Today’s News 16th February 2022

• Nord Stream: The Geopolitics Of Keeping Germany 'Down', Russia 'Out', & Instability In Ukraine
  Nord Stream: The Geopolitics Of Keeping Germany ‘Down’, Russia ‘Out’, & Instability In Ukraine

  Authored by Alastair Crooke, former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum,

  It seems reasonable to expect we will have this crisis with us – in its various forms – for at least the next two years…

  

  Macron in a remarkably frank interview with a French Journal put his finger on the main structural problems facing the EU: He lambasted the fact that the EU Council (and other EU states) had vetoed the earlier French-German proposal for a Russia-EU summit. The consequences to this omission, he said starkly, was that: ‘Others’ were talking to the Russians on the behalf of the EU. It’s not hard to surmise that he is implying that U.S. ‘interests’ (whether directly or via NATO ventriloquism) were the ones doing the talking. And that ‘Europe’ had lost its voice.

  This is not simply a case of wounded amour propre by the French Jupiterian leader. It is rather, that some West European leaders (ie. the Carolingian Axis), belatedly have awoken to the realisation that the whole fake artifice of the ‘imminent Russian invasion’ of Ukraine is about corralling European states back into bloc (NATO) discipline. Macron – to give him his due – showed by his remarks at the Moscow press conference that he understood that silence at this crucial moment could define Europe for the next decades – leaving it bereft of the autonomy (let alone any modicum of sovereignty) that Macron so much wants for Europe.

  The account of Macron’s press conference after his long tête-à-tête with Putin represents the contortionism of a French President unable to explicitly diss the dominant Anglo-American narrative on Ukraine, whilst saying – in barely coded language – that he was at one with Russia on all its complaints about the failed European security architecture, and the real risks of its toxicity for Russia that could lead to war in Europe.

  Macron explicitly said that new security arrangements in Europe are absolutely needed. (In spite of his care not to poke the U.S. in the eye, he was clearly signalling a non-NATO ‘new’ arrangement). He also flatly contradicted the Washington narrative, saying that he did not believe Russia had an intent to invade Ukraine. Adding that in respect to NATO expansion, mistakes had been made.

  Macron, in short, came out at complete odds with the Biden narrative of imminent war. He clearly risks an outpouring of Anglo-U.S. and some European wrath for unreservedly taking on board Putin’s ‘not an inch’ stance of full Kiev compliance with Minsk, and a complete settlement for Donbass, as his own. The French President subsequently travelled to Kiev to shore up the ceasefire on the Contact Line. Predictably, the Anglo press is now hailing Minsk II as a weapon being held to the head of Kiev – precisely loaded to fracture the state and trigger a civil war.

  Macron, from his comments, seemingly understands that the Ukraine crisis – through posing grave risks war inside Europe – paradoxically does not lie at the heart of the Carolingian fears.

  Strikingly, China is saying the same explicitly: The authoritative Global Times in an editorial warns that the U.S. is instigating conflict in Ukraine in order to tighten bloc discipline – to corral European States back into the U.S.-led fold. No doubt, China makes the connection that Ukraine provides the perfect pivot for shepherding Europe towards America’s next stage of requiring a united front with the U.S. for the later task of barricading-in China, behind her borders.

  In play, therefore, are key decisions that will define Europe for the future. On the one hand, (as Pepe Escobar noted some two years ago), “the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass à la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history – switching world power in favour of these three great powers, and against Anglo-Saxon sea power”.

  And on the other hand, NATO was conceived, from the outset, as a means of Anglo-American control over Europe and more precisely for keeping Germany ‘down’, and Russia ‘out’ (in that old axiom of western strategists). Lord Hastings (Lionel Ismay), NATO’s first Secretary General, famously said that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.

  This mindset lingers on, but the formula has acquired today a greater import, and a new twist: To keep Germany ‘down and price uncompetitive’ versus U.S. goods; to keep Russia ‘out’ from being Europe’s source of cheap energy; and to keep China ‘fenced out’ from EU–U.S. trade. The aim is to contain Europe firmly within America’s narrowly defined economic orbit and compelled to forgo the benefits of Chinese and Russian technology, finance and trade – thus helping towards achieving the aim of barricading China within its borders.

  Largely overlooked is the geo-political import: that China, for the first time, is directly intervening (taking a very clear and powerful stance) on a matter central to European affairs. In the longer term, this suggests that China will be taking a more politically orientated approach to its relations with European states.

  In this context, at the Biden and Olaf Scholtz’s press conference in Washington this week – lit up, in flashing neon lights, for all to see – Biden literally bullied Germany into a commitment to scrap Nordstream 2 (should Russia invade Ukraine), reflecting Washington’s aim to keep Germany on the leash of bloc discipline. He effectively said that if Scholtz doesn’t bin Nordstream, then he, Biden, would do it: “I can do it”, he underlined.

  Yet, the moment he gives that undertaking, Germany’s little slice of sovereignty is gone – Scholtz yields it to Washington. Moreover, Macron’s aspiration to some wider euro-autonomy is gone too, for without French and German policy alignment, EU ‘pretend sovereignty’ is gone. Moreover, if Nordstream is binned, EU energy security is blown away. And with little real alternative supply, the EU is nailed for good to expensive U.S. LNG dependency (with the likelihood of gas price crises at home, too).

  It is not clear (and a likely source of anxiety for Macron), whether Germany’s refusal to give Biden his desired Nordstream ultimatum represents any meaningful reserve of Euro-sovereignty at all. What would happen were Washington to incite the Ukrainian militia ‘crazies’ into some outrage, or into a false flag attack that triggers mayhem?

  Would Scholtz be able to hold his Nordstream ‘line’ in the ensuing frenzy that the Anglo-axis would whip up? The little space which Macron has been trying to free-up in order to resolve the Ukraine crisis, would evaporate in the moment.

  All this underlines what a narrow ‘line’ Macron is trying to walk: Were Schulz ‘to cave’ over Nordstream, Macron’s aspirations to re-shape Europe’s security architecture inevitably would be perceived in Moscow – though laudable – as hollow for their lack of any real European agency.

  And in the Ukrainian particular, Macron’s room for manoeuvre to prevent a war in Europe would be attenuated, since only by Macron (backed by the EU), acting in lockstep with Putin, would there be a chance to compel Kiev to implement Minsk II.

  The list of Macron’s challenges do not end there: France has the EU rotating Presidency, but EU foreign policy requires unanimity amongst member-states. Can he get that? Will Team Biden become so angered at France playing the maverick, that Washington resolves to stick a spanner in Macron’s works?

  Biden needs a foreign policy achievement for his campaign into the Midterms. And 63% of Americans say they would support massive sanctions imposed on Russia, were Moscow to invade Ukraine. Biden is known to believe in the adage that ultimately all politics – including foreign policy – is subservient to domestic electoral needs. Heavily sanctioning Russia – with Europe acting in lockstep – is just the step that would likely be seen in the White House as giving his ratings a needed fillip. (And not unprecedented: Recall Bill Clinton, under pressure over the Lewinsky exposé, triggered the Balkan war to distract from his personal predicament).

  Not surprisingly, President Putin is cautious.

  Is Macron, who says he has consulted widely, speaking for the EU? And most important of all, where does Washington stand in this?

  The most significant point to grasp from the Putin–Macron episode is that it gave the lie to the idea that Moscow is somehow hoping to open negotiations with the West on secondary issues, as a possible gateway to Russia’s existential concerns. Russia is open to negotiations, but only in respect to Putin’s three red lines: No NATO (including stealth NATO) in Ukraine; no strike missiles on Russia’s border; and the roll-back of NATO to the lines of 1997. Putin did not give an inch on the latter; he gave not an inch either on Minsk as the only solution in Ukraine. Putin did not give at all the impression of a man liking negotiating for the sake of negotiating.

  Bottom line: No easy fixes. Even if conflict is frozen or paused over the short term, it will not hold longer-term, as the West refuses to acknowledge that Putin means what he says. This likely will only change through the sides’ experience of pain. The West, for now, sits sanguine in the belief that it has escalatory preponderance in the application of pain. We’ll see how true that proves to be.

  It seems reasonable to expect we will have this crisis with us – in its various forms – for at least the next two years. These political initiatives mark but the start of a drawn-out, high-stakes, phase of a Russian effort to shift the European security architecture into a new form which the West presently rejects. The Russian aim will be to keep the pressures, and even the latency, of war ever-present, in order to harass war-averse Western leaders to make this necessary shift.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 00:05

• Visualizing The World At War
  Visualizing The World At War

  May 8, 2021 marked 76 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe – VE Day.

  While the conflict which claimed millions of lives on European soil is firmly committed to the annals of history, Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that conflict in the East of the continent is still a harsh reality in the present day.

  Even before the recently increased risk of a Russian invasion, the Ukrainian crisis, ravaging the Donbass region of the country, had amassed a death toll above the 13 thousand mark.

  As data collection by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) shows, a substantial portion of the globe is still engulfed in some form of conflict.

  This infographic shows countries in which there have been reports of armed clashes involving state forces and/or rebel groups in 2022. Even as early as February 4, and using this simplified definition, the presence of war across the world is extensive.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Unlike the situations in Donbass and Syria, for example, not all conflicts fit the picture we may have in our minds when thinking of war.

  In Mexico in 2021 for example, ACLED recorded 6 armed clashes involving state forces. Each one though was a battle between different law enforcement entities – providing a snapshot of the ongoing fight against police corruption and the deep-seated influence of organized crime.

  So far for 2022, no such incidents have been recorded in the country.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 23:45

• How The CDC Abandoned Science
  How The CDC Abandoned Science

  Authored by Vinay Prasad via TabletMag.com,

  Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda…

  

  The main federal agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.

  Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it.

  In November 2020, a CDC study sought to prove that mask mandates slowed the spread of the coronavirus. The study found that counties in Kansas which implemented mask mandates saw COVID case rates start to fall (light blue below), while counties that did not saw rates continue to climb (dark blue):

  

  CDC.GOV

  The data scientist Youyang Gu immediately noted that locales with more rapid rise would be more likely to implement a mandate, and thus one would expect cases to fall more in such locations independent of masking, as people’s behavior naturally changes when risk escalates. Gu zoomed out on the same data and considered a longer horizon, and the results were enlightening: It appeared as if all counties did the same whether they masked or not:

  

  YOUYANG GU

  The CDC had merely shown a tiny favorable section, depicted in the red circle above, but the subsequent pandemic waves dwarf their results.

