Jan 18

Today’s News 18th January 2022

  • Dr. Peter McCullough: Official COVID "Narrative Has Crumbled"
    Dr. Peter McCullough: Official COVID “Narrative Has Crumbled”

    Authored by Art Moore via WND.com,

    Dr. Peter McCullough – a renowned cardiologist and highly published medical scientist whose confrontation of the government’s COVID-19 policies has drawn more than 40 million views on Joe Rogan’s podcast – told WND in a video interview Thursday night the official pandemic narrative that has been fiercely guarded by establishment media and social-media censors is “completely crumbling.”

    That narrative, he said, included “false statements regarding asymptomatic spread, reliance on lockdown and masks – which obviously didn’t work – the suppression of early treatment, the mass promotion of vaccines that failed.”

    “And now here we are, almost in complete free fall,” McCullough said, referring to the record number of COVID-19 cases as officials acknowledge the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission.

    McCullough noted that in California, with the more contagious but much milder omicron variant now dominant, health care workers who tested positive for COVID-19 and had symptoms were told to go back to work.

    “With that, I think that’s it. I think that’s the end. The narrative has crumbled. People don’t want these vaccines,” McCullough said.

    “The vaccines should be pulled off the market. They clearly are not solving the problem.”

    The focus, he said, should be on “treating high-risk patients who develop symptoms” with some of the early treatments that he and other physicians around the world have found to be effective, including ivermectin and a new drug granted emergency use authorization by the FDA, Paxlovid.

    McCullough cited a study from Denmark and data from the U.K.’s health agency showing that the vaccines have zero effectiveness against omicron.

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    “That’s not misinformation,” he said. “I’m just quoting the data. All of this can be looked up. Fact-checkers can look at it. I know I’ll never have any problems with allegations of misinformation, because I just quote the data.”

    President Biden clearly had McCullough in mind when on Thursday he urged social media companies and media outlets to “please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”

    McCullough pointed out his work has been relied upon by courts across the nation, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has testified to the U.S. Senate and will be back there later this month.

    “I think America knows who is giving them the straight story.”

    In the half-hour video interview with WND (embedded below), McCullough also discussed:

    • The punishment of physicians who counter the official COVID narrative and use clinically indicated, FDA-approved drugs off-label such as ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, including a colleague in Maine whose was ordered to undergo a psychological examination after her license was suspended;

    • His participation in a rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23 protesting vaccine mandates;

    • The Supreme Court’s rulings Thursday on vaccine mandates;

    • The possibility that omicron could spell the end of the pandemic, serving as a “universal booster”;

    • Data showing that vaccination has backfired, making the pandemic worse in nations with high vaccine intake;

    • The lethality of the mRNA vaccines;

    • His view on Biden’s mass testing program;

    • His take on new FDA-approved treatments and his simple, inexpensive, over-the-counter protocol for treating omicron;

    • The unwillingness of so many doctors to “come off the sidelines” and treat patients for COVID-19;

    • The “crisis of competence” among top government health officials;

    • Where to find resources and support for physicians and patients, and for employees confronting mandates.

    “I think Americans are going to understand that their individual choice is really what’s going to matter in the end,” he McCullough told WND in conclusion. “If Americans decide that they’re not going to take any boosters or any more vaccines, it doesn’t matter how many mandates or how many court decisions that happen. The vaccine program is going to crumble. I think it’s just a matter of saying no.”

    He emphasized that the vaccines are still “research.”

    “No one can be forced into it,” he said of vaccination. “And they’re not turning out to be safe or effective. So, if  everybody just stands firm and declines the vaccines, I think that will be the quickest way for us to get out of this.”

    See the WND interview with Dr. Peter McCullough:

    McCullough, in a video interview with WND in December, called for a “pivot” from the current policies to early treatment and “compassionate care” for those who have COVID or have suffered vaccine injuries, which have included myocarditis, neurological issues and blood clotting.

    “Now is the time for doctors to step up. Now is not a time for rhetoric or harsh statements regarding scientific discourse,” he said.

    Many of McCullough’s 600 peer-reviewed publications have appeared in top-tier journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet. He testified to the U.S. Senate in November 2020 against what he described as the federal government’s politicization of health care during the pandemic, curbing or blocking the availability of cheap, effective treatments. In a speech in September, he told of having been stripped of the editorship of a Swiss-based journal after having lost his position with a major health system, “with no explanation and no due process.” Baylor University Medical Center fired him in February. And Texas A&M College of Medicine, Texas Christian University and University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine have cut ties with McCullough, accusing him of spreading misinformation.

    “I’ve been stripped of every title that I’ve ever had in that institution. I’ve received a threat letter from the American College of Physicians, [and] a threat letter from the American Board,” he said in September.

    All because of his “lawful” participation “in a topic of public importance.”

    He said there are “powerful forces at work, far more powerful than we can possibly think of, that are influencing anybody who is in a position of authority.”

    McCullough is the chief medical adviser for the Truth for Health Foundation, a physician-founded charity that says it is “dedicated to following the Oath of Hippocrates to serve individual patients to the best of our ability and judgement and to uphold the highest standards of medical ethics.”

