Today’s News 17th May 2022

• The NHS's Most Serious (and Avoidable) Errors Of 2021
  The NHS’s Most Serious (and Avoidable) Errors Of 2021

  If you’re about to go under the knife, you’d like to think that you will be in safe hands. And while you almost certainly are, with millions of operations being correctly performed each year in England alone, as Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, doctors and nurses still slip up in a small number of cases.

  According to new data released by the UK’s National Health Service, a total of 379 medical malpractices called ‘Never Events’ were recorded between April 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022.

  The term is defined by the service as “serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents that should not occur if healthcare providers have implemented existing national guidance or safety recommendations.”

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The most frequently seen malpractice in this stretch of time was surgery being performed on the wrong part of the body. The records reveal a range of severity and include details of how one patient had their ovaries removed when the surgical plan was to conserve them, while another patient underwent surgery on the wrong eye and others had skin tags and hemorrhoids removed when another surgery had been intended. In terms of injections, 27 were administered in the wrong part of the body. Of these, the highest number recorded was six incidents of injections into the wrong eye. Meanwhile, there were also eleven incisions in the wrong part of the body, presumably where surgeons had begun the process before realizing they were cutting into the wrong spot.

  As Statista’s chart above shows, while it’s rare, a number of patients received procedures intended for someone else. This included one person who received a sigmoidoscopy (a kind of colonoscopy), which wasn’t meant for them, while another had a rectal drain intended for another patient.

  In addition to these cases, a total of 90 foreign objects were recorded as having been accidentally left in the body after a procedure, ranging from a scalpel blade, to part of a pair of wire cutters, and even part of a drill that had not been identified as missing at the time of the procedure. The most commonly seen items to be left behind in patients were 31 vaginal swabs, as well as 19 surgical swabs.

  According to the NHS, the release of the list of Never Events is not to encourage a ‘blame culture’, but rather to acknowledge red flags, highlighting when an organization’s systems for implementing existing safety alerts may not be up to standard. The report adds that all data is provisional and subject to change.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 02:45

• Escobar: Death By A Thousand Cuts – Where Is The West's Ukraine Strategy?
  Escobar: Death By A Thousand Cuts – Where Is The West’s Ukraine Strategy?

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  The pounding, daily western narratives on ‘Ukrainian wins’ and ‘Russian losses’ underpins the lack of an actual, cohesive Grand Strategy against Moscow…

  

  While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

  Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

  Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

  So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.

  But when military means became necessary for Byzantium – as in Russia’s Operation Z – it was preferable to use weaponry to contain or punish adversaries, instead of attacking with full force.

  Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos – which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military function.

  It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.

  But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.

  Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following this logic.

  Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’

  On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity, which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed – but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on demilitarization and denazification.

  The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.

  Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy, coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’ political elites.

  The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and Turkish Bayraktar drones.

  This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget about peer.”

  The caliber of ‘strategic’ advice from the NATO realm was self-evident in the Serpent Island fiasco – a direct order issued by British ‘consultants’ to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, thought the whole thing was suicidal. He was proven right.

  All the Russians had to do was launch a few choice anti-ship and surface Onyx missiles from bastions stationed in Crimea on airports south of Odessa. In no time, Serpent Island was back under Russian control – even as high-ranking British and American marine officers ‘disappeared’ during the Ukrainian landing on the island. They were the ‘strategic’ NATO actors on the spot, doling out the lousy advice.  

  Extra evidence that the Ukraine debacle is predominantly about money laundering – not competent military strategy – is Capitol Hill approving a hefty extra $40 billion in ‘aid’ to Kiev. It’s just another western military-industrial complex bonanza, duly noted by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

  Russian forces, meanwhile, have brought diplomacy to the battlefield, handing over 10 tons of humanitarian assistance to the people of liberated Kherson – with the deputy head of the military-civil administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, announcing that Kherson wants to become part of the Russian Federation.

  In parallel, Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of the government of Crimea, has “no doubts that the liberated territories of the south of the former Ukraine will become another region of Russia. This, as we assess from our communication with the inhabitants of the region, is the will of the people themselves, most of whom lived for eight years under conditions of repression and bullying by the Ukronazis.”

  Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, is adamant that the DPR is on the verge of liberating “its territories within constitutional borders,” and then a referendum on joining Russia will take place. When it comes to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the integration process may even come earlier: the only area left to be liberated is the urban region of Lysychansk-Severodonetsk.

  The ‘Stalingrad of Donbass’

  As much as there’s an energetic debate among the best Russian analysts about the pace of Operation Z, Russian military planning proceeds methodically, as if taking all the time it needs to solidify facts on the ground.

  Arguably the best example is the fate of Azov neo-Nazis at Azovstal in Mariupol – the best-equipped unit of the Ukrainians, hands down. In the end they were totally outmatched by anumerically inferior Russian/Chechen Spetsnaz contingent, and in record time for such a big city.

  Another example is the advance on Izyum, in the Kharkov region – a key bridgehead in the frontline. The Russian Ministry of Defense follows the pattern of grinding the enemy while slowly advancing; if they face serious resistance, they stop and smash the Ukrainian defensive lines with non-stop missile and artillery strikes.

  Popasnaya in Luhansk, dubbed by many Russian analysts as “Mariupol on steroids”, or “the Stalingrad of Donbass,” is now under total control of the Luhansk People’s Republic, after they managed to breach a de facto fortress with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Popasnaya is extremely important strategically, as its capture breaks the first, most powerful line of defense of the Ukrainians in Donbass.

  That will probably lead to the next stage, with an offensive on Bakhmut along the H-32 highway. The frontline will be aligned, north to south. Bakhmut will be the key to taking control of the M-03 highway, the main route to Slavyansk from the south.

  This is just an illustration of the Russian General Staff applying its trademark, methodical, painstaking strategy, where the main imperative could be defined as a personnel-preserving forward drive. With the added benefit of committing just a fraction of overall Russian firepower.

  Russian strategy on the battlefield stands in stark contrast with the EU’s obstinacy in being reduced to the status of an American dog’s lunch, with Brussels leading entire national economies to varying degrees of certified collapse and chaos.

  Once again it was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a diplomatic master – to encapsulate it.

  Question: “What do you think of Josep Borrell’s (Lavrov’s EU counterpart) initiative to give Ukraine frozen Russian assets as ‘reparations?’ Can we say that the masks have come off and the west is moving on to open robbery?”

  Lavrov: “You could say it is theft, which they are not trying to hide … This is becoming a habit for the west … We may soon see the post of the EU chief diplomat abolished because the EU has virtually no foreign policy of its own and acts entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.”

  The EU cannot even come up with a strategy to defend its own economic battlefield – just watching as its energy supply is de facto, incrementally turned off by the US. Here we are at the realm where the US tactically excels: economic/financial blackmail. We can’t call these ‘strategic’ moves because they almost always backfire against US hegemonic interests.

  Compare it with Russia reaching its biggest surplus in history, with the rise and rise of commodity prices and the upcoming role of the stronger and stronger ruble as a resource-based currency also backed by gold.

  Moscow is spending way less than the NATO contingent in the Ukrainian theater. NATO has already wasted $50 billion – and counting – while the Russians spent $4 billion, give or take, and already conquered Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, created a land corridor to Crimea (and secured its water supply), controls the Sea of Azov and its major port city, and liberated strategically vital Volnovakha and Popasnaya in Donbass, as well as Izyum near Kharkov.

  That doesn’t even include Russia hurling the entire, collective west into a level of recession not seen since the 1970s.