  In short, the CDC’s study was not capable of proving anything and was highly misleading, but it served the policy goal of encouraging cloth mask mandates.

  When it comes to promoting mask mandates in school, in October 2021 the CDC famously offered a comparison of masked and unmasked schools in Arizona’s Pima and Maricopa counties in their own journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The analysis claimed that schools with no mask requirement were 3.5 times more likely to experience a COVID outbreak when compared with schools that mandated masking. But the analysis did not adjust for rates of vaccination among either teachers or students. The paper also looked at two counties in Arizona with different political preferences, and thus did not separate mask mandates from other patterns of behavior that fall within partisan lines. Democratic voters, for example, are much more likely to embrace mask mandates and are more likely to otherwise curtail their behavior as they report greater overall concern about COVID. Elementary schoolchildren generally do better with COVID than high school kids, but the CDC’s analysis lumped all ages together, and might have been biased by the fact that mask mandates were more common at ages when outbreak detection occurs less often.

  These were only a few of the CDC paper’s problems. When the reporter David Zweig investigated it for The Atlantic, he found that the exposure times varied: The mask mandate schools were open for fewer hours per day, with less time for outbreaks to occur. Zweig also found that the number of schools included did not add up. He hypothesized that some schools conducting remote learning might have been wrongly included, but when he asked the paper’s authors to provide him a list of the schools, they didn’t. In short, the more one examined this study, the more it fell apart.

  Masking is not the only matter in which the CDC’s stated policy goal has coincided with very poor-quality science that was, coincidentally, published in their own journal. Consider the case of vaccination for kids between the ages of 5 and 11. COVID vaccination in this age group has stalled, which runs counter to the CDC’s goal of maximum vaccination. Interestingly, vaccinating kids between 5 and 11 is disputed globally; Sweden recently elected not to vaccinate healthy kids in this age group, and some public health experts believe that it would be preferable for kids to gain immunity from natural exposure instead. Stalling U.S. uptake therefore reflects a legitimate and open scientific debate, regardless of whether the CDC’s policy goal would like to consider it closed.

  Enter the CDC’s new study. Widely covered in news outlets, the January 2022 study claims that kids below the age of 18 who get diagnosed with COVID are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. “These findings underscore the importance of COVID-19 prevention among all age groups,” the authors write, “including vaccination for all eligible children and adolescents.” But a closer examination of the study again reveals problems.

  First, it does not adjust for body mass index. Higher BMI is a risk factor for COVID, prompting hospitalization and diabetes, and yet the CDC analysis does not adjust for weight at all. Second, the absolute risks the study finds are incredibly low. Even if the authors’ finding is true, it demonstrates an increase in diabetes of up to 6 in 10,000 COVID survivors. Third, the CDC’s analysis uses billing record diagnoses as a surrogate for COVID cases, but many kids had and recovered from COVID without seeking medical care. Without a true denominator that conveys the actual number of COVID cases, the entire analysis might be artifact. As the former dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey Flier told The New York Times, “The CDC erred in taking a preliminary and potentially erroneous association and tweeting it to specifically create alarm in parents.” Some might view it as a mistake, but after observing these matters for almost two years, I believe it was the entire point of the study: Alarm might boost flagging vaccine uptake in kids.

  (Already, a better study out of the United Kingdom finds no causal link between COVID and diabetes in kids.)

  Manufacturing alarm at the very moment an age or other demographic cohort is targeted for vaccination has become a pattern for the CDC. On May 10, 2021, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization for the 12- to 15-year-old cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine. On June 11, the CDC published a study in MMWR claiming to demonstrate rising hospitalization among this age group; widespread media coverage of the study quickly followed. But the absolute rates for this age group were, in reality, amazingly low: Less than 1.5 per 100,000, which was lower than they had been in the previous December. Meanwhile, a safety signal was being investigated—myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle—which was more common after the second dose, and reported to be as frequent as 1 in 3,000-6,000, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Other countries became reluctant to push two doses within the standard 21- to 28-day timeline for these ages. By July, the U.K. had decided against pushing vaccines for this cohort, a decision that was walked back only slowly.

  

  CDC.GOV

  The CDC was undeterred, and in recent weeks the agency’s director has started to push for more doses at these ages. Against the advice of an FDA advisory committee, Rochelle Walensky has moved forward with recommending boosters for 12- to 15-year-olds. This view differs from WHO guidance and that of other countries, including Canada, which is not authorizing boosters for healthy adolescents aged 12-17. But when it comes to vaccination, the CDC has a single policy: All Americans should get three doses, regardless of age or medical conditions. This is not science as such, but science as political propaganda.

  If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider a final example: the CDC’s near-total dismissal of natural immunity. Many other countries consider recovery from prior infection as a vaccination equivalent or better, an assumption that makes both medical and intuitive sense, but the CDC has steadfastly maintained that everyone needs the same number of vaccinations whether they have recovered from a COVID infection or not. This view is countered by data showing that vaccinating people who have recovered from COVID results in more severe adverse events than vaccinating people who have not had COVID.

  In order to bolster the claim that people who have recovered from COVID benefit from vaccination as much as those who never had it, the CDC published a fatally flawed Kentucky-based analysis. The August 2021 study compared people who had contracted COVID twice against those who had it just once, and concluded that those who had it once were more likely to have had vaccination. But the study could have easily missed people who had two documented cases of COVID but might have had severe underlying medical conditions—such as immunosuppression—that predisposed them to multiple bouts of infection in a short period. In addition, people who had COVID once and then got vaccinated might not have sought further testing, believing themselves invulnerable to the virus. The study did not adequately address these biases. Months later, the CDC published a stronger, cohort study showing clearly that natural immunity was more robust than vaccine-induced immunity in preventing future COVID hospitalizations, and moreover, that people who survived infection were massively protected whether vaccinated or not.

  But to listen to Walensky tell it, none of these complications even exist. On Dec. 10, 2021, she told ABC News that the CDC had seen no adverse events among vaccine recipients, and denied seeing any cases of myocarditis among vaccinated kids between 5 and 11. On that same day, however, data from her own agency showed the CDC was aware of at least eight cases of myocarditis within that age group, making her statement demonstrably false.

  So why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system. That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.

  Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic. Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure, because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science, perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at all.

  Ultimately, science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a chaotic, uncertain universe. Science itself is transcendent, and will outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred, or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is already cast.

  *  *  *

  Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 23:25

• Democrats Ask YouTube To Ban Ghost Gun Instructional Videos
  Democrats Ask YouTube To Ban Ghost Gun Instructional Videos

  Readers have been well informed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is on a mission this election year to attack the gun industry ahead of midterms to please the Biden administration’s anti-gun lobbyist and voters. We’ve told readers the Justice Department is preparing to release a new set of rules this spring to regulate so-called “ghost guns.” 

  Ahead of the ruling, the federal government is preparing to shut down law-abiding and freedom-loving Americans who are legally (for now) assembling ghost guns in their garages or basements and publishing videos on social media. These unserialized guns spark concern with the ATF because they cannot track them. 

  

  Bloomberg reports Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal, Bob Menendez, Chris Murphy, Cory Booker, and Ed Markey are calling on Silicon Valley’s Big Tech to censor anyone who posts a video of a ghost gun. The senators have explicitly called on YouTube to remove all users’ videos who post information videos on ghost guns, such as manufacturing and assembly. 

  “While we acknowledge and appreciate that YouTube has engaged with congressional staff about this problem and, in recent weeks, removed some of these videos, we are alarmed that an extensive amount of this dangerous content still exists on YouTube,” lawmakers told YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in a letter. They said the measures YouTube have already taken are “insufficient.” 

  Responding to the senators is Maryland-based (right outside of Washington, D.C.) gun advocacy group The Machine Gun Nest said, “of course, Democratic senators would be begging for more censorship of homemade firearms videos, even though the majority of these videos do not violate YouTube’s current terms of service.” 

  “This is similar to their approach for gun control in general, constantly moving the goalposts. The removal of YouTube videos does little to stop the production of homemade firearms… Silencing or de-platforming their opposition is akin to winning the argument. Unless blocks of aluminum, CNC machines, PLA plastic, and 3D printing are banned, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see the end of homemade firearms (just maybe on liberal-owned social media platforms).”

  Other Democratic lawmakers have shown little appetite for Biden’s gun-control legislation ahead of the midterms because it’s such a controversial issue. 

  Igor Volsky, the co-founder of Guns Down America, told Reuters that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer from New York had promised anti-gun violence lobbyist the Senate would vote on background checks legislation. Still, the bills have yet to make it to the floor. 

  “We’ve been promised by Senate Majority Leader Schumer as far back as March, April [of 2021] that there would be a vote during the summer, then it got pushed back even further. They’re using this familiar playbook of making all kinds of promises during the campaign and then fail to deliver anything when they’re in power,” Volsky said.  

  One of the main reasons why Biden’s gun-control legislation has become so unpopular among lawmakers is that progressive D.A.s across the country who favor decriminalization of petty crimes have transformed their counties and or cities into violent messes. Since the pandemic, people from both political parties have panic-bought guns and ammo as America transformed into what some describe as a ‘third world country.’ 

  The increasing support for guns has become so massive that more than 62.5% of all U.S. counties are covered by either state or county-level 2A gun sanctuary resolutions, ordinances, or laws. The number is increasing, and the data below is from September 2021. 

  

  … and this is why Beto O’Rourke backtracked last week from his 2019 comments that he would confiscate AR-15s. 

  So the attempt to de-platform ghost gun creators from YouTube will only drive these creators to conservative social media outlets as liberals, no pun intended, ‘shoot themselves in the foot’ by tackling such a controversial issue at the same time as their own policies have turned American cities into violent messes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 23:05

• North Korean Authorities Arrest Dance Tutor, Students For Practicing "Capitalist" Dance Moves: Report
  North Korean Authorities Arrest Dance Tutor, Students For Practicing “Capitalist” Dance Moves: Report

  Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

  North Korean authorities have reportedly arrested a dance tutor and several of her students for using foreign media to practice a “capitalist” dance routine, news outlet Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Friday, citing sources in the teacher’s neighborhood.

  

  A resident of the northwestern city of Pyongsong said on Jan. 31 that a dance instructor, who appears to be in her 30s, was caught teaching “foreign-style disco dances” to teenage students in Yangji-dong of Pyongsong City.

  In North Korea, anyone caught with large amounts of media from South Korea or the United States could face a life sentence or even a death penalty under the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act enacted in December 2020.

  While enforcement of the law is often lenient around Seollal, which refers to the Korean Lunar New Year, the Anti-Socialism Inspection Group has been particularly active in operating clampdowns this year, according to a source.

  “The Anti-Socialism Inspection Group, a joint operation of the State Security Department and the police, has been intensively cracking down on people for watching South Korean movies and distributing foreign media,” the resident told RFA.

  The source, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed that officers from the Anti-Socialism Inspection Group monitored the dance tutor’s residence in plain clothes for two days before conducting a raid.

  “At the scene of the crackdown on the dance instructor that day, a USB flash drive containing foreign songs and dance videos had been plugged in, next to the flatscreen TV,” the source said, adding that the flash drive was also seized during the raid.

  

  In this May 11, 2016, file photo, members of the Moranbong Band, North Korea’s most popular all-female pop group formed by leader Kim Jong Un, perform during a concert where high level officials, diplomats and foreign journalists were invited to watch, as part of celebrations on the conclusion of the ruling party congress in Pyongyang, North Korea.

  The dance instructor is believed to have been working at Okchon high school in Pyongsong with a monthly salary of 3,000 won ($2.50), before deciding to open a private dance academy in her house for middle and high school students.

  According to another source, the dance tutor charges around $10 per hour for a twice-weekly dance class. Most of her students come from wealthy families, which are often spared harsh punishment for minor transgressions.

  “However, since the Central Committee has ordered that those who violate the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act be severely punished regardless of their rank or class, the foreign dance instructor and students caught this time will not be spared from hard labor,” the source said.

  “Their parents are also likely to be punished by being forced to leave the party.”

  Meanwhile, a South Korean-based human rights group reported last year that at least seven people had been put to death for watching or distributing K-pop videos, or Korean popular music, since leader Kim Jong-un took power in 2011.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 22:45

• Breakthrough Research Finds Link Between 'Long COVID' And Vagus Nerve Damage
  Breakthrough Research Finds Link Between ‘Long COVID’ And Vagus Nerve Damage

  New research out of Israel has just confirmed that the puzzling long-COVID phenomenon, which has caused so much fuss around the world, might be caused by damage to one of the most influential nerves in the human body.

  For those among us who aren’t familiar with the vagus nerve, it’s the 10th cranial nerve, and the longest and most complex in that category. Still, repairing nerve damage will be essential since the nerve exerts control over the gastrointestinal tract, along with the face and chest.

  

  New research is set to be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases investigates the connection between post-COVID syndrome, also known as long COVID, and the vagus nerve.

  This ‘pilot study’ was authored by Dr. Gemma Lladós and Dr. Lourdes Mateu of the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital Badalona, Spain, and its findings will be presented at the congress, taking place between April 23-26 in Lisbon.

  The study suggests that vagus nerve damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 dysfunction could be responsible for many of the symptoms of long COVID, including persistent voice problems, difficulty swallowing, dizziness, abnormally fast heart rate – aka tachycardia – low blood pressure and digestive issues.

  Here’s more on the study’s findings from the Jerusalem Post:

  Long COVID is a condition characterized by persistent and continuous health issues caused by COVID-19 after the patient has recovered from the initial infections. It can affect nearly every organ in the body, as well as cause a range of mental health and nervous system disorders. Some of the most common symptoms of long COVID include fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, loss of smell and taste, and muscle weakness.

  In order to further understand the phenomenon, the researchers used imaging and functional tests, as well as a morphological and functional evaluation of the vagus nerve, in an assessment of long COVID patients presenting one or more signs of VND.

  Out of the 348 patients taking part in the study, two-thirds (228) had at least one symptom of VND among their long COVID symptoms. After the initial assessments were completed, further evaluations were conducted on a test group of 22 patients, all presenting VND symptoms.

  Tachycardia and dizziness were two of the most commonly-reported symptoms of long COVID.

  Of the 22 subjects analyzed, 20 were women with a median age of 44, and on average the symptoms had been present in the participants for 14 months.

  The most frequent VND symptoms presented were diarrhea (73% of subjects), tachycardia (59%), and dizziness, difficulty swallowing, and voice problems (45% each). An additional 14% of patients suffered from low blood pressure.

  All in all, 86% of the patients assessed had at least three different VND-related symptoms.

  While the findings were revelatory, opening up a new avenue of research for scientists inside and outside Israel, the dynamics driving the vagus nerve damage remain a mystery.

  As the exact cause of long COVID and the reason why symptoms present in such a varied way from patient to patient is not currently known, the study’s findings could impact and change the understanding and treatment of the condition significantly going forward.

  “In this pilot evaluation, most long COVID subjects with vagus nerve dysfunction symptoms had a range of significant, clinically-relevant, structural and/or functional alterations in their vagus nerve, including nerve thickening, trouble swallowing, and symptoms of impaired breathing,” summarized the study’s authors.

  “Our findings so far thus point at vagus nerve dysfunction as a central pathophysiological feature of long COVID.”

  But given the prevalence of long COVID this breakthrough will certainly be remembered as a relief for researchers and patients both.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 22:25

• An American Fight In Ukraine Brings Big Costs, No Benefits
  An American Fight In Ukraine Brings Big Costs, No Benefits

  Authored by Joseph Solis-Mullen via The Mises Institute,

  If there was one thing that predictably united the usually squabbling Roman elite, it was the emergence of a perceived threat to Rome’s Mediterranean and near-continental hegemony. To some degree, however difficult to calculate, it is impossible to deny that the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been responsible for the increasing polarization of American politics. Mikhail Gorbachev predicted as much as the Cold War neared its end, saying, “Our major secret weapon is to deprive you of an enemy.” Sure enough, their mortal foe vanquished, Republicans and Democrats set about fighting for position and privilege with an unconstrained vigor that over the course of thirty years led to the violation of many of the Republic’s so-called democratic norms long before Donald Trump became the 2016 Republican nominee for president.

  It should be no surprise, then, to find Republicans and Democrats trying to recapture some of that once celebrated bipartisanship by once again uniting to battle the next round of challengers to liberal capitalist hegemony. However, in this refight of the Cold War, now cast as “democracy versus authoritarianism,” the United States is starting from a far weaker relative position than it did in, say, 1950. In 1950, for example, its industrial output constituted half the world total. Also weighing in its favor, Europe at that time was completely dependent on the Americans, both economically and militarily, and so allowed Washington to, more or less, dictate a joint foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union at its discretion.

  Both of these conditions now fail to hold, and as military, economic, and diplomatic resources become scarcer for an America fighting obvious decline, avoiding unnecessary conflicts will be crucial to preserving the country’s existing status and prosperity. While transitional friction is bound to occur, and indeed there may be things worth fighting for, Ukraine isn’t one of them

  To highlight some of the various reasons why Ukraine represents a bad investment for the American people, it is helpful to compare it with another territorial question fraught with similar peril: Taiwan. This is particularly apropos given the joint statement issued by Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping this past week, which more or less formalized what had to that point been a tacit assumption: they will support one another’s desired adjustments to existing territorial bounds and geopolitical institutions.

  Setting aside the fact that Taiwan is party to a still ongoing, seventy-year civil war against mainland control and that America’s act of arming the separatist province is highly provocative and injudicious, the case for doing so, in realpolitik terms, is fairly coherent from the liberal imperialist and neoconservative perspectives: Taiwan forms part of a tight chain of islands penning in the Chinese navy and threatening its maritime supply chains; it is an ethnolinguistically homogeneous, high-performing democracy, and its high-tech exports form a critical component in Western supply chains; it hasn’t been ruled by the mainland in over a century and is buttressed by a ring of allies committed to maintaining its status quo independence.

  This last point is crucial, for whereas Europe has faltered over how to handle Russian revanchism, there is no such uncertainty among the leadership of Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines, Australia, and a host of others that China needs to be contained.

  Turning to the case of Ukraine, apart from relative European ambivalence Ukraine’s own comparative deficiencies throw the likely returns of defending it further into doubt: producing nothing the US needs, it is a corrupt and ethnolinguistically divided state, and shares a long and open border with Russia; it was part of the Soviet empire and for at least two hundred years before that had been acknowledged by various Western powers as the Russian Empire’s sphere of influence.

  

  While it is regular to hear those such as former US ambassador and Stanford professor Michael McFaul say that no Russian leader had ever raised any objection to North American Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion, this is verifiably false. Of course the Russians objected—that they often did so mutedly or ineffectively, as in the Balkans, was merely a function of Russia’s then relatively enfeebled state. But as early as 1995 then Russian president Boris Yeltsin issued a statement reaffirming Russia’s traditional right to a sphere of influence over its near abroad; and in 2007, following another round of NATO expansion eastward, Putin issued a memorable denunciation of the action at the Munich Security Conference, the meaning of which could not be mistaken—“Against whom is this expansion intended?” he rhetorically fulminated.

  Though the US and Russia jointly committed to observing and protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty in 1994 in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations subsequently ignored Yeltsin’s warnings of Russian prerogatives in the region and violated what many had taken to be an agreement that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east.” Following two full rounds of NATO enlargement, in 2008 the Bush administration twisted the arms of German and French leaders to get a soft public commitment about Ukraine’s future NATO membership. When the Obama administration subsequently supported the ouster of Russian ally Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the Kremlin responded by annexing Crimea—thus safeguarding the naval base it had leased from Ukraine since the country’s independence and preventing the Kremlin’s further loss of influence in Ukraine’s domestic politics.

  Since the 2012 elections that returned Putin to power, but especially since 2014 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Western audiences have been inundated with a litany of articles and books devoted to explaining the inevitability of an aggressive Putin on the march. The truth is that just like the arming of Taiwan, NATO expansion and support for the unconstitutional overthrow of Ukraine’s Russian-aligned president were reckless and injudicious acts that ignore likely long-term security implications in favor of short-term geopolitical and domestic gains. Further, it is evident that the apparently looming conflict between democracy and authoritarianism is a pretense, a rhetorical construction of Western military, security, academic, media, and political elites determined to maintain Western hegemony in the face of surging challengers. For instance, one can hardly fail to note that the theocratic and patriarchal dictatorship governing Saudi Arabia continues to count itself among America’s allies—this even as it continues to wage a brutal and illegal war on neighboring Yemen. So too does support continue to flow to Egypt, Jordan, Israel—et cetera.

