Bill In Baltimore Would Prevent Anyone Under Age 25 From Facing Felony Murder Charges

  Democrats in Baltimore, Maryland have introduced a bill that would prevent anyone under the age of 25 from facing first-degree murder charges in certain circumstances.

  

  The legislation, House Bill 1180, was introduced by Democratic Delegate Charlotte Crutchfield, who hilariously calls it the ‘Youth Accountability and Safety Act.’

  The bill, which is working its way through the House, has faced significant pushback from conservatives.

  “It would be absolutely outrageous and result in more crime,” said law enforcement expert Maury Richards, former Chief of Police of Martinsburg, West Virginia, Fox5 Baltimore reports. “Last year, with Senator Carter’s Juvenile Justice Reform Act, it really opened the floodgates. There is a crime wave of violence going on right now, but instead of the legislator debating to rescind that, we’re hung up on whether 25-year-olds should be charged with murder.”

  State GOP Senator William Folden of Frederick County has called the bill “irresponsible” in its approach.

  “They know the difference between right and wrong. They’re just not being held accountable and they don’t care about right or wrong,” said Folden.

  And according to GOP Delegate Susan McComas of Hartford County, “This bill is the definition of insanity. We are going to legalize murder as long as people are under 25. Outrageous.”

  Even Democratic Delegate Carl Jackson of Baltimore County thinks it’s absurd.

  “I believe that accountability must be at the center of any discussion regarding the criminal justice system,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 21:20

• TikTok Turns To Biden-Linked Lobbying Group As Scrutiny Intensifies
  TikTok Turns To Biden-Linked Lobbying Group As Scrutiny Intensifies

  By Blue Apples

  Whether it was Jen Psaki or her successor and former deputy Karine Jean-Pierre, so many instances of the Biden administration’s White House Press Secretary fumbling over their words as if they’re mimicking the president have come when they have tried to address conflicts of interest connected to his office. Most times, these instances have regarded controversies enveloping Hunter Biden that are often inextricably tied to the younger of the president’s sons acting as an intermediary between foreign governments and the big guy — err, his father.

  However, those conflicts of interest haven’t been limited to Biden alone. Psaki herself was revealed to have been connected to an Israeli spying company, per financial disclosures she filed before returning to her role as White House Press Secretary for Biden having previously held the same role in the Obama administration. Yet, a new development in the federal governments ongoing saga with TikTok has exposed many more such conflicts of interest deeply embedded in the Biden establishment. As the potential for a nationwide ban of TikTok looms, the Chinese social media platform has enlisted the services of a lobbying firm with close connections to the Biden administration. Several senior and mid-level directors in the Biden administration were previously employed by that very same lobbying group: SKDK.

  The mounting pressure behind TikTok’s enlistment of SKDK comes on the heels of increased scrutiny aimed at the app by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On March 7th, the Senate introduced a bill with bipartisan support aimed at curbing the influence of ByteDance, the Chinese tech company is the parent company of TikTok which has drawn the ire of politicians at state, local, and federal levels. Having already been banned by state governments across the country as well as from federal IT infrastructure, the proposed legislation brought to the Senate could mean a nationwide ban of TikTok in general.

  The proposed bill backed by a dozen US Senators would imbue the Biden Administration with the power to ban TikTok under its own discretion. While the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, does not target TikTok specifically, it would be a tool to galvanize the immense political pressure surrounding the app to facilitate action against it, if signed into law. The RESTRICT Act was introduced in the wake of another bill that would require a ban of TikTok depending on the outcome of a national security assessment over the app.

  Major Texas University Blocks Students From Using TikTok On Network https://t.co/y4jfeQyhTB

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 20, 2023

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

  However, there is a caveat. The bill would enable a potential ban of TikTok by expanding the powers of the Executive Branch to be able to do so to begin with. Given the presence of several members of the Biden administration who formerly worked for SKDK, concern arises that the president’s office may not have the impetus to act on any such ban. Instead, the expansion of his office’s powers could ironically serve as a vehicle for Biden to take aim at political opponents.

  Presently, Deputy White House Communications Directors Kate Berner and Herbie Ziskend, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, and Interior Department Press Secretary Tyler Cherry each highlight a roster of bureaucrats appointed by Biden who have previously worked for TikTok’s newest ally SKDK. The most prominent member of the Biden Administration with links to the lobbying group is Senior Adviser to the President Anita Dunn, who was a founding partner at the firm.

  

  Given the presence of so many former SKDK employees in Biden’s ranks, it should come as no surprise that the administration has fostered a cordial relationship with TikTok. That may be an understatement as the White House actually announced a partnership with the app ahead of the 2022 Midterm Elections to “combat misinformation” in tandem with the Federal Voting Assistance Program, a division of the federal government tasked with assisting overseas voters participate in US elections. This endeavor was part of a broader campaign by TikTok to launch a foray directly into matters regarding US elections. TikTok also partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) to provide voters with information on how to get out their vote. Given that partnership with the NASS, it’s clear that whatever influence TikTok has cultivated has permeated into the US political sphere far beyond the federal government alone.