    *  *  *

    Last year, America’s doctors, nurses and paramedics were celebrated as frontline heroes battling a fearsome new pandemic. Today, under Joe Biden, tens of thousands of these same heroes are denounced as rebels, conspiracy theorists, extremists and potential terrorists. Along with massive numbers of police, firemen, Border Patrol agents, Navy SEALs, pilots, air-traffic controllers, and countless other truly essential Americans, they’re all considered so dangerous as to merit termination, their professional and personal lives turned upside down due to their decision not to be injected with the experimental COVID vaccines. Biden’s tyrannical mandate threatens to cripple American society – from law enforcement to airlines to commercial supply chains to hospitals. It’s already happening. But the good news is that huge numbers of “yesterday’s heroes” are now fighting back – bravely and boldly. The whole epic showdown is laid out as never before in the sensational October issue of WND’s monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE GREAT AMERICAN REBELLION: ‘We will not comply!’ COVID-19 power grab ignites bold new era of national defiance.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 23:50

  • China Coal Production Hits Record To Avoid Energy Crisis
    China Coal Production Hits Record To Avoid Energy Crisis

    Many of us in the Western world are spending the most ever on electricity bills, forced to eat fake meat, and paying a lot more in taxes for green initiatives. At the same time, China ignores the green revolution by ramping up record coal production in December. 

    China, the world’s biggest polluter and consumer of coal, produced a record 384.67-million tons of the dirtiest fossil fuel last month, up 7.2% YoY compared with the same month a year ago. The month prior, production was up nearly 14 million tons. For the full year, output reached 4.07 billion tons, up 4.7% over the previous year. 

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    While Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped out on the Group of 20 summit and United Nations climate conference in late 2021, many Western powers agreed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the end of this decade and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. It wasn’t a mistake that China didn’t show up to the conference because they were too busy panic hoarding coal and other fossil fuels ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter to avoid an energy crisis. Beijing ordered state-owned energy companies to secure fossil fuel supplies at any costs in early October. 

    The move to panic hoard sent thermal coal futures contracts on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange to a record high of 2,309 yuan per ton on Oct. 18. By the end of the month, regulators imposed price caps on miners and ordered more production. Prices plunged 69% from 2,309 to 712 today due to the market intervention by the government as coal inventories for utilities surpassed 162 million tons, or about 21 days usage, about 40 million more tons than the same period last year. 

    One can forget Beijing’s diplomatic pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality in the coming decades — it simply won’t happen any time this soon as their calls to go green is just hot air. 

    Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere. The process to manufacture iPhones to televisions to laptops is very energy-intensive and powered by coal. 

    If you want to know the actual cost of the world going green over the next three decades, well, it’s between $100 and $150 trillion. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 23:20

  • Make Preparations! Canadian Cross Border Trucking Vaxx Mandate Now In Effect, Domestic Trucking Mandate Starts Next Week
    Make Preparations! Canadian Cross Border Trucking Vaxx Mandate Now In Effect, Domestic Trucking Mandate Starts Next Week

    Authored by ‘Sundance’ via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

    The cross border vaccine mandate for truckers in/out of Canada is now in effect.  The U.S. vaccine mandate takes effect on January 22nd.

    It will take a few days to see the consequences, but there will be consequences.

    Keep in mind, any impact is taking place in a supply chain system that is already tenuous and unstable at best.  A small disruption that may have been minimally significant against a fully operational supply chain, is more likely to be a much bigger disruption in a supply chain that is already under a severe amount of demand side stress.  Somewhere in the range of 16,000 to 38,000 daily loads are likely to be impacted.

    When questioned about this, Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc says the trucking industry “has had adequate time to prepare for this.”  Keep in mind, the mandate was announced 45 days ago (November 30th).  According to the Canadian government, changing the structural rules for all the logistics and commerce in cross border shipping, 45 days is enough notice.  

    WATCH:

    CANADA – […] “I think you probably won’t see that movement … that the government’s looking for,” retail expert Bruce Winder told CTV News Channel on Saturday when asked if the effort will encourage truckers to get vaccinated.

    […]  The mandate throws a “major wrench” in the Canadian and North American supply chains, he added, with grocers, food producers, the auto parts industry and building materials among the sectors expected to be most affected.

    “I really hope that we’re not at the stage where you see food insecurity, where you’re actually going to grocery stores and there’s nothing on the shelf,” Winder said.  “That could be the worst-case scenario.”

    Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, told CTV News Channel on Saturday that there were as many 23,000 vacancies at the end of the third quarter of 2021, with his group’s own studies showing that roughly 20 per cent of Canadian truck drivers operating across the border are unvaccinated.

    […] “If we remove a fifth of that workforce, we’re going to see shortages on shelves and we’re going to see inflation of prices, because the cost to bring this stuff here is going to go up.”  (read more)

    The truth is no one knows how bad the disruption will be.  What we do know is that there will be disruption, and there is no infrastructure for a level of rig-switching at the border crossing region that could accommodate changing rigs, drop-offs and/or pick-ups or driver transfers on the scale that is being discussed.   The logistics here are a total mess.

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    Keep your fingers crossed, but prepare for FUBAR.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 22:50

  • Iran & Saudis Preparing To Reopen Embassies After Decade Of Regional Proxy War
    Iran & Saudis Preparing To Reopen Embassies After Decade Of Regional Proxy War

    In a highly unexpected and unusual development, and coming off a possible diplomatic breakthrough amid recent talks aimed at opening up relations, Iranian diplomats arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia this weekend for the first time in a half-decade. The two countries haven’t had diplomatic relations since 2016, when Iranian protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran following the kingdom’s execution of a popular Shia cleric. They are reportedly preparing to reopen embassies.

    The Saudis and Iranians have further been waging fierce proