- Buchanan: Where Does NATO Enlargement End?
Buchanan: Where Does NATO Enlargement End?
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the breakup of the USSR began. But the dissolution did not stop with the 14 Soviet “republics” declaring their independence of Moscow.
Decomposition had only just begun.
Transnistria broke away from Moldova. South Ossetia and Abkhazia seceded from Georgia. Chechnya broke free of Russia but was restored to Moscow’s control after two savage wars. Crimea and the Donbass were severed from Ukraine.
Besides these post-Cold War amputations, assisted by Russia, what do Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have in common?
All seek admission to NATO, and with it Article 5 war guarantees that oblige the United States to wage war against Russia to restore their sovereignty and territorial integrity if attacked.
It is easy to understand why these nations would want the U.S. obligated to fight on their behalf. What is not understandable is why the U.S. would issue such war guarantees. Why would we commit to risk war with a nuclear-armed Russia on behalf of nations no one has ever regarded as vital interests of the United States of America?
Consider how many nations have been admitted to NATO, and thus received U.S. war guarantees, after 1991.
There are 14: Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
These 14 newest members of NATO represent an expansion of U.S. war commitments riskier in ways than the original creation of NATO, when we were obligated to defend 10 nations of Western Europe.
Today, we defend 29 nations, stretching far into Eastern Europe.
Still, further NATO expansion may be in the cards.
As mentioned, Georgia and Ukraine are looking to join NATO and have the U.S. thereby obligated to fight Russia in their defense. Two other nations, Sweden and Finland, are talking of abandoning their traditional neutrality for NATO membership and U.S. war guarantees.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a candidate member of NATO. Its capital is Sarajevo, where an assassin’s bullet fired in 1914 killed the Austrian archduke, an incident that led directly to the First World War.
Mikhail Gorbachev, at the end of the Cold War, reportedly told U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that Russia would agree to unification of East and West Germany if the U.S. would guarantee that NATO would not be moved further east.
Baker is said to have told Gorbachev, “Not one inch.”
Whatever the truth, can we not understand why a Russian nationalist like Vladimir Putin would feel his country was being corralled and imperiled, if a NATO alliance created to contain Russia had lately added 14 members, most of which were former allies or republics of the USSR?
As The New York Times editorialized on Monday:
“Mr. Putin’s concerns cannot be entirely dismissed. Were Ukraine to join NATO, the alliance would then have a 1,200-mile land border with Russia, a situation no major power would abide, no matter how loudly the Atlantic alliance claims to be purely defensive.”
Here is the precise language of Article 5.
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them … shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith … such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Apparently, “the North Atlantic area” now extends to the eastern Baltic and the Balkans.
If Ukraine and Georgia are admitted to NATO, the North Atlantic area would include the Caucasus, and five of six nations on the Black Sea. Only Russia would be outside NATO.
Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “NATO never promised not to admit new members; it could not and would not.”
But this is nonsense. There is no requirement that the U.S. admit to NATO any or all nations that apply for admission.
For whatever reasons we choose, we can veto any applicant. And avoiding war with Russia might constitute one of those reasons.
With NATO’s continuous post-Cold War expansion into Central and Eastern Europe, America has to ask: If the risk of war with Russia grows with each new member on its borders admitted to NATO, why are we doing this? Is there no red line of Putin’s Russia we will not cross?
Do we believe Putin will indefinitely accept the encirclement and containment of his country by nations united in an alliance created to keep Russia surrounded?
Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan disagreed often but did agree on this: U.S.-NATO war guarantees stopped at the Elbe. Beyond the river in Germany, we battled the USSR with weapons of diplomacy, politics and economics, not weapons of war.
How would we have reacted if, after losing the Cold War, we were treated to Russian warships on Lake Ontario and Moscow giving Canada war guarantees?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/12/2022 – 02:00 - Chinese Communist Party Advances Agenda To Weaken US Through Stealth Tactics: Expert
Chinese Communist Party Advances Agenda To Weaken US Through Stealth Tactics: Expert
Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times,
Social movements such as the promotion of critical race theory, the “defund the police” movement, and wokeism, as well as stealth tactics such as intellectual property theft and drug trafficking, are used in unrestricted hybrid warfare by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to weaken the United States, BlackOps Partners CEO Casey Fleming says.
Today, the United States is at war with China and with the CCP, Fleming said, explaining that “there’s only one China and it’s completely controlled by the CCP, so you can’t extract one or the other.”
However, that war is an unrestricted hybrid war, also called “the gray zone,” which is “everything short of conventional war,” and it focuses on weakening the CCP’s opponents or targets as much as possible, Fleming said in a recent interview on Epoch TV’s “Crossroads” program.
The CCP regime propagandizes to Chinese people that the United States is “the great evil in the world that must be overtaken, for China to have their overall destiny, which is to rule the world,” Fleming said. “They say that we are the dark, we represent the devil.”
The CCP is “an enemy” of the United States because it calls the United States an enemy, he said.
Fleming likened the gray zone to the strategy being used by the CCP against Taiwan:
“Weaken your enemy … to the point of capitulation, so that they say, ‘Okay, we don’t want to go to war, we value our people. We don’t want death and destruction; we’ll just go ahead and join China.’
“[The gray zone is] worse than conventional warfare because it’s killing an economy, it’s killing our ability to fight.”
Fleming cited U.S. Adm. Chester Nimitz, credited with winning the Pacific War during World War II, who said a few years after that war that the United States has the most powerful military in the world, and in order to kill it, its economy needs to be killed.
And this exactly what the CCP has been doing, Fleming said. There are over 100 different methods of unrestricted hybrid warfare, he said, explaining that the word “unrestricted” means the enemy follows no rules.
“We follow the rule of law and international rules of order in how we transact, [do] business, and so on. Well, your enemy does not follow any of that. They say: Those are your laws and, in fact, we’re going to handcuff you with your own laws.”
These tactics are described in the book “Unrestricted Warfare,” written in 1999 by two senior colonels of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Fleming said. The book was published by a publishing house of the PLA, the military force of the CCP.
Tactics of Unrestricted Hybrid Warfare
One of the gray zone methods is intellectual property (IP) theft. Developing a new product takes years of research and costs billions of dollars. These expenses are recovered through selling the product to customers, Fleming said.
If a Chinese company steals the intellectual property related to a product developed by an American company, it doesn’t incur any development costs and can immediately start making the product in China, Fleming said.
It then sells the product to the customers of the U.S. company at about half price, thus putting the IP owner out of business, he said.
Crystal meth paste at a clandestine laboratory near La Rumorosa town in Tecate, Baja California state, Mexico, on Aug. 28, 2018. (Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)
Drug warfare is another method being used by the CCP to weaken the United States, the expert said.
Recently, fentanyl became a leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45, according to calculations (pdf) done by the organization Families Against Fentanyl that are based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The fentanyl capital of the world is Wuhan, China,” Fleming said, adding that the CCP ships the precursor chemicals to manufacture crystal meth pills and fentanyl pills to Mexican drug cartels.
“They [also] use the six drug cartels—beautiful distribution network—to get that all through North America and even to Europe.”
Crystal meth is a form of methamphetamine—a powerful, highly addictive stimulant that looks like glass fragments, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Currently, most methamphetamine in the United States is produced by transnational criminal organizations in Mexico, the NIDA said.
“The drug can be easily made in small clandestine laboratories, with relatively inexpensive over-the-counter ingredients. Methamphetamine production also involves a number of other very dangerous chemicals. Toxic effects from these chemicals can remain in the environment long after the lab has been shut down, causing a wide range of health problems for people living in the area.”
Religious warfare is another form of the gray zone methods carried out by the CCP, Fleming noted.
“They killed every bit of religion in China. The Christian cross has been banned. They’ve shut down churches, they’ve shut down mosques. And that same thing is happening now today in the U.S.”
“It is Chinese communism on the streets of America and in your living room. And I’m talking critical race theory, I’m talking Black Lives Matter,” Fleming said.
“Blacks are extremely important. They’re incredible people, but they’re being hijacked in the Black Lives Matter movement. And many blacks understand that and they’re saying: We need a different platform to move all Americans to—not just blacks but all Americans—to a new platform, to take our country back from this whole Chinese communist infiltration and subversion.”
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a Marxist organization. Patrisse Cullors, a BLM co-founder, said in an interview with Real News Network in 2015, “We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia [Garza] in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” Alicia Garza is also a BLM co-founder.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Black Lives Matter for comment.
The defund the police movement and wokeism are also “Chinese communist methods, unrestricted hybrid warfare methods, to weaken the United States.” Fleming said.