  Liberalism as domestic policy is great, but as a foreign policy it is arguably the worst, for it implies that only democratically elected governments are truly legitimate, thereby serving as a pretense or temptation for conflict with otherwise distant great powers, while at the same time the blatant double standard that America applies when considering its strategic partnerships, and indeed many of its own actions, erodes American credibility as a purported moral force.

  Though the Biden administration has already ordered the deployment of US troops to Eastern Europe because of the potential for war between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, and has done little else otherwise to diffuse the conflict, what US policymakers should do in the interest of the American people is obvious: stay home, save lives. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 22:05

• Chipotle On Brink Of Guacamole Shortage After US Bans Mexican Avocados
  Chipotle On Brink Of Guacamole Shortage After US Bans Mexican Avocados

  Four days have passed since the United States suspended all imports of Mexican avocados following a federal inspector threatened at an avocado farm in the state of Michoacan, Mexico (the central hub of Mexican avocado production). Now one of the largest US Mexican fast-food chains could be on the brink of a guacamole shortage. 

  NYPost reports Chipotle Mexican Grill sounded the alarm on possible future supply disruptions of avocados in the coming weeks.

  “Our sourcing partners currently have several weeks of inventory available, so we’ll continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust our plans accordingly,” Chipotle’s CFO Jack Hartung said in a statement. He said the company is “working closely with our suppliers to navigate through this challenge.” 

  Hartung didn’t explain what supply distributions of avocados would mean for the company with nearly 3,000 US locations. The fast-food retailer was already dealing with some of the highest avocados prices, up 31% this year alone. 

  The price for a 20-pound box of avocados from the state of Michoacan was around $27. 

  

  Two decades of avocado prices show current prices are some of the highest ever for this time of year. And could be set to move higher, between the $30-$35 range if the import ban isn’t immediately lifted. 

  

  Chipotle has already raised prices to combat soaring food inflation. However, if the import ban remains in place, a shortage of guacamole could be seen as early March. There was no word if other fast food Mexican retailers such as Taco Bell, Qdoba Mexican Eats, Moe’s Southwest Grill, and Baja Fresh would experience similar issues. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 21:45

• Are They Finally Admitting Natural Immunity?
  Are They Finally Admitting Natural Immunity?

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  In late January, the CDC published a report that made what might have been regarded as a shocking claim. If you have had Covid, the CDC demonstrated in a chart, you gain robust immunity that is better than that of vaccination, especially concerning duration. 

  

  That should be nothing surprising. Brownstone has chronicled 150 studies making that point. What made this new chart different was that it came from the CDC, which has buried the point so deeply for so long as to amount to a near denial. 

  So there: the CDC says it. So nonchalant! So uneventful! 

  If people had understood this two years ago, plus been made more completely aware of the dramatic risk gradient by age and health, lockdowns would have been completely untenable. 

  The society-wide mandates and lockdowns depended on keeping the public ignorant on settled points of cell biology and immunology, plus pressuring social media companies to censor anyone who didn’t fall in line. Here we are all this time later and the truth is coming out. 

  Had the knowledge of risk gradients and immunities been in the forefront of policy makers’ minds – instead of wild fear and obsequious deference to Fauci – we would have focused on protecting the vulnerable and otherwise allowed society to function normally so that the virus would become endemic. We would not only have saved thousands of lives; we could have avoided the vast economic, educational, cultural, and public-health wreckage all around us. 

  Somehow at the time, that point was made unsayable for reasons on which we can only speculate. And yet today, the New York Times had said exactly this. In a piece by David Leonhardt called Protecting the Vulnerable, he writes:

  With the Omicron wave receding, many places are starting to remove at least some of their remaining pandemic restrictions. This shift could have large benefits. It could reduce the isolation and disruption that have contributed to a long list of societal ills, like rising mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime and, as Substack’s Matthew Yglesias has written, “all kinds of bad behavior.”

  At the same time, there remain those who are vulnerable and they deserve protection: “They include the elderly and people with immunodeficiencies that put them at greater Covid risk. According to the C.D.C., more than 75 percent of vaccinated people who have died from Covid had at least four medical risk factors.”

  You can read that again: unhealthy but vaccinated people still die. What these people need is to enjoy the protection of herd immunity, the point at which the virus exhausts itself in the face of widespread immunity. 

  If you have followed this debate, you know exactly the origin of that precise idea now being pushed in part by Leonhardt: The Great Barrington Declaration. This is the document on which Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci ordered a media hit back in October 2020. It advocated nothing more than traditional public health measures as a moderate solution between lockdowns and complete negligence of the virus threat. 

  As decent as this article is, it overlooks a huge issue, namely why would non-vulnerable populations be forced to get a non-durable vaccine with risks when natural immunity is a known option? Leonhardt doesn’t go there but he should have. 

  Today, even Anthony Fauci is singing a different tune. He told the Financial Times:

  “There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus,” he said. “But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the Covid restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.”

  Further: 

  As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”

  Again, this is straight out of the Great Barrington Declaration, almost to a word, but without acknowledgement. 

  There can be no question that early on in lockdowns, Fauci, the CDC, and the WHO all decided to bury the point that we would get to endemicity the same way we always have. 

  How did that happen? Paul Allan Offit is an epidemiologist who advises (or did advise) the Biden administration in the early days. He is not my favorite guy but, as things go, he is no Anthony Fauci. He seems sincere and intelligent. 

  Offit variously appears on podcasts. Last week, he let slip an astonishing thing. He said that early on in the pandemic, he met at the White House with Walensky, Fauci, Collins, and one other person. The topic was whether the Biden administration should recognize natural immunity to Covid — the most well-established fact about cell biology. He and one other person said absolutely. The rest said no. 

  Here is the remarkable clip.  

  How did the consensus against recognizing natural immunity to COVID arise? In a closed-door meeting described here by insider Paul Offit, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins simply decided against recognizing natural immunity—and that was that. “Consensus”pic.twitter.com/f8vcuf8y2I

  — Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) February 11, 2022

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

  Offit is fascinating in this interview because it was pretty clear to him that he was revealing something very important but he did not know whether this was going to be some kind of problem. He then proceeded to tell the story. He did not speculate about the reasons. He was smiling and laughing throughout the interview. 

  The immunity passports in place in three of the biggest American cities (though DC just repealed its own), the entire public sector, plus the attempt to impose them on the whole of the private sector, probably constitute the most invasive, aggressive, and controversial public policy since the Vietnam War draft. It all could have been fixed by a recognition of the immunological reality: the exposed and recovered are protected. That point of science was rejected by Fauci, Collins, and Walensky. The whole Biden administration went along. 

  We didn’t know until last week that this Offit meeting had even occurred. And surely this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more that time goes on, the more questions are piling up about this gang that wrecked liberty in the US after Inauguration Day 2021, a time when they could have reversed all the restrictions but instead went the other way. 

  Central to the concern here is what precisely happened in February 2020 to cause Fauci to forge plans to lock down the entire American economy for a virus that he previously said repeatedly could not be stopped. Why did he change his mind? We have plenty of evidence that his change of mind was related to his fear — real or imagined — that the pathogen was made in a lab and was leaked either deliberately or accidentally and that he would likely bear responsibility. Fauci and his friends were on burner phones for weeks and holding secret meetings. The HHS document ordering lockdowns were all forged in these weeks. 

  If the Republicans take back Congress, they are going to have a real time discovering the inner workings of the deep state here, if they find the courage to look deeply enough. That such an obvious and settled point of science became taboo for a time is truly a scandal for the ages. Now we know that it was a deliberate decision. Why? And why are we only now hearing about it, long after knowing this truth might have saved so much destruction? 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 21:25

• Tesla Receiving Competing Bids To Build A Second Factory In China: Electrek
  Tesla Receiving Competing Bids To Build A Second Factory In China: Electrek

  “There’s this place called Shanghai…”

  And now it looks like Tesla is getting ready to double down on its reliance on China. The EV maker is reportedly getting competing bids for a second Gigafactory in the country, according to a report by electrek this week. 

  Tesla has already said it expects to announce a new factory location this year. Now, speculation is running rampant that the company could be expanding its footprint in China. There were also rumors of another potential factory in Europe, but those rumors have failed to materialize into anything tangible. 

  But there’s now apparently tangible evidence that China is in the running for a new location. Tesla reportedly has provinces competing against each other to host the company, as it did before launching its initial Gigafactory in China. 

  

  Liaoning Province reportedly released documents over the last week that reference a potential Tesla factory project, electrek reported: 

  On February 11, Liaoning Province’s official Wechat account, “Liaoning Release,” published an article titled “Five Grasps of Dadong District of Shenyang City, Striving to be the Pioneer in Revitalization Development.” The report stated that Shenyang City is actively preparing to implement Tesla’s vehicle project.

  The blog notes that it is anything but a done deal and that the statement translates to something “aspirational” as opposed to definitive. The report also mentions Qingdao, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Hefei, Zhengzhou, Shenzhen, and Jinan as potential competing locations for another Tesla factory. 

  While electrek predicts that the company’s four existing locations/planned locations (Fremont, Shanghai, Texas and Berlin) “should push Tesla’s production capacity beyond three million vehicles annually by the end of next year”, the automaker’s “greater ambitions” could be helped along with additional factories. 

  “2022 is the year we will be looking at factory locations to see what makes the most sense, possibly with some announcement by the end of this year,” Musk said during the company’s latest earnings call. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 21:05

• The Game Theory Of Bitcoin, Part 2
  The Game Theory Of Bitcoin, Part 2

  Authored by Jeremy Garcia via Bitcoin Magazine,

  Read “A Look At The Game Theory Of Bitcoin,” the first part of this series, here.

  Thinking about the potential Bitcoin-oriented geopolitical moves to be made only shows the unlimited possibilities of Bitcoin’s game theory…

  

  In this article I will suggest potential routes for Bitcoin’s game theory to play out. So, what is game theory? In layman’s terms, if you are playing any game of strategy, whether it be chess, basketball, football, Battleship, Monopoly or checkers, any move you make in the game will have to be countered by your opponent. The strategic decisions that you and your opponent make will ultimately determine who wins and who loses the game. This is game theory in its most simplistic form.

  Undoubtedly, the countries with the highest inflation rates will adopt bitcoin first and will be the greatest beneficiaries. Countries like the U.S. may take a longer time, as they will still be hyperinflating their currencies with their powerful seigniorage they hold. When these superpowers do eventually adopt bitcoin, all the countries who adopted it first will get an economic boost and be lifted to a more even playing field with the most powerful countries. This is how powerful Bitcoin can be for a country who willingly accepts it.