  Ahead of enlisting the services of SKDK, the parent company of TikTok has spent more than $13.4 million into lobbying groups since it first reported payments to federal lobbyists in 2019. Over a third of that total was spent on federal lobbying efforts in 2022 alone. That spending vaulted ByteDance to the position of the fourth-largest spending on federal lobbying of any internet company. ByteDance was only outshined by Amazon, Google, and Meta in that regard.

  Much of that spending has brought former US Congressmen who are now in the private sector as lobbyists into ByteDance’s fold. The company has previously hired former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) as a federal lobbyist along with his colleague at Crossroads Strategies, former Louisiana Senator and US Representative John Breaux, Sr. (D-LA). Several other former House Representatives work for another ByteDance aligned lobbying group, K&L Gates. These lobbyists include Jeff Denham (R-CA) and Bart Gordon (D-TN). The roster of former elected officials ingratiated into the sphere of Chinese-owned companies conveys an equal, if not greater, bipartisan support of TikTok’s ongoing operations than those reaching across the aisle to unite on the converse position presently in Congress who have advanced legislation to sanction the company.

  As pressure against TikTok intensifies, the social media company has enlisted lobbyists with an understanding of what truly makes Washington tick. That, coupled with the assimilation of like-minded bureaucrats into the Biden administration may prove to be an ominous forecast for the future of the RESTRICT Act and any similar bills that follow in its footsteps. In the end, the approval of the former may ultimately serve as a tool for the Biden administration to have greater resources to wage its political wars anyway, proving that TikTok’s immense influence isn’t a catalyst for corruption in Washington as much as it is a symptom of its already festering presence.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 21:00

• Rookie Traders "Down Under" On Sydney's Beaches Are Earning As Much As $400,000 Straight Out Of School
  Rookie Traders “Down Under” On Sydney’s Beaches Are Earning As Much As $400,000 Straight Out Of School

  I think we just found where all the recently laid off bankers from Wall Street are going to wind up: Sydney, Australia.

  Why, you ask? Because rookie traders “down under” are earning as much as $400,000 straight out of school, according to a new Bloomberg report on the burgeoning market for tech-driven trading. 

  Noting that Citadel Securities, IMC Trading BV and Optiver BV all already have established presences on the continent, Bloomberg says that math and science majors may command up to that much to work at trading firms. The city has appeal because of a university system that churns out grads who are familiar with, and adapt well to, the business and trading world. 

  James Meade, head of employability at UNSW Sydney, said: “Trading firms offer extraordinary grad salaries.” 

  Citadel could be upping its staff in Australia by 50% to 100%, the report says. It already has more than 60 employees there. Matt Culek, COO, said: “We are excited about the pipeline of talent that we’ve seen coming out of schools in Australia.”

  Optiver has most of its 500 Asia-Pacific staff in Sydney already, the report says. IMC employs more than 1,300 people. More than 90% of its 300 regional employees are based in Sydney already. 

  

  And the business isn’t all based in Australia, rather the traders are working to build a hub for other regional markets – Japan, South Korea and other large Asian markets – the report says. 

  Sydney has a long history with tech-driven trading, the report details:

  Sydney traces its roots in the computer-driven trading business back to the 1990s, when Australia’s stock exchange had one of the biggest options markets in Asia-Pacific, which helped entice firms to the city. Tax breaks on offshore trading revenues, which are in the process of being phased out, also contributed.

  Sydney is also a major forex trading hub, and Macquarie Group Ltd., which is based in the city, has a longstanding trading business that helped its profits hit a record last year.

  And of course, fun in the sun after work on Australia’s many beaches isn’t a bad perk either. John Fildes, a capital markets veteran who now works for Bain & Co., told Bloomberg that the jobs there have become “a lifestyle thing”. 

  One former trader for Optiver – who is now paying as much as A$250,000 ($165,000) – said: “My schedule was to get up quite early, be in the water around 6 a.m. Go home and grab a coffee, get on my scooter and ride over to the office. I still miss it.”

  “It’s significantly better than a Wall Street bank. The hours are there, but the work is quite enjoyable,” concluded 26 year old former Optiver intern Will Green. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 20:40

• Doug Casey On The Rise Of "Climate Brats" And Other Useful Idiots
  Doug Casey On The Rise Of “Climate Brats” And Other Useful Idiots

  Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

  International Man: Webster’s Dictionary defines a useful idiot as a “naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda.”

  Lenin is thought to have originated the phrase when referring to communist sympathizers in the West.

  What is your take on this term? Is it still applicable today?

  

  Doug Casey: Today’s make-believe democracies are overflowing with useful idiots. They latch on to one lame-brained notion after another, perhaps to give meaning to their confused and pointless lives. They’re a bit like cats chasing the red dot from their master’s laser pointer. The Ukraine, Covid, sex perversions, Trump, racism, climate change—it’s one thing after another.

  Climate change is one of the central scams being promoted by the World Economic Forum as part of their Great Reset. It seems everything that comes out of the WEF—I can’t think of any exceptions — is antithetical to the traditional values of Western Civilization, prominently including free markets and personal liberty.

  We’ve discussed the COVID hysteria and what looks like World War III starting in the Ukraine. But the biggest thing, with the longest legs, is climate change. Full disclosure: I believe in climate change. The climate has been changing constantly since the world came together about four and a half billion years ago. And it’ll continue to change.

  The problem, however, isn’t climate change itself but the process of indoctrinating the public, especially young people, with the belief that humanity is destroying Mother Earth.