Why People Should Care
A man holding a phone walks past a sign for Chinese company ByteDance’s app TikTok, known locally as Douyin, at the International Artificial Products Expo in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on Oct. 18, 2019. (STR/Files/Reuters)
“The ultimate goal is to weaken the United States so it weakens our will to fight, and they can just walk on. They don’t have to fire one bullet. … It’s to take over and replace democracy and freedom worldwide with Chinese communism,” Fleming said.
Fleming pointed out that the U.S. military wouldn’t be able to protect the country against an enemy using unrestricted hybrid warfare.
“[The military is] still fighting in World War II technology. War is going to electronics, robots, AI [artificial intelligence], radar jamming, all these types of things,” he said.
“Our military is not meant to protect our economy, and not meant to protect your company and your company’s intellectual property and your suppliers who have your intellectual property.”
In order to prevent the CCP from winning this war, foreign influence through investments needs to be stopped first in any part of the country, whether it’s business, academia, or government, the expert said. His company BlackOps Partners, provides educational resources on its website to help people understand the risks.
“When you hear of a former congressman being paid a half-million dollars a year to lobby for TikTok, or lobby for ByteDance, with the DOD [U.S. Department of Defense], there’s a problem.”
ByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company that develops mobile apps such as TikTok.
Many in mainstream media are compromised by the CCP, Fleming said, adding that a lot of companies actually walked back their statements critical of the CCP, e.g. statements of genocide taking place in China.
“Even the well-renowned CEO of JPMorgan Chase had to walk back a comment.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he regretted a joke he made in November, saying that his bank would outlast the CCP, according to Bloomberg.
“We are in battle. It’s just a battle we’re not familiar with,” Fleming said.
Day by day, people’s freedoms and values and their children’s freedoms and values are being eroded by media, critical race theory, defund the police movement, and wokeism, he said.
People should care about it because their children and grandchildren “are on the balance,” said Fleming, a senior adviser on risk, strategy, and counterintelligence.
“If you’re run by the Chinese Communist Party, they dictate what house you live in, which plant your children are going to be working in, and what they’re going to be manufacturing for 12 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/12/2022 – 00:05 - Playboy Mansion Had So Much Cocaine That Poodle Became Addicted, Report Says
Playboy Mansion Had So Much Cocaine That Poodle Became Addicted, Report Says
A new documentary series called “Secrets of Playboy” will debut on Jan. 24 on the A&E Network explores the hidden dark truths behind the Playboy empire.
The Sun reports there was so much cocaine in the Playboy Mansion that Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner’s best friend’s poodle got addicted to it. The dog’s drug habit was so bad that it had to be locked in a room during parties because it would jump on people and lick guests’ noses for the next fix.
Sondra Theodore, an ex-girlfriend of the late sex magnate, was interviewed in the upcoming documentary series. She claims the poodle got addicted after sniffing “huge vials” of white powder that were placed around the mansion.
“John Dante was Hef’s best friend. He had a dog Louis and this tiny poodle got hooked on cocaine,” Theodore, 65, is quoted as saying in an upcoming documentary. “There were drugs everywhere. The dog could smell it from across the room. He had to lock that dog up when people were around.”
Hefner’s former assistant, Lisa Loving Barrett, who worked at the mansion from 1977 to 1989, recalled there was more than one drug handed out to guests. She said Quaaludes were known as the “leg spreaders.”
Hefner lived in the mansion, located outside Beverly Hills, from 1974 until he died in 2017 at the age of 91. The ten-part series may certainly reveal other hidden secrets about the wild sex parties at the mansion.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 23:45 - Former Border Commissioner: "We Have Lost Control Of The Southwest Border"
Former Border Commissioner: “We Have Lost Control Of The Southwest Border”
Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times,
The southwest border during President Joe Biden’s first year in office reached historic levels of illegal crossings, pulling agents off the front line and leaving large swaths of the border unpatrolled. Drugs, especially fentanyl, flowed in, and overdose deaths are at an all-time high.
“What we’re experiencing now on the southwest border is a complete, utter catastrophe,” Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees Border Patrol, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 7.
“We have lost control of the southwest border.”
During the 2021 calendar year, Border Patrol agents apprehended close to 2 million illegal immigrants from 150 different countries along the southwest border—more than double 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, according to CBP data.
Last year, Border Patrol agents detected, but didn’t catch, an additional 600,000 illegal border crossers, known as “gotaways,” Morgan said.
“That’s the equivalent to the size of the state of Vermont,” he said.
“Think about the bad people that are in that 600,000 that got away.”
A Border Patrol agent organizes illegal immigrants who have gathered by the border fence after crossing from Mexico into the United States in Yuma, Arizona, on Dec. 10 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Mexican nationals made up 28 percent of encounters in fiscal year 2021, the lowest proportion in recorded history, according to CBP.
The northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador made up 44 percent, and the remaining 28 percent were from other countries—double the previous record for the latter demographic.
“This trend is important because the Department of Homeland Security does not currently have agreements to electronically verify nationality with these different countries of origin, making removing or expelling their nationals more resource-intensive and time-consuming,” CBP stated in a press release on Jan. 3.
Outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle nations, the countries accounting for the largest number of encounters in fiscal year 2021 were Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, and Cuba, CBP said.
On the Mexico side of the border, across the Rio Grande in Texas, hundreds of discarded passports, visas, and identification papers can be found every day. Illegal aliens are told it’s harder to be deported from the United States without papers.
“This is not a surge. This is an invasion,” Morgan said.
“I mean, this is a catastrophic amount of illegal aliens trying to break into our country.”
The result in some border areas, he said, is that most Border Patrol agents are being pulled off the “national security mission” to be “daycare providers, processing agents, and bus drivers.”
Morale among the Border Patrol workforce is at an all-time low.
Upon taking office almost a year ago, President Joe Biden was quick to dismantle several key border security initiatives that the Trump administration had established, including a halt to border wall construction, and the Remain in Mexico program, which attributed to up to an 80 percent drop in “catch-and-release” by requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico until their final court judgement.
Now, instead of waiting in Mexico, most illegal immigrants are released into the United States to wait for future court dates that can be set years into the future.
Border Patrol drops van loads of Haitians who crossed the U.S. border illegally at local NGO Border Humanitarian Coalition to catch a bus to San Antonio or Houston, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Border Security
Although the public’s main focus is on illegal immigration numbers, Morgan said that’s just a subset of border security.
“When you open your borders up to one threat, one crisis, it’s not mutually exclusive from the others—you’re opening your borders up to the vast set of complex threats that we face,” he said.
“Anytime you’re so overwhelmed that you can’t perform the fundamental national security mission to secure our borders, the result [is] that every aspect of our nation’s public health, public safety, and national security is being impacted.”
The record numbers in 2021 occurred during a year in which many Americans, under the backdrop of a pandemic, faced vaccine mandates, work-from-home orders, and school closures.
Overcrowded border facilities were unable to test everyone for COVID-19, resulting in the release of illegal immigrants with the disease into communities. In July 2021, the city of Laredo sued the Biden administration for releasing a “flood” of illegal immigrants into Laredo, causing “irreparable harm.”
Under the Title 42 public health order, which was instituted in March 2020, illegal immigrants could be quickly expelled back into Mexico as a pandemic precaution, rather than be processed under Title 8 immigration law, which is a much more protracted process inside the United States.
Since March 2021, however, Title 42 has slowly been whittled down—first to allow in all unaccompanied children, then families with children under 7, then most families in general, most single females, and single adults from non-Spanish speaking countries.
Border Patrol agents apprehend and transport illegal immigrants who have just crossed the river into La Joya, Texas, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Border 2022
Morgan predicts the southwest border metrics will continue to worsen through 2022.
“There’s no end in sight. There’s none. And this administration, every single day, everything they’re doing is just to get better at releasing people. They’re not trying to stop the flow,” he said.
Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead border security efforts, with the main focus being to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration. Harris visited Mexico and Guatemala last year, but was criticized by the Guatemalan president in December for having no communication since June 2021.
On Aug. 26, the Supreme Court ordered the Biden administration to restart the Remain in Mexico program, but CBP data through November 2021 doesn’t indicate any new enrollees in the program.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said he is working toward building a “safe, orderly, and humane immigration” system.
Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
During the tail end of the September crisis that saw close to 15,000 mostly Haitian illegal immigrants gather under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, Mayorkas denied that the administration’s policies were responsible.
“What we are learning from our interviews with individuals is that they are receiving false information and misinformation from the smuggling organizations that traffic in the exploitation of vulnerable individuals,” Mayorkas said during a congressional hearing on Sept. 21, 2021.
During a Senate hearing in November 2021, Mayorkas gave himself high marks for his role in leading the border efforts.
“I’m a tough grader on myself and I give myself an ‘A’ for effort, investment in mission, and support of our workforce,” Mayorkas said.
Morgan accused Mayorkas of creating a “sanctuary country” for illegal immigrants, allowing them to come in and then shielding them from deportation.
