Oct 11

Today’s News 11th October 2022

  • Shellenberger: Biden Is Failing The World
    Shellenberger: Biden Is Failing The World

    Authored by Michael Shellenberg via Substack,

    The world desperately needs energy and yet President Joe Biden is preventing sufficient quantities of oil and gas from being produced…

    Below is the written transcript of the above video. Additional slides and graphs are in the video.

    Many people in the U.S. are still unaware of just how dire the situation is in Europe. They have started logging their old-growth forests for wood fuel to stay warm during the winter. You can see in a tweet that just came out today from somebody in Denmark that “people are stealing each other’s wood pellets and their wood briquettes as soon as they’re delivered.” To make matters worse, “There’s constant reports of cars having their tanks drilled and their gas stolen.” Remember, it’s not even winter yet. Winter’s actually over 72 days away. So this is a very serious situation.

    You can see that in Poland people are actually burning trash to stay warm. Burning trash in your fireplace creates toxic smoke. It’s hazardous. The government’s considering handing out masks so people can breathe more safely when they’re outdoors.

    Recall that natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country in the world. Carbon emissions have been on the decline globally, in large measure, because of the transition from coal to gas. Natural gas is something that most reasonable people agree is a superior fuel to coal. Natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its emissions by 22% between 2005 and 2020, which is five percentage points more than the United States had agreed to reduce our emissions under cap and trade legislation, which nearly passed Congress in 2010 and under the UN Paris Climate Agreement.

    The above is a graph that was produced by Matthew Yglesias, a well-known progressive blogger. He tweets it out whenever somebody points out that President Biden isn’t doing all he can to expand oil and gas production. It’s accurate. It does show that oil production increased on a daily average under Biden from under Trump. But it’s deeply misleading. You have to remember that under Trump, the Coronavirus pandemic, for several months, massively slashed oil production.

    You can see from the below chart of the EIA data on crude oil production that we still haven’t gotten back to where we were before the pandemic. Now consider how the need is much greater for US oil now that Europe and the United States are rejecting Russian oil.

    The United States is the biggest liquified natural gas exporter, it’s true. But it takes five years to bring online new LNG capacity in the United States.

    So all of the new LNG that’s come online during Biden’s presidency was due to past presidents.

    And Biden has leased less land than any President since World War II. It’s a shockingly small amount of land: 130,000 acres as opposed to seven million acres under Obama, four million acres under Trump, during the first 19 months of their administrations.

    It’s a huge reduction in the amount of land being leased.

    You can see that in some particular cases, like a very large oil and gas sale in Alaska, the Department of Interior claimed there wasn’t any industry interest in the lease. This turned out not to be the case. The Senator from Alaska, Lisa Markowski said, “I can say with full certainty based on conversations as recently as last night, that Alaska’s industry does have an interest in lease sales and the Cook Inlet to claim otherwise is simply false, not to mention stunningly shortsighted.”

    People point out the oil and gas industry does have many thousands of leases, and that’s true, but there’s a high degree of uncertainty about whether the leases they have will produce oil and gas at levels that make sense economically to produce from.

    So increasing oil and gas leasing at a time of an energy crisis in Europe seems like a no-brainer, but the Biden administration is not doing that. In fact, it’s been preventing the expansion of gas in many other ways.

    You can see the Biden administration denied a request to have a formaldehyde regulation exempted. All else being equal, you’d wanna reduce that pollution. But I think a little bit of formaldehyde is gonna be a less toxic airborne event than having people breathing toxic wood and plastic smoke in Europe. The right thing to do, in terms of aiding our allies, would be to wave that regulation. But the Biden administration refused.

    You can see that the Biden administration is actively considering forgoing all new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific. It may do no offshore leases at all for oil and gas.

    Instead, the Biden administration has sought to give sanctions relief to Venezuela in the hopes that Venezuela would produce more oil. And of course, most famously Biden went to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis to produce more oil in July. Now, everybody agrees that was a huge foreign policy failure. The Saudis announced they would be cutting production with the rest of OPEC+. The Biden administration’s pressure on the Saudis apparently annoyed them. Now, they’ve been pushed closer into the arms of Russia. This is a pretty significant setback for the Biden administration.

    At the same time Biden was going to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Biden administration was refusing to even meet with oil and gas executives. That’s a pretty serious snub when you consider that it’s an industry you want to expand production.

    An oil and gas analyst on Twitter criticized a Senator from Wisconsin for suggesting the Democrats are responsible for the lack of refining capacity. He said, “What — do you also blame a political party for a flat tire?”

    I pointed out that a single oil refinery outage would have little impact if we had sufficient refinery capacity, and the reason we don’t is that politicians, mostly Democrats have used regulations to prevent their construction. When I interviewed executives one said to me, “If you were an oil company, why would you invest hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding refining capacity if you thought the federal government would shut you down in the next few years? The narrative coming out of this administration is absolutely insane.”

    So you can see here that refinery capacity was increasing all the way through 2020. It then declined due to the pandemic. And it has not risen since then. When the analyst was asked, why don’t we get more refineries? He clearly didn’t know. Or at least he said he didn’t know. But it’s clear the Biden administration has not wanted more refineries.

    There was a chance to retrofit a major refinery in the US Virgin Islands. It was a refinery that was older. It needed pretty significant upgrades. It was polluting. But these are machines that can be fixed. Several billion dollars of investment would’ve fixed it and it goes back many years. This is an article from 2008. It describes how, at that time, the Democrats in the Senate killed a proposal for refinery expansion.

    Go back to 2006. The same thing happened. The House was in the hands of the Republicans who passed a piece of legislation to expand refineries. And it was the Democrats who killed it. And, incidentally, they’re using the exact same arguments today that they used back then.

    More recently, we’ve seen an attack on expanded natural gas pipeline capacity, including from Pennsylvania to the Northeast, particularly to Boston. The result of not having pipeline capacity is that they’ve been burning more oil for electricity in New England. In fact, oil-fired power jumped to a four-year high earlier this year. And they’ve been having to import liquified natural gas to New England rather than just pipe it in, which is significantly cheaper. Probably half as expensive.

    Grassroots advocacy and lawsuits have prevented pipelines from being built. You can see there’s a strong correlation between the price of natural gas and the ability to get pipelines built. We stop building pipelines and gas gets more expensive. Globally, the impact is that we’re gonna return to coal. This is the consequence of stifling oil and gas production.

    One could argue that we just need more scarcity in order to accelerate the transition to electric cars. But it’s notable that the major figures in this, including President Biden, supporters of President Biden, and representatives of his administration aren’t defending a pro-scarcity position. They’re instead claiming that they’re doing all they can to bring down oil and gas prices and expand production.

    I think this data, and the historical chronology, paint a picture that shows that there has, in fact, been a war on natural gas and oil United States and that it is impacting global supplies, and leaving Europe vulnerable.

    *  *  *

    Subscribe to Michael Shellenberger. Thousands of paid subscribers. Reporting on cities, energy, and the environment.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 23:40

  • "Glock Switch Epidemic" May Be Rippling Through America's Inner Cities
    “Glock Switch Epidemic” May Be Rippling Through America’s Inner Cities

    Gangsters in American cities are increasingly “modifying their firearms to enable fully automatic fire, converting simple handguns into tiny machine guns,” according to The Epoch Times. 