  Small countries in Latin America, Africa and many other regions of the world whose money is collapsing will be anxiously and excitedly watching progress of bitcoin. They stand to benefit the most from it.

  All small countries will most likely continue to be bullied and belittled by the International Monetary Fund, central banks, G7 countries and other central authorities to not accept bitcoin in return for promises of “free money, protection and support.” These powerful entities will try everything in their power to prevent Bitcoin’s hope and prosperity from spreading because widespread Bitcoin adoption means their power will be gone forever. Central authorities up to this point have been ruling with fear, lies, fiat slave money and taxation. The U.S. chess pieces will continue to attack Bitcoin with lower Moody ratings and false narratives on countries who adopt her. The IMF could likely stop providing funds to the countries that accept this new technology’s power of hope and sound money. When the world sees the freedom that Bitcoin can offer them from the shackles of their dishonest rulers, many more places will embrace bitcoin. The darkness of the fiat world will be swept away and pure monetary light will shine forth from the beacons of Bitcoin.

  One of Bitcoin’s greatest game theoretic events we may see play out is when the world’s energy companies like Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco and others start mining bitcoin. This is an inevitability because they can convert their excess energy resources into digital energy. Imagine what a world will look like when Saudi Aramco decides to start denominating their oil prices in satoshis. The reason that this is highly likely, is twofold: The first reason is because of the unfairness of the petrodollar system, as explained in great detail by Alex Gladstein. What better unit of account to choose to replace this system than bitcoin, because no one can manipulate it? Secondly, oil companies will be able to make money through the mining of bitcoin. What oil company does not want to make more money? One of my Bitcoin brothers, @harvardhodl, believes that energy companies will become the new banks of the world. In his own words, “energy companies will create the bitcoin and have the opportunity to hold it on their balance sheet by subsidizing it through the sale of energy.” I highly regard his opinions because he works in the energy sector and has a pulse on its inner workings. I also highly recommend you listen to his excellent podcast, “Bitcoin for the People.”

  The U.S. has effectively become the first world power to allow Bitcoin to flourish. Here are the strategic moves that the U.S. has made in this chess game with Bitcoin:

  1. The U.S. adopted the internet protocol (TCP-IP) and does not regulate it’s internet companies like China. Bitcoin is the native money of the internet. Inevitably, more U.S. regulations will appear to try to control Bitcoin, but U.S. lawmakers will be “raking leaves in the wind” with their regulations because they will realize that they cannot control an open protocol, just like they can’t control the internet.

  2. The Internal Revenue Service taxes bitcoin as an intangible property, just like tangible real estate.

  3. The CFTC has deemed bitcoin to be a commodity.

  4. The U.S. stock market has allowed mining companies, like Bitfarms, Hut 8 and Marathon, to list as public companies. Core Scientific mining company will likely be next.

  5. Mining companies are quickly propagating in states like Texas, Wyoming, Washington, New York, Kentucky and Georgia. States are fighting among themselves to attract mining companies to their economies.

  6. America has more than 35% of the Bitcoin mining hash rate.

  7. Governors and senators are lobbying for Bitcoin

  8. Bitcoin has become mainstream among stars like Tom Brady, Kevin O’Leary and many other beloved and popular U.S. athletes, celebrities and stars.

  9. Major payment apps like Cash App and PayPal allow for the purchasing of bitcoin.

  10. 46 million Americans own bitcoin, or ~17% of the U.S. population.

  11. Intel and Jack Dorsey’s company, Block, are going to start designing Bitcoin mining ASICs, making mining more accessible to everyday Americans.

  12. Regular, everyday Americans will be able to buy bitcoin at 300 local community banks sometime this year.

  All of these moves are a part of Bitcoin game theory.

  The U.S. will be forced to adopt Bitcoin as a defensive move, otherwise it’s world reserve currency status could be lost. All currencies since the advent of fiat have failed and the U.S. dollar will be no different. U.S. senators, governors, presidents and the military will use bitcoin to win elections, attract Bitcoin companies to their states and the nation and fight the currency wars we currently are in. Bitcoin will serve as a defensive and offensive move to allow the U.S. to retain its status as a superpower. But Bitcoin belongs only to the world.

  Russia might adopt Bitcoin before the U.S. in a strategic move to gain a headstart against their age-old rival. If this happens, in the words of Max Keiser, “a global hash race will begin,” and that will start a chain reaction among G7 countries. The capitulation of Russia will be due to the fact that they will understand the correlation between gold and bitcoin, which they have been aggressively buying since the 2008 crisis. Russia has a lot of cheap energy and they will start to mine bitcoin when they realize how much money they can make, given this excess energy.

  Another Bitcoin game theory event could occur if Turkey decides to purchase bitcoin with it’s hyperinflated, worthless fiat currency, the lira. This will be the most important strategic move for a country who has a hyperinflated currency. The beauty of this move is that Turkey will be able to print worthless fiat to buy money that is appreciating at around 170% per year. Essentially they will be mimicking what the U.S. has been doing since 1971 — printing fiat to gain economic prosperity. The only difference in Turkey’s case is that they are not invading countries to do this — instead they are just breathing life back into their country’s failed economy by becoming huge beneficiaries of the first mover’s advantage. Turkey will start a chain reaction among all the other inflation-ridden countries to follow suit and the world will look on with utter disbelief as bitcoin rapidly gets adopted. G7 countries will nervously observe these happenings and start their capitulation even earlier.

  There will be great dissension during the transition from a fiat world to a Bitcoin world — but this will not be Bitcoin’s fault. Wars may be fought: not necessarily kinetic wars, but maybe even cyber wars. Rulers do not want to allow for Bitcoin. Why would the rulers of the world not desire a world like this? The simple answer is that in the fiat world, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In a Bitcoin world, all people are treated fairly because the money is:

  • Open to all

  • Immutable

  • Universal

  • Ungovernable

  • Fair

  • Empowering

  Bitcoin’s game theory is an elegant, organic, phenomenal and powerful thing to see unfold.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 20:45

• Now The US & Russia Are Holding Massive Rival Military Drills In Middle East
  Now The US & Russia Are Holding Massive Rival Military Drills In Middle East

  On top of the rival troop build-up between Russia and US-NATO forces in Eastern Europe over Ukraine, both sides are set to hold massive rival war drills further south in the Mediterranean and Middle East areas. 

  Though largely under-reported given the prominence of Ukraine headlines this week, the US Navy is currently holding what’s being called possibly the largest maritime exercise in history. A whopping 60 nations are participating across a huge expanse. Bloomberg detailed early this week: “Running through Feb. 17, the drills will cover waters off the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and East Africa. Known as both Cutlass Express 2022 and International Maritime Exercise 2022 — or IMX-CE22 — the war games will encompass nearly 10,000 personnel, 50 warships, and 80 unmanned systems.”

  

  The multinational drills will also have an aerial component that includes drones, while there will also be unmanned experimental vehicles on the ground and in the sea. 

  It’s clear the huge exercises are focused on Iran at a time the Islamic Republic has gained more direct support from both China and Russia, both of which in the last two months have held joint exercises with Iran in regional Mideast waters.

  “As Iran becomes emboldened by its growing relationship with China and Russia, its aggression in the congested waters of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean will likely increase,” Bloomberg wrote . “Thus one goal of Cutlass Express is to tamp down Iranian adventurism at sea.”

  At the same time, on Tuesday Russia also continues flexing, this time in the Mediterranean and in Syria: “Russia has deployed MiG-31K fighter jets with hypersonic Kinzhal missiles and long-range Tupolev Tu-22M strategic bombers to its air base in Syria for naval exercises, Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the defense ministry,” Reuters writes.

  “The aircraft dispatched to Russia’s Hmeimim air base will take part in exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, part of a surge of Russian military activity amid a standoff with the West over Ukraine and security in Europe,” the report details. 

  As part of continued Russian ‘messaging’ and flexing – no less that the head of Russia’s armed forces, defense minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu was present off Syria’s coast to inspect preparations for Russian military exercises on Tuesday…

  “Russian Defence Minister, Army General Sergei Shoigu, inspected the exercises of the Russian Navy in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, conducted as part of a series of naval exercises in operationally important areas of the World Ocean, as well as in the waters of the seas adjacent to Russia,” the defense ministry was cited as saying. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 20:25

• Bovard: Free Crack Pipes? Time To Pardon Tommy Chong
  Bovard: Free Crack Pipes? Time To Pardon Tommy Chong

  Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

  Conservative publications have accused the Biden administration of planning to distribute $30 million worth of free crack pipes and other paraphernalia as part of its effort to achieve “racial equity” among “underserved communities.” The original notice for federal grants included provisions to pay for “safe smoking kits/supplies” but the Biden administration insists that no federal funds will be specifically used to purchase crack pipes. But taxpayers will get screwed anyway thanks to federal distribution of free condoms under the same program.

  While “harm reduction” is the stated goal of  that federal program, the Biden administration continues to ignore the vast harms caused by federal drug prohibitions, despite record numbers of deaths from drug overdoses last year.

  The latest federal drug war farce should be a reminder of one of the biggest drug war publicity stunts of this century. On the eve of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the most decisive federal attack ever made on pipes and bowls often used for smoking marijuana, tobacco, and other substances. Ashcroft bewailed, “The illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without their knowledge.” Ashcroft did not offer any evidence that pipe sellers, unlike government agents, were planting evidence in people’s homes.

  

  Operation Pipe Dreams involved more than 1,200 federal agents conducting raids in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oregon, Iowa, California, and Idaho. Fifty-five people and 10 companies were indicted in the biggest attack on glass bowls in American history. The feds confiscated 124 tons of what was alleged to be drug paraphernalia, including plastic baggies that could potentially be used to package illicit drugs.

  Ashcroft’s prosecutors used a rarely enforced 1980s laws that criminalized the sale of drug paraphernalia. Seizure fever permeated the bong attack. U.S. Deputy Marshal Dale Ortmann commented, “This was the biggest push in asset seizures that I’ve seen in eight years.” U.S. Deputy Marshal Gary Richards noted that, thanks to cash grabbed from businesses that were raided, “We have access to money that will pay for inventory and storage fees” for the 124 tons of goodies. Apparently, this was the only “boondoggle test” that Justice Department masterminds applied to this case.

  The biggest catch of Operation Pipe Dreams was 64-year-old Tommy Chong, the older half of the legendary, Grammy Award-winning comic duo Cheech and Chong, who lampooned drug warriors from the 1960s to the 1980s. Their movie “Up in Smoke” was some of the best political-cultural humor of the 1970s. Chong’s company, Chong Glass, sold ornate bongs that cost hundreds of dollars over the Internet; a Los Angeles art gallery had an exhibit of Chong’s top-of-the-line products. The Drug Enforcement Administration set up a phony shop in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and ordered bongs and other material from Chong Glass and then nailed Chong for shipping paraphernalia across state lines.

  The DEA hit Chong’s Pacific Palisades, California, house at 5:30 a.m., while Chong and his wife were asleep. Chong later commented, “It was a full-on raid. Helicopters, them bangin’ on the door. They come in with loaded automatic weapons, flak jackets, helmets, visors, about 20 agents. They bust in the house. They took all my cash, took out my computers, and they took all the glass bongs they could find.”

  Chong’s arrest sparked ridicule far and wide, including barbs from both David Letterman and Jay Leno. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette snipped, “With the nation on Orange Alert at the time, the only bearded men most Americans wanted to see in custody were members of al-Qaida.” Though Chong controlled much less than 1 percent of the national bong market, busting him guaranteed the feds massive publicity.

  Chong continued doing his comedy routine pending his trial. When asked his views on Operation Pipe Dreams, he replied, “I feel pretty sad, but it seems to be the only weapons of mass destruction they’ve found this year.”

  On September 11, 2003, the second anniversary of the infamous attacks, Chong was sentenced to nine months in federal prison, fined $20,000 for selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia, and forced to surrender $103,514 in cash to the feds. Chong’s lawyer asked for probation, considering that this was Chong’s first offense and that it was a nonviolent crime. U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan (a Bush appointee) urged a harsh sentence, in part because of Chong’s history of “trivializing law enforcement” with his humor. If Operation Pipe Dreams did not deserve to be trivialized, then the United States is a theocracy, with worship of government the official religion.

  Chong was also forced to promise the judge that he would not profit from his arrest and prosecution. This effectively destroyed Chong’s freedom of speech to discuss his case in future comedy performances. At least in Chong’s case, mocking the feds would be a federal offense.

  

  Even though Chong was not the biggest player in the paraphernalia game, he received a harsher sentence than any of the other people who had been convicted in Operational Pipe Dreams at the time of his trial. Chong’s partner, Cheech Marin, derided the prosecutors: “These are the same kinds of simpletons we were fighting when we made Up in Smoke, in terms of a repressive administration.  That Tommy  Chong  is going to prison for this is a total miscarriage of  justice. The administration should hang its head in shame.”

  In a 2005 interview with the Los Angeles Weekly, Chong observed, “The American justice system is just riddled with lies and inconsistencies.” He explained his prosecution: “They just wanted to show the entertainment world that we’re vulnerable. ‘You do something that we don’t like, you’re going to end up in jail.’ That’s the message they put out.” Chong was philosophical about his imprisonment: “I call this the Tsunami Government. This government is just like the tsunami. It’s coming in, it’s going to wreak havoc and desolation, and then it’ll go out. It’ll disappear. So we just have to live through it.”

  The principle behind Operation Pipe Dreams was that federal agents have the right to destroy the lives of anyone who does something that politicians disapprove. This is the same toxic principle that has been used to arrest more than ten million of nonviolent marijuana smokers since the Reagan era.

  Regardless of what sort of “harm reduction” handouts the Biden administration distributes, the least Biden can do is pardon Chong (who served his prison sentence long ago) and any other nonviolent offender whose record is stained by a convict for distributing paraphernalia. It would be far better for Biden to call an end to the disastrous federal drug war. But we are unlikely to see such courage or wisdom from a man who, during his decades in the Senate, was renowned for championing punitive crime bills to impose his favorite cure: “Lock the S.O.B.s up!”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 20:05

• Little Known Fund Manager's 11 Year Bet On Avis Nets Him $2 Billion And His Investors 35% Returns For 2021
  Little Known Fund Manager’s 11 Year Bet On Avis Nets Him $2 Billion And His Investors 35% Returns For 2021

  Little known hedge fund manager Karthik Sarma is the $2 billion story that no one has every heard of – until this week.

  This week, Bloomberg profiled how 47 year old Sarma, who runs SRS Investment Management from a “modest” home he shares with his sister and her family in a New Jersey suburb, beat well known hedge fund managers thanks to an “11 year old wager on Avis Budget Group” that paid off as the stock rocketed 456% in 2021. 

  The fund, which has about $8 billion under management, owned about 50% of its Avis position using common stocks and swaps, which resulted in Sarma’s investors seeing a 35% gain in 2021. Sarna’s personal net worth “roughly tripled” to $3 billion as a result of the bet.

  He was topped on Bloomberg’s 2021 hedge fund rankings only by Citadel’s Ken Griffin and TCI Fund Management’s Chris Hohn, Bloomberg reported this week. 

  

  Sarma runs his fund by using a “robust short book” while avoiding hefty leverage. He used to work for Tiger Global Management founder Chase Coleman, whose hedge fund fell from Bloomberg’s rankings due to market volatility. 

  He usually holds about 25 stocks on the long side and 35 stocks on the short side. This makes his net exposure “generally lower” than peers, the report says. He invested in Avis because he had “taken a long-term view that companies able to manage fleets of cars and trucks in a cost-effective manner will be extremely valuable in the future of human transport.”

  He came to the U.S. to get a master’s degree in operations research from Princeton University before joining Tiger Global in 2001. There, he was considered the firm’s “most talented non-partner”, Bloomberg wrote. He went off on his own 5 years later and started his own firm. Initially, he made money on bets 

  Names like Viking Global Investor’s Andreas Halvorsen and Melvin Capital Management’s Gabe Plotkin were also absent from the list. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 19:45

• The Zombification Of The Economy
  The Zombification Of The Economy

  Via SchiffGold.com,

  Another hotter than expected CPI print in January put even more pressure on the Federal Reserve to do something about inflation. Suddenly, there is talk of a 50 basis point interest rate hike at the next FOMC meeting.

  But “doing something” is easier said than done, particularly in this zombie economy.

  The Fed has gotten itself into a tight spot. Raising rates will expose another major economic problem that lurks just under the surface.

  The world is buried in debt.

  Economist Daniel Fernández Méndez described the 21st century as the “decade of debt.”

  “And if things continue the way they are, it could well be called the century of the great debt default.”

  We’ve talked a lot about the massive levels of debt piled up by the federal government during the pandemic. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In 2021, US consumer debt grew at the fastest pace in five years. And then we have corporate debt and the proliferation of “zombie companies.”

  Could this lead to a “Minsky Moment” — the point at which it becomes impossible for debtors to pay off their debts?

  

  Daniel Fernández Méndez thinks it could.

  The following was originally published by the Mises Wire. The opinions expressed are the authors and don’t necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold. 

  More and more economists and finance specialists are warning of the potential arrival of a new “Minsky moment.” The last time this term was used with such conviction was in 2008 at the onset of the Great Recession. It seems that 2021–22 could have some parallels with the world’s last severe recession.

  The Twenty-First Century: The Century of Debt

  Up to now, the twenty-first century could be called the century of debt, and if things continue the way they are, it could well be called the century of the great debt default. At the beginning of the century, the extremely low interest rates promoted by central banks in practically the entire developed world caused a frenzy of private credit creation and a gigantic financial and real estate bubble that exploded in 2008 with dire consequences for the world economy.

  Central banks, heavily pressured by politicians, redoubled their commitment to low interest rates, causing public overindebtedness to a degree unprecedented in times of peace. In 2020, when the growth model based on the accumulation of public debt and low interest rates seemed to start to weaken, the COVID-19 recession arrived. The worldwide excess of public spending in 2020 has not been corrected, and it does not appear it will be corrected any time soon. The new public debt is adding fuel to the fire. And the accumulation of it (and also private debt, especially that issued by companies) could be reaching the point of no return.

  Global debt reached $200 trillion at the beginning of 2011, while global [gross domestic product] GDP was $74 trillion (275 percent debt/GDP). In the second quarter of 2021, global debt reached almost $300 trillion with GDP of $83.9 trillion (330 percent debt/GDP).

  Figure 1: Global debt and global GDP

  

  What Is a Minsky Moment?

  Hyman Minsky was a post-Keynesian economist who developed a very insightful taxonomy of financial relationships. According to him, the finances of a capitalist economy can be summarized in terms of exchanges of present money for future money.1 The relationship proposed by Minsky is as follows:

  1. Present money is invested in companies that will generate money in the future.

  2. When companies make a profit, they return the money to investors from their profits.

  Income or profit expectations determine the following:

  1. The flow of present money to companies

  2. The price of financial assets such as bonds and stocks (financial assets that articulate the exchange of present money for future money)

  Present business income, meanwhile, determines the following:

  1. Whether expectations about past income (included in already-issued financial assets) have been met

  2. How to modify expectations about future income (and therefore, indirectly, the flow of present money to companies and the price of financial assets issued in the present)

  Minsky articulates three possible types of income-debt relationship in companies (although he extends the analysis to all economic agents):

  1. Hedge. Hedge finance companies can meet all of their debt obligations with their cash flows. That is, their inflows exceed their outflows. Such companies are stable.

  2. Speculative. Speculative companies can pay the interest on their debt but cannot pay down the principal. They are forced to constantly refinance. These companies are unstable, as any minor problem can bankrupt them.

  3. Ponzi. Ponzi companies do not generate enough income to pay down the principal or pay the interest. They must sell assets or issue debt just to pay the previous interest on their debt. They end up defaulting on the new debt sooner or later. Their chances of survival are minimal.

  According to Minsky, when things are going well in an economy and income expectations are met, corporations begin to err on the side of optimism and excessively increase their debt. This causes a shift from a stable situation (in which hedge companies are the norm) to an unstable one (in which Ponzi companies are the norm). In a Ponzi situation, the economy will experience widespread defaults and a financial and economic crisis.

  An economy is said to be in a Minsky moment if debtors are unable to pay down their debts (a speculative situation) or unable to pay the interest and the principal (a Ponzi situation).

  Minsky was partly right. He accounts for a common truth of financial crises: issuance of debt was abused in previous periods. As a caveat, though, taking into account monetary and financial state interventions—mainly but not solely those of central banks—perhaps the cause of this degradation of debt quality is not a market problem, or at least not exclusively. The crisis may be exogenous to the market (caused by public authorities) or endogenous but amplified by exogenous factors (public authorities contribute to it).

  The Economy Has Been Zombifying for Two Decades

  As already discussed, global debt has grown more rapidly than the global economy over the last ten years, so it seems credit quality has indeed degraded. The income needed to pay off debt is growing much more slowly than the debt itself.

  An additional piece of evidence to support this argument is the increase in the number of “zombie companies.” A zombie company is one whose earnings before interest and taxes are less than or equal to its debt service (it coincides exactly with Minsky’s definition of speculative and Ponzi companies, taken together). A zombie is a wonderful metaphor because a zombie moves and appears to be alive but is in fact dead. A zombie company also moves and appears to be alive—it generates activity, employs workers, and produces goods—but in reality is (almost) dead. It is (almost) certain to die given its inability to pay its debt with its own means. The number of zombie companies has increased exponentially in the United States in recent years, according to a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report. Furthermore, the probability of remaining in a zombie state has increased. And in fact, zombification is a reality in almost every part of the world.

  Figure 2: The rise of corporate zombies

  

  Source: Banerjee & Hofmann. Note: The various layers of financial intermediation hide this underlying relationship as if it were behind a veil.

  Figure 3: Zombie shares by country

  

  Source: Banerjee & Hofmann. Note: The BIS definition of a zombie company is even more restrictive than ours. It requires, in addition to having an interest coverage ratio lower than 1, a Tobin’s Q lower than the average for two consecutive years (meaning the market values these companies lower than their competition).

  However, the BIS data end in 2017. What has COVID-19’s impact been on an already-zombified global economy?

  COVID-19 Hit a Zombie Economy: Now What?

  The most recent data on company interest coverage (financing cost to earnings) are from the Fed and refer to the North American economy. In the figure below we can see that the median coverage ratio began to fall at the end of 2018, which is consistent with our hypothesis that the economy’s growth model, based on cheap debt, was beginning to run its course. The pandemic has hammered the median coverage ratio. Although the ratio has been recovering since the second half of 2020, it is currently at the level seen in 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession.

  

  Even more revealing is the interest coverage ratio of the companies in the first quartile (that is, the 25 percent of companies with the lowest ratio). This indicator has been below 1 since 2012; in other words, zombification has accelerated since then. Keep in mind that a ratio lower than 1 means that a company’s profits are insufficient for it to pay its financing costs (it is a Ponzi company).

  The interest coverage ratio for companies in the twenty-fifth percentile reached almost 0 just before the pandemic (their profits had almost disappeared). Since then, the ratio has been negative (these companies recorded losses). Observe that these companies have not recovered, while companies in other quartiles have. Their ratio is currently just above −1, which means that their losses (before interest) are nearly equal to their financing cost. This is a total disaster. At least 25 percent of US companies are financially dead.

  Valuation of Zombified Companies

  One would expect that these companies would begin to go bankrupt, and this is indeed what is happening. According to the Fed, 2.5 times more zombie companies (as a fraction of all companies) went bankrupt in 2020 than in 2019 (<2 percent in 2019 and around 4.5 percent in 2020).

  Curiously, the zombie companies that survived 2020 are seeing their valuation skyrocket. Their aggregate value already exceeds $6 trillion, while in 2019 it was close to $2 trillion.2

  Figure 5: Total enterprise value with [earnings before interest and taxes] EBIT less than interest expense

  

  Conclusion

  Markets are now extremely complacent. The fundamentals do not seem to justify their optimism. Zombie companies, which were already a problem in 2019, have not only not been killed off but have multiplied. The zombie apocalypse could be closer than we imagine, and we do not have enough Will Smiths in the world to save us.

  In a future article, we will analyze the impact of restrictive monetary policy (tapering) on zombie companies.

  *  *  *

  Legal notice: the analysis contained in this article is the exclusive work of its author, the assertions made are not necessarily shared nor are they the official position of the Francisco Marroquín University.

  Originally published at Universidad Francisco Marroquín’s Market Trends.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 19:25

• Elon Musk Donated Nearly $6 Billion To Charity In November 2021, Filings Reveal
  Elon Musk Donated Nearly $6 Billion To Charity In November 2021, Filings Reveal

  Elon Musk donated 5,044,000 shares of Tesla to charity from November 19th to November 29th of 2021, new filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show. It marks one of the largest charitable donations in history. 

  The massive $5.74 billion donation went to an unnamed charity, multiple media sources reported on Tuesday morning. It occurred around the same time Musk traded jabs with the United Nations about whether or not $6 billion would help solve world hunger. 

  Musk said last year he would donate $6 billion to fight world hunger…if the UN could prove that much money would save tens of millions of lives. Musk was responding to director of the UN’s World Food Programme, who told CNN last year that $6 billion from people like Musk and Jeff Bezos could “help 42 million people” who he said “were literally going to die if we don’t reach them”. 

  

  In a Tweet response, Musk challenged the UN’s statement, saying that if the World Food Programme could provide him “open sourced accounting” on how the $6 billion would be used, he would sell Tesla stock “right now and do it”.

  Recall, Musk also sold more than $16 billion in stock late last year after posting a Twitter poll asking his followers if he should sell stock in the company. Musk claimed the sales were to help offset taxes that would amount to more than $11 billion due to stock options set to expire in 2022. 

  Musk’s foundation, The Musk Foundation, has offered up large, eight-figure gifts in recent years, according to Bloomberg. 

  Bob Lord, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Reuters: “His tax benefit would be huge. He’d save between 40% and 50% of the $5.7 billion in tax, depending on whether he could take the deduction against his California income and he’d avoid the gains tax he would have to pay if he sold the stock.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 19:05

• Why Did Masks Stop Working In Japan And South Korea?
  Why Did Masks Stop Working In Japan And South Korea?

  Authored by Ian Miller via Unmasked Substack,

  In some ways Japan and South Korea might be at least partially to blame for the multiyear long obsession with masking in most of the Western world.

  

  Many governments, especially in the United States, appeared to believe that the early “success” of countries on the Asian continent was due to a widespread cultural acceptance of masking.

  That misguided assumption helped direct public health agencies, politicians, school boards and media outlets to shred dozens of high quality pre-Covid studies on masking and forcefully enact and enforce measures that were guaranteed to fail.

  Once committed, they had no choice but to ignore the obvious global failure of masks and mask mandates and continue their disproven assertions that masks could end the pandemic in a matter of weeks or reduce infections dramatically.

  We’ve since witnessed the anti-science crowd endlessly promoting masking and interventions, with the predictably disastrous results in the Western countries being waved off as a function of poor compliance.

  “The reason it’s not working is because people aren’t complying with the mandates,” they’d say, contrary to overwhelmingly consistent survey data that measured mask usage in the 90-98% range across most of the United States and Europe.

  To excuse their failure, anti-data activists would point to the Asian countries as “proof” that if we all just masked a little harder, we could bring Covid under control immediately.

  Japan

  Few aspects of Covid have been more consistent than the media’s love affair with Japan’s mask culture.

  It’s been a repetitive theme. One survey found that 80% of Japanese people are likely to continue with masks after Covid-19 subsides.

  And perhaps even more incredibly:

  more than 90 percent of whom considered a face mask to be an asset rather than a burden, and feel comfortable with one on.

  90 percent think of masks as an asset! Mind boggling isn’t it?

  One website has gone so far as to create an etiquette guide for how to behave in Japan during the pandemic. This section explains that the expectation in Japan is for high-quality masking inside and outside:

  You will be expected to wear a mask when indoors or on public transport, as well as in outdoor spaces where you encounter other people, such as in the streets and in urban parks.

  For your mask to function correctly, ensure that your nose and mouth are covered and that there are no gaps. Various types of masks are used in Japan, but surgical masks made of non-woven fabric are the most common and recommended.

  But it’s not just masking; you’re also expected to, and I cannot believe this is real, talk quietly.

  “In restaurants, on public transportation and in other closed spaces, avoid talking in a loud voice, especially when not wearing a mask, e.g. during meals.”

  Don’t speak in a loud voice? Who comes up with this nonsense?

  You may not remember, but during the Summer Olympics hosted by Japan, cases in the country skyrocketed, leading to spectator-free games.

  And just as with nearly everywhere else on earth, the surge peaked and dropped within a few months and reached extremely low levels.

  Equally as unsurprising was the media rush to credit masks and vaccine rates with the dramatic decline, exemplified by an article from the Associated Press:

  Almost overnight, Japan has become a stunning, and somewhat mysterious, coronavirus success story.

  Some possible factors in Japan’s success include a belated but remarkably rapid vaccination campaign, an emptying out of many nightlife areas as fears spread during the recent surge in cases, a widespread practice, well before the pandemic, of wearing masks and bad weather in late August that kept people home.

  Ah yes, the widespread practice of wearing masks. No mention of the statistical impossibility of masks causing the decline when they were worn before the surge started.

  Obviously, given the percentage of people happily complying with masking, Japan must be a Covid-free paradise, right?

  Let’s check!

  

  Oh no. That is not great.

  When the story was published on October 18th, Japan was averaging 518 cases each day. By mid-February, that number was 94,491, an increase of 18,142%.

  I wonder if there’ll be any new stories implying that masks don’t work because the curve went up over 18,000% a few months after they tried to credit mask wearing with bringing it down.

  But that’s just one part of the story — Japan also has an exceptionally high vaccination rate, which, naturally, was mentioned as a possible explanation for the “bewildering” decline.

  Many credit the vaccination campaign, especially among younger people, for bringing infections down. Nearly 70 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

  Well obviously that percentage has only increased over time, so let’s see how effective their high vaccination rate has been in preventing another surge:

  

  As always, the media completely ignores the impact of seasonal effects on Covid spread. One of the easiest ways to visualize this is by overlaying cases from year to year:

  

  It’s important to note that numbers on each axis are vastly different to allow for better comparison, but it’s immediately obvious that increases and decreases have happened within weeks of each other — the 2021-2022 curve is essentially slightly delayed from 2020-2021. With that in mind, it’s clear that we would expect cases in Japan to peak in a matter of days. 

  And the top of the orange curve indicates that’s likely to happen, right on schedule.

  This isn’t that complicated! The curve went down in October 2021 because it’s a period of low respiratory virus spread in Japan. Based on these numbers, we can expect that Japan’s curve might see another bump in late spring, followed by a more substantial surge in late summer, and a huge increase in the winter.