  They’re given snippets of science, like the fact that the world has been generally warming since the mid-19th century. Well, sure, it has because the planet went through what’s known as the Little Ice Age from the 16th through the 19th centuries. It has cyclically been warming for the last 150 years. As a matter of fact, the world has been warming since the end of the last Great Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago.

  The “global warming” people have found a great excuse for changing not just the economy but the way literally everything works. My view is that they’re basically anti-human—they actually hate and fear people. It’s why Yuval Noah Harari, the mincing court intellectual of the WEF, often refers to them as “useless eaters.” He may be right. But what’s insane is that someone like him could gain the power to make serious decisions. People like him applaud massive population reduction.

  Especially, it would appear, of what Hillary called “deplorables” in the Western world. They see people as the enemy. Some idiots among them are useful, but they’re all expendable.

  It’s easy for the “elite’—who are actually parasites—to influence those that they refer to as “the masses.” That’s partly because the average person has no grip on either science or history. Any episode of Jay Leno’s Jay Walking, or Mark Dice’s current equivalent on Youtube, offers plenty of anecdotal proof. They’ll ask what seem like average, reasonably intelligent people the simplest of questions. They can’t answer any of them. A typical response to the question “Who won the American Civil War” might be “The Germans?”. The only questions they can answer correctly are about pop and sports stars.

  It’s absolutely true: The world is full of useful idiots. They’re useful to the ruling classes who want to change everything. In fact, just last week, the Aspen Institute, one of the world’s best-known think tanks, sponsored a climate change conference featuring Kamala Harris and Gloria Estefan as the twin keynote speakers.

  It’s a pathetic comedy. A couple of useful idiots are talking to an audience of useful idiots about something that none of them know absolutely anything about.

  International Man: Today, we see a lot of useful idiots among average people—especially children and young adults—whipped up into a hysteria over so-called “climate change.”

  Popular culture, the media, Hollywood, academia, Wall Street, politicians, and other authority figures reinforce the climate alarmist narrative.

  Are these people being duped into supporting an agenda they don’t fully understand? What is really going on here?

  Doug Casey: The fact is that Congress critters live in an echo chamber. They’re there to pass laws and regulations governing what other people can and can’t do. And for that reason, they all believe that they have a right to push their agendas. They’re narcissists who love power. That’s why they’re in Washington.

  Congress is largely populated by people like AOC, the race-baiting socialist bartender, the mentally disabled John Fetterman, and George Santos, the pathological liar. Almost every Congress critter is an embarrassment. They didn’t run for Congress because they’re good people but because they’re power-hungry narcissists.

  Useful idiots are annoying enough when you see them in sports, the media, and Hollywood. But they tend to concentrate in Congress, where they’re actively dangerous.

  International Man: Recently, climate brats—young Westerners with psychological problems—glued themselves to priceless paintings in various museums.

  Another group threw cake on the Mona Lisa.

  Yet another threw tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting.

  The perpetrators of these destructive acts did so to draw attention to a fictitious climate emergency.

  What is your take?

  Doug Casey: They’re trying to draw attention to lunatic beliefs by destroying great works of art. That alone is proof that they are, in fact, deranged. These people have real psychological problems. That they aren’t severely punished but are taken seriously proves how degraded the West has become. But it’s just getting what it deserves. Very sad…

  It’s one thing to try to get the attention of other people, so they listen to what you have to say. But destroying the great art of Western Civilization is really where their heads are at. Destroying Western Civilization is an active part of their insane agenda. They’re deeply unhappy with themselves, but they blame it on Civilization.

  Their severe psychological problems are illustrated by the kind of people populating the Biden administration. Everyone from the tranny who dresses up in an admiral’s costume to Pete Buttigieg, who plays the female part of a couple with his boyfriend, to the former assistant secretary in Biden’s Office of Nuclear Energy who was that was caught stealing women’s clothing again and again. Biden himself, his Attorney General Merrick Garland, almost all of the top military people…

  This is all part of a syndrome.

  International Man: While these climate brats seem to be engaging in isolated acts, the reality is that climate alarmism is dictating government policy and corporate decisions and pumping unimaginable distortions into the global economy.

  Where is this trend headed?

  Doug Casey: Trends in motion tend to stay in motion and even accelerate until they reach a crisis. And that’s where we’re heading right now. Even if we don’t reach a crack-up crisis, which I suspect we will, even if saner heads prevail and start to reverse the trend, it’s going to take many, many years to first slow the trend and then reverse it. So there’s not much cause for optimism.

  International Man: Given everything we discussed today, what are the investment implications?

  Doug Casey: Put money in things that everybody has been taught to hate but are necessary for Civilization to continue. This means energy—uranium, oil, natural gas, and coal—and metals like gold and copper—resources in general.

  Fortunately, the stocks of companies that produce these things are very cheap, with many selling for single-digit P/Es, and double-digit dividends. The mining and energy industries are very un-PC. ESG dictates that you shouldn’t put money into any kind of extractive industry. It’s generally very expensive or impossible to get permits for development, so the stocks are very cheap. I’d like to believe that reality will reassert itself, and these things will go up a lot.