    Called a “switch,” “chip,” or auto sear, these illegal gun parts are being bought from China and can transform a standard semi-automatic Glock into a fully automatic weapon. 

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    The Trace, a nonprofit news organization focused on gun violence, reported earlier this year that illegal switches could be purchased online for as little as $20. 

    A 2017 report from The Firearm Blog said Glock switches were once available on Amazon. The gun blog continued:

    “Given the size of the Amazon marketplace, it isn’t surprising that some unscrupulous sellers slip through the cracks. Nothing that I saw on the seller’s page indicated they are affiliated with Amazon beyond having a presence on the e-commerce giant’s marketplace.” 

    Though the switches are banned from all e-commerce websites, many were imported from China. 

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    On the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) website, the federal agency describes these devices as “a relatively simple, albeit illegal, device that allows a conventional semi-automatic Glock pistol to function as a fully automatic firearm. The switch is classified as a machine gun under federal law.”

    This means that anyone possessing a Glock switch that doesn’t have a license to own one will face serious jail time. But this hasn’t stopped gangsters from buying switches from China or illegally making them. 

    While there are no comprehensive national statistics on the proliferation of Glock switches used in violent crime, a story count for the device mentioned in all US media has erupted in the last 12 months. 

    The only issue for the ATF is the 3D printing community has already learned how to make switches — making the need for Chinese ones obsolete.  

    A Glock switch allows the firearm to dump a 30-round magazine in about 2 seconds. Any gangster trying to use the switch will easily miss their target because of rapid recoil. 

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    And why does YouTube allow kids to publish rap videos about illegal gun devices? 

    … 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 23:20

  • It's Time To Tell Biden We Say "NO!" To Nuclear War!
    It’s Time To Tell Biden We Say “NO!” To Nuclear War!

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    Last week the New York Times ran a shocking article claiming that the US intelligence community believes the Ukrainian government to be responsible for the August attack that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian philosopher.

    Surely the established narrative that Ukraine is a model western democracy standing strong for our shared values against an aggressive Russian invader is damaged with reporting that Kiev conducted an al-Qaeda style attack on an innocent civilian inside Russia.

    The murder of Dugina was a textbook definition of terrorism, which is, “the use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.”

    Just over a month later, the Nordstream pipelines were blown up, seemingly ending at least in the near term the possibility that Germany may find a way to save its economy by mending fences with its main energy supplier.

    A leading Polish politician thanked the US for doing the job.

    Then over the weekend, the bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea was bombed, killing at least six civilians and leaving part of the bridge under water.

    Traffic was restored hours after the attack, but Russian President Vladimir Putin placed the blame on Ukraine’s intelligence service. We all know that Ukraine relies on its US masters, so we can assume the US provided the intelligence allowing the targeting of the bridge.

    There is a pattern here.

    More and more brazen attacks are being launched against Russia and Washington is doing little to hide US fingerprints. Why?

    The Biden Administration seems to be moving us closer to nuclear war over Ukraine and Biden himself seems to know it. Last week he said, Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons…” For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of nuclear weapons] if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

    So the question is if he knows that his proxy war against Russia is moving us closer to the unthinkable – nuclear annihilation – why does his Administration persist in crossing red line after red line? Apparently, Biden’s “experts” believe that Putin is bluffing and will do nothing about the Dugina assassination, the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, and the Kerch Bridge attack.

    But what if they’re wrong?

    Normally foreign policy action should be weighed on a cost/benefit basis. Will adopting one particular policy benefit the United States more than the risks involved? In this case there is absolutely nothing on the positive side of the ledger. Will the security and prosperity of the United States benefit more from regime change in Russia than it would suffer should nuclear war break out?

    It doesn’t seem all that hard. No.

    So what’s going on here? Why does the US Administration – with the support of most Republicans in Congress – continue to send tens of billions of dollars in military aid and move us toward nuclear war over a conflict that has nothing at all to do with the United States?

    The time to end US participation in this war is yesterday. And if it takes millions of Americans in the streets peacefully protesting while demanding that their representatives stop this madness, then bring it on. Tomorrow may be too late.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 23:00

  • Belarus & Russia Deploying "Regional Grouping" Of Troops, Lukashenko Announces
    Belarus & Russia Deploying “Regional Grouping” Of Troops, Lukashenko Announces

    Belarus appears to be playing a larger role in Russian operations in neighboring Ukraine following the weekend Crimean bridge attack. For starters, Ukraine on Monday charged Belarus with hosting Iranian-made suicide drones which Russian forces used it its major air assault on Kiev. 

    “The enemy used Iranian Shahed-136 UAVs in strikes launched from the territory of Belarus” and the Crimean peninsula, the Ukraine military said in statement, claiming further to have intercepted at least nine of the drones, which were “destroyed.”

    Via kremlin.ru

    But the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are now more alarmed at recent signaling by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who on Monday accused Ukrainian forces of plotting an attack on his territory.

    “I’ve said already that today Ukraine is not just discussing but planning strikes on the territory of Belarus,” state-run Belta quoted Lukashenko as saying. He then indicated Russian troops are being mustered on Belarusian soil, according to the two countries’ longstanding joint security agreement:

    “We have agreed to deploy a regional grouping of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus,” he added.

    These reports have been accompanied by unverified claims which circulated Monday of huge numbers of Russian troops being transferred to Belarus, such as the following: 

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    It remains as yet unknown the degree to which a large amount of Russian troops are mustering inside Belarusian territory. While Belarus assisted with the initial invasion launch on February 24th, hosting Russians for what were dubbed “training exercises” just before the assault was launched, it hasn’t played a significant role in Putin’s “special operation” since then.

    As for other countries in the region, Poland is growing more nervous about the role of Minsk in executing the war. On Monday the Polish government urged all of its citizens to leave Belarus: 

    “We recommend that Polish citizens staying on the territory of the Republic of Belarus leave its territory with available commercial and private means,” the government said in guidance for travellers published on its website.

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    As for Warsaw’s new advisory, no specific reasons were given other than continued deteriorating relations amid general tensions related to the ongoing war. But this and other indicators strongly suggest that Minsk could be on the brink of escalating its involvement.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 22:40

  • Hunter Biden's Lawyer Responds To Reports He'll Be Indicted Soon
    Hunter Biden’s Lawyer Responds To Reports He’ll Be Indicted Soon

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

    An attorney for Hunter Biden responded to reports claiming the president’s son may be charged soon over alleged tax crimes.

    “As is proper and legally required, we believe the prosecutors in this case are diligently and thoroughly weighing not just evidence provided by agents, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including witnesses for the defense,” Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, said in a statement to the Washington Times on Friday in response to the reports.

    Then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden at the reviewing stand to watch President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Parade from in front of the White House in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    Reports suggested that U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss is nearing a decision on whether to charge Hunter Biden and is in discussions with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on how to proceed. Namely, the Washington Post, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, alleged that federal agents have found enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and making a false statement relating to the purchase of a firearm.