  The Russian strategic victory, as it stands, is military, economic, and may even coalesce geopolitically. Centuries after the Byzantine Strategikon was penned, the Global South would be very much interested in getting acquainted with the 21st century Russian version of the Art of War.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 02:00

• The Battle For Control Of Your Mind
  The Battle For Control Of Your Mind

  Authored by Aaron Kheriaty via The Brownstone Institute

  In his classic dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell famously wrote, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” This striking image served as a potent symbol for totalitarianism in the 20th Century. But as Caylan Ford recently observed, with the advent of digital health passports in the emerging biomedical security state, the new symbol of totalitarian repression is “not a boot, but an algorithm in the cloud: emotionless, impervious to appeal, silently shaping the biomass.”

  

  These new digital surveillance and control mechanisms will be no less oppressive for being virtual rather than physical. Contact tracing apps, for example, have proliferated with at least 120 different apps in used in 71 different states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have been used across 38 countries. There is currently no evidence that contact tracing apps or other methods of digital surveillance have helped to slow the spread of covid; but as with so many of our pandemic policies, this does not seem to have deterred their use.

  Other advanced technologies were deployed in what one writer has called, with a nod to Orwell, “the stomp reflex,” to describe governments’ propensity to abuse emergency powers. Twenty-two countries used surveillance drones to monitor their populations for covid rule-breakers, others deployed facial recognition technologies, twenty-eight countries used internet censorship and thirteen countries resorted to internet shutdowns to manage populations during covid. A total of thirty-two countries have used militaries or military ordnances to enforce rules, which has included casualties. In Angola, for example, police shot and killed several citizens while imposing a lockdown.

  Orwell explored the power of language to shape our thinking, including the power of sloppy or degraded language to distort thought. He articulated these concerns not only in his novels Animal Farm and 1984 but in his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” where he argues that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

  The totalitarian regime depicted in 1984 requires citizens to communicate in Newspeak, a carefully controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual’s ability to think or articulate subversive concepts such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will. With this bastardization of language, complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms conveying only simplistic meaning.  

  Newspeak eliminates the possibility of nuance, rendering impossible consideration and communication of shades of meaning. The Party also intends with Newspeak’s short words to make speech physically automatic and thereby make speech largely unconscious, which further diminishes the possibility of genuinely critical thought.

  In the novel, character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

  By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak [standard English] will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

  Several terms of disparagement were repeatedly deployed during the pandemic, phrases whose only function was to halt the possibility of critical thought. These included, among others, ‘covid denier,’ ‘anti-vax,’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’. Some commentators will doubtless mischaracterize this book, and particularly this chapter, using these and similar terms—ready-made shortcuts that save critics the trouble of reading the book or critically engaging my evidence or arguments.

  A brief comment on each of these may be helpful in illustrating how they function.

  The first term, ‘covid denier,’ requires little attention. Those who sling this charge at any critic of our pandemic response recklessly equate covid with the Holocaust, which suggests that antisemitism continues to infect discourse on both the right and the left. We need not detain ourselves with more commentary on this phrase.

  The epithet ‘anti-vax,’ deployed to characterize anyone who raises questions about the mass vaccination campaign or the safety and efficacy of covid vaccines, functions similarly as a conversation stopper rather than an accurately descriptive label. When people ask me whether I am anti-vax for challenging vaccine mandates I can only respond that the question makes about as much sense to me as the question, “Dr. Kheriaty, are you ‘pro-medication’ or ‘anti-medication’?” The answer is obviously contingent and nuanced: which medication, for which patient or patient population, under what circumstances, and for what indications? There is clearly no such thing as a medication, or a vaccine for that matter, that’s always good for everyone in every circumstance and all the time.

  Regarding the term “conspiracy theorist,” Agamben notes that its indiscriminate deployment “demonstrates a surprising historical ignorance.” For anyone familiar with history knows that the stories historians recount retrace and reconstruct the actions of individuals, groups, and factions working in common purpose to achieve their goals using all available means. He mentions three examples from among thousands in the historical record.

  In 415 B.C. Alcibiades deployed his influence and money to convince the Athenians to embark on an expedition to Sicily, a venture that turned out disastrously and marked the end of Athenian supremacy. In retaliation, Alcibiades enemies hired false witnesses and conspired against him to condemn him to death. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte violated his oath of fidelity to the Republic’s Constitution, overthrowing the directory in a coup, assumed full powers, and ending the Revolution. Days prior, he had met with co-conspirators to fine-tune their strategy against the anticipated opposition of the Council of Five Hundred.

  Closer to our own day, he mentions the March on Rome by 25,000 Italian fascists in October 1922. Leading up to this even, Mussolini prepared the march with three collaborators, initiated contacts with the Prime Minister and powerful figures from the business world (some even maintain that Mussolini secretly met with the King to explore possible allegiances). The fascists rehearsed their occupation of Rome by a military occupation of Ancona two months prior.

  Countless other examples, from the murder of Julius Caesar to the Bolshevik revolution, will occur to any student of history. In all these cases, individuals gathering in groups or parties to strategize goals and tactics, anticipate obstacles, then act resolutely to achieve their aims. Agamben acknowledges that this does not mean it is always necessary to aver to ‘conspiracies’ to explain historical events. “But anyone who labelled a historical who tried to reconstruct in detail the plots that triggered such events as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ would most definitely be demonstrating their own ignorance, if not idiocy.”

  Anyone who mentioned “The Great Reset” in 2019 was accused of buying into a conspiracy theory—that is, until World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab published a book in 2020 laying out the WEF agenda with the helpful title,Covid-19: The Great Reset. Following new revelations about the lab leak hypothesis, U.S. funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, vaccine safety issues willfully suppressed, and coordinated media censorship and government smear campaigns against dissident voices, it seems the only difference between a conspiracy theory and credible news was about six months.

  *  *  *

  Originally posted at ‘Human Flourishing’ Substack.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 23:45

• Biden Orders US Troops Back To War-Torn Somalia, Reversing Trump Withdrawal
  Biden Orders US Troops Back To War-Torn Somalia, Reversing Trump Withdrawal

  White House officials have announced that President Biden will reverse Trump’s Somalia withdrawal of US forces as the fight with al-Shabaab Islamic militants heats up. This includes talk of a return to a policy of indefinite “boots on the ground” – or as one senior official was quoted as saying – “a persistent US military presence” there.

  “President Biden has approved a request from the Secretary of Defense to reestablish a persistent U.S. military presence in Somalia to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab, which has increased in strength and poses a heightened threat,” a senior admin official said to The Hill Monday.

  

  “This is a repositioning of forces already in theater who have travelled in and out of Somalia on an episodic basis since the previous administration made the decision to withdraw in January 2021,” the official added.

  Further The New York Times has also confirmed that “Biden secretly signed an order in early May authorizing the military to redeploy 100s of Special Forces into Somalia and to target about a dozen Al Shabab leaders” underscoring too that it’s reversal of a “last minute” Trump policy that went into effect within that last two months of his administration. The report said additionally that likely no more than 450 troops would be deployed.

  Upon Trump’s ordered December 2020 withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, there had been an estimated 700 there in support of counterterror operations. The country has suffered from decades of intermittent civil war, and running conflicts between competing warlords.

  Over the past three decades the war-torn country in the Horn of Africa only sporadically hits the news when things go horribly wrong, such as with major pirate attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Aden, or the November 2020 death of a CIA officer reportedly during a raid on a suspected al-Shabaab bomb-maker, and then there’s the disastrous ‘Black Hawk Down’ 1993 mission wherein 18 American soldiers were killed.

  US intelligence officials have in the past months been vocalizing their concerns that the terrorist organization al-Shabaab is spreading due to their being no significant military pressure on them. In recent years the Pentagon has established dozens or even perhaps hundreds of small forward operating bases across the African continent, ostensibly as part of broadly defined ‘counterterror’ support given to allied host nations.