“They’re trying to totally demolish ICE and make illegal immigration legal,” Morgan said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Everything that they’re doing is making our border less secure and our country less safe.”
Border Patrol agents apprehend 21 illegal aliens from Mexico who had hidden in a grain hopper on a freight train heading to San Antonio, near Uvalde, Texas, on June 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Looking to Governors
Morgan said he believes the open border policies are an intentional move toward more Democratic House seats through redistricting now that illegal immigrants are counted in the Census. Secondly, eventually they expect illegal immigrants to vote Democrat.
Republicans are also complicit, he said, because they still believe that this country needs the illegal workforce.
“But there is a true marginalized American workforce that’s out there that’s having to compete with companies paying lower wages to illegal immigrants. That’s real,” Morgan said.
He said concerned Americans should push their governors to do more in the immediate term, instead of waiting for the federal elections. Morgan said Florida, Texas, and Missouri have made some inroads, but more need to step up.
“If you have a meth overdose in your state, I guarantee that meth came from the southwest border,” he said.
“The cost to American taxpayers is unconscionable and governors should step up and say enough is enough.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 23:25 - Binance's Mysterious CEO Has Quietly Amassed A $96 Billion Fortune
Binance’s Mysterious CEO Has Quietly Amassed A $96 Billion Fortune
The owner of the world’s largest crypto fortune, which stands at $96 billion, is likely an unsuspecting name that you wouldn’t recognize: Changpeng Zhao.
But despite the fact that you’ve likely never heard of the Binance CEO, who now spends his time meeting with royalty and living in the United Arab Emirates, doesn’t mean that he isn’t gaining on the list of the world’s richest people, on the tails of well known celebrity CEOs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. In fact, he’s richer than Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, the report notes.
Described by Bloomberg as a ” former McDonald’s burger-flipper and software developer” turned “the most prominent personality” in the UAE’s crypto scene. Zhao is a Canadian citizen who was born in China’s Jiangsu province.
And his fortune could be getting even larger: he still owns a significant amount of Bitcoin and Binance Coin, which was up 1300% last year.
Zhao’s rise to riches hasn’t come without its bumps in the road. Binance has been banned from China and is facing a number of regulatory probes globally, for example. The U.S. Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service are probing one of his entities, Binance Holdings, has been used for money laundering and tax evasion.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is also looking into potential market manipulation and insider trading within the company, as well as whether it “illegally allowed U.S. clients to trade derivatives tied to cryptocurrencies,” Bloomberg wrote.
The company’s future will likely hinge on whether or not it can appease regulators. Usually, in our experience, we’ve found that there’s a number that can stave off such probes. We’ll have to see if Binance finds itself as lucky.
DA Davidson & Co. analyst Chris Brendler says that Binance generated at least $20 billion in revenue last year, about triple what is expected from Coinbase. In a recent 24 hour span, Binanace did a whopping $170 billion in transactions. A “slow day” is about $40 billion, Zhao said recently. “I don’t care about wealth, money, rankings,” he told Bloomberg in November.
“Coinbase might appear to be the 800-pound gorilla from a U.S. perspective, but Binance is significantly bigger,” Brendler told Bloomberg.
Binance responded: “Crypto is still in its growth stage. It is susceptible to higher levels of volatility. Any number you hear one day will be different from a number you hear the next day.”
Zhao’s fortune likely hinges on whether or not he can meet regulators in the middle, which is why it’s not surprising that he’s embracing regulation. “I’m not an anarchist. I don’t believe human civilization is advanced enough to live in a world without rules,” he said in November.
Binance makes it revenue through holding hundreds of different crypto tokens, which they don’t convert to traditional currencies. A favorable regulatory resolution will likely be paramount for the continued existence of some of these tokens.
Zhao said of the tokens: “We just hold them. If you calculate the number today, it’s one number, and 5 minutes later it’s a different number because every price is changing.”
Tim Swanson, head of market intelligence at Clearmatics, cites Binanace’s user stickiness as part of their success: “They don’t even have to be the first to list a coin anymore for liquidity to aggregate there.”
Binance’s goal of being able to operate anywhere has made it tough for regulators to pin down to one location. Brendler commented: “Their approach was, ‘We don’t need a regulator, we are decentralized’. That worked really well for growing and scaling and product innovations.”
But now it’s time to see how long that attitude can last. After all, Zhao’s fortune may depend on it…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 23:05 - Ivy League Cartel Sued For Price-Fixing
Ivy League Cartel Sued For Price-Fixing
Authored by Matt Soller bia BIG substack,
In a comical trolling of elite America, plaintiff lawyers are suing Yale, MIT, Columbia, Duke, et al for price-fixing. The suit reveals how American universities favor the wealthy and powerful.
Last April, Sam Haselby and I wrote a piece titled “Break up the Ivy League Cartel,’ offering a history of the elitism of top universities in America. For hundreds of years, these top schools have policed the moral, cultural, and economic boundaries of what forms the American elite, and in the post World War II era, the global elite. They are in many ways a cartel of institutions that share strategy on endowment funds, academic trends, cultural capital and student management.
The lovely and fairly priced Columbia University.
But it’s not just this informal elite-production model that makes such universities a cartel; they are also an *actual cartel.* Today, a group of class action law firms sued 16 universities for price-fixing against low-income students in the admissions process, which is the key gatekeeping mechanism designed to enhance prestige. The defendants are the wealthiest and most powerful academic institutions in America: Brown, CalTech, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Yale.
The specific charge is that these universities colluded to price-fix the terms of financial aid. Working together to provide scholarships isn’t necessarily illegal. A lot of universities give out scholarships based on income, under the premise that higher education should be an equalizing force in American society. Some schools even say they make admissions ‘need-blind,’ which means that they don’t take into account ability to pay when determining which students to accept. Instead, the admissions department accepts students based on merit, and then gives accepted students scholarships to make sure they can afford the schooling.
But what specifically makes someone ‘needy’ in a ‘need-blind’ system? The answer to that is an accounting question, so universities work together through an organization called the 568 President’s Group to set the terms for what makes someone needy. Now, if this also sounds like open price-fixing, that’s because it is. But done properly, it’s not necessarily illegal. The reason is universities have been caught before for price-fixing, and part of the settlement of that suit was that they were given an antitrust exemption so they could work together to price scholarships, within certain bounds.
In 1991, the Justice Department investigated 23 prestigious Northeastern universities – including Harvard, Yale, and MIT – for holding an annual meeting in which they “discussed the financial aid applications of 10,000 students who had been accepted to more than one institution in the group,” ultimately colluding to offer the same financial package to these students. The Attorney General called them a “collegiate cartel.” After the settlement, top universities agreed to stop the meetings, but it’s hard to watch the Ivy Leagues without concluding that they are watching each other and mimicking each other carefully.
This settlement was codified when Congress passed the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994. Universities were allowed to work together to establish standards for who is needy, and how much they would need. However, to qualify for the antitrust exemption, universities had to admit “all students” on a need-blind basis. If they aren’t need-blind for everyone, they can’t work with other universities to price admissions.
Do these universities have a need-blind policy for all students? Most of them say that they do. But as it turns out, admissions officers have a nasty habit of letting in the children of the wealthy and powerful, in return for donations and prestige. “At Dartmouth,” so goes the complaint, “development officers meet with admissions staff to review a list created by the development office. Each year, up to 50 applicants may be considered through this special process, most of whom are admitted, accounting for 4-5% of Dartmouth’s student body.” Selling admissions to the powerful is policy at many of these schools.
Sometimes the individual cases are jaw-dropping. For example, the CEO of Sony, Michal Lynton, was trying to get his daughter into college, and the private equity baron Leon Black, who had been on the board of Dartmouth, tried to recruit her to that school, because of the assumption that a large donation would accompany her to campus.
Alas, Black failed. Lynton went to Brown, as did her father’s $1 million donation.
It’s not always about money. At Georgetown, the dean of admissions said, “On the fundraising side, we also have a small number of ‘development potential’ candidates. If Bill Gates wants his kid to come to Georgetown, we’d be more than happy to have him come and talk to us.” But don’t worry, he added, “not all those special cases end up being people who give a lot of money. We have children of Supreme Court justices, senators, and so on apply. We may give extra consideration to them because of the opportunities that may bring.”
So these schools do not accept all students on a need-blind basis. And that creates a problem, because high-end universities restrict their incoming classes, which generates scarcity and prestige. Class size doesn’t increase with increasing population size, it is fixed, with the goal of these universities turning themselves into, as Scott Galloway notes, luxury brands. For instance, in 1940, the acceptance rate at Harvard was eighty-five percent. In 1970, it was twenty percent. For the class of 2025, it was 3.4 percent.