    Clark did not say whether he believes his client will be charged, stating: “That is the job for prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized for doing this job.”

    Responding to the Washington Post, Clark noted that “it is a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation such as this one.”

    “Any agent you cite as a source in [the Post’s] article apparently has committed such a felony,” he said. “We expect the Department of Justice will diligently investigate and prosecute such bad actors.”

    The Epoch Times has contacted the DOJ and Hunter Biden’s lawyer for comment.

    More Details

    For months, there have been rumors and reports suggesting that the younger Biden could face indictment.

    Neither the DOJ nor FBI have gone on record to publicly issue a comment about the progress investigation or what it even entails. Instead, alleged anonymous sources have provided purported information about the probe to the Washington Post, New York Times, and other corporate media outlets.

    About a month after the 2020 election, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden both confirmed Hunter is being investigated due to his tax affairs.

    “I learned … for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Hunter Biden said in a statement in December 2020. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden depart from Holy Spirit Catholic Church after attending Mass on St. Johns Island, S.C., on Aug. 13, 2022. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

    It’s not clear if the investigation is linked to business deals in China or Ukraine. Several years ago, Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, while his father was the vice president and a key individual handling the Obama administration’s Ukraine affairs.

    While the younger Biden has asserted that he did nothing wrong, during a 2019 interview, he told ABC News in October 2019 that those business arrangements were “poor judgment on my part.”

    “I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father. That’s where I made the mistake. So I take full responsibility for that. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever,” he insisted.

    Those business deals became the subject of intense interest in late 2020 after the New York Post published messages obtained from a laptop he allegedly left at a computer repair shop in Delaware. Contents of the laptop showed that he had overseas business ties, including with individuals that had links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 22:20

  • World Food Prices Are "Decisively Rolling Over"
    World Food Prices Are “Decisively Rolling Over”

    Global food prices have been tumbling in the back half of the year after nearly two years of soaring.

    Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, tweeted Monday that the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) global food price index has fallen for six consecutive months after the latest monthly decline of 1.1% in September. 

    Sonders said global food prices are “decisively rolling over,” though some on Twitter disputed her, as she replied: “Decisive seems appropriate given 6-month change is fastest (worst) since GFC.” 

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    Others said even though food prices around the world appear to be rolling over, US inflation remains stubbornly high. 

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    Someone complained: “Sure doesn’t feel like it in the grocery store.” 

    “Apparently, our local supermarket hasn’t gotten the message,” another Twitter user said. 

    Someone else said: “None reflected in good old Texas where prices continue to go up daily, especially on n all staples. Milk, eggs, meat all up over 20% and still climbing in major chain.” 

    One user noted the reversal in prices is “Great news for those facing food insecurity,” though we must add world food prices remain above levels that triggered 2010/11 Arab Spring. 

    Recall we pointed out World Food Prices Crash The Most Since 2008 in August. The trend appears welcoming, but the UN warned not too long ago that fertilizer affordability could slash future harvests in the next planting season. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 22:00

  • Trump Asks CNN To Prove His 'Big Lie' About 2020 Elections Is False
    Trump Asks CNN To Prove His ‘Big Lie’ About 2020 Elections Is False

    Authored by Venus Upadhayaya via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump, who sued CNN for defamation early this week, said in an interview on Wednesday that the media should prove his allegations about the 2020 presidential election being rigged are false.

    Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Miami on Oct. 5, 2022, in a still from video. (NTD)

    CNN had termed Trump’s allegations a “big lie,” a term that Trump claimed was coined by anchors to malign his reputation. While talking to hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head on the Real America’s Voice network show “Just The News No Noise” on Oct. 5, Trump said CNN should “prove the big lie.”

    “They’ll say whatever comes to mind. They talk about the big lie. I said, well prove the big lie. The big lie is not a big lie at all. The big lie is the opposite,” said Trump.

    “All the stats—we have everything. Unfortunately, we haven’t had judges that want to look at it. They don’t want to change elections.”

    The former President filed a lawsuit against CNN on Monday, alleging defamation and seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

    “And so we sued CNN for a lot of money and we’ll see how that goes. I think it should go very well,” Trump said.

    The 29-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, accuses CNN of having “sought to use its massive influence—purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source” to defame Trump “for the purpose of defeating him politically.”

    The effort resulted in CNN claiming credit for “[getting] Trump out” in the 2020 presidential election, attorneys for Trump said in the complaint (pdf) adding that the “libel and slander” against Trump has only escalated in recent months because CNN fears Trump’s presidential campaign for 2024.

    “CNN has been given the dreaded ‘Pants on Fire!’ designation by PolitiFact for its stories comparing Trump to Hitler,” said the attorneys.

    They were referring to two psychiatrists discussing coverage of Trump on CNN’s now-canceled “Reliable Sources” program. Allen James Frances, the chairman emeritus of Duke University’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, had said on the show: “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained, but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person.”

    Politifact, a fact-checking website operated by the Poynter Institute of MediaStudies had done a fact-check on the claim and rated it as “Pants on Fire” on its “Truth-O-Meter,” which means “the statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 21:40

  • 2022 Republican Voters Being Undercounted Again: Trafalgar
    2022 Republican Voters Being Undercounted Again: Trafalgar

    A top independent pollster says Republican voters will be undercounted in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections next month – which will likely skew polls in favor of Democrats.

    “These submerged voters aren’t answering polls, they aren’t putting stickers on their cars, or signs in their yard—they’re not even posting on social media,” said Robert Cahaly, the head of the Trafalgar Group, in a Daily Wire podcast – noting that Republicans may not be inclined to reveal their political views after President Biden’s Sept. 1 speech targeting “MAGA Republicans.”

    “They are underwater. They’re not saying a word to anybody until election day.“

    Cahaly added that voters should not trust mainstream polls in the coming weeks – citing previous polls weighted towards Democrats.

    “Polls have two purposes,” he said. “They’re either to reflect the electorate, or they’re to affect the electorate—and too many of these media and university-based polls are designed to affect the electorate and are trying to create a false narrative quite often when there’s not one.”

    Cahaly made reference to the Biden speech in Philadelphia that accused supporters of former President Donald Trump of being a threat to U.S. institutions, coming just a few weeks after the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. While he spoke in front of a dark red-lit background next to two Marines, Biden said Trump and his followers “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations” of the United States. –Epoch Times

    During the 2020 election cycle there were “hidden voters,” Cahaly wrote on Twitter several weeks ago.

    “Now [the] Biden administration has essentially classified ‘MAGA Republicans’ as a threat to democracy marshaling federal law enforcement to focus on them,” he said. “This move has created a new type of voter that will be even harder to poll or even estimate.”

    In Nov. of 2020, Pew Research noted; “It’s clear that national and many state estimates were not just off, but off in the same direction: They favored the Democratic candidate.”

    Pew added that polls “overestimated the Democratic advantage by an average of about 4 percentage points” in 2020. “When looking at national polls, the Democratic overstatement will end up being similar, about 4 points, depending on the final vote count.”

    And in 2016, polls were also inaccurate and were biased in favor of Democrats, Cahaly argued.