  If you had told me when I was a teenager, full of rage towards the Republican party for what they were doing to Iraq and Afghanistan, that it would be the Democrats who started most of the wars in my lifetime, I would have laughed in your face. https://t.co/FJJRLCqZeH

  — Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 16, 2022

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

  Critics, however, have denounced the rapid growth of AFRICOM as part of continued post-9/11 ‘imperialist’ US expansion, pointing also to US-NATO military intervention in Libya against Gaddafi as part of regime change operations, and as a new “scramble” for influence over the continent in competition with China grows, and even to a lesser degree towards thwarting a growing Russian presence in unstable countries like Mali. Are we witnessing the return to a (failed) Global War on Terror (GWOT) posture across the Mideast/North Africa region under the Democratic administration? It appears so.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 23:25

• Pilot Writes "Make Beer Not War" Over Skies Of Poland 
  Pilot Writes “Make Beer Not War” Over Skies Of Poland 

  “Make Beer Not War,” read the plane’s flight path over the skies of Poland, a country that shares a 332-mile border with Ukraine. 

  According to FlightRadar, a creative pilot operating a Tecnam P2008JC (single-engine aircraft) spent nearly four hours in the skies above Poland writing a protest message against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

  Meanwhile over Poland#MakeBeerhttps://t.co/LT2rLJxAsb pic.twitter.com/YrgzyuEs4t

  — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) May 14, 2022

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

  The pilot switched on the emergency beacon, sending a notification to FlightRadar users, where flight observers worldwide were able to watch the pilot Saturday write “Make Beer Not War.” 

  

  Last month, a FlightRadar user spotted another pilot in the central European country that wrote “FckPutin.”

  

  Over the years, pilots around the world were obsessed with drawing sky penises (see: here & here), though now, some write ant-war messages. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 23:05

• JPMorgan's Humiliation Is Complete: Bank Turns Overweight On Same Chinese Stocks It Called "Uninvestable" Just Weeks Ago
  JPMorgan’s Humiliation Is Complete: Bank Turns Overweight On Same Chinese Stocks It Called “Uninvestable” Just Weeks Ago

  Remember when back on March 14, JPMorgan – easily the staunchest bull on US stocks – stunned Wall Street when its analyst Alex Yao told the truth about Chinese tech stocks, saying they were “uninvestable“? For those who have forgotten, this is what the bank said:

  As risk management becomes the most important consideration for global investors in relation to their China Internet investment strategy as they price in China’s geopolitical risks and incremental concerns about regulatory risks, we find China Internet uninvestable on a 6-12 month view with an unpredictable share price outlook, depending on the market perception of China’s geopolitical risks, macro recovery and Internet regulation risk. The sector-wide sell-off might continue given lack of valuation support in the near term, in our view. We downgrade 28 coverage stocks to Neutral or Underweight. The only name with an OW rating in our coverage universe is Kuaishou.

  Well, just two days later JPM was fed a horse dose of humiliation when a rally sparked by PBOC jawboning sent all these “uninvestable” stocks soaring as much as 40% (a move which we had predicted just hours earlier, when we said that the JPM downgrade “confirms the price action and if anything suggests that with the bottom having fallen out of the sector, now is the time to buy China internet stocks”).

  

  Of course, while JPMorgan was ultimately right and Chinese tech stocks did continue to crater, China decided to punish JPM and its clients, and as the PBOC’s jawboning sent stocks surging days after the JPM record, all those who listened to the bank got stopped out of their short positions.

  JPMorgan’s humiliation was not done yet, however, and China continued to dole out punishment to Jamie Dimon’s bank for daring to bash its tech stocks – something Beijing has been doing with impunity for the past two years as it seeks to teach the country’s home grown start up billionaires a lesson – and back in April, Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan was removed as the most senior underwriter for Kingsoft Cloud Holdings’ Hong Kong stock offering after one of the bank’s analysts cut the share-price target for the Chinese technology company by half.  The bank remains a sponsor of the IPO, but is now ranked behind UBS Group AG and China International Capital Corp on the deal.

  But the humiliation wasn’t done, and last week an even more embarrassing moment emerged when Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan’s harshly written “uninvestable” note was never meant to be published in the first place.

  According to Bloomberg, “JPMorgan editorial staff in charge of vetting the bank’s research asked for “uninvestable” to be removed from 28 reports penned by technology analyst Alex Yao and his team before they were published on March 14.” But while the word was cut from most of the reports  – in some cases replaced with “unattractive” – it appeared in the published version of four, including one on JD.Com Inc.:

  “As risk management becomes the most important consideration among global investors in relation to their China investment strategy, as they price in China’s geopolitical risks, we view China Internet as uninvestable on a six-12-month view with a binary share price outlook.”

  According to Bloomberg, JPMorgan has concluded that it was an editorial error that allowed the word to slip through even though the editors, analysts and supervisors involved had all agreed before publication that it wasn’t the best choice of word. And indeed, while Yao’s team was undoubtedly turning more cautious on Chinese Internet companies, its prediction of share-price gains for at least 10 of them by year-end suggested the sector wasn’t entirely “uninvestable.”

  Today, however, JPMorgan’s humiliation was complete, because now that it has become all too clear just how political the bank’s sellside notes are, JPM analysts miraculously turned bullish on the same Chinese Internet stocks they recently called “uninvistable”, and upgrading at least 15 companies just two months after their bearish report on the industry triggered a market selloff, an even more powerful short squeeze, and a bout of internal hand-wringing at the biggest US bank.

  On Monday, the same team of analysts led by Alex Yao raised their ratings on companies including Tencent and Alibaba, a move that even Bloomberg said would “raise eyebrows on Wall Street” after reports from the team in mid-March called the sector “uninvestable.”

  Monday’s upgrades mark the latest twist in the closely watched drama that has highlighted the tough “balancing act” banks face as they try to expand their businesses in China while still giving clients access to candid research (i.e., factual reports instead of worthless propaganda) on the country’s turbulent markets.

  “Significant uncertainties facing the sector should begin to abate on the back of recent regulatory announcements,” Yao and his colleagues wrote in their May 16 note, in which they forgot all about just how uninvestable the same sector was two shorts months ago. Shares of Meituan, NetEase and Pinduoduo were also among those upgraded to overweight from underweight.

  Naturally, Yao’s team couldn’t just pull a “deus ex machina” and pretend it never said its own call would be garbage just a few weeks ago, and so to cover up its tracks, the JPM analysts said their bearish view in March reflected the first of a three-stage-cycle. The second phase — where the selloff abates and share prices stabilize — has arrived earlier than expected, the analysts wrote, not that anyone would believe them of course. Still, to preserve the last shred of credibility, they added that risk appetite could remain low and it may be difficult for speculative growth names to outperform.

  The JPM analysts also said that policy developments since mid-March have been supportive, diminishing risks related to regulation, the potential delisting of American depositary receipts and geopolitics, as they scrambled to come up with some way to soothe China’s anger and make Beijing forget that the downgrade ever happened. They also mentioned a March 16 meeting led by China’s Vice Premier Liu He, where authorities vowed to ease their crackdown on the tech sector, as one of the key triggers behind the change in view.

  

  The analysts cautioned that they still expect “significant downside risk” to consensus earnings for the second quarter for some stocks including Meituan and Alibaba as Covid containment measures take a toll on Chinese businesses. That did not prevent them from upgrading both companies from Sell (UW) to Buy (OW).

  

  The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index hit its closing low for the year on the day of JPMorgan’s March report and just two days later point rallied more than 50% as the PBOC sparked a short squeeze to stop out all those who had shorted Chinese stocks on JPM’s advice. It has since given up some of those gains amid persistent worries about regulatory risks and Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes.