  The general stock market is still way overpriced. Plus, a crypto bubble still exists, evidenced by things like Dogecoin, which was created as a joke and serves no useful purpose. It still has a market cap of about $11 billion dollars. I think that can almost be used as an indicator of how much of a bubble the economy is still in.

  *  *  *

  We’ve seen governments institute the strictest controls on people and businesses in history. It’s been a swift elimination of individual freedoms. But this is just the beginning…

  Most people don’t realize the terrible things that could come next, including negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and much more. If you want to know how to survive what the central bankers and the Deep State have planned, then you need to see this newly released report from legendary investor Doug Casey and his team. Click here to download it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 20:20

• Prosecutor Won't Charge 6-Year-Old Who Shot Teacher – Unsure About Parents
  Prosecutor Won’t Charge 6-Year-Old Who Shot Teacher – Unsure About Parents

  The Virginia first-grader who shot his teacher in January won’t be charged for the attack, and the Newport News prosecutor says he’s still considering whether the boy’s parents should face criminal charges.  

  Speaking with NBC News, prosecutor Howard Gwynn said the “prospect that a 6-year-old can stand trial is problematic” because, at that age, a child can’t comprehend the legal system or collaborate with an attorney working to defend him. Whatever the prosecutor’s misgivings, it is theoretically possible for a 6-year-old to face criminal charges in Virginia.

  

  Two months after the disturbing classroom shooting at Richneck Elementary, Gwynn is still pondering the legal destiny of the six-year-old shooter’s parents:  

  “Our objective is not just to do something as quickly as possible. Once we analyze all the facts, we will charge any person or persons that we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt committed a crime.”

  On Jan. 6, 25-year-old first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was critically wounded when one of her students shot her once with his mother’s 9mm Taurus handgun, which she’d legally purchased. Zwerner was seated at a table when the boy — who’d firmly established a pattern of behavior problems and disturbing incidents with staff and students — suddenly opened fire.  

  While there was no confrontation immediately before the shooting, it came one day after the boy was issued a one-day suspension for breaking Zwerner’s cell phone. 

  

  In Virginia, it’s a misdemeanor crime to leave a loaded gun accessible to a child under 14, with a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

  The shooter’s parents claim the pistol had a trigger lock and was “secured” on the top shelf of the mother’s closet. They also said they’ve “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.” 

  “We have to make our decision based on our ability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a crime occurred,” said Gwynn.

  It’s conceivable the parents could be charged with contributing to a minor’s delinquency. They say the boy has an acute disability and was receiving the “treatment he needs” while detained at a medical facility after the shooting. 

  Meanwhile, Zwerner is expected to file suit against the school district, which has already ousted its superintendent and an assistant principal in the wake of the shooting. In January, Zwerner’s lawyer said three teachers sought intervention against the child.

  

  On the day of the shooting, a school staff member searched his backpack on a tip that the child might be packing heat. They didn’t find it, and administrators chose not to involve the police. The search happened around 11:30 am and the shooting took place about two-and-a-half hours later.  

  Other school staff members have spoken out against school officials’ disregard of warnings about the shooter and a tendency to ignore other problem students in a drive to bolster the school’s ratings. 

  “We see students being assaulted (and) we see teachers being assaulted…daily,” said elementary teacher Djifa Lee at a school board meeting. “[Disciplinary] referrals are so closely tied to accreditation, and this puts educators and office staff or administrators in a tough position.”

  “Every day in every one of our schools, teachers, students and other staff members are being hurt,” said high school librarian Nicole Cooke. “Every day, they’re hit. They’re bitten. They’re beaten. And [violent children] are allowed to stay so that our numbers look good.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 20:00

• White House Rules Out Designating Mexican Cartels As Foreign Terrorist Organizations
  White House Rules Out Designating Mexican Cartels As Foreign Terrorist Organizations

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

  The Biden administration on Wednesday ruled out designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations following the kidnapping of four Americans that led to two deaths near the U.S.-Mexico border.

  “Designating these cartels as [foreign terrorist organizations] would not grant us any additional authorities that we don’t really have at this time,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a news briefing with reporters. “The United States has powerful sanctions authorities specifically designated to combat narcotics trafficking organizations and the individuals and entities that enable them. So, we have not been afraid to use them.”

  

  The White House is in touch with the families of American citizens who were kidnapped or killed in Mexico in a high-profile international incident that drew the response of the FBI and top Mexican law enforcement, said Jean-Pierre.

  In a Wednesday briefing, Jean-Pierre said the administration has spoken with the families of the victims but did not offer many details. It’s not clear if President Joe Biden personally spoke with the families.

  “We will do everything in our power to identify, find, and hold accountable the individuals responsible for this attack, and we continue to work in coordination with the Mexican government,” she said. The U.S. Treasury Department, she added, has sanctioned Mexican firms and individuals in connection with the drug trade and cartels in recent months.

  In October 2022 and last month, the agency sanctioned members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel who are allegedly part of the organization’s fentanyl and methamphetamine trade. The agency last week targeted Mexican companies linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, with fresh sanctions, according to a news release.

  CJNG in some areas has “become heavily engaged in timeshare fraud, which often targets U.S. citizens,” the department said. “This crime, which can defraud victims of their life savings, results in another significant revenue stream for the cartel and strengthens its overall criminal enterprise. Today’s action exposes this CJNG scheme and also serves as a warning to potential victims, many of whom are elderly.”