This zero sum situation means that if there are a preset number of slots that go to the wealthy, to alumni, or to the powerful, then that number of slots is not going to people who don’t have the money to attend. If you do favors for the wealthy in the admissions process, then you aren’t a need-blind admission system, and you don’t quality for the antitrust exemption. But the complaint also shows that, far from merely letting in the children of the wealthy while otherwise in all other areas being need-blind, many of these institutions actually discriminate against students who need scholarships. Vanderbilt, Penn, and Columbia don’t seem to be need-blind, with Penn and Vanderbilt officials conceding that who they accept off the waiting list depends in part on who needs financial aid. So they really don’t qualify for any antitrust exemption.
Is there really harm? Yes. The complaint shows that when universities move away from the consensus methodology for calculating the cost of college, the price they charge goes down. So there are financial costs at issue, and the 170,000 alumni who were overcharged when they went to these schools with underpowered financial aid packages deserve compensation.
It’s a very clever suit, legally speaking. No one can reasonably dispute whether universities have colluded, or whether they maintain policies favoring potential donors. There’s no need to establish a secret conspiracy, as it’s out in the open. The only real question is whether what universities have done is illegal. It’s a simple question of law, with few disputes on the facts. It’s no surprise that the suit was brought by some of the savvier plaintiff firms (Roche Freedman, Berger Montague, FeganScott, and Gilbert Litigators & Counselors).
It’s also a profoundly embarrassing suit. Every university gets a little profile in the complaint, showing how basically the students are nearly all rich kids, and the endowments of these schools are ridiculous. Here, for instance, is the profile of the University of Pennsylvania.
There’s a broader lesson here. The higher education system in the U.S. is a crown jewel of American society, but universities have also organized their financing models towards flagrant abuses of market power. And that’s not just at the elite level. Economist Marshall Steinbaum turned me on to this piece, showing that more broadly universities use government-mandated information collection to price discriminate in harmful ways against millions of students. Bringing a suit against a practice like this is much harder than showing a clear, open price-fixing conspiracy by elite universities whose behavior looks, when reading the letter of the law, as if it is a violation of Section One of the Sherman Act.
Of course, we know top universities collude to help the powerful. What makes this suit damaging is that it attacks their underlying conception of self. Elite universities want to imagine themselves as meritocratic, though in fact they cater to the wealthy professional class and the billionaires who employ them. In other words, top universities are increasingly tax-free hedge funds with educational arms attached for branding purposes. And they are price-fixers, to boot.
As this suit goes forward, these universities may actually face some measure of justice.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 22:45 - US Apartment Occupancy Hits Record High After COVID-Fueled Migration
US Apartment Occupancy Hits Record High After COVID-Fueled Migration
New data from property management software company RealPage shows apartment occupancy in the US surged to a record high in December. High occupancy rates come as renters were lured in with pandemic discounts in late 2020 and 2021 as others fled metro areas for a new life in the suburbs.
RealPage said 97.5% of the professionally managed apartments in the US last month were occupied, the highest on record. The figure is two percentage points higher than the occupancy rate in December 2020. Just a few percentage points equate to hundreds of thousands of households.
“I don’t think most people realize just how crazy that is,” Jay Parsons, deputy chief economist for RealPage, told Bloomberg.
“Not only is that a record, typically we consider 95 to 96% to be essentially full,” Parsons said.
In the first year of the virus pandemic, apartment rents plunged as residents fled metro areas, such as ones in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Operators of apartment buildings panicked during the pandemic when tenants broke their leases and escaped cities due to lockdowns and soaring violent crime. As rents fell, operators began to offer substantial discounts to new tenants. The deals lured in new renters in 2021, resulting in soaring rent prices throughout the year.
Most new tenants are locked into a multi-year lease and have no intention of moving. Another issue for renters is the low housing supply, and surging prices have kept them on the sidelines. Prices are expected to continue rising in 2022.
In a separate report, Pew Research Center found rental homes and apartments across the country are experiencing the lowest vacancy rates in four decades. Despite the Covid-fueled migration patterns, a record low number of households moved between March 2020 and March 2021 because of low housing inventory.
“Rents are rising, and the discounts and concessions of 2020 are likely a thing of the past. Moreover, demand for housing continues to outpace the supply,” Bloomberg said.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 22:25 - Vaccine Mandates Are A Driver Of Wage Inflation
Vaccine Mandates Are A Driver Of Wage Inflation
Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance
This is Part 2 of an exclusive interview with Doomberg, the collective that runs the Doomberg Substack. During this interview series, we discuss their outlook on 2022, China-based equities, Joe Rogan’s influence on the media, ARK Invest, silver and gold, the Elizabeth Holmes trial and inflation.
On my last interview series with Doomberg, they predicted uranium would “double or triple” and laid out a semi-serious case for oil going to $300 per barrel.
Doomberg publishes skeptical analyses through the hard money/Austrian lens and its objective is to be funny without being silly, to teach without being self-indulgent, and to provoke without being polarizing. They publish 10-12 pieces a month, which you can read for free here.
You can read Part 1 of this interview here.
Q: What’s your favorite piece you’ve written of late and why? How can it be informative for investors?
That’s like asking us to select our favorite child!
But seriously, a recent piece titled New England is an Energy Crisis Waiting to Happen went viral, with 90,000 views on Substack and a similar number when Zerohedge reprinted it to their website.
We don’t give stock advice on Doomberg, but we do highlight interesting opportunities for other investors to consider. Documenting the sheer insanity of New England’s energy predicament is one such example. The piece drew on our extensive technical background and allowed us to connect the seriousness of the situation to how the reader’s own body works.
It also gave us the opportunity to highlight the work of another great content creator, Meredith Angwin, and her excellent book Shorting the Grid.
How do you think the Biden administration will replace the lost Fed governors, since your prognostication about Powell on his way out was incorrect. Will Biden appoint hawks?
Given how poorly we called the Powell renomination, we are abstaining from any other prognostications on the future of the Fed.
We would direct your readers to the formidable Danielle DiMartino Booth who, unlike us, has relevant experience at the Fed and knows what she is talking about.
Has inflation become an issue big enough to span both political aisles? Are you a Rickards guy that thinks the worst is over in terms of prices or a Schiff guy that thinks the worst inflation is yet to come?
We do believe inflation has become a huge issue for both sides of the aisle.
We respect Rickards’ work, but we have a different view that stems from our extensive experience in industry. Our network of C-suite contacts is signaling that inflation is real and ongoing, especially wage inflation. These costs are being passed on to the consumer.
We also believe the confusion around and heterogeneous implementation of various vaccine mandates is an underreported driver of wage inflation.
A meaningful number of workers in the country will simply refuse to get vaccinated, which is shrinking the labor supply for some jobs. Once we do get through the pandemic, we believe a shortage of energy is on the horizon, which we wrote about in There’s Not Enough Oil.
We fall firmly into the Schiff camp on this one.
Any chance of a growth to value rotation this year? Which indexes will fare the best in ‘22, relative to one another?
That seems like a popular idea which is being written about by several market observers we follow.
Historically, if inflation runs hot, that’s bad for stocks in general, but especially growth stocks. For example, the basket of stocks in the Ark Invest portfolios would probably not stand up well to a bout of sustained inflation.
6 month 10 year yield / Yahoo Other smart people tell us we need to be watching the bond market, and especially the long bond, which doesn’t seem to be doing much right now – at least compared to how hot CPI and PPI are running.
As a rule, with real yields this negative and valuations this elevated, all stocks are susceptible to a correction. We are the out-of-touch, cranky old folks standing on the lawn shaking our fist at the next generation on this one.
I recently wrote that the Elizabeth Holmes trial is a reminder that “risk on” doesn’t always work out. What did you make of the jury’s decision and what does it tell you about today’s market climate?
We are the last people to defend the actions of Elizabeth Holmes, but this sure seems like a case of selective prosecution.
The market is filled with frauds, crypto rug pulls, NFT wash trading scams, and blatant pump-and-dump shenanigans.
If lying to investors to raise money is a crime punishable by extended prison sentences, we need to get busy building more prisons.
Thanks, my Doomy friend.
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DISCLAIMER:
I am short ARKK, long KWEB, TME, XOM, CCJ, URA, URNM, oil and uranium and various gold and silver miners/names. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time. It should be assumed Doomberg has positions in any security or commodity mentioned in this article and may transact in them. Answers are the opinions of the interviewee. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. Doomberg has contributed to my podcast but this interview was not part of any sponsorship or ad deal or contract, it was initiated by me because I enjoy the blog’s content and wanted to ask questions that I believed my readers would benefit from. It is only a look into our personal opinions and portfolios. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe.