  And speaking of outright JPMorgan propaganda, we got the latest installment from the bank’s US facing team earlier today when Marko Kolanovic, who has been horrifically wrong with his recos in 2022, telling clients to buy stocks for 20 consecutive weeks…

  

  … decided to keep digging the hole he is in, and earlier today did what he has done very single week, saying that he “maintains a pro-risk stance” because he thinks that equity markets price in too much risk of a near-term recession (somehow he calculated this as being 70% even though if that was truly the case, the S&P would be trading around 3,000 right now) and being from JPMorgan, Kolanovic of course believes there will be no recession so you must buy stocks. Hopefully you still have some money left after having bought stocks for the past 19 weeks after listening to Marko play the same old broken record week after week after week…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 22:25

• At Least 300 Azov Fighters Surrender To Russians At Azovstal Plant, Ending Lengthy Siege
  At Least 300 Azov Fighters Surrender To Russians At Azovstal Plant, Ending Lengthy Siege

  The more than month-long standoff at Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks plant is finally over, after for many weeks the siege of the large complex by Russian forces remained the focus of international headlines, and following a series of high-risk civilian evacuations, some of them under the auspices of UN and Red Cross emergency teams.

  The remnant hundreds of armed Ukrainian Azov battalion militants which had refused to come out have now surrendered in the Monday night hours. “Reuters saw about a dozen buses apparently carrying Ukrainian fighters leaving the plant on Monday. It was not possible to determine how many people were aboard.”

  

  Widespread reports say that some 300 Ukrainian fighters have laid down their weapons and emerged from the cavernous facility. “More than 260 Ukrainian soldiers were evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the port city of Mariupol,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar said. Another “53 heavily wounded (soldiers) were evacuated from Azovstal to the medical mortgage near Novoazovsk for medical aid,” according to Malyar’s statement.

  Azov issued a statement on Telegram saying they are “implementing the approved decision of the Supreme Military Command” in order to “save lives”. 

  And the Russian side has since confirmed that “An agreement has been reached on the removal of the wounded,” according to a Russian defense ministry statement. “A humanitarian corridor has been opened through which wounded Ukrainian servicemen are being taken to a medical facility in Novoazovsk.”

  Russian media is also widely reporting the surrender at Azovstal, with RT airing some of the first footage of the evacuation of the last fighters to leave…

  Surrender at #Azovstal – #Ukraine Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar confirms that 53 wounded #Ukrainian soldiers were taken from #Mariupol‘s Azovstal steel plant to the hospital in #Novoazovsk, another 211 people were taken to #Yelenovka – both cities in the #DPR. Total 264. pic.twitter.com/XzYNCInwAA

  — tim anderson (@timand2037) May 16, 2022

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

  The Moscow Times is quoting confirmation from Ukraine’s president – who is applauding the safe surrender: 

  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “we hope to save the lives of our boys.”

  “I want to underline: Ukraine needs its Ukrainian heroes alive. This is our principle,” he said in a video statement.

  Crucially, Novoazovsk – where the wounded Ukrainian fighters are being taken – is in Russian-controlled territory about 40km east of Mariupol. The surrendered troops are reportedly now in the custody of the pro-Moscow Donetsk People’s Republic. Likely Kiev will seek to negotiate their return for captured Russians currently in Ukrainian military custody.

  Azov battalion, which has long been widely acknowledged even in prior mainstream media reporting as a neo-Nazi group, is asking the Ukrainian public for continued “support” – given this surrender (after previously vowing multiple to times to ‘fight till the end’) will likely be viewed by some as premature capitulation. During the long siege, all that were stuck in the facility had been running out of food, supplies, and ammunition as Russian forces had them completely surrounded. Last month President Putin is said to have ordered the military to simply wait them out, as opposed to what would have likely been a high death toll operation to enter the underground complex beneath the huge plant.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 22:05

• Senator McConnell Expects Wednesday Vote On $40 Billion Ukraine Aid
  Senator McConnell Expects Wednesday Vote On $40 Billion Ukraine Aid

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday that he expects the Senate will hold a vote on the nearly $40 billion aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday.

  “We expect to invoke cloture — hopefully by a significant margin — on the motion to proceed on Monday, which would set us up to approve the supplemental on Wednesday,” McConnell said in Sweden after visiting Ukraine on Saturday.

  

  By invoking cloture, the Senate can limit the debate on an issue to 30 hours and hold a vote after that time. This past Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocked the Senate from voting on the massive aid package, which had already passed in the House.

  The Pentagon has said Congress needs to pass the $39.8 billion aid package to avoid delays in weapons shipments to Ukraine. “May 19 is the day we really — without additional authorities — we begin to not have the ability to send new stuff in,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

  He stressed that: “It’ll start impacting our ability to provide aid uninterrupted.”

  Paul blocked the vote because he wanted to add text to the bill that would create a new inspector general for oversight of the billions in weapons that are being poured into Ukraine, but he also noted the economic pain Americans are feeling due to the 40-year high inflation and soaring gas prices.

  “Americans are feeling the pain and Congress seems intent only on adding to that pain by shoveling more money out the door as fast as they can,” Paul said.

  Despite Paul’s delay, the aid is expected to easily pass through the Senate once a vote is held. In the House, the measure passed in a vote of 368-57, with only Republicans voting against the legislation.

  Once signed by President Biden, the new aid package will bring the total US expenditure on the war in Ukraine to over $53 billion.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 21:45

• Supreme Court Rebuffs Biden Admin, Sides With Ted Cruz Over Campaign-Finance Caps
  Supreme Court Rebuffs Biden Admin, Sides With Ted Cruz Over Campaign-Finance Caps

  The Supreme Court struck down a federal campaign-finance regulation limiting politicians from repaying loans above $250,000 from supporters more than three weeks after Election Day.

  

  As The Wall Street Journal reported, at issue was a $260,000 loan Mr. Cruz, a Republican, made to his campaign in 2018 when he was locked in a down-to-the-wire race against Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke.

  The senator challenged a federal $250,000 cap on the reimbursement of a candidate’s personal loans with money his or her campaign receives after the election.

  Lawyer Charles Cooper, representing Mr. Cruz at the high court, said the limits were an unlawful burden on political candidates’ free-speech rights that couldn’t be justified by government claims that the rules guarded against corrupt influence by donors.

  The Justice Department, representing the Federal Election Commission, argued the government had legitimate anti-corruption interests in limiting the ability of candidates to be repaid with money that donors contribute to a political campaign after they know an election’s outcome.

  The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ideological split sided with Senator Cruz with Chief Justice John Roberts explaining in his opinion for the court that “The question is whether this restriction violates the First Amendment rights of candidates and their campaigns to engage in political speech.”

  “[T]here is no doubt that the law does burden First Amendment electoral speech, and any such law must at least be justified by a permissible interest,” he wrote.

  “When the government restricts speech, the government bears the burden of proving the constitutionality of its actions,” Roberts wrote, quoting directly from the 2014 plurality opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC.

  The government “is unable to identify a single case of quid pro quo corruption … even though most states do not impose a limit on the use of post-election contributions to repay candidate loans.”

  The rule “burdens core political speech without proper justification.”

  Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

  Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion that the Supreme Court was making a mistake.

  “In striking down the law today the court greenlights all the sordid bargains Congress thought right to stop … In allowing those payments to go forward unrestrained, today’s decision can only bring this country’s political system into further disrepute.”

  Kagan embraced the bribery argument advanced by the Biden administration.

  “Repaying a candidate’s loan after he has won election cannot serve the usual purposes of a contribution: The money comes too late to aid in any of his campaign activities. All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor—by a vote, a contract, an appointment.

  “It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption—the danger of ‘I’ll make you richer and you’ll make me richer’ arrangements between donors and officeholders.”

  The ruling adds to a line of recent Supreme Court rulings striking down campaign-finance restrictions as violating the First Amendment.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 21:25

• Is There Hope For The Mainstream Media?
  Is There Hope For The Mainstream Media?

  Submitted by reader “Prison Mike”

  It was hard to disagree with the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times when he called social media the “cancer of our time.” A free society needs a robust, competitive, self-sustaining news media landscape, and social media seems to have corrupted that. If social is cancer, and the LA Times horrible readership are any diagnosis, that paper is a terminal case.

  The Times is just once instance of the vicious cycle in news media. Radical technological changes have disrupted traditional funding models, making traditional types of reporting too unprofitable to sustain. Newsroom staffing has been slashed by one-quarter since 2008, with those left standing horrified they’ll be next.

  This creates newsrooms full of anxiety, with many reporters trying to leverage sensationalism on social media. While reporters 20 years ago might have tried to bury – or at least hide – the biases that informed their reporting, now they brag about those biases on Twitter in the purity-spiral battle to prove who’s the wokest.

  Traditional news outlets have lost credibility, and for good reason. In a recent survey, the US ranks dead last in trust of domestic media. And desperate attempts to tack into these headwinds is making things worse.

  Just getting it right doesn’t matter to so many in the industry nowadays as seen with NBC’s recidivistic problem with improperly sourcing articles.

  We can also see so much hypocrisy when it comes to the reporting on potential conflicts of interest after people leave the White House. When former Trump administration staffers left to pursue media opportunities, they were attacked for conflicts of interest but with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki leaving to join MSNBC and former deputy press secretary for Vice President Kamala Harris, Symone Sanders launching her own MSNBC show, we have not heard a peep.

  Traditional news values don’t even enter into editorial decisions when you’re paid by the click, or worse, subsidized by corporate overlords.

  One particularly galling example is Business Insider. While one wouldn’t immediately think it would suffer from some of these aforementioned problems, indeed it’s been a leader.

  All the way back in 2013, reporters were deriding Business Insider for “slideshows and other crap meant not to inform, but merely to generate clicks.” When its ownership changed hands in 2016, there was a mass exodus of staff who objected to the way “traffic took precedence over enterprise reporting.”

  Some of their reporting has even led to public fights and litigation, accusing Insider’s corporate masters of using the news outlet to slander their competitors. After hit pieces against Barstool Sports’ owner – and direct media competitor – Dave Portnoy over alleged sexual misconduct, he filed a lawsuit against Business Insider for defamation and printing “outright fabrications.” Bogus “Me Too” allegations are very useful for getting rid of competitors in a world where we unquestionably “believe survivors.”

  Comparable allegations have been made about the website’s coverage of real estate mogul and head of real estate data company CoStar, Andrew Florance, who’s been accused of misconduct ranging from making female subordinates at his company CoStar feel uncomfortable to pointing a gun at people!  While the accuracy and severity of the claims made in the reporting is best left up to those involved, Insider’s reporting never once mentioned that their parent company Axel Media also owns multiple real estate marketing portals across the globe that are direct competitors to CoStar. Most notably Axel Springer bought France’s number 3 property platform Logic-Immo for $115 million in 2017 and also in 2011 bought online property advertising firm SeLoger for $846 million.  

  Insider’s reporting is immediately brought into questions based on the fact their CEO has a lifetime ban from the SEC, a point that Portnoy has made publicly multiple times. Their questionable ethics should receive even more scrutiny when reporting on their owner’s competition without making basic disclosures.

  At the very least, it’s reasonable to wonder if these undisclosed conflicts are motivating factors of what Insider chooses to cover. Even for as horrible as the once-great Washington Post has become since Jeff Bezos bought it, whenever the paper reports on Amazon, they are quick to disclose their ownership.

  The sad truth is that media neutrality and reliability seems to be a product of 20th Century television reporting. Because the Big Three – ABC, NBC, CBS – had to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, they all were all fighting to be the one that shot best toward the middle.

  As demographics have become more diverse, so too has our media consumption. News outlets have reverted to the kind of biases we’d previously seen for hundreds of years, whether it was corrupt Gilded Age political bosses or Thomas Jefferson hiring a newspaper to call John Adams a hermaphrodite.

  The challenges of the modern media environment are hard, but it’s hard to feel bad for almost any modern, mainstream media outlet.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 21:05

• Why Are Watches Usually Set To 10:10 In Advertisements?
  Why Are Watches Usually Set To 10:10 In Advertisements?

  Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Science (emphasis ours),

  It seems a tad odd, but it’s also true: Take a look at advertisements for traditional watches (you know, the ones with the rotating ‘hands’), and you’ll quickly notice that the time on the watches is almost always set to 10:10. This has actually been the norm since the 1950s, but why?

  

  A simple explanation is that this setting keeps the hands out of the way of the watch’s brand, so ‘Rolex’ or ‘Cartier’ can be placed front and center, but other time settings also accomplish this aim. A different explanation might prompt surprise and understandable skepticism: 10:10 sells more watches because the arrangement of the hands subtly resembles a smile, thus leaving onlookers in a better mood.

  An international team of researchers explored the latter theory in 2017, publishing their results in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. They recruited 46 participants to look at sixty pictures of various watches with their times either set at 10:10, 11:30, or 8:20, asking participants to rate both their emotional response to seeing each picture as well as their likelihood to buy each watch. Subjects rated watches set at 10:10 as slightly more pleasurable compared to watches set to the other times. They also said they would be slightly more likely to buy them.

  

  In a second experiment, the researchers recruited twenty more subjects to each view twelve different images in random order of watches again set at 10:10, 11:30, or 8:20 and rate how much each setting resembled a picture of a smiling or sad face on a scale of one to ten. Overwhelmingly, subjects said that watches set at 10:10 most closely resembled a smiling face while watches set at 8:20 most closely resembled a sad face.

  While the research could have benefited from a larger sample size, particularly for the first experiment, and probably should have compared more time settings, it did decidedly support the hypothesis. Marketers are well known for exploiting any angle they can to sell products, and setting clock hands on traditional watches to 10:10 does indeed seem to subtly influence prospective purchasers.

  Source: Karim AA, Lützenkirchen B, Khedr E and Khalil R (2017) Why Is 10 Past 10 the Default Setting for Clocks and Watches in Advertisements? A Psychological Experiment. Front. Psychol. 8:1410. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01410

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 20:25

• "It Was A Mistake" – Bernanke Says Fed's Fear Of 'Shocking' The Market Delayed Tightening Move
  “It Was A Mistake” – Bernanke Says Fed’s Fear Of ‘Shocking’ The Market Delayed Tightening Move

  With inflation running rampant, unemployment falling, and wages soaring, the Jerome Powell-led Federal Reserve waited too long to reverse its ultra-low interest rate policies and a massive bond-buying program. This delay has now been called a “mistake” by former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. 

  Bernanke spoke with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview during Monday’s “Squawk Box” show. He told Sorkin, “The question is why did they delay that. … Why did they delay their response? I think in retrospect, yes, it was a mistake.”

  

  Inflation has become one of the most severe threats to the economy. Bernanke said, “And I think they [Fed] agree it was a mistake.” He explains why the Fed missed the window of opportunity to tighten: 

  “One of the reasons was that they wanted not to shock the market.

  “Jay Powell was on my board during the Taper Tantrum in 2013, which was a very unpleasant experience. He wanted to avoid that kind of thing by giving people as much warning as possible. And so that gradualism was one of several reasons why the Fed didn’t respond more quickly to the inflationary pressure in the middle of 2021,” he said. 

  Powell, the defender of financial markets, got it wrong last year when inflation began to run higher than the Fed’s 2% target, though Fed members widely said inflation would be “transitory.” What’s disturbing is inflation was not transitory, and the monetary wonks operating the printing presses clearly didn’t understand. Their inability to tighten last summer has caused the Fed to be way behind the curve, hence today’s oversized rate hikes. 