    “In 2016, Trump supporters were called ‘Deplorables’ and other unflattering names,” Cahaly said on Twitter, referring to Hillary Clinton’s now-infamous “basket of deplorables” remark. “This was a major contributor to the ‘shy Trump voter’ phenomenon that ‘most’ polling missed, which resulted in a major loss in public confidence for polling flowing the election.” -Epoch Times

    “National polls can misrepresent the electoral college, and statewide polls can obscure outcomes in congressional districts,” former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in the Epoch Times last month. “In early October 2016, Hillary Clinton was only ahead by 3 points nationally—and she was running up huge margins in California and New York (two of our four most populous states). The media believed she would be the next president. But she didn’t have the advantage in the heavily contested states (which meant she wasn’t winning the electoral college).”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 21:20

  • TikTok Bans The Term "White Lives Matter"
    TikTok Bans The Term “White Lives Matter”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    TikTok has banned users from even searching for the term “white lives matter,” listing the phrase as being associated with “hateful behavior.”

    Apparently, according to the Chinese-owned video app, which is notorious as perhaps the most censorious in existence, white lives don’t matter.

    When searching for videos or profiles containing the term “white lives matter,” users are met with a message which states, “No results found. This phrase may be associated with hateful behavior. TikTok is committed to keeping our community safe and working to prevent the spread of hate. For more information, we invite you to review our Community Guidelines.”

    TikTok uses the same method to block people from even searching for individuals deemed to be “hateful,” where banning their accounts isn’t enough, mere mention of them must be expunged entirely.

    Naturally, there’s no chance whatsoever that the term “Black Lives Matter” would receive similar treatment.

    Indeed, a previous trend that TikTok allowed to feature prominently on the platform was centered on users threatening to violently kneecap people who didn’t support BLM.

    The platform has also allowed fake news about Trump resigning to go viral, has censored videos that make fun of Dr. Anthony Fauci, has removed videos that highlighted inconsistencies in Amber Heard’s testimony, and has also threatened to censor criticism of Joe Biden.

    The term “white lives matter” rose to prominence again last week after Kanye West unveiled a new line of merchandise featuring the slogan and modeled it with Candace Owens.

    Earlier this year, Instagram temporarily suspended Kanye after an angry rant prompted by his 8-year-old daughter being allowed to perform a pro-LGBT TikTok dance routine.

    The hip hop star had his account blocked for 24 hours for violating the platform’s policies on “hate speech, harassment and bullying” after his eldest daughter North appeared with bright makeup and sang a song about falling in love with a girl in a video that was posted to TikTok.

    Meanwhile, no matter how much the idea is censored and demonized, white lives do indeed matter.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 21:00

  • Here Comes The Open Revolt: A Reeling Europe Lashes Out At The Fed For "Bringing Us To A World Recession"
    Here Comes The Open Revolt: A Reeling Europe Lashes Out At The Fed For “Bringing Us To A World Recession”

    As a result of the Fed’s relentless tightening blitz, which on November 2 will have hiked rates by 75bps on four occasions in just 96 trading days, the fastest tightening campaign since Volcker, both US capital markets (the S&P 500 is down -24%, for the 4th worst year on record, only 1931, 1974, and 2002 were worse; and 10Y TSYs are down -17% for the worst year on record… 1987 second worse, and bonds were down -10%) and the US economy have been left reeling.

    However, the damage in the US – whose economy is relatively isolated from the knock-on (or is that out) effects of the soaring global reserve currency – are nothing compared to the devastation unleashed by the Fed in the form of the soaring dollar and exploding interest rates. And yet the outcry against either the Soros Biden administration, or chair Powell has been relatively muted (excluding the occasional scathing oped in China’s Global Times and fake populist rage-tweet by everyone’s favorite “native American“, Liz Warren). To be sure, this was to be expected: after all, the last thing central banks need, when they are seeking to effect an extremely unpopular global economic recession that will leave millions without a job (think inflation is bad? just wait until you have no job and inflation is still bad) is growing discord among the ranks of the technocrats who have a simple script: no matter how unpopular or stupid a given policy is, you never, never, disagree in public, as this risks sparking popular outrage and toppling the entire house of cards at the hands of a suddenly very angry public.

    At least that was the case until now: because today, in a startling outcry breaching the unspoken protocol of “no dissent, never dissent”, Josep Borrell, the high representative of the 27-member EU bloc, lashed out all too publicly at the Fed when he said that central banks (across Europe where the recession will be far, far worse than in the US) are being forced to follow the Fed’s multiple rate rises to prevent their currencies from slumping against the dollar, and compared the US central bank’s influence to Germany’s dominance of European monetary policy before the creation of the euro.

    Of course, back then the solution to the super deutsche mark was simple: pool all nations under a common currency umbrella, even if it means misery for the less productive, and less mercantilist countries (hence the neverending European sovereign debt crisis which remains in hibernation only thanks to the ECB’s bond buying). This time however, there is no simple solution taking advantage of gullible states, instead now that they’ve broken the seal of silence, the “leaders” of Europe admit to just how powerless they truly are when the custodian of the world’s reserve currency has to do what’s best only for itself, allies and friends be damned:

    “Everybody has to follow, because otherwise their currency will be [devalued],” Borrell said to an audience of EU ambassadors, the FT reported. “Everybody is running to increase interest rates, this will bring us to a world recession.”

    The comments which the FT defined as “unguarded” but were are confident were very much pre-cleared with all the proper officials, came in a wide-ranging speech in which he also criticized the EU for failing to listen to foreign countries and seeking to “export” its governance model and standards on to others, and admitted that the bloc failed to anticipate Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine despite what the FT called “warnings from Washington”, because of course for the FT to mention Trump, or heaven forbid, admit he was right, would be inconceivable.

    Borrell’s carefully chosen words on US monetary policy followed the World Bank’s warning last month that rate rises by multiple central banks could trigger a global downturn in 2023, as it argued the “degree of synchronicity” by central banks was unlike anything seen in five decades.

    Yes, the artificial facade of calm agreement propping up the world’s most aggressive tightening cycle in history is starting to crack and quite violently at that.

    Borell’s warnings come as the World Bank and IMF kick off a week of joint meetings in Washington, where officials will discuss the multiple threats to the global economy. The fund is expected to downgrade its global economic forecasts for the fourth consecutive quarter.

    And as a growing chorus of angry voices rises to warn the Fed against even more aggressive tightening, it appears that the message is finally seeping through: top Fed officials have recently more directly acknowledged that their campaign to tighten monetary policy risks creating “spillovers” that could jeopardize weaker economies, and all other economies too. But they underscore that their chief concern remains bringing US inflation under control, suggesting that the global ramifications of their plans are secondary considerations.

    Maybe not: Lael Brainard, vice-chair of the Fed, on Monday said that while the US central bank should continue raising rates it must do so “deliberately and in a data-dependent manner” due to “elevated global economic and financial uncertainty”. Her comments were enough to push risk assets sharply off their session lows, even if they have since slumped back.

    She added that the Fed “takes into account the spillovers of higher interest rates, a stronger dollar, and weaker demand from foreign economies”. Last month she highlighted the risks posed to highly indebted emerging markets as borrowing costs rapidly rise.