MORE DISCLAIMER:
The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I get shit wrong a lot. If I am here listing things I got right or things I think will happen in the future, note that there are likely twice as many things I got wrong over the same period of time. I’m not a financial advisor, I hold no licenses or registrations and am not qualified to give advice on anything, let alone finance or medicine. Talk to your doctor, talk to your financial advisor or your therapist. Leave me a alone and do your research elsewhere. If you can find somewhere to rate this Substack one star, please do so as to save future readers from the misery of my often wholly incorrect prognostications.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 22:05 - Prepping For Oil Liftoff: The Permian's Largest Producer Just Went Full "Zero Hedge"
Prepping For Oil Liftoff: The Permian’s Largest Producer Just Went Full “Zero Hedge”
The largest oil producer in the Permian has shuttered all of its hedges on the commodity for the year, indicating a vanilla bullish outlook on the price of oil in 2022.
Pioneer Natural Resources said in a filing on Wednesday that removing the hedges would cost $328 million but would leave the company positioned to capitalize off of a continued rise in oil prices. The company also bought back $250 million of its own shares, Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg reported.
RBC Capital Markets analysts Scott Hanold commented: “The hedge monetization strategically positions PXD for further strength in 2022 oil prices.”
Most companies like Pioneer use instruments like swaps and options to help hedge against volatility in prices. The hedges help ensure that producers have enough capital to meet their costs of doing business.
Hedges worked as saviors for many companies during 2020 and 2021, when oil prices collapsed.
Riding oil prices higher, hedges can sometimes wind up capping companies’ upside. Pioneer, for example, lost more than $2 billion last year as oil prices rose and its hedges plunged underwater.
The company’s announcement this week makes it very clear what Pioneer’s outlook for oil is heading into 2022: plain ole’ bullish.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 21:45 - What To Expect From Tomorrow's "Brutal" Inflation Report
What To Expect From Tomorrow’s “Brutal” Inflation Report
Tomorrow may be ugly: according to Axios, the White House – or at least those who are feeding lines to the so-called president – are bracing for a “brutal” inflation report.
- WHITE HOUSE BRACES FOR BRUTAL INFLATION REPORT – AXIOS
While it remains to be seen if tomorrow’s report is brutal, the damage has already been done – here is a snapshot of key price changes in the past year, courtesy of Bank of America:
- price of basic human needs such as food, heat, shelter soaring; global food prices up 27% YoY;
- US heating costs up: 30% for natural gas, 43% for oil, 54% for propane;
- US rents up 12%,
- house prices 18%
- lumber prices up 40% past 4 months
Here is what consensus expects: according to economists, the consumer price index (CPI) increased 0.4% in December, bringing the year-ago inflation rate up from 6.8% to 7.0%, which will be the highest headline print since June 1982 when the Fed Funds rate was in the double digits.
While energy prices had been jumping in earlier months, JPMorgan slook for the energy CPI to fall 1.7% in December based on weakening in a variety of related price measures (that will promptly be reversed in January when energy prices jumped again). But even with energy prices down in December, a 0.7% increase in food prices and a 0.5% increase in core prices (ex. food and energy) should push headline inflation higher in December.
For the core index, consensus looks for a 0.5% increase, which should push year-ago inflation up from 4.9% in November to 5.4% in December. Increases in the rent measures have been especially firm lately (just as we warned they would be) and economists expect December gains close to the increases from earlier months, with tenants rent up 0.41% and owners’ equivalent rent rising 0.44%
Meanwhile, vehicle prices have been surging in the CPI throughout much of 2021 and additional increases are expected in December, albeit with a slight moderation relative to the past few months. As such JPM forecasts that new vehicle prices increased 0.5% in December while used vehicle prices jumped 2.4%.”
In its snap preview, Deutsche Bank writes that with y/y CPI set to touch 7% and core inflation come in near 5.4%, “these are ultimately not the kind of inflation numbers that will gently settle back near target, without both a huge favorable supply side reversal, and a very substantial suppression of demand that includes much tighter financial conditions that will have to include much higher real and nominal US yields.” Of course, much tighter financial conditions will also likely trigger a recession first we and then Jeff Gundlach suggested today. At the end of the day, however, the decision is entirely political: is Biden – and the Democrats – hurt more by soaring prices or by the risk of a market crash. We’ll know soon enough.
* * *
How will FX react to tomorrow’s CPI print? According to DB macro strategist Alan Ruskin, as per Figure 1, the two most recent CPI reports where core came in largely as expected (the release for November and September), saw the USD weaken moderately. This is one indication that going into the recent CPI releases, the market has tended to fear larger than expected core CPI numbers, and shows some relief if it gets “as expected” data.
Note the stock market has also exhibited this behavior of recording gains on as expected data for the September and November data released in October and December respectively. For the coming CPI number, there is again a high likelihood of the market exhibiting “a relief” response if the data comes in as expected at 0.5% for core. Note that in terms of the 0.5% core median, the distribution skews slightly more to 0.4% than 0.6%.
For broader FX context, going into the data, the USD’s performance so far in 2022 has been very disappointing (as discussed earlier today when we framed the latest market conundrum). US yields and spreads have generally moved in favor of the USD. All of EUR-USD 2y nominal, 2y real, 10y nominal and 10y real spreads have moved in favor of the USD year to date by 11bps, 15bps, 9bps, and 7bps respectively. Dec ’22 fed fund futures has moved 12bps in favor of the USD. Some of the spread adjustment in favor of the USD represents an unwind from late 2021 spread moves in favor of the EUR when the ECB briefly came into the spotlight. Either way, the USD performance has been a disappointment, and we ended Tuesday’s session knocking on the DXY technical floor at 95.50. The danger is even on as expected CPI data, the USD breaks to the downside and only finds its footing multi-week, on further evidence that the Fed will still leapfrog these readjusted rate expectations, in the next dance between the market leading the Fed, and the Fed then leapfrogging the market, signaling still higher rates.
* * *
A slightly different perspective comes from Bloomberg’s Vincent Cignarella, who suggests ignoring the (soraing) year-over-year inflation data (we know it will be plus or minus 7%) and to instead focus on month-over-month. According to Cignarella, “what investors need to follow is where is inflation going now, not the trend from a year ago. The forecast for this week is for some good news for bond bulls, but not so much for stocks.”
The problem is that while inflation could roll over in the the next few months, earnings (on a 3-month moving average) appear to not be keeping pace. And while bonds would like see a moderation in inflation, without wages keeping pace, it’s difficult to see equities rallying as lower wages implies lower earnings according to the Bloomberg strategist. .
Finally, if indeed the CPI numbers are truly “brutal” and well above consensus expectations, the BLS has already signaled what the next step will be: as we asked one month ago in “And Just Like That, Inflation Is About To Disappear?”, the BLS is about to make some adjustments to its CPI basket weights…
… and we are 100% confident the adjustments won’t make inflation appear any higher than it already is.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 21:24 - Common Office Desk Phone Could Be Leaking Info To Chinese Government, Govt Report Alleges
Common Office Desk Phone Could Be Leaking Info To Chinese Government, Govt Report Alleges
A major Chinese phone maker could be putting U.S. consumers, companies, and even national security data at risk, and a U.S. senator wants to know what the Commerce Department is going to do about it.
As DefenseOne first reported, in a Sept. 28 letter obtained by Defense One, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., described a report that “raises serious concerns about the security of audio-visual equipment produced and sold into the U.S. by Chinese firms such as Yealink.”
Yealink doesn’t have the name recognition of the controversial Chinese telecom giant Huawei, but its phones are widely installed across the United States, including in government agencies. In September, Yealink and Verizon announced plans to sell “the nation’s first 4G/LTE cellular desk phone.”
In the letter, Van Hollen asked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo whether her agency is aware of the report by Chain Security, a Virginia-based company that analyzes electronics for security. He asked whether she considers its analysis credible, and if so, what she wants Commerce to do about it.
Many of the security issues raised in the report are similar to those that the U.S. government has had for years about Huawei. In essence, there are a number of big—but possibly unintentional—security flaws that an adversary could use to steal data. But with the Yealink T54W phone in particular, there are also some concerning features that are clearly built in on purpose.
The report pointed to the Yealink software that connects each phone to the local network. Called the device management platform, or DMP, it allows users to make calls from their PCs and network administrators to manage the phones. But it also allows Yealink to secretly record those phone calls and even track what websites the users are visiting.
“We observed that if the phone is being managed by the device management platform, and if the user’s PC is connected to the phone in order to access a local area network, it’s collecting information about what you’re surfing” on your computer, said Chain Security CEO Jeff Stern. “The method of using the desktop IP phone such as the Yealink phone as an Ethernet switch to connect the PC to the local area network is a common business practice. The administrator on that platform can also initiate a call recording without the user’s knowledge…What they do is they issue a command to the phone to record the calls.”