  Jean-Pierre’s response about the Biden administration’s strategies targeting cartels came in the wake of a violent incident that occurred in Matamoros, Mexico, which is located just south of Brownsville, Texas. Four Americans were kidnapped and two of them were killed after they crossed the border for reported medical treatment, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 19:40

• "Dollar Tree Dinners": TikToker Goes Viral After Showing People How To Cook For $35 A Week
  “Dollar Tree Dinners”: TikToker Goes Viral After Showing People How To Cook For $35 A Week

  With rising inflation putting pressure on household finances, some low-income Americans have turned to “Dollar Tree Dinners” as their meal of choice.

  Rebecca Chobat’s TikTok videos have garnered the interest of budget-conscious shoppers, particularly as food inflation continues to persist at its highest level in four decades. Through her videos, which reach an audience of 742.5k followers, she explains how to make meals using products from the discount retailer with a weekly budget of $35.

  Chobat has published numerous videos showcasing “unique recipes and cooking ideas from the Dollar Tree.” Some of her video titles include “Dollar Tree Gumbo” and “Dollar Tree Beef Pot Pie.” 

  

  Although consumers can save money by consuming Dollar Store meals, there are some negative aspects to consider: 

  The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently published a report expressing worry about the absence of fresh produce in discount stores. Most food sold at Dollar Tree contains highly-caloric and heavily-processed items, which are not considered nutritious options.

  However, due to negative real wage growth taking a toll on household finances, some individuals have no alternative but to turn to Dollar Stores for food. For some, even Walmart has become too expensive. 

  Since the 2008 financial crisis, there’s been an explosion of Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar stores nationwide as the vast majority of folks are getting poorer. All three discount retailers operate 34,000 stores nationwide and are set to open thousands more in the coming years. 

  

  Chobat told Bussiness Insider these videos are having a real impact on people saving money in these challenging times. 

  “I get those messages fairly frequently but that one really struck home for me,” she said. 

  Regularly consuming food from discount stores could lead to health issues in the future. Therefore, it is imperative to revitalize local economies and supermarkets to promote the availability of fresh food products.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 19:20

• Amid Trump Probe, Georgia GOP Passes Prosecutor Oversight Bill
  Amid Trump Probe, Georgia GOP Passes Prosecutor Oversight Bill

  Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Senate of Georgia passed a bill last week that aims to toughen up oversight measures on the state’s prosecutors, after a special purpose grand jury counsel wrapped up investigations into alleged election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

  

  The bill, SB 92 (pdf), would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, which would “have the power to discipline, remove, and cause involuntary retirement of appointed or elected district attorneys or solicitors-general.” The Republican-majority Senate passed the bill in a 32 to 24 vote on March 2.

  Republicans introduced the bill in the House in February 2021 as HB 411. The House passed the bill by a 104 to 61 vote in March 2021. but it was held off in the Senate. It was revived in the Senate in March 2022.

  The bill introduces several grounds for disciplining a state district attorney or solicitor general, including mental or physical incapacity, willful misconduct, willful and persistent failure to carry out his or her professional duties, the conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. Disciplinary measures include removal or involuntary retirement.

  The bill would “protect the citizens of Georgia and clean up the criminal justice system where it needs to be cleaned up,” Georgia Republican Sen. Randy Robertson (R-Catula), the bill’s sponsor, said on the upper chamber’s floor on March 2.

  “We have, in a community near our state university where somebody who’s an elected DA says they can choose—not based on evidence but based on how they feel and what their political leanings are—as to who they will prosecute,” Robertson added. “In order to solve this problem, there needs to be oversight.”

  Meanwhile, the opposition party warned that the state might use the proposed commission to target prosecutors who differ politically.

  “We’re going to use a commission like this, potentially, to harass or put the fire under prosecutors of a certain party in certain urban areas that don’t align with what state government wants,” said State Sen. Josh McLaurin (D-North Fulton) on Thursday.

  The Epoch Times has contacted the Georgia Senate for comment.

  The Peach state’s GOP lawmakers in the lower chamber are also working to pass House Bill 231 (pdf) to mirror the upper chamber’s oversight body, which, if passed into law, would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Oversight Commission in the House.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 19:00

• Epidemic Of E-Bike Fires Rips Across America
  Epidemic Of E-Bike Fires Rips Across America

  According to New York City officials, a supermarket and apartment building were destroyed on Sunday due to a fire caused by an electric bike. The rise in reports of lithium-ion battery fires across the metro area is an unintended consequence of the ‘green’ mobility trend.

  WSJ reported the New York City Fire Department revealed the number of e-bike lithium-ion battery fires had more than doubled last year to 216. The fire department said the blazes had injured 40 people and killed two this year. 

  

  “These are incredibly dangerous devices if they are unregulated or used improperly,” New York Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh recently told reporters.  

  The latest fire on Sunday was when an e-bike triggered a five-alarm fire in the Bronx. New York ABC affiliate WABC-TV reported the fire destroyed a supermarket and apartment building. 

  “There is nothing left and it is all because of this one single bike,” Kavanagh said on Sunday, adding the fire was so intense that five firefighters, one emergency medical services official, and a resident of the building were hurt during the incident. 