    As the FT notes, the Fed’s crushing influence over current monetary policy trends mirrored the situation in Europe before the euro, when countries were forced to follow the policies of Germany’s Bundesbank, said Borrell. “You had to do it. Even if it was not the right policy for your internal reasons.” Of course, the alternative, the Euro was an even worse disaster: at least in the DEM days, European countries could devalue their way out of a fiscal crisis; with the common currency they all have to beg the ECB for bond-buying mercy or else be forced to install another pro-European puppet prime minister.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 20:40

  • Recent North Korean Missile Tests Involved 'Tactical Nukes': State Media
    Recent North Korean Missile Tests Involved ‘Tactical Nukes’: State Media

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    North Korea used “tactical nuclear” missiles in its recent blitz of tests to enhance and warn the enemies of its nuclear counterattack capabilities, state-run media reported on Monday.

    State mouthpiece Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally guided the launches, which involved loading tactical nuclear warheads at a silo.

    The recent tactical nuclear drills have demonstrated that North Korea’s nuclear combat forces are “fully prepared to hit and destroy targets at any time from any designated location,” according to the report.

    “Various types of tactical ballistic missiles launched on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 hit the targets with the combination of air explosion and direct precision and dispersion strike, proving the accuracy of our weapon systems,” KCNA stated.

    According to the report, Kim ordered the drills “under the simulation of an actual war” in response to the United States’ and South Korea’s joint naval drills on the Korean Peninsula, which involved a U.S. aircraft carrier.

    “We should send a clear signal to the enemies escalating the regional situation by involving armed forces with more powerful and resolute action,” the authoritarian leader was quoted as saying by KCNA.

    Kim added that his country has no intention of engaging in dialogue with enemies that pose military threats to North Korea, despite their continued efforts to do so, it added.

    North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the sea on Oct. 9 after the South Korean navy launched two-day joint naval drills with the United States’ USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, marking its seventh launch in two weeks.

    Japan’s Defense Ministry said the missiles flew 350 kilometers (217 miles) at a 100-kilometer (62-mile) altitude and landed outside Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

    The U.S. carrier strike group earlier participated in trilateral ballistic missile defense drills alongside Japanese and South Korean warships in response to North Korea’s missile launch over Japan on Oct. 4.

    Nuclear Test Preparations Near Completion

    In its latest report, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) said that North Korea is in the last stages of completing its preparations for a seventh nuclear test, citing the excavation of underground tunnels at the Yongbyon site.

    It claimed that North Korea obtained petroleum products through ship-to-ship cargo transfers, violating the UNSC sanctions, and used non-fungible token technology to raise money for its weapons program, Nikkei Asia reported.

    The U.S. Treasury Department last week sanctioned two individuals and three entities involved in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum to North Korea, which it said directly supports the authoritarian regime’s weapons program.

    North Korea earlier adopted a new law allowing it to conduct a nuclear strike “automatically” against any “hostile forces” posing an imminent threat. Kim vowed to “never give up nuclear weapons” even if North Korea is subjected to “100 years of sanctions.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 20:20

  • Huge Barge Logjam On Mississippi Eases; Vessel Shipping Prices Hyperinflate
    Huge Barge Logjam On Mississippi Eases; Vessel Shipping Prices Hyperinflate

    A massive logjam of more than 2,000 barges at various parts of the Mississippi River is being cleared Monday morning. 

    Southbound vessel traffic resumed early morning on the Mississippi River near Stack Island, an island located in Issaquena County, Mississippi after northbound traffic was cleared Sunday, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. wrote in a note. 

    “We were able to completely clear the Northbound queue,” ADM said. 

    ADM added that once all the southbound congestion is resolved, the Coast Guard will allow one-way traffic moving forward. 

    Bloomberg also reported two choke points: one near Stack Island and the other near Memphis, Tennessee, were reopening after being closed last week due to the lack of rainfall which caused the grounding of barges, blocking parts of the waterway. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    Last week, we detailed the chaos unfolding on the crucial US water artery for the Midwest economy in “Dangerously Low” Mississippi River Level May Spark Transport Chaos For Farm Goods During Harvest and Barges Grounded By “Near-Historic” Low Water Halt Mississippi River Traffic. 

    The timing of the closure comes as barges transport harvested corn, soybeans, wheat, and other farm goods from Midwest farms to major export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. 

    Remember, the cause of the weather chaos across the US could be due to a weather phenomenon known as La Nina. Meanwhile, Bloomberg continues to point to “climate change.” 

    Even though congestion begins to ease, barge prices per ton to ship farm goods have hyperinflated from $12 a ton in June to $90 last week. 

    Low water levels reduce the amount of weight a barge can haul, which increases demand for more barges. This is one inflation story the Federal Reserve can’t solve. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 20:00

  • Anthony Blinken Raises The Pucker Factor On Dissent: Taibbi
    Anthony Blinken Raises The Pucker Factor On Dissent: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    After publishing “On John Lennon’s Birthday, a Few Words About War” last night, old friend and former Moscow Times editor Matt Bivens* and I discovered we’d written on the same topic.

    You can find Matt’s excellent essay here.

    He notes a big thing I missed. A series of ominous statements was buried in Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent joint press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, trumpeting the “tremendous opportunity” the Nord Stream blasts afforded to remove “the dependence on Russian energy.”

    A few public figures questioned those comments, but Blinken said something else that was worse. The relevant passage:

    I also made clear that when Russia made this move, the United States and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe costs on individuals and entities – inside and outside of Russia – that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory…

    We will hold to account any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support for President Putin’s illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory.  In support of this commitment, the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce are releasing new guidance on heightened sanctions and export control risks for entities and individuals inside and outside of Russia that support in any way the Kremlin’s sham referenda, purported annexation, and occupation of parts of Ukraine.

    There’s no way to know what a State Department official might believe meets the definitions of “political support,” support “in any way,” the “Kremlin’s sham referenda,” or any of a half-dozen phrases in that passage. This is why the negative precedent of government watch lists after the PATRIOT Act was important. By making lists, officials can seriously impacting your life without notice or right of appeal. Even if courts later strike down the activity, it may take nearly 20 years to get there, and that’s assuming a) the state discloses enough to make a court challenge possible and b) they abide by any judicial rulings.

    From Google and Twitter to the Departments of Justice and State, we’ve become a blacklisting society, and it’s beginning to look like the excesses of the Bush years were just a warmup.

    *As editor of the Moscow Times, Matt led an investigation of the 2000 Russian presidential elections that resulted in an eight-page exposé detailing extensive ballot-stuffing and misreporting of vote results in favor of… Vladimir Putin. In one case, for instance, the Times found authorities reported 88,000 more votes for Putin than had actually been collected from certain polling stations in Dagestan. “Fraud and abuse of state power appear to have been decisive,” the paper wrote.

    Meanwhile, this is from the prepared statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Aril 12, 2000 of Stephen Sestanovich, at the time our ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union. Sestanovich told the Senate he had six major observations about the election of Vladimir Putin, the second of which was that “voters showed even less interest than 4 years ago in returning the Communists to power.” His main “headline”:

    We witnessed a constitutional process, with multiple candidates, very high turnout, and — according to the many international observers on the scene — few procedural improprieties. I recall the confident forecast of a distinguished Russian analyst after the 1996 election, that Russian voters would never again have the chance to pick their president at the polls. In the past decade, elections have become the only legitimate way to select Russia’s leaders.