  These surges have happened in predictable patterns, regardless of how dedicated they are to masks, regardless of how many people view masks as an “asset” and will continue wearing them for an endemic virus. And also despite the high vaccination rates that Japan has achieved.

  Japan, despite their low testing, is even reporting similar rates to other countries that have unsuccessfully attempted to control Covid with masking:

  

  How does the media keep getting this wrong? How do they keep ignoring reality and maintaining an easily disproven narrative?

  South Korea

  It’s important to mention that the media does their best to credit other interventions, not just masks and vaccination rates, when attempting to explain the apparent success of Asian countries in combating the Coronavirus.

  They also frequently praise the objectionable and nonsensical practice of “contact tracing.”

  Just a few days after the AP’s missive about Japan, The Conversation published an article (don’t worry, they also credit masks) explaining that South Korea’s use of digital technology, contact tracing and quarantines to slow the spread of the coronavirus led to the country’s low case rates.

  To combat Covid and future pandemics, governments need to heed the lessons of these social interventions and not just the technological ones. South Korea teaches us that high-tech solutions can help protect against disease, but these work together with social interventions – interventions that the UK has not used as effectively.

  They continued:

  Key to this has been quarantine measures for travelers arriving in the country, which were introduced very swiftly, and the country’s highly effective test-trace-isolate system. This carefully designed process provides local support for those in isolation, while monitoring them and sanctioning non-compliance.

  Yes, mobile phone data and other forms of surveillance have been used to trace people who might have the virus. But once a positive case is confirmed, it is human intervention that ensures those people don’t spread the virus further.

  There are several mind-blowing statements contained in these paragraphs, but my personal favorite is the hand-waving dismissal of “mobile phone data and other forms of surveillance” being used to trace Covid cases, as if that’s a totally normal and acceptable function of government that should be encouraged.

  Allow me to submit a slight edit to their work:“We as a society need to eliminate any semblance of personal freedom and right to privacy in order to submit to the government’s desire to pretend they can control the spread of an endemic respiratory virus.”

  Even if this worked, which we’ll soon see it most definitely does not, how can this be a remotely acceptable policy? How can anyone believe that this is a trade-off worth making? How can anyone think this technology will be discarded after Covid “ends,” whatever that means for an endemic virus?

  As we’ve seen, governments and media have rapidly increased their calls for censorship — what’s to prevent them from using mobile phone surveillance to “isolate” those who share views they find “dangerous misinformation” until they can be rehabilitated into promoting “accurate” opinions?

  None of this is remotely defensible ethically, but at least there could be a case made that it worked to help stop Covid — except The Conversation forgot about winter.

  

  Cases have risen 2,800% since the article was published, despite South Korea’s dedication to testing, surveillance, isolation, mask mandates and vaccine passports.

  How are we still pretending we can control Covid with layered interventions, with “Swiss Cheese Models of Pandemic Defense,” with following the example of Asian countries?

  The collapse of Japan and South Korea’s pandemic response is yet another nail in the Covid mitigation coffin for those trying to credit masking and interventions with slowing or stopping the spread of a highly infectious respiratory virus.

  For nearly two years now, we’ve seen media outlets attempt to allocate credit to interventions by ignoring the seasons. They purposefully wait until the curve goes down to report that masking in addition to their favored intervention of the week is responsible for controlling the surge — ignoring that the same interventions existed before the surge started.

  South Korea and Japan have not had strict lockdowns, yet had better outcomes than most European or North American countries. However, it’s not due to masking or interventions, it’s likely been in large part due to cross exposure, as this study illustrates.

  Yet that’s not a story the media wants to share, because they’ve fully committed to the indefinite pretense that human intervention is the most important factor in the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

  Masks and interventions MUST work, because their preferred, trusted experts and politicians, say they do. Evidence and data be damned.

  Well…maybe the pretense won’t be quite so indefinite.

  I’m expecting my apology any day now.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 18:45

• Single-Family Home Rents Surge At Fastest Pace Ever
  Single-Family Home Rents Surge At Fastest Pace Ever

  New data from CoreLogic Inc. shows rental prices for single-family homes soared to an all-time high in 2021. This comes as on-time rent collections deteriorates as households are pressured by soaring shelter, food, and energy inflation. 

  CoreLogic’s new report says rent prices for single-family homes increased by 7.8% in 2021, a record high. In December, rent prices jumped 12% year over year for the month. 

  

  Soaring rents for single-family homes come as on-time rent collections are rapidly deteriorating. 

  Only 92% of renter households had made their rent payment for December by the end of December, the lowest percentage since April 2019, down from 93.8% in December 2020, and down from 95.9% in December 2019.

  

  What stands out is the down-trend over those 33 months, interrupted by the months when the big stimulus checks poured into household coffers. – Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com 

  Without stimmy checks, as shown above by Richter, increasing rent prices and soaring inflation, in general, will continue to pressure household finances. With inflation climbing at its highest pace in four decades in January, such cost pressures sent consumer sentiment to its lowest level in more than a decade last week. 

  

  The inverse relationship of soaring costs and declining on-time rent is on full display. It only suggests more discontent for the Biden administration as polling data plunges ahead of the midterms. 

  

  But don’t worry, the Federal Reserve is hard at work as hawktard comments from St.Louis Fed’s Jim Bullard are basically attempting to spark a mini-recession to cool inflationary headwinds. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 18:25

• The Unstated Scandal: The CIA Collected Info On President Trump
  The Unstated Scandal: The CIA Collected Info On President Trump

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion relating to a defense firm’s potential conflict of interest in the Michael Sussmann case. The conflict itself is certainly intriguing, with Sussmann’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins LLP (Latham) having represented potential witnesses in the case, including Perkins Coie, former Perkins Coie (and Clinton Campaign general counsel) Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and Hillary for America.

  

  The issue that made more noise, however, was Durham’s disclosure that Rodney Joffe – a contractor with deep ties to the Clintons, and what appears to be a deep hatred for Trump – had exploited Executive Office of the President of the United States data he obtained from a “sensitive arrangement” with the U.S. Government to damage President Trump. Here is our initial post on the topic.

  And here is the talented Lee Smith providing a great explanation on Tucker:

  .@LeeSmithDC says he keeps hearing people comparing the scandal to Watergate when it doesn’t compare to Watergate at all. We are talking about some of the most secure communications in government been Surveiled by political operatives. pic.twitter.com/f22h5V92vV

  — The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) February 15, 2022

  Yet the data from the Executive Office of the President wasn’t all that Joffe had obtained. He also collected domain name system (DNS) internet traffic pertaining to a healthcare provider; Trump Tower; and Trump’s Central Park West apartment building.

  

   Yesterday, February 14, Sussmann’s attorney’s disputed the Durham filing – to an extent. They said Sussmann provided the CIA with Executive Office of the President data from “when Barack Obama was president.”

  I have a theory about this.

  If Sussmann’s attorney is telling the truth (never a given), then we suspect the Executive Office of the President data included that from the 74 day the Trump transition period (between the November 8, 2016 election and the January 20, 2017 inauguration) – which would still be spying on the incoming Trump Administration.

  For background, the Executive Office of the President includes a number of Executive councils (National Security Council, Office of Management and Budget, etc.) that support the President. It is involved generally in the transition from one president to the next.

  What about the data involved with the Trump transition? On August 1, 2016, Trump reached an agreement with the General Services Administration (GSA) “for telecommunication and internet technology services for both the pre- and post-election transition period.”1 This is the agreement. I wonder if Joffe’s company, Neustar, helped the GSA in the execution of that agreement. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not sure it matters, as Neustar already had an agreement to provide “DNS resolution services” to the Office of the Executive of the President.

  Regardless, the “transition theory”, if we can call it that, matches the timeline in the Sussmann indictment, which states that Joffe and his team continued to target “Trump-related computer networks” in late 2016 and early 2017. And it makes sense in context of Sussmann’s conduct, as Sussmann tried to put this information out there in late December 2016.

  

  Anyway, back to the point of this post.

  According to Durham, Joffe and his associates manipulated that data to make it seem like Trump, and those in Trump’s world, had suspicious interactions with internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider. They then combined those allegations with the Alfa Bank hoax materials (the subject of Sussmann’s Fall 2016 meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker).

  This damaging information, purporting to demonstrate at least circumstantial evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, was presented on February 9, 2017 to what Durham describes as U.S. Government “Agency-2.”

  That agency was the CIA. We know for sure that Sussmann met with the CIA General Counsel. We learned in January 2022 that, if Sussmann is to be believed, there were two other CIA employees at that meeting.

  In other words, a Clinton supporting contractor (Joffe) obtained sensitive information (perhaps unlawfully) about the Office of the President of the United States (Trump), manipulated the information, passed it to a DNC/Clinton lawyer (Sussmann), who then delivered it to the CIA.

  All on American soil.

  This is important because the CIA is generally prohibited from conducting domestic operations. The FBI explains:

  “The CIA collects information only regarding foreign countries and their citizens. Unlike the FBI, it is prohibited from collecting information regarding ‘U.S. Persons,’ a term that includes U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, and U.S. corporations, regardless of where they are located.”

  In the CIA’s own words:

  “The FBI is responsible for coordination of clandestine collection of foreign intelligence through human sources or human-enabled means and counterintelligence activities inside the United States.”

  Yet when it came to Trump, here was the CIA doing what it is prohibited: “collecting information regarding U.S. persons” inside the United States.2 (See also the CIA’s bulk surveillance program.)

  A top CIA official answered the call of a DNC lawyer who alleged that these suspicious internet “lookups” proved “that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Accusations that were baseless, according to Durham.

  In other words, the secret police was more than willing to accept politically damaging information against the President. I’m curious what they did with it. It seems naive to think the information stayed at the CIA. I bet it was passed onto the FBI or DOJ, who may have used it to further the Trump/Russia investigation.

  The scandal we are seeing come to light just isn’t about Hillary and Joffe and Sussmann. It’s not limited to Fusion GPS, FISA abuse, or Igor Danchenko.

  It’s also about the willingness of U.S. intelligence to target the President. And on that topic, the CIA has some serious questions to answer.

  *  *  *

  1. Democracy Forward Found. v. U.S. Gen. Servs. Admin., 393 F. Supp. 3d 45, 48 (D.D.C. 2019).

  2. I can imagine the lazy pro-CIA rebuttals to this argument. They all ignore the dangers of CIA operations inside the U.S. and dismiss the jurisdiction of the various intelligence agencies. And let us be clear that CIA operations include collecting information.

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/15/2022 – 18:05

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