  “There is extraordinary damage. This entire building behind me is completely destroyed,” she said, adding, “And so we really want to emphasize to the public, how much damage can be done by a single bike, but I think that this shows how really dangerous this is to our members; to the public.”

  New York City officials said battery fires are happening metrowide. They have pushed for regulating lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes and scooters. 

  Shocking footage shows e-bike burst into flames in devastating NYC fire https://t.co/MYpKffkqV8 pic.twitter.com/zFK3gTT9go

  — New York Post (@nypost) March 6, 2023

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

  In 2022, the US imported 1.1 million e-bikes, up from 880,000 in 2021 and 450,000 the previous year, according to the Light Electric Vehicle Association. 

  Climate alarmist media outlets have guilt-tripped the American people into purchasing these dangerous devices that could spontaneously explode at any time. 

  

  

  

  Apart from New York City, these fires are occurring throughout the country. Bloomberg data shows news stories about “e-bike fires” in US news have exploded over the last 12 months.

  

  Climate alarmists pushing for the electrification of everything to combat global warming must be transparent about the risks associated with lithium-ion batteries.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 18:40

• Is MMT Now Official Policy?
  Is MMT Now Official Policy?

  Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

  Remember Modern Monetary Theory or “MMT”? I first sounded the alarm back in 2018 and then again in 2021.

  

  At the time, MMT was all the rage among monetary and fiscal policy wonks. It seemed to offer the best of all possible worlds. You can spend as much as you want without any downside.

  The main tenets of MMT are that debt and deficits don’t matter because the Fed can monetize the debt by printing money. The Fed can just wire money directly to government contractors to pay bills.

  But MMT gradually faded from the headlines.

  The pandemic of 2020 changed everything. MMT was still not a topic of discussion. It didn’t matter, because MMT was being practiced, even if by stealth.

  COVID relief and economic “stimulus” was Job One. Congress provided $2.7 trillion in new spending including $1,400 checks sent to every American. Then, on Dec. 21, 2020, Trump signed another $900 billion relief package that provided an additional $600 check to every American.

  Wait, There’s More!

  Not to be outdone, the new Biden administration passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), which provided another $1.9 trillion of deficit spending, and sent another $1,400 check to every American.

  The runaway spending didn’t end there. On Nov. 15, 2021, Joe Biden signed the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This was followed by $737 billion in new deficit spending for the Green New Deal in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) signed by Biden on Aug. 16, 2022.

  The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from a dangerously high 106% at the start of the Trump administration to an astronomical 124% or so today, the highest in U.S. history.

  For perspective, the other countries with a debt-to-GDP ratio in that range include Lebanon, Greece and Italy. The U.S. is now a full-fledged member of the deadbeat club.

  Does this debt and deficit debacle mean that MMT has achieved its goals and is now the guiding light for fiscal and monetary policy?

  The answer is: yes and no.

  It’s Complicated

  The “yes” answer is easy to explain. MMT says that spending doesn’t matter and deficits don’t matter. The U.S. can issue as much debt as it wants and spend as much money as it wants.

  As long as the debt is denominated in dollars and the Fed has a U.S. dollar printing press, we can always monetize the debt with new money. Problem solved.

  With $10 trillion of new debt in three years and a 124% debt-to-GDP ratio, the U.S. is certainly acting as if debt and deficits don’t matter. This is the essence of MMT.

  The “no” answer is more nuanced and political. It’s true that we are acting in accordance with MMT, but the MMT advocates are keeping their heads down. Why shouldn’t they? They are getting exactly what they want and the Republicans have gone along with it.

  Trump increased the deficit by $4.6 trillion in his last year in office, almost half the $10 trillion total increase under Trump and Biden together since 2020. There’s no need to push MMT or even discuss it if Republicans and Democrats are acting in accordance with it.

  So the U.S. is implementing MMT without acknowledging or even understanding it. It now exists in practice, but it has not passed a political litmus test. The future of MMT hangs in the balance starting now.

  The Debt Ceiling “Crisis”

  We’re facing a debt ceiling “crisis.”

  What is the debt ceiling exactly? It’s a numeric limit on the total debt that the U.S. Treasury is allowed to issue. There’s no debt ceiling in the U.S. Constitution. Instead, it’s imposed by statute. There’s no legal requirement for that statute.

  The debt ceiling itself could be repealed by Congress at which point there would be no limit on the size of the national debt. Still, Congress likes the idea of a debt ceiling. It forces the White House and Treasury to come back to Congress from time to time to request increases as needed.

  This gives Congress some leverage to ask for political concessions in return for raising the debt ceiling. So the debt ceiling is really a political football rather than a serious macroeconomic policy tool.

  In the end, Congress always approves the ceiling increases. In a way, the debt ceiling debate is all for show. To be clear, the debt ceiling does not mean the Treasury cannot issue any new debt. It means that the Treasury cannot issue debt that increases the total outstanding above the ceiling.

  The Looming “X-Date”

  The “X-Date” is the day the Treasury is projected to run out of cash and can’t pay bills or pay off Treasury note holders. Right now, the X-Date is estimated to be around June 5, 2023, but even that is a guess. The real X-Date will depend on how much positive cash flow the Treasury generates during tax season around mid-April.