  So how behind the curve is the Powell-led Fed? The Taylor Rule suggests Fed Funds should be over 11%, not around 1%. The Taylor rule is a formula that can predict or guide how central banks should alter interest rates due to changes in the economy.

  

  Right now, Taylor’s rule recommends that the Federal Reserve should continue to raise interest rates. 

  “There’s a lot of support for the fact that the Fed is tightening now, even though obviously we see the effects in markets,” Bernanke said. “You know, we’ll see the effects in house prices, etc.” 

  Meanwhile, the central bank is attempting to achieve a proverbial “soft landing,” though there’s an increasing risk of a recession in the not-too-distant future. 

  Powell and gang missed the window of opportunity to tighten policy rates and is now considered, well, in one former central banker’s eyes, a “mistake.” And with policy errors, hard landings are usually seen. 

  Watch the full interview here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 20:11

• Ambassador Says Russian Diplomats In D.C. Being Approached & Harassed by CIA, FBI
  Ambassador Says Russian Diplomats In D.C. Being Approached & Harassed by CIA, FBI

  Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov over the weekend went public with an usual allegation – that Russian diplomats working in Washington are being harassed and increasingly approached by the FBI and CIA, which are said to be seeking information. Without specifying which precise entity is allegedly behind it, Antonov went so far as to say this includes “threats of physical violence” against Russian embassy employees in D.C. amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

  Antonov described to Russia’s TASS news agency over the weekend: “It’s like a besieged fortress. Basically, our embassy is operating in a hostile environment … Embassy employees are receiving threats, including threats of physical violence.”

  

  “Agents from US security services are hanging around outside the Russian embassy, handing out CIA and FBI phone numbers, which can be called to establish contact,” he claimed.

  The Russian ambassador’s words were picked up by Reuters, which contacted the named agencies in order to seek confirmation or comment. “CIA and the FBI declined comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. State Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment,” the report noted.

  While it’s long been acknowledged as somewhat standard practice among competing foreign intelligence agencies to attempt to quietly recruit agents and assets from the other side (who often work under diplomatic cover at their respective country’s embassy or consulate), what is entirely uncommon is that this type of activity would be done so brazenly just outside embassy grounds, as the Russian ambassador is alleging.

  As for the general atmosphere of harassment and intimidating “threats” that Russian embassy employees might be on the receiving end of – this part of the allegations seems more believable given Russian officials in Europe have already been subject of such attacks. 

  The Russian ambassador to Poland was attacked as he tried to lay a wreath at the Soviet soldiers’ cemetery in Warsaw. pic.twitter.com/FFtBzuRITW

  — RadioGenova (@RadioGenova) May 9, 2022

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

  The foremost latest example was Russia’s ambassador to Poland getting doused in red paint on the occasion of a May 9th ‘Victory Day’ ceremony. Embassies and consulates in various parts of Europe have also been subject of vandalism and property defacement of late.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 20:05

• The New Rift Between WHO And China
  The New Rift Between WHO And China

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  From the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization and China’s CCP have worked and spoken hand-in-glove, culminating in the Potemkin Village junket of mid-February 2020. The WHO-sponsored travel report—how wonderfully China had performed!—was written and signed by American public health officials who recommended Wuhan-style lockdowns, a disastrous policy that further inspired most governments in the world to do the same.

  

  Twenty-six months later, it turns out that China in fact had not “eliminated the virus fully within its borders,” contrary to the over-the-top claims of TV pundit Devi Sridhar in her new book “Preventable.” They only pushed cases into the future, as the CCP discovered when positive tests appeared all over Shanghai, leading to 7 weeks of brutal lockdowns.

  This move on China’s part has been a disaster for the country and the world economy, and presently endangers the financial and technological future of the entire country.

  For Xi Jinping, lockdowns and zero-covid were his greatest achievement, one which was celebrated the world over, causing his political pride to swell beyond all bounds. Now, he cannot back off lest he face possible losses in upcoming party elections.

  Just this past weekend, he made it clear to the entire government that there would be no backing off the zero-covid policy: the CCP will “unswervingly adhere to the general policy of ‘dynamic zero-Covid,’ and resolutely fight against any words and deeds that distort, doubt or deny our country’s epidemic prevention policies.”

  The problem is acute: vast numbers in China likely need to acquire natural immunity via exposure. The lockdown policy likely puts a damper on the achievement of endemicity. That means long-term damage to China’s future.

  Sensing this problem, the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, offered a mild criticism:

  “Considering the behavior of the virus, I think a shift will be very important,” adding that he had discussed this point with Chinese scientists.

  What happened next is truly fascinating: Tedros’s comments were censored all over China and searches for the name Tedros were immediately blocked within the country.

  Implausibly, merely by stating the incredibly obvious point, Tedros has made himself an enemy of the state.

  Meanwhile, another WHO/China partisan, Bill Gates, has been sheepishly saying something very similar in interviews, namely that the virus cannot be eradicated.

  It’s not just Tedros and Gates who are trying to flee their advocacy of lockdowns. Anthony Fauci himself denied that the United States ever had “complete lockdowns”—which is technically correct but not because he didn’t demand them.

  On March 16, 2020, Fauci faced the national press and read from a CDC directive: “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

  In fact, one gets the strong sense that governments around the world are pretending as if the whole pathetic and terrible affair never happened, even as they are attempting to reserve the power to do it all over again should the need arise.

  On May 12, 2022, many governments around the world gathered for a video call and agreed to pour many billions more into covid work, and reaffirm their dedication to an “all-of-society” and “whole-of-government” approach to infectious disease. The U.S. government under the administration readily agreed to this idea.

  Leaders reinforced the value of whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches to bring the acute phase of COVID-19 to an end, and the importance of being prepared for future pandemic threats. The Summit was focused on preventing complacency, recognizing the pandemic is not over; protecting the most vulnerable, including the elderly, immunocompromised people, and frontline and health workers; and preventing future health crises, recognizing now is the time to secure political and financial commitment for pandemic preparedness.

  The Summit catalyzed bold commitments. Financially, leaders committed to provide nearly $2 billion in new funding—additional to pledges made earlier in 2022. These funds will accelerate access to vaccinations, testing, and treatments, and they will contribute to a new pandemic preparedness and global health security fund housed at the World Bank.

  Is it progress to see these people throwing around language from the much-criticized but now wholly vindicated Great Barrington Declaration? Doubtful. You can’t make a bad policy better by tossing around words. There is every indication from this statement that there will be no apologies, no regrets, and no changes in the default position that governments must always and everywhere have maximum power to control any pathogen of their choosing.

  Despite Tedros’s censored words, it’s no wonder that Xi Jinping continues to feel vindicated and affirmed, and sees no real political danger in choosing his own power over the health and well-being of his people. Governments around the world still cannot muster the courage to make a full-throated and solid attack on zero-covid, for fear of the implications of such a concession. Nudges and hints, even from the WHO, will not do it.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 19:45

• 100,000 More Recalls And Even More Shanghai Delays Sting Tesla To Start The Week
  100,000 More Recalls And Even More Shanghai Delays Sting Tesla To Start The Week

  Just as it started to look like everything had finally been sorted out for Tesla in Shanghai, we reported last week that the company once again had to halt its production due to “issues with supplies”. 

  Starting off this week, it doesn’t look like things are getting any better. First, Bloomberg reported that “no vehicles were sold in Shanghai last month” as a result of the lockdown, according to an auto-seller association in the city. 

  Meanwhile, Tesla’s plans to restart Shanghai to its pre-pandemic production levels have been pushed back another week, Reuters reported this weekend. Citing an internal memo, Reuters wrote that Tesla is still planning on just one shift for its plant this week and a daily output of about 1,200 units.

  Tesla is aiming for 2,600 units per day by May 23. 

  

  Additionally, it was reported Monday that Tesla would be recalling over 100,000 vehicles in China. 107,293 vehicles in China will be recalled “due to safety risks”, according to the China People’s Daily. 