Stern clarified that “this feature is intended for use by an enterprise customer’s employee or representative. However, every system has a Superuser Administrator, or SYSADMIN. In these types of systems, the SYSADMIN typically has access to everything. Some modern systems, especially after Snowden, deny this capability to the SYSADMIN. But we need to assume that this is not the case here and that the Yealink DMP SYSADMIN is in China.”
Chain Security’s report notes that Yealink’s service agreement requires users to accept China’s laws, while “a related set of service terms allows the active monitoring of users when required by the ‘national interest’ (this means the national interest of China).”
Stern also noted that the phone also doesn’t use digital certificates to prevent unauthorized changes to its software. That makes it far easier for attackers to compromise the data on the phone and potentially even the entire network it’s connected to, without attribution to Yealink. “Without some sort of monitor watching what’s going on on the phone you wouldn’t know this firmware is on there and it can do anything you want in terms of surveilling your network and the subnet. The scenario we worry about with a device like this is that it will surveil your network and then exfiltrate…essentially your network architecture or your network implementation.”
The lack of a firmware signature requirement isn’t exactly unheard of. Stern called it an “old mistake.” But he said, “There’s no reason that old mistakes like this should continue to be there. Like, this is bad.”
A Verizon spokesperson said Yealink’s DMP “has been built to meet the custom requirements of Verizon” and that the customization was related to “security; feature management exposure to the devices through the DMP; firmware management and remote diagnostics.”
That response left Stern with more questions. “Who is doing the firmware customization? Does [Verizon] have a license to modify the source code of the firmware? Does [Verizon] plan to do penetration testing on the firmware before releasing it to their users? Does [Verizon] do source code security analysis on all firmware that it receives from Yealink?”
Stern also found that the phone exchanges encrypted messages with a Chinese-based cloud server, Alibaba Cloud, multiple times a day. You cannot program the phone not to do that. To stop it, you have to go to the enterprise’s network router and prohibit the exchange. But if you didn’t know that the phone was doing it in the first place, there’s little that you can do to stop it.
There’s also a specialized microprocessor unit from a Chinese chip maker called Rockchip. Of course, Chinese chips are in all sorts of devices and security experts can test most of them for bugs. But this one hasn’t gone through that same testing because, says Stern, Rockchip designed it specifically for Yealink. “This one is clearly a specialized product, based on the model number developed for Yealink and there’s no documented vulnerabilities to mitigate against. Except there are vulnerabilities, right? Because everything has vulnerabilities. It’s just no one is reporting on it because it’s a specialized chip,” he said.
That doesn’t mean that something is wrong with the chip, exactly, but it hasn’t received the same sort of scrutiny that other, more widely distributed components do receive.
One telecom industry expert who is familiar with the report, but did not help write it and has no affiliation with Chain Security, described the firm as reputable. The expert didn’t endorse or dispute any of the report’s findings but said that the language in Yealink’s service agreement alone was enough to warrant a review by the government. “The fact that you [meaning Yealink] are bound by Chinese law, that is something the government needs to know.”
If the Commerce Department investigates the report’s concerns and finds them valid, Yealink might find themselves on a path similar to that of Huawei, placed on a list of untrustworthy technologies that government customers are not allowed to purchase. The industry expert said there was no set process or timeline for such determinations to occur.
Stern said he believed that Yealink phones were in government offices, since the government market for IP phones is roughly $300 million, by his analysis, and Yealink is one of the top ten providers. A web search shows Yealink manuals uploaded for reference to the websites of many local, state, and federal agencies.
Van Hollen’s office didn’t provide any additional detail on why they had sent the letter to the Commerce Department. A Van Hollen spokesperson said that “the letter really speaks for itself — the Senator is simply seeking more information.”
On Dec. 28, the Commerce Department responded to Van Hollen in a separate letter obtained by Defense One. “We take these matters seriously,” wrote Wynn W. Coggins, Acting Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Administration. “The Department of Commerce shares your concerns about the security of the Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS) supply chain and the threats to that supply chain posed by our foreign adversaries and is actively working to address those concerns.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 21:05 - China Inflation Pressures Slow As Commodity Crunch Eases
China Inflation Pressures Slow As Commodity Crunch Eases
Thanks to various measures by the government to increase supplies of commodities (and simultaneously crack down on speculation), Chinese inflation pressures eased significantly in December.
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Chinese producer prices rose 10.3% YoY, slowing dramatically from November’s 12.9% and well below economists’ forecasts of a 11.3% gain.
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Chinese consumer prices increased just 1.5% YoY, down from 2.3% in November and also lower than an expected 1.7% gain.
The drop in PPI largely reflects a dramatic easing of commodity price pressures
And as PPI compresses relative to CPI, margin pressures may ease modestly…
And push Industrial Profits down even further…
Notably, food prices fell in December, with pork prices dropping almost 37% and vegetable price gains slowing.
However, this easing of inflationary pressures may itself be transitory as China’s “ZeroCOVID” policy means strict mobility restrictions are widened to contain the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant, temporarily driving prices up due to supply-side pressures, compounded by the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays will also see a surge in demand for staple foods and thus higher prices.
Additionally, the drop in inflation may offer Beijing more confidence in unleashing a more broad-based stimulus to bail out its property developers (or more likely the actual homeowners).
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 21:01 -
- Chicago Mayor Gets COVID After Striking Deal With Teachers To Return To Classrooms
Chicago Mayor Gets COVID After Striking Deal With Teachers To Return To Classrooms
After a week-long shutdown, Chicago Public schoolteachers will finally return to their posts on Wednesday after reaching a deal with City Hall.
The shutdown, which had returned the nation’s third-largest school system to remote-only education after the Chicago Teachers Union voted to refuse to return to the classroom unless proper safety protocols were implemented. The shutdown has lasted almost exactly a week already.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the deal with the Chicago Teachers Union on Monday that would return students to classrooms on Wednesday. The deal came after the Illinois House of Delegates voted to suspend the union’s remote action, which city hall had blasted as an illegal work stoppage.
“No one is more frustrated than I am,” Mayor Lightfoot said after the deal was reached. She added: “I’m glad that we’re hopefully putting this behind us and looking forward. But there does come a point when enough is enough.”
By the looks of it, the “anti-science” teachers union got most of what it wanted. The agreement includes metrics on when a classroom or a school should go remote, enhances testing, and increased contact tracing. The union has insisted the city didn’t do enough to provide enough testing and vaccination opportunities.
“I am not going to say anyone in our team feels this is a home run,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey during a separate press conference. He added that the deal moves the union toward as much as it could get for now and its members worked hard without pay.
A resolution to the conflict came after the Biden administration urged Lightfoot and the union to reach a deal.
“The president’s been very clear, as we have been clear: We are on the side of schools being open,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said earlier on Monday, when asked about the standoff in Chicago.
This latest battle between city hall and the teachers follows the union’s longest strike since 1987 in 2019, which was ordered to demand higher pay as well as more nurses and social workers in schools. And in early 2021, the union’s caused a delayed and phased-in return to school as it battled with city hall for resources and demanded certain protocols for students.
“I’m hopeful that this is the end, at least for this school year,” Lightfoot said, adding that the agreement takes the district through the end of summer school. “I’m hopeful that we will have a stable, uneventful rest of the school year.”
But just as this problem ended, another has reared its head for Mayor Lightfoot: she tested positive for COVID on Tuesday, meaning it would have been pretty difficult to continue negotiations, anyway.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tested positive for COVID-19, her office announces. She encourages people to get vaccinated and boosted pic.twitter.com/DFs3ZUxZDR
— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) January 11, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Of course, Lightfoot’s sickness is just the latest example of a ‘breakthrough’ infection.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 20:45 - Beef Prices Jump As Omicron Spread Sickens Meat Plant Workers
Beef Prices Jump As Omicron Spread Sickens Meat Plant Workers
The COVID-19 Omicron variant’s spread among U.S. meatpacker workers is threatening beef output and raising prices, according to Bloomberg.
New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows beef output last week dropped 5.3% YoY, and wholesale prices jumped 1.3% on Monday, the most significant increase since August.
Rising meat prices have been the Biden administration’s core focus as food inflation is a big concern for working poor Americans. Biden’s polling data is near an all-time low as inflation wipes out wage gains.
The administration has blamed the meat industry for price-gouging. Still, it appears they have very little knowledge or are unable to or unwilling to admit problems actually driving inflation in the industry, which is related to labor issues.
“The beef market is finding some strength because you’re having trouble with absentee workers,” Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities Inc. in West Des Moines, Iowa, told Bloomberg by phone.
Recently absenteeism at processing, packaging, and distribution of meat plants has recorded around 8%, up from 4-5%, said Mark Lauritsen, vice president of meatpacking at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, representing thousands of plants employees.
“Meat plants don’t tend to be as bad as the general population,” Lauritsen said, adding that many meat workers are fully vaccinated and kept absenteeism relatively low.