  Congress and the White House are also battling over the budget for fiscal 2024, which begins on Oct. 1, 2023. If a new budget is not passed by Sept. 30, 2023, the government will shut down at midnight.

  It is possible that Congress could extend that deadline with a continuing resolution (CR) that permits government agencies to keep spending at existing levels for existing programs until Congress gets around to passing a budget.

  Although the debt ceiling increase and the budget are separate issues with separate procedures, they are converging at about the same time. Mid-April is the date when markets will focus on this more intently because of the X-Date.

  We’ll have better estimates of the X-Date by April, and a kind of “countdown to default” will begin.

  Where does the MMT crowd stand in all of this?

  Putting MMT to the Test

  As noted, supporters of MMT have had the luxury of getting everything they want politically without having to stand up and defend MMT publicly. COVID and climate change (really, bogus climate alarmism) acted as the perfect cover for the Trump and Biden spending seemingly without having to worry about debt or deficits at all.

  The mantra in Washington was “spend, spend, spend.” And they did.

  Now that the pandemic is over and the Green New Scam is law (for better or worse), a day of reckoning has arrived. If the debt ceiling is raised and deficit spending is increased without serious reforms, it will be left to MMT’ers to explain why none of this matters.

  They will rise to the occasion. Again, the main tenets of MMT are that debt and deficits don’t matter because the Fed can monetize the debt by printing money. If inflation emerges, the government can simply raise taxes to cool off the inflation.

  Of course, MMT is nonsense. One can be reasonably sure that if members of Congress don’t understand MMT, they definitely do not understand the flaws in MMT. But that won’t stop the banner from being raised. Expect to hear a lot of commentaries that “deficits don’t matter,” and “debt doesn’t matter” as the debt ceiling and budget battles are being waged in the months ahead.

  We can be sure of a few things…

  There Will Be No Default

  The Treasury will not default on its debt. You’ll be reading a lot of stories about a debt default in the coming months. Those stories will be used to scare voters into a “clean” debt ceiling increase.

  Whatever your views on the debt ceiling, you can ignore these default stories. It won’t happen because it serves no one’s interest. A better way is to think of the debt ceiling debate as a game of chicken between conservative Republicans and the White House.

  In the end, Republicans will get some (not all) of what they want and the debt ceiling will be raised. That will lay the issue to rest … until the next time.

  Passing the budget is more complicated. The budget is huge and there’s a lot more at stake than just debt issuance. Spending increases, defense spending, support for Ukraine, social programs, tax increases and more are all on the table.

  Although the budget deadline is Sept. 30, Congress will try to get something done over the course of July and August. This will happen at exactly the same time that the debt ceiling and X-Date crisis is playing out.

  In the end, the debt ceiling will be raised, most likely in July. A government shutdown in late September is a real possibility. That will be another point of high volatility in stocks. All in all, it will be an interesting year.

  At a minimum, investors should expect increased market volatility as default talk grows louder. It may be a good time to reduce equity exposure and increase your cash allocation.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 18:20

• Why Are They Afraid? Is The Release Of Suppressed J6 Footage Really A "Threat To Our Democracy"?
  Why Are They Afraid? Is The Release Of Suppressed J6 Footage Really A “Threat To Our Democracy”?

  The release of over 40,000 hours of January 6th security footage by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to Tucker Carlson of Fox News has sparked an immediate backlash from Democrats who claim Carlson is exploiting the footage to misrepresent the event.  Say what you want about Fox News, but Carlson as an individual has shown consistency in his reporting and an effort to get beyond the mere surface of events.  The assertion that Carlson is misrepresenting J6 footage remains unfounded.

  Leftists were not able to describe how, exactly, surveillance footage from the capitol is rigged to depict events that did not happen, but their reactionary behavior indicates a number of inconvenient truths:

  First, leftists went on the attack before the footage was ever received by Tucker Carlson.  They didn’t want him to have it.  The Democrats at least believed that unreleased footage might show evidence contrary to their carefully crafted narrative of an “insurrection.”  Or, they knew that it would debunk their narrative.   Either way, they preemptively accused Carlson of mishandling the footage as it was made available to him. 

  If the public can be convinced that certain information is a lie before they ever see the information, then the release of those facts becomes irrelevant.  The populace has been strategically infected with bias, so they will not see what is right in front of their eyes.

  Second, Democrats and some GOP NeoCons have shown once again that they think the public should not be allowed to determine the meaning of data and evidence for themselves.  In fact, one might suspect that establishment elites have something to hide as they rage indignantly about the mere release of video surveillance.  Why are they so opposed to the public viewing the information unless that information threatens to expose establishment lies?  

  Third, much like the release of the Twitter Files, it is actually a majority of the corporate media that is seeking to misrepresent the evidence being revealed as rigged, incomplete or not important.  Their goal is to suppress new information, and if they can’t do that they will try to undermine it by sowing false seeds of doubt. 

  Numerous Democrat leaders and some NeoCon politicians, without taking time to acknowledge the implications of the surveillance being presented by Tucker Carlson, have immediately denounced the footage as “lies” and “sleight of hand.”  Senator Chuck Schumer was quick to go on the attack, calling Carlson’s recent segment on J6 a “perversion” of the truth.  Not only that, but Schumer openly called for Rupert Murdoch to stop Carlson and remove him.  