  The recall, which relates to a defect in the central touchscreen during fast charging, “involves Model 3 and Model Y vehicles produced in the country between Oct 19, 2021, and April 26, 2022,” the report says. 

  Recall, Tesla’s most recent Shanghai shutdown came just three weeks after the plant resumed production. The plant was closed for a total of 22 days, Reuters noted. Shanghai is now in its seventh week of lockdowns, and we noted last week that it was “unclear when the supply issues can be resolved and when Tesla can resume production”.

  Wire harness maker Aptiv is one supplier who is currently facing issues due to “infections found among its employees”, we reported last week. Meanwhile, Tesla had just started to eye resuming double shifts at its plant, we noted two weeks ago. The plant was making plans to “resume double shifts” at its Shanghai factory as soon as mid-May after starting back up in mid April. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 19:25

• The Post-Roe World: A Reality Check On The Implications Of The Leaked Supreme Court Opinion
  The Post-Roe World: A Reality Check On The Implications Of The Leaked Supreme Court Opinion

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in the Hill on claims being made about the post-Roe world and the sweeping away of such rights as interracial marriage and the use of contraceptives. The “parade of horribles” seems to get longer by the day but it may actually be undermining the good-faith arguments made by pro-abortion advocates.

  

  The Map of Hell painting by Botticelli

  Here is the column:

  The New Yorker magazine ran a cover in 1976 showing the view of the country from 9th Avenue. The map by Saul Steinberg showed civilization largely ending at the New Jersey border with a vast wasteland between New York and the Pacific Ocean.

  It appears that, for some people, not much has changed with that view of America.

  Recently the editors of the New York Times seriously warned that some states likely would outlaw interracial marriage if Roe v. Wade is overturned:

  “Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t.”

  It is hard to imagine because it is utterly untrue. Nothing in the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization supports such a dire prediction. To the contrary, the draft expressly states that “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Indeed, such a motive might come as something of a surprise to Justice Clarence Thomas, given his own interracial marriage, or to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, given her own interracial family.

  The purpose of the Times’ commentary seems to be to inflame rather than inform readers. And that is consistent with the position of politicians and pundits who raised alarms, even before the leak, over the need to reignite anger among voters to avoid a disaster in the midterm election. On MSNBC, for example, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) agreed with John Heilemann that Democrats must “scare the crap out of [voters] and get them to come out.”

  The Times editorial is part of a “parade of horribles” that is becoming increasingly grotesque in its exaggerated claims. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and former Clinton Attorney General Eric Holder had a preposterous discussion of how if Roe goes down, Brown v. Board of Education could be next. MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” host Joy Reid falsely told her audience that the decision “could apply to almost anything” in not just prohibiting interracial marriage but overturning the Brown decision.

  An apocalyptic post-Roe hellscape can be a motivating image, but only to the extent that it is credible.

  The problem is that the claims are detached from both legal and political realities.

  Consider three of these claims on interracial marriage, contraception and same-sex marriage:

  Interracial marriage

  With polls showing that 94 percent of Americans support interracial marriage, the Times editors do not bother to name the states that are largely composed of the remaining 6 percent.

  The claim is even less credible legally than it is politically. The leading case on interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, was based on different constitutional grounds and would not be negated by this opinion. While the court did discuss the due process right to marriage, it was primarily handed down on equal protection grounds due to the inherent racial classification. Then-Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: “The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States … There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”

  None of that, however, deters some pundits from keeping alive the fear that interracial marriages soon could be criminalized. As ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel declared, “They’ll come for same-sex marriage, they’ll come for interracial marriage, they’ll outlaw that peanut butter that comes with the jelly in the same jar.”

  It might be a good comedic line — but this and similar claims make no constitutional sense. There is no reason to believe that interracial marriages would be banned in a post-Roe world.

  Contraception

  The cries of alarm include other areas expressly addressed in the draft opinion as not impacted by its analysis. For example, many critics claim that contraception could soon be outlawed even though the court’s draft specifically dismisses such claims: “Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged.”

  It is true that some activists have sought to outlaw IUDs and Plan B prescriptions as “abortion-inducing.” However, putting aside that the draft opinion expressly distinguishes the contraception cases, there is no basis for suggesting that the court would eradicate any semblance of personal privacy and intimacy protections under the Constitution. Such sweeping transformation of the private lives of Americans would involve curtailing a host of other rights, including equal protection. Moreover, there would be considerable practical barriers to such bans in preventing interstate availability of contraceptives.

  The polling on this issue is even more lopsided. While the public remains supportive of limits on abortion, some 83 percent support to the availability of contraceptives. Only 6 percent favor making contraception illegal.

  Same-sex marriage

  In 2015, the court voted 5-4 to strike down bans on same-sex marriage. The court’s specific foundation for this right has continued to be mired in controversy. Even some of us who had long supported same-sex marriage raised concerns at the time over the reliance of Justice Anthony Kennedy in his decision on a “right to dignity.”

  Once again, however, the court in this draft opinion distinguishes abortion from other areas as involving claims of an “unborn human life.” Nothing in this opinion endorses a ban on same-sex unions.

  However, even before this draft opinion was leaked, there were calls for a better-articulated foundation than the one laid out in Obergefell v. Hodges. As with interracial marriage, many of us have argued for an equal-protection foundation for the right.

  Putting this aside, the politics on this issue has changed dramatically in the last decade. Polls show that 70 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage.

  Roe is not the basis for all of these rights, and its basis has long been debated. Nevertheless, columnist Maureen Dowd has declared that the “antediluvian draft opinion is the Puritans’ greatest victory since they expelled Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

  Such claims, however, ignore that the basis for the original decision was questioned even by liberals. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe wrote that “one of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” At least some of the court’s justices clearly hold many of the same doubts over the basis for Roe in the Constitution.

  There is ample cause for pro-abortion advocates to organize over the loss of Roe. However, those claims are only undermined by a parade of horribles that leaves both the case law and credibility behind.

  A cynic might wonder if Democratic leaders in Congress truly want to preserve the status quo of Roe. After all, their recent proposed codification of Roe went beyond the draft decision, which the leadership knew would lose critical votes in the Senate — but which may provide what they hope will be a powerful rallying cry for the midterm elections.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 19:05

• Reuters Mocked For Using Paintball Training Photo In Ukraine War Report
  Reuters Mocked For Using Paintball Training Photo In Ukraine War Report

  Reuters is being widely mocked for publishing an article Monday morning which is headlined, Ukraine says it has repelled Russian incursion in Sumy region – given it is accompanied with the below photograph. The photo tweeted by Reuters naturally created some confusion, to put it lightly.

  Yes, a Ukrainian “military photo” showing troops beating back the Russians… apparently with paintball guns.

  Ukraine says it has repelled Russian incursion in Sumy region https://t.co/dE81E0R9P6 pic.twitter.com/une4hkj0M6

  — Reuters (@Reuters) May 16, 2022

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

  The report filed from Kyiv is introduced with the lines, “Ukrainian border guards repelled an incursion by a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group in the northeastern region of Sumy on Monday, the governor of the Sumy region said.”

  The photo and tweet stayed live for hours throughout the morning, even as social media users expressed in hundreds of comments (and counting) that this demonstrates why it it remains hard to trust mainstream media reporting on complex foreign conflicts, especially Ukraine. Reuters did attempt to clarify in a caption with the photo that it shows “Members of the territorial defense force” attending “training”.

  

  However, the avalanche of comments was triggered by the fact that the Reuters tweet itself was accompanied by no clarifying context.

  Some have also noted that given the ‘fog of war’ already makes it obviously very difficult to ascertain precisely what’s happening with the rapidly developing battlefield situation from day to day, the choice to feature Ukrainian troops paintballing is but the latest in a series of mainstream media fails. Throughout the conflict, big claims have often been made – captured in headlines – but typically with little in the way of actual evidence. “Ukraine claims…” “Russia claims…” “US officials claim…” are the types of introductions that have become commonplace.

  Ummm. pic.twitter.com/0jQM4KRdq6

  — MikeMcKinnon75 (@MikeMcK1975) May 16, 2022

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

  Typically Ukrainian forces are quite open about showing off their US-supplied military hardware, and in particular the Raytheon and Lockheed Martin produced FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile system. These have flooded the battlefield, and have had devastating effect on Russian tanks and armored vehicle convoys.

  But the paintball pic has elicited sarcastic comments suggesting that maybe it’s the paintball industry’s turn to make a pile of cash off the conflict…

  This war is being manipulated by Big Paintball https://t.co/QTbUOggSGL

  — Granite State Texian (@Aquinas71) May 16, 2022

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

  Untrusting observers are also questioning the $40 billion in Ukraine aid that the Senate is expected to again vote on Wednesday at a moment it is being hotly debated following Sen. Rand Paul last week blocking an initial hasty vote.

  Glad they received the shipment of TIPPMENN 98’s and CO2 canisters from the US Taxpayers. https://t.co/pVeQHP3PYZ

  — Hamill Stewart (@stewart_hamill) May 16, 2022

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

  “Maybe Ukrainians really do need the $40 billion if they’re fighting the Russian army with paintball guns?” one Twitter user asked. “And Reuters wonders why nobody trusts legacy media anymore.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 18:45

• Lott: Guess How Many Violent Crimes Actually Involve Guns?
  Lott: Guess How Many Violent Crimes Actually Involve Guns?

  Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClear Politics,

  To President Biden, public health researchers, and the media, violent crime is all about guns. But a new survey finds that people are badly misinformed about how much violent crime involves guns. The average likely American voter is way off, thinking that over 46% of violent crimes involve guns. In fact, the true figure is less than 8%.

  

  Not surprisingly, those who believe that most violent crime involves guns are more likely to view gun control as the solution.

  Biden has given four major speeches on violent crime (here, here, here, and here). Each one of them was focused on enforcement of gun control laws. In the four speeches, he mentioned “gun” or “firearm” 179 times. The term “weapon,” sometimes in connection with “assault weapon,” was used another 31 times.

  The words “crime,” “violence,” or “violent” were mentioned about half as often – 94 times. He only mentions the words “murder” and “homicide” seven times in these four presentations, and entirely omits them from his two most recent talks.

  But this “guns first” approach ignores a basic fact – over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms. Although Biden blames guns for the increase in violent crime, the latest data show that gun crimes fell dramatically.

  The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, in the latest year available (2020), shows that there were 4,558,150 rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults, and the FBI reports 21,570 murders. Of those, 350,460 rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults (see Table 8) and 13,620 murders involved firearms. So, while it’s true that firearms are the weapon of choice in more than half the murders in this country, it’s also true that only 7.9% of violent crimes were committed with guns.

  The new McLaughlin & Associates survey of 1,000 likely voters from April 20 to 26 for the Crime Prevention Research Center shows how misinformed people are. People across the country, of all races and incomes, have wildly inaccurate beliefs about how frequently violent crime involves guns.

  Even so, there are large differences across groups. The average Democrat estimates that 56.9% of violent crimes involve guns, whereas the typical Republican gave an answer of 37%. Those with the highest incomes (over $250,000 per year) and those who work for the government give the highest numbers – 56.1% and 51% respectively. Women (50%) believe that more violent crimes involve guns than men do (43%). Urban Americans say 48%, whereas rural Americans say 40%. But the biggest difference is between blacks (59%) and Asians (31%).

  The McLaughlin survey also gave people three options on the best way to fight crime: Pass more gun control laws, more strictly enforce current laws, or have police concentrate on arresting repeat violent criminals.

  Some respondents at least got it right that less than 20% of violent crime involves guns. Just 8% prioritized more gun laws, and 15% focused on stricter enforcement of existing laws. An overwhelming 71% thought the best way of fighting crime was to arrest violent criminals.

  Some likely voters thought that more than 80% of the violent crime involved guns. Most supported either more gun control laws (33%) or more strict enforcement of current gun laws (28%). Only 36% of them wanted the focus on arresting violent criminals.

  Those who think that most violent crime is committed with guns consistently support more gun control. Those who don’t believe that instead want to focus on arresting violent criminals and keeping them in jail.

  Perhaps the gun control debate would be very different if the media had done a better job of informing people about crime. The most newsworthy cases, unfortunately, don’t tend to be typical of violent crime. Focusing on how to solve 8% of violent crime does nothing to solve the other 92%.

  John R. Lott Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Until January 2021, he was the senior adviser for research and statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy where he dealt with issues of vote fraud.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 18:25

• Tiger Global Sells, Liquidates Billions: Here Is Its Full Portfolio As Of March 31
  Tiger Global Sells, Liquidates Billions: Here Is Its Full Portfolio As Of March 31

  Heading into today’s 13F filing deadline for the first quarter, we said that it would be the first time that investors actually cared about (and read through) at least some of these filings in years…

  Monday may be the first time in years when people actually read through 13F filings

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 13, 2022

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  … and none more so than the 13F belonging to the biggest tech-focused fund of them all, Tiger Global, which having accumulated tens of billions in the past two decades, has gotten destroyed in the past few months, losing $17 billion in 2022, and which according to the FT, “has in four months erased about two-thirds of its gains since its launch in 2001, according to calculations by LCH Investments.”

  To be sure, we don’t know what the fund has done in the past 45 days since the 13F covers the period from the start of the year through March 31, but even that is plenty, and below we summarizes the most important changes to what is arguably the most important portfolio for the tech world.

  First, according to its just filed 13F, Tiger Global Management managed just $26.6 billion as of March (in disclosed longs), nearly $20 billion less than the $46 billion it reported as of Dec 31.

  Digging through some of its most notable changes, we find that Tiger liquidated all of its holdings in Netflix and Adobe during the first quarter, which combined were worth more than $1 billion as of Dec 31, while buying more shares of Carvana. NFLX plunged 38% in the first three months of the year.

  The fund also bought shares of beleaguered online used-car retailer Carvana, which plunged 49% during the quarter and has lost an additional two-thirds of its value since March 31. Tiger also added to its holdings in Crowdstrike, Sea Ltd, Snowflake, Servicenow, and others. While not captured by this 13F period, Tiger Global’s losses mounted in April, with the hedge fund declining 15%, extending this year’s drop to 44%.

  As we reported previously, the firm is headed for its worst year since it was founded in 2001 as fast-growing tech companies in the US and China – which were behind the fund’s earlier gains – cratered. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 slid 13% in April, its biggest monthly decline since 2008, while the broader S&P 500 fell 8.8%, the most in more than half a century.

  The full breakdown of changes between Dec 31 and March 31 is shown below (new positions in green), starting with the fund’s top 5 positions: JD.com (it reduced this position by 942K shares), Microsoft (cut by 598K shares), Crowdstrike, NU Holdings, and Sea Ltd. Tiger also slashed its holdings of Facebook Meta by a whopping 25%, and ended the quarter owning just $867.8 million.

  In total, Tiger Global sold out of 83 shares and bought just two new positions: digital banking-services firm Dave (a banking app aimed at people who hate banks. Dave offers products like no-interest cash advance) and Starry Group Holdings Inc. It was left with 88 stocks they’re invested in as of March 31. And the market value of those holdings is $26.6 billion.

  

  … Looking at the liquidations, Tiger Global sold out of Netflix, Adobe, Coupa, Sunrun, Paypal and more. They ditched 83 stocks entirely in the first quarter.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 18:05

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