    The State Department boasted about Putin’s election as both legitimate and the fruit of a long, U.S.-aided effort to build democratic infrastructure in Russia. They described an event heralding a pluralistic future. I leave it to the reader to decide if that constitutes “support in any way.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 19:40

  • GOP AGs Sue Berenson Foe Andy Slavitt, Other Biden Officials Who Colluded With Big Tech
    GOP AGs Sue Berenson Foe Andy Slavitt, Other Biden Officials Who Colluded With Big Tech

    Two Republican state attorneys general have sued former Biden COVID czar Andy Slavitt and other administration officials as part of an ongoing lawsuit over collusion between the feds and big tech in order to suppress COVID-related free speech.

    Louisiana AG Jeff Landry

    The complaint, requesting the deposition of “key defendants,” was filed by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana, and cites a third-party subpoena of Twitter, Meta and YouTube, which identified a variety of White House and administration officials, the Daily Caller reports.

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

    Journalist Alex Berenson – who was banned from Twitter on April 21, 2001 and sued his way back onto the platform – called out Slavitt in an August Substack article.

    Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s Covid response team, complained specifically about me, according to a Twitter employee in another Slack conversation discussing the White House meeting.

    “They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson,” the employee wrote. “Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”

    According to an interview he gave to the Washington Post in June 2021, Slavitt worked directly with the most powerful officials in the federal government, including Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff, and Biden himself. -Unreported Truths

    Slavitt, meanwhile, has lawyered up.

    “Throughout this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” said AG Landry in the states’ press release. “https://twitter.com/EIGARBARINO/status/1579558520776986624?s=20&t=_d9Z9…;This egregious attack on our First Amendment will be met with an equally full-hearted defense of the rights of the American people.”t=_d9Z9ZhsTYzzFEAnaTCqzghttps://twitter.com/EIGARBARINO/status/1579558520776986624?s=20&t=_d9Z9…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 19:20

  • The Golden Rule And The Hunter Biden Scandal: Turley
    The Golden Rule And The Hunter Biden Scandal: Turley

    Authored by Johnathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

    President Biden’s hot mic moment during a visit to hurricane-stricken Florida — in which he muttered that “No one f–ks with a Biden” — left many people confused. His Sopranos-like warning might not deter developing hurricanes but it has succeeded for years in Washington as a kind of “Biden Golden Rule.” Neither prosecutors nor the press have seemed interested in pursuing allegations of criminal or corrupt practices by some members of the Biden family.

    Now, after years of investigation, reports indicate that FBI agents are convinced ample evidence exists to charge the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun- and tax-related charges. Those charges (and a possible plea) may be the best-case scenario for the Bidens — and many others in Washington. Indeed, the reported narrow scope of a possible indictment is strikingly similar to what I previously described as the ideal “controlled demolition” of the Hunter Biden scandal.

    Three questions immediately arise from this Justice Department leak, and the concern is that all three may be answered by the Biden Golden Rule:

    For the Bidens, justice delayed is justice

    The first question is why, in an investigation that began in 2018, the Justice Department only now believes it could charge over false statements on a gun registration form and on tax evasion. Both crimes were well established years ago.

    The gun charge is based on the fact that Hunter Biden reportedly answered “no” to a standard question about whether he was an “unlawful user of, or addicted to” a narcotic drug or any other controlled substance. He wrote a book detailing his raging drug and alcohol addictions during this period (ironically, even as his father called for stricter enforcement of gun laws).

    The FBI has long had the gun registration form, the book and other self-incriminating statements, not to mention President Biden’s repeated references to his son being an addict.

    Hunter Biden also apparently did not pay taxes on millions garnered from his foreign business dealings or alleged influence-peddling schemes, and a Hollywood lawyer reportedly paid off as much as $2 million in delinquent taxes on his behalf recently. The FBI has had Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop since 2019, detailing payments from foreign sources and gifts or benefits, including a diamond.

    Yet the long investigation has worked to the advantage of the Bidens as well as the Democrats in pushing any indictment beyond 2020 and, most likely, after the 2022 midterm elections. Indeed, Hunter Biden’s lawyer insisted after the leak of possible charges that prosecutors “should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized” to act.

    It is often said that “justice delayed is justice denied” — but in politics, justice delayed is simply justice.

    Is this all there is?

    A second question concerns what were not referenced as likely charges against Hunter Biden.

    For years, some of us have said an obvious, overwhelming argument existed to appoint a special counsel in this case. Yet Attorney General Merrick Garland has refused to do so.

    Hunter Biden’s laptop reportedly contained detailed emails about business deals spanning the globe and millions of dollars from foreign sources, including some tied to foreign intelligence operatives. Some of his accounts reportedly were used to pay some of the bills for President Biden.

    Even if the Justice Department is set to decline charges linked to foreign money transfers or influence-peddling, there is the obvious omission of charges under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). The Justice Department has used FARA aggressively in past prosecutions such as that of Trump associate Paul Manafort.

    The omission of a charge under FARA would be glaring and troubling in light of those past prosecutions. And with the refusal to appoint a special counsel, that omission would likely avoid a public airing of any influence-peddling allegations tied to the Biden family.

    A telling leak

    The third question is why this leak occurred in the first place. Hunter Biden’s lawyer is justified in objecting to this leak and noting that it likely would constitute a federal crime. So why would sources at the FBI take the risk of a leak at this time?

    Much like the Supreme Court leaking of the Dobbs decision, this one appears intended to trigger a response. The most obvious motivation would be to lock in the Justice Department if agents feared the department’s leaders might be resisting or delaying any charges.

    It could also be an effort to alert the public about the narrow scope of charges being discussed with Hunter Biden’s defense team as a possible plea deal. There may also be concern that a plea deal might be reached before any Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. GOP leaders have pledged to investigate the influence-peddling allegations, but a plea could be used to say the matter is now considered closed by the Justice Department.

    The focus on the gun charge is likely to highlight the absence of charges related to the reported foreign payments and alleged influence peddling. While the standard registration form warns of a potential 10-year sentence for false statements, it is rare to see significant prison time emerge from such cases. Indeed, prosecutors often choose not to charge on such violations. As a first-time offender, Hunter Biden could avoid prison entirely or plead to a short period of incarceration.

    For those concerned about alleged influence-peddling, such a charge may seem like arresting a bank robber solely for double-parking his getaway car. While the reported charges could result collectively in a few years in jail, the absence of far more serious charges is likely to raise questions about the scope of the investigation.

    The videos and emails reportedly uncovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop show a wide array of alleged criminal acts — a target-rich environment for any prosecutor. Indeed, it would take an amazing marksman to hit the gun charge and a few tax violations while missing other potential crimes. While any eventual indictment might contain other charges, the leak (if accurate) suggests a strikingly narrow focus as a basis for a possible plea.

    The U.S. attorney in charge of this investigation, David C. Weiss, is a respected prosecutor. Even so, many Americans may wonder why Hunter Biden’s case suddenly was downgraded from a Category 5 hurricane to a tropical storm.

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 19:00

  • UN 'Human Rights' Panel Votes To Ignore China's Uyghur Abuses In Xinjiang
    UN ‘Human Rights’ Panel Votes To Ignore China’s Uyghur Abuses In Xinjiang

    Last week the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 19-17 to not discuss China’s abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province – with Cuba, Venezuela, Nepal, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar and the UAE among the countries siding with Beijing.

    What’s even more appalling, as the WSJ editorial board points out, is that the last four countries on that list are majority Muslim nations voting to ignore documented abuses against a Chinese Muslim minority group.

    Indonesia is notably the world’s largest Muslim country, while Pakistan’s state religion is Islam.

    In addition to China, the other nations on the dishonor role were: Bolivia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Namibia, Senegal, Sudan and Uzbekistan. There were also 11 abstentions, including India, Mexico and Ukraine. Perhaps Kyiv hopes to keep China from giving military aid to Russia’s invaders, but this wasn’t Ukraine’s finest hour. Mexico under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has never met a left-wing dictatorship it didn’t support. -WSJ

    The ‘no’ vote follows an August report by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights that drew from interviews with former detainees in Xinjiang.

    “A consistent theme was description of constant hunger and, consequently, significant to severe weight loss during their periods in the facilities,” reads the report. “Almost all interviewees described either injections, pills or both being administered regularly.”

    Other victims reported “various forms of sexual violence, including some instances of rape,” while “Several women recounted being subject to invasive gynaecological examinations, including one woman who described this taking place in a group setting.”

    Other forms of abuse; no sleep, no prayer, and being forced to sing Chinese patriotic songs.

    The report said the pattern of maltreatment in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” and asked China to look into “allegations of torture, sexual violence, ill-treatment, forced medical treatment, as well as forced labor and reports of deaths in custody.”

    We’re sure John Cena can explain everything…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 18:40

  • Big Rail Workers Union Rejects Biden-Backed Labor Deal, Renews Strike Possibility
    Big Rail Workers Union Rejects Biden-Backed Labor Deal, Renews Strike Possibility

    Authored by Noi Mahoney via FreightWaves.com,

    Members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED) rejected a labor contract with the freight railroads on Monday, sending the two sides back to the bargaining table and resetting the countdown to a potential work stoppage.

    More than 56% of BMWED membership voted against ratification of the tentative national agreement reached with the Class I freight railroads on Sept. 11.

    The Biden-sponsored deal included a 24% wage increase, $5,000 bonuses and an additional paid day off.

    BMWED represents about 26,000 workers who build and maintain the tracks, bridges, buildings and other structures on railroads across the country, according to its website.

    “The result of the vote indicates there is a lot of work to do to establish goodwill and improve the morale that has been broken by the railroads’ executives and Wall Street hedge fund managers,” BMWED President Tony D. Cardwell said in a statement.

    “I trust that railroad management understands that sentiment as well. Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard.”

    BMWED will go back to the bargaining table for additional negotiations with the railroads. If a deal cannot be negotiated, BMWED could go on strike after Nov. 14.

    A new labor deal for union members has been in the works since January 2020, but negotiations with the railroads failed to progress. A federal mediation board took up the negotiations but released the parties from those efforts earlier this summer. 

    Two of the largest labor unions — those representing locomotive engineers and train conductors — were the last to reach a tentative agreement with the railroads. Their agreement averted a rail strike that could have begun as early as Sept. 16.

    So far, only four of the 12 unions have ratified the national agreement with the railroads: the American Train Dispatchers Association, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Transportation Communications Union and the the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 18:20

  • Apple Devices Repeatedly Trigger 'Crash Detection' On Rollercoasters
    Apple Devices Repeatedly Trigger ‘Crash Detection’ On Rollercoasters

    Apple’s new car-crash detection safety feature for the iPhone 14 and new Apple Watch models is causing headaches for emergency services with repeated false positives at theme parks.

    WSJ’s Joanna Stern and Coaster101 report Kings Island and Dollywood amusement parks have reported guests with new Apple devices trigger the safety feature that automatically dials 911 when users are on rollercoasters.

    It has been reported Apple’s algorithm on newly released devices, which factors in G-force measurements, pressure changes, GPS/speed changes, and loud noises, has been tricked numerous times at the theme parks while the owner of the device was on a rollercoaster. 

    Stern provided one 911 call of a false positive while a person was on a rollercoaster at Kings Island amusement park just northeast of Cincinnati in Mason, Ohio. 

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

    In the video, the iPhone revealed to the 911 emergency operator:

    “The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone.”

    The phone’s owner wasn’t responsive because they were having a blast on the rollercoaster. Stern said the amusement park reported at least six recent car-crash detection false positives. This prompted local emergency teams to investigate each one for a car crash at the amusement park but found no evidence of a crash. 

    The theme park website Coaster101 reported that the same phenomenon was happening at the Dollywood amusement park in Tennessee. Rollercoaster rides now have signs that warn guests to leave Apple devices off the ride for fear “device may activate emergency call function.” 

    The sign read:

    Cell phones and other devices should not be brought aboard any attraction.

    Due to the dynamic movement you will experience on this ride, Apple Watches and similar devices may activate their emergency call function.

    To prevent your device from making unintended 911 calls, please turn it off or enable airplane mode.

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

    Perhaps Apple engineers could solve this issue with a geofence update around all amusement parks. And why wasn’t this thought of in the first place? 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 18:00

  • Goldman Trader: "The State Of Things Feels Rather Precarious… We Are On The Verge Of Regime Change And Cycle Shift"
    Goldman Trader: “The State Of Things Feels Rather Precarious… We Are On The Verge Of Regime Change And Cycle Shift”

    By Goldman trader and managing director, Bobby Molavi

    The start of last week saw a risk on beta chase across all equities, as the positioning underweight and pervasive bearishness triggered the latest of a long series of 2022 relief bounces. Last week alone a reflection of the challenges of carrying risk efficiently in 2022. Liquidity appeared and disappeared, we had two 3% plus moves at the headline index level and for all the intra week ‘drama’ we pretty much found ourselves at close of play on Friday near where we started on Monday. A painful “nothing done” as one client put it. This week we have CPI, start of Q3 earnings, both of which will be key in terms of setting the tone for the next few weeks. For the second quarter in a row, more than 10% of the S&P500 market cap has preannounced earnings. The last time this occurred was early 2020. The general narrative from my conversations are multiples are still too high, earnings have further to fall and equity ownership remains high.

    Good news is now firmly bad news… Fridays NFP a reflection that any positive indicator is being read as a signal that the FED has more to do in terms of hikes and slowing down demand side of the equation. That being said, we have mixed signals. Employment may be strong, mortgage repayments high and rising and energy prices may remain elevated but elsewhere we are seeing multiple signs of deflation – job openings slowing (JOLTS data), second hand car prices (Manheim used car data), US/China freight rates (-76% from peak), inventory levels at retailers etc. Elsewhere we saw an OPEC cut, adding fuel to the inflationary fire and cost of living pressures the world is facing. Almost impossible to play the game in an environment where the worlds fulcrum risk free rate is moving more and faster than at any point in recent history.