  Why?  Because “our democracy depends on” the censorship of such materials.  

  Watch Schumer again: "Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight…from letting him go on again and again…our democracy depends on it."

  They’re going to try and take Tucker off the chessboard “because democracy”

  What is in those tapes? pic.twitter.com/cqKZzo8mo2

  — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 8, 2023

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

  NeoCon Mitch McConnell went even further, stating:

  “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”

  In other words, the mainstream news should be taking its cues from government officials and repeating exactly what THEY say, rather than reporting on the evidence as it exists.  In their view, the narrative of the government supersedes the determinations of the public.

  This is the exact sentiment that was expressed by U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who argued that Carlson’s conclusions were “offensive and misleading.”  Manger claimed that:

  “TV commentary will not record the truth for our history books…The justice system will. The truth and justice are on our side.”

  Again, they believe that they write the truth.  They write history, and history is whatever they say it is.  The J6 Committee had one job, which was to perpetuate the historical narrative of an insurrection by conservatives on the steps of the Capitol Building.  They were not interested in the truth, which is why over 40,000 hours of surveillance footage was never released to the public.  They showed us what they wanted us to see, not the full reality.  

  Beyond the numerous videos showing police opening the doors and inviting protesters inside (which the media continues to lie about), there is also the question of intent which the J6 Committee was never able to prove.

  The FBI found no evidence that the Trump Administration had anything to do with the Capitol protesters and scant evidence of any form of organization or coordination that would be required for an insurrection.  Where were the plans for takeover?  Who intended to run the government after the supposed coup?  Where was the army that was going to secure the capitol after the insurrection’s success?  None of these things existed.   

  In fact, none of the protesters on J6 were even armed and the only person killed when the protests turned violent was Ashli Babbitt, a protester.  It’s pretty difficult to pull off an insurrection without weapons, without organization and without a plan.  In other words, there was no insurrection.  The claim is an erroneous lie, and always has been.  The establishment has tried to reinvent a protest that turned aggressive into an act of war against “democracy” itself.

  Tucker Carlson’s footage shows what most of us already knew – That the media and elements of the government have completely overblown the events of January 6th for political gain  The footage also reconfirms that no police were killed by protesters, and yet the media continue to perpetuate that disinformation.  It is likely that Carlson will be releasing new footage for many months to come which runs contrary to the official version of events, which is why Democrats are calling for him to be taken off the air.        

  There is far more proven organization during the BLM and Antifa riots across the US for the past few years.  Just this week Antifa engaged in a highly organized direct attack on a police training center site near Atlanta, Georgia.  But the media doesn’t want to talk about that, or how leftist groups represent a danger to our constitutional freedoms.  And it is this double standard that is only making half the country more inclined to not care about such notions. 

  If our system is so corrupt that the release of hard video evidence “threatens our democracy,” then maybe our democracy isn’t worth saving. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 18:00

• Mother Sues Doctor Who Allegedly Administered COVID-19 Vaccines To Children Without Consent
  Mother Sues Doctor Who Allegedly Administered COVID-19 Vaccines To Children Without Consent

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A doctor violated the law by administering COVID-19 vaccines to children without consent, according to a new lawsuit.

  

  Dr. Janine Rethy, chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, is being accused of holding two children in a room until she convinced them to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

  The minors are both children of NaTonya McNeil, a Washington resident who brought the suit in D.C. Superior Court.

  “Ms. McNeil’s two minor children were held in a room by Defendant until she overcame their will and forcibly vaccinated them while physically preventing them from consulting with their mother, who was right outside the room,” the 9-page suit states.

  The children were also allegedly provided with “false and fraudulent information” in order to get their purported consent to administer the vaccines.

  Rethy told the kids that they had to get a COVID-19 vaccine to attend school and that they could not legally decline vaccination, according to the filing.

  The kids gave in when given the false information.

  Rethy and MedStar did not respond to requests for comment.

  Annual Check-Ups

  McNeil took the children to Rethy for annual physical examinations on Sept. 2, 2022.

  The location was the Georgetown Kids Mobile Medical Clinic/Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, which is operated by the Georgetown University Hospital, at a recreation center. Rethy is director of the mobile clinic.

  McNeil waited outside with her 1-year-old child while the two other kids went inside. But she called her daughter’s cell phone soon after and asked to speak with the doctor. McNeil told Rethy she was outside and available if needed to answer questions or provide information.

  Rethy never asked McNeil about any vaccinations, according to the suit.

  The 16-year-old child, who attends Dunbar High School, went first. Rethy “came at me with a needle,” the girl was quoted as saying. Rethy, asked what the injection was, said it was a COVID-19 vaccine. The minor said she did not want the shot.

  “Dr. Rethy told K.M. that the injection was required for her to attend school, and then injected the needle,” the suit states. The younger child, 14, “also reluctantly agreed to accept the injection after seeing his sister be injected, although he had repeatedly refused COVID-19 injections previously as well.”

  “Both children were very upset and angry that they had been coerced into being injected,” the filing states.

  Rethy also injected the children with a meningococcal vaccine.

  Neither Rethy nor clinic staff provided information about the vaccinations to McNeil or the children, the suit says. Rethy did speak with McNeil, but only told her she was going to call a prescription for the asthma of one of the children.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/09/2023 – 17:40

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