However, the spread of the highly contagious omicron virus variant that can infect fully vaccinated people has begun to sicken workers from meatpacking plants to supermarkets. It is producing supply problems in the new year.
Cargill Inc., a top U.S. meatpacker, said it was experiencing a rise in infections at its plants, though all the plants are still operating.
Other food makers, such as Conagra Brands Inc. and Campbell Soup Co., are seeing upticks in absenteeism among workers due to COVID.
Meanwhile, Americans begin to panic as many have taken to social media to voice their concerns about food shortages at supermarkets.
This all means that food inflation will remain elevated through 2022 despite Biden’s attempt to squash it ahead of midterms.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 20:25 - Who Is Ray Epps? DoJ Refuses To Say, Jan6 Committee Claims 'Not A Fed'
Who Is Ray Epps? DoJ Refuses To Say, Jan6 Committee Claims ‘Not A Fed’
In October of last year, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned AG Merrick Garland about a mysterious man, Ray Epps, instructing protesters to enter the US Capitol building on January 5, and who later shepherded crowds towards the Capitol on January 6.
I questioned Attorney General Garland about whether there were Federal Agents present on 1/6 and whether they agitated to go into the Capitol. Attorney General Garland refused to answer. pic.twitter.com/RHq3Yd2pbu
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) October 21, 2021
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The strange story of the mysterious man took some crazy turns, threatening to shatter the entire official narrative of the “Capitol Breach” and expose yet another dimension of proactive federal involvement in the so-called “insurrection” of January 6th; but until last week’s remembrance of the events of that day by the Democrats, Epps had faded back to the grey man… until today.
Once again, the mysterious man at the center of so much action during January 6th’s events is hitting the headlines as Ken Silva details at The Epoch Times, top federal law enforcement officials have declined to answer numerous questions about Ray Epps, the Arizona resident captured on video encouraging Jan. 6 protestors to breach Capitol Hill.
Controversy has surrounded Epps in recent months due to questions about his possible connection to law enforcement. Despite video evidence of him making repeated calls for action, Epps has not been charged in relation to Jan. 6, and his photo has been removed from the government’s list of most wanted people from that event.
The Democratic-led House committee investigating Jan. 6 reportedly said Jan. 11 that it has interviewed Epps, and that Epps denied any connection to law enforcement.
But at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier that day, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) were unsuccessful in obtaining answers about Epps.
Cruz asked the FBI’s assistant director for national security, Jill Sanborn, 10 questions about Epps and other potential undercover feds, none of which received substantial answers.
Sanborn admitted that she is aware of Epps, but said she doesn’t have “specific background for him.”
When Cruz asked whether Epps worked with the FBI, Sanborn declined to answer—likewise for when Cruz asked about whether federal informants participated in the riots, encouraged the riots, or removed barriers.
“I cannot answer that,” Sanborn said to each query.
Cruz pressed further.
“Five seconds after Mr. Epps whispered to a person, that same person began forcibly tearing down the barricades. Did Mr. Epps urge them to tear down the barricades?” Cruz asked.
“Similar to the other answers, I cannot answer that,” Sanborn replied.
After Cruz, it was Cotton’s turn to take a crack at the issue. Cotton asked a similar line of questions, this time directed towards Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of DOJ’s national security branch.
Olsen said he wasn’t aware of any plain-clothes officers among the Jan. 6 crowd, and that he didn’t know whether any undercover agents entered the Capitol.
The lack of information irked Cotton.
“Your answers are all, ‘I don’t know,’” Cotton said. “Did you prepare for this hearing? Did you know it was happening before this morning?”
Olsen also said he didn’t have any information about Epps.
“This was a man on the most-wanted page for six months. Do you really expect us to believe that you don’t know anything about him?” Cotton asked.
“I simply don’t have any information at all,” Olsen responded.
When pressed further, Olsen said he couldn’t say how many rioters were arrested for crimes related to violence, or even name a single person from the government’s list of most wanted Capitol Hill rioters. This provoked further criticism from the Arkansas senator.
“This is a hearing to mark the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, and you can’t even tell us how many people have been charged with crimes of violence. Would you go into a briefing with the attorney general and not be able to answer such basic questions?” Cotton said.
“I guess we’re going to have to seek our answers elsewhere. This was not a stellar performance.”
Towards the end of the hearing, committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) entered into the record a fact-checking article from PolitiFact, which says there’s no evidence that Epps was a federal asset.
Durbin said he never heard of Epps before Jan. 11.
Epps, for his part, could not be reached for comment. His address is listed on public court records—Jan. 6 defendant Kelly Meggs has issued a subpoena for him to testify—but a number connected to that address appears to have been disconnected. Epps also had a number listed on the page for the Arizona Oath Keepers, but a call to that line went straight to Epps’ voicemail, which was full.
Epps gave an interview to The Arizona Republic last January. He reportedly said of his comments caught on video: “The only thing that meant is we would go in the doors like everyone else. It was totally, totally wrong the way they went in.”
Following the hearing, right-wing pundits took to Twitter to congratulate Cruz and Cotton for their questions. Cruz had been dragged through the coals by Fox News host Tucker Carlson a week earlier for referring to the Capitol Hill riots as “domestic terrorism.”
“Constructive criticism works,” said Darren Beattie, the author of the Revolver News articles on Epps.
The Jan. 6 Committee reportedly issued the following statement shortly after the hearing: “Committee is aware of unsupported claims that Ray Epps was an FBI informant based on the fact that he was on the FBI Wanted list and then was removed from that list without being charged.
“The Select Committee has interviewed Mr. Epps. Mr. Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency”
To which, none other than Glenn Greenwald had the perfect – if not very uncomfortable – retort:
This may be, but then why isn’t Epps among the more than 700 people charged in connection with 1/6 when there are multiple videos showing him doing far more than many if not most than those who have been charged? https://t.co/gL6ZeBhEv1
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 11, 2022
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So, once again we are left asking: who is Ray Epps?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 20:05 - China Halts Some US Flights As Omicron Wave Spreads
China Halts Some US Flights As Omicron Wave Spreads
The rate at which new infections of COVID-19 have spread worldwide is rapidly increasing, forcing China’s civil aviation regulator to suspend some flights from the US to Shanghai, according to Shanghai Daily.
Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said five flights to Shanghai operated by Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines, and China Eastern Airlines have been suspended beginning next week.
Over 50 passengers on these flights have tested positive since the end of 2021 at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said.
Among the most severely affected, Delta Air Lines Flight DL287 from Seattle to Shanghai will be suspended through the end of February.
Six travelers on the flight tested positive at the Pudong airport on January 1, while another 11 on the same flight tested positive on January 6.
American Airlines Flight AA127 will be put on hold for four weeks beginning January 24 after 10 passengers tested positive upon arrival at Pudong Airport on December 31.
Other flights, such as China Eastern’s MU588 from New York to Shanghai and United Airlines Flight UA857 from San Francisco to Shanghai, will be suspended for two weeks beginning next week. -Shanghai Daily
CAAC further explained that flight suspensions would end if an airline’s inbound passengers all test negative for three weeks. Then it would be allowed to add two flights per week.
The move comes as the US faces a surge in Omicron infections. New cases are set to triple last year’s quarter-million daily caseload. The seven-day average is around 704k.
Since the virus pandemic began, China and the US have slapped each other with flight restrictions to minimize the spread of the virus.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 19:45 - Biden's Education Secretary Allegedly Requested 'Domestic Terrorism' Letter From School Boards Group
Biden’s Education Secretary Allegedly Requested ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Letter From School Boards Group
Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Newly surfaced emails suggest that the U.S. Department of Education might have played a more important role than previously thought in the creation of a highly controversial letter, which likened concerned parents to domestic terrorists.
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona answers questions during the daily briefing at the White House on Aug. 5, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) In a letter (pdf) sent to President Joe Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) characterized disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime.” The organization also urged the federal government to invoke counterterrorism laws to quell “angry mobs” of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for teaching Marxist critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions such as mask mandates on their children.
Just five days later, on Oct. 5, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to help address an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders. The memo remains in effect, despite the NSBA having since apologized for and rescinded the letter.
According to email exchanges obtained by advocacy group Parents Defending Education (PDE), the NSBA letter appears to be a response to a request for information by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
On Oct. 5, NSBA board member Marnie Maldonado sent an email (pdf) to fellow board member Kristi Swett, asking her whether the NSBA had gone through all the correct procedures before sending the letter to Biden.
“I am very concerned about the process by which the statement was made and the tone that essentially allowed the White House to direct the Attorney General to consider members of our community ‘domestic terrorists,’” Maldonado wrote, adding that she wanted the NSBA “to focus on civility.”
In response, Swett said she agreed that there were “communication issues” within the NSBA. She also mentioned that Chip Slaven, then-interim director of the NSBA, “told officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cordona [sic].”
In an interview with Fox News, PDE President Nicole Neily indicated that the letter Cardona allegedly requested and the “domestic terrorism” letter are the same thing.
“Should this allegation be true, it would reveal that this administration’s pretextual war on parents came from the highest levels,” Neily told Fox News.
“Attorney General Merrick Garland unequivocally stated that he based his memo on the NSBA’s letter—which in turn mobilized the FBI and U.S. attorneys,” she said. “If Secretary Cardona was truly involved in this ugly episode, it is a significant breach of public trust, and he should be held accountable.”
The new information comes amid questions over the Biden administration’s involvement in the creation of the NSBA letter, which still serves as the basis of a series of actions taken by the Justice Department.
According to internal files leaked to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division has created a new “threat tag” titled “EDUOFFICIALS,” and directed agents to apply the tag to all “investigations and assessments of threats” relating to school boards.
“This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents,” Jordan said in a letter to Garland. “The FBI’s actions were an entirely foreseeable—and perhaps intended—result of your October 4 memorandum.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 19:25 - China Auto Sales Rise 4.5% In 2021, Tesla Sells Record 70,602 Vehicles In December
China Auto Sales Rise 4.5% In 2021, Tesla Sells Record 70,602 Vehicles In December
New energy vehicles continue to steal the show in China, with sales totalling 2.99 million units for 2021, according to newly released data from China’s Passenger Car Association.
2021 battery electric vehicle sales led the charge, according to Bloomberg, with sales up 168.6% to 2.44 million units.
China’s Passenger Car Association said that overall passenger vehicle sales finished the year at 20.5 million units, up 4.5% for the year.
Shares of Tesla higher in pre-market trading on Tuesday after it was announced the EV maker sold 70,602 cars in China during December. This marks a 34% sequential rise in sales, according to Bloomberg data, and a record sales month for Elon Musk’s automaker in China.
The overall rise in vehicles sales for 2021 in China comes after a torrid November, where we noted weeks ago that sales fell for the seventh straight month in November. Sales were down 9.1% from the year prior as the industry continued to struggle with what is now becoming a year’s long semiconductor shortage.
The country posted total sales of 2.52 million vehicles in November, once again led by sales of new energy and electric vehicles.
CAAM spokesperson Chen Shihua commented last month: “Consumer acceptance of new energy vehicles continues to rise. The market has shifted from policy-motivated to demand-driven.”
Recall, we wrote in September that the heads of many auto manufacturers have suggested that the semi shortage “may not just disappear” in 2022.
Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess said on Bloomberg TV in September: “Probably we will remain in shortages for the next months or even years because semiconductors are in high demand. The internet of things is growing and the capacity ramp-up will take time. It will be probably a bottleneck for the next months and years to come.”
Ola Kallenius at Daimler and Oliver Zipse of BMW also added to the pessimism. Kallenius said that the shortage “may not entirely go away” in 2022, according to Bloomberg. Zipse said there could be another 6 to 12 months left in the shortage.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 19:05 - Bill Gates Flip Flops After Turning Omicron 'FUD' Up To '11'
Bill Gates Flip Flops After Turning Omicron ‘FUD’ Up To ’11’
After initially turning the “FUD” dial up to ’11’ in response to the initial reports and data about the omicron variant, Microsoft founder and billionaire wannabe global vaccine czar Bill Gates has apparently had a change of heart.
Gates on Tuesday joined Professor Devi Sridhar, a professor and chair of global health policy at the University of Edinburgh, for a Twitter discussion about the COVID pandemic.
Following a few questions about vaccines where Gates seems to actually acknowledge their shortcomings for once, Gates tells Dr. Sridhar that after an omicron wave has subsided, the rest of the year should see far fewer cases and deaths, leaving COVID to retreat to the intensity of a bad flu.
“Once Omicron goes through a country then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases so Covid can be treated more like seasonal flu.”
A more infectious variant is “not likely,” according to Gates, although he acknowledges that the world has been “surprised a lot” before, and that the WHO is already hard at work trying to prepare for the “next” pandemic.
Final question- what everyone wants to know -> how and when will the pandemic be over? Does omicron show that we can ‘live with COVID’? Or are other dangerous variants around the corner in 2022?
— Prof. Devi Sridhar 🌈 (@devisridhar) January 11, 2022
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As countries experience their Omicron wave health systems will be challenged. Most of the severe cases will be unvaccinated people. Once Omicron goes through a country then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases so Covid can be treated more like seasonal flu.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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.@DrTedros has started the conversation about how we avoid the next pandemic which is important. I appreciate your work on this. We can do a lot better next time!!#
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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Circling back to the beginning of the conversation, Dr. Sridhar asks Gates what would make the “biggest difference” to ending the COVID pandemic? To our surprise, Gates acknowledged that better vaccines would make the biggest difference.
To kick-off the conversation with @BillGates, what scientific or tech breakthrough would make the biggest difference now to ending the COVID pandemic?
— Prof. Devi Sridhar 🌈 (@devisridhar) January 11, 2022
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The vaccines we have are missing two “key things”: 1) they don’t actually do much to prevent the spread of the virus, and 2) their duration is “limited”.
The vaccines we have prevent severe disease and death very well but they are missing two key things.
First they still allow infections (“breakthrough”) and the duration appears to be limited.
We need vaccines that prevent re-infection and have many years of duration.#
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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Of course, this isn’t the first time that Gates has expressed constructive criticism about his beloved vaccines.
The conversation takes an almost humorous turn when the doctor asks Gates about the “obstacles” to “global vaccination access?”.
Agree 100%- next gen vaccines with sterilising immunity. 2nd question: What are the current challenges in reaching global vaccination access? What are the obstacles?
— Prof. Devi Sridhar 🌈 (@devisridhar) January 11, 2022
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Gates offers his usual boilerplate reply. But we would like to remind readers – before they simply and uncritically swallow this – that the biggest obstacle to global vaccine access just might be Bill Gates himself, since the Microsoft billionaire became perhaps the biggest opponent of the “open vaccine” movement which demanded that companies like Pfizer and Moderna make their vaccine creations open source for all countries to try and produce, instead of coveting the recipes and charging top dollar, ensuring the developing world would be last in line, only after the developed west has gotten its fill of boosters.
During 2021 the supply of vaccines was limited and they mostly went to wealthy countries. Now we have a lot of supply overall and the problems are logistics and demand. The health systems in developing countries are a limiting factor.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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mRna vaccines still can’t meet all the demand so figuring out who gets what is complicated.#
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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And when the good doctor brings up the question of vaccine “access”, Gates started talking out of both sides of his mouth.
There’s been a lot of discussion on responsibility of pharma companies like Pfizer/Moderna for access. What is the role of these companies in ensuring pricing and availability esp in low and middle income contexts?
— Prof. Devi Sridhar 🌈 (@devisridhar) January 11, 2022
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When we have adequate supply then tiered pricing is used where the rich countries pay a lot more than middle income and low income pay the least which is funded by @gavi. When supply is limited rich countries have to not outbid the others so governments are key to this. #
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
Suddenly, deep in the twitter thread, Gates touched a nerve – especially considering what’s going on in Australia regarding the saga of unvaccinated tennis pro Novak Djokovic. Asked what countries could have done to be better prepared, Gates appeared to endorse the “COVID zero” strategies embraced by Australia and China.
A few countries like Australia moved fast to diagnose cases at scale and isolate people who were infected. They were able to limit deaths dramatically. Once the numbers get large in a country it is too late. So the first few months made a lot of difference.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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Also some countries did a better job of reducing mobility, using masks and protecting the elderly.
We weren’t prepared – no practice in advance.#
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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Do you think the world will come together to get ready for the next one? I hope so but I am not sure.#
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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Finally, an interview with Gates is never complete without a discussion of the role that online “misinformation” has played during the pandemic. Apparently, Gates is still dumbfounded by the notion that people think he’s conspiring to microchip them via the vaccines.
One major problem has been online misinformation on Facebook & other platforms around vaccines, masks and other interventions- how do we deal with this challenge? When expertise is neglected and conspiracy theories are spread as if they are truth?
— Prof. Devi Sridhar 🌈 (@devisridhar) January 11, 2022
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Trusted authorities like @WHO and @CDCgov need more resources to see the pandemic early (surveillance) and to communicate better. Social media got behind on trying to get factual information out – there will be a lot of debate about how to do better on that…
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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People like you and I and Tony Fauci have been subject to a lot of misinformation. I didn’t expect that. Some of it like me putting chips in arms doesn’t make sense to me – why would I want to do that?#
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
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Spoken like somebody who’s conspiring to microchip the population.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/11/2022 – 18:45
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