    A market of extremely large tails… If we just focus on the facts. We see:

    • a stock market down ~25% ytd,

    • a bond market experiencing one of it’s worst performance years in history,

    • a housing market that is seeing consistent price falls for first time in a decade,

    • a consumer dealings with cost of living crisis,

    • a global economy experiencing 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP

    • a slew of central banks that ‘no longer have your back.’

    There is also a worrying reality that an escalation in terms of methods of warfare in Ukraine is now more possibly more likely than the market estimated 3 months ago. Scott Rubner recent piece with some sobering stats on 2022 and how things have panned out. Since 1900, 122 years of data, through Q3, the US 60/40 “worlds and voting retirement” Portfolio is down -21%, for the 2nd worst year on record. From an equity view the S&P 500 is down -24%, for the 4th worst year on record (only were worse 1931 – great depression / 1974 – inflation / 2002 – internet bubble). If we look at Bonds….through Q3, 10 year USTs are down -17% for the worst year on record, 1987 was second worse, and bonds were down -10%. To say that 2022 will go down in historical context would be an understatement. As we approach Q3 Scott argues that retail has started to capitulate….they rotated $89bn into money markets last week and at the same time we saw material retail outflows in consensus mega caps like Apple and Tesla. But…… it’s not all doom and gloom. We’re seeing the highest proportion of insider buying in Stoxx600 for 10 years, cash levels for mutual funds are extremely high, positioning in Europe is extremely low, PE dry powder is at all time highs and employment remains (thus far) sticky and high. US equity futures position % open interest remains at lowest since GFC, vol control funds equity allocation at 5th 10y%ile. Worth noting that CTAs have recently sat on sidelines and are now flipping to buy, which could contribute to a large right tail asymmetry. Our models project CTAs to buy c. $190bn on 2std up tape over the next month. It may not be likely, but there is also the extreme right tail of a positive resolution to Ukraine. A trigger for an immediate relief in terms of inflationary pressures, geo-political risk premia normalization and a likely multi standard deviation rally for equity markets globally.

    The speed of the move is as important as the move itself… There are definitely signals that the withdrawal of liquidity and the shift to a new neutral is having impacts in unexpected segments of the market. The ‘lower for longer’ era of the last decade is clearly over but at the same time the question of at what cost remains. The reality there is leverage and liability in more places than we care to admit. In the housing market sitting with the consumer as they grapple with higher repayments. In the energy market as companies seek to manage their contracts vs cost base and the materially higher volatility of the underlying commodities. Twenty years ago, non-banks held $51 trillion of financial assets, compared with banks’ $58 trillion; on the latest data, non-banks have grown to $227 trillion in scale, outstripping banks at $180 trillion. Among them are asset management firms, pension funds and insurance companies. Unlike 2008/09 leverage exists in different parts of the financial ecosystem. At the end of the day Liquidity in times like these is key. This has been a theme for a while but I think it is now moving to front and center. I’ve noticed stats all year…low top of order book liquidity in the US, bid offer spreads at wides in Europe, SX5E and Stoxx 600 daily volumes vs last year or last 5 years. All signals are pointing to a withdrawal of liquidity from the system and this needs to be monitored. I always ask myself who is the marginal buyer at the moment in size vs the short gamma style trading of CTA (bigger sellers lower, bigger buyers higher). The great hope has been private equity and potential strategic M&A…it has been around but not enough to offset.

    Speaking of M&A… There remains no bid for value with US value trading at 11th %’ile vs history and Europe at the 4th %’ile vs history. It is true that some companies are cheap for a reason…but at some point you’d have to assume that the spread between spot and unrecognised potential value unlock in some of these names triggers activity. We find ourselves in a market with $3.4tr of dry-powder globally across growth, infra, buyout, real estate and buyout. When looking at previous uncertain moments the dry powder stats were ~$800bn in 2016, ~$700bn in 2008, and ~$300bn in 2001.

    The evolution of product segmentation… Years ago…I remember a sales person arguing that Bskyb was not a discretionary product…that it was in fact a staple. Once a consumer was hooked into that entertainment infrastructure there were many many things they would cut first before cutting this. I reflected on that again last week as I read about Pelotons latest round of job cuts and restructuring. I find it interesting (worrying) that we are on the verge (or already in the midst) of regime change and cycle shift. What was normal in 20/21 will cease to be so in 23/24 is my view. The marginal discretionary $ will move to different places and consumers behavior will change and as a result all recent modelling from a time of abundant leverage and a focus on ‘experiences’ may change. I read that in the second hand car data last week there was a clear signal that cars (especially luxury) were becoming an increasingly discretionary item, in the client (and friend) conversations around holidays and travel a shift towards less is more and closer to home as a preference. It will be interesting to see what consumers look to now for sources of entertainment – will terrestrial tv or vanilla sky suffice over 5 additional streaming channels…. will going out and having a few pints in the local replace the £23 smoked bay leaf martini at the trendy cocktail joint… are staycations the new vacation…. and will all things energy consumptive (especially where prices are pushed through the consumer) needing a discount factor we’ve not seen historically.

    Climate….the state of things feels rather precarious at the moment. We seem to be juggling national, political, social and economic dangers and pressures simultaneously. We have discussed the food crisis as a result of Ukraine conflict and the supply shortages of many key staples they produced, but this is only one angle. Climate changes are impacting our eco system…whether it be floods, droughts, fires or more simply the environments where we grow our food. We are seeing harvests across food types being impacted globally as a result of these shifts….Rice shortages in California, corn in Iowa, grains across Europe, fruit in the UK, soy in china. In the short term, just another inflationary pressure but in the long term something even more worrisome. I think there are two vectors by which this will be interesting….firstly the yet to be felt consequence of this inflation and climate impact on our food supply. European farmers in the midst of a fertilizer shortage as access to ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer now scarce or too expensive. Secondly, what innovations will come out of this experience. Electrification and renewable energy might in part help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels but also will we see innovation to optimize will use of sensors, software and alternative feeds to optimize crops.

    From a European perspective…in a very tricky spot if you ask me. Central banks having to deal with inflation having arguably fallen drastically behind the curve. Having to deal with inflation with a heavily bifurcated starting point between the north and the south and the haves and the have nots. A region that is sorely lacking in growth but equally lacking the room to takes risks to encourage it (see uk). On top of all this we are heading into winter with power outages increasingly likely, corporates having to rationalise, move or shut down production. Hard to see this all adding up to incremental investment in the region. (seeing signs of this in corporate narratives at the micro level). We’ve already touched on the material spike in cost of servicing mortgage debt as a % of weekly earnings for most UK households. Worth examining the impact of the materially higher base rate for the broader ‘unfixed’ European community. With variable rates common across Europe (especially in the periphery) the recent 75bps hike passing through to the end consumer who have become accustomed to the ultra low levels of funding available. There are potential political ramifications here. If you look at the eastern EU bloc of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania you see regions with ultra high inflation (close to 25% in Estonia), low savings rates and the need to now absorb the ECB wide rate hike on top. If the emerging parts of the EU are the drivers of growth for the EU this dynamic can’t be helpful.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 17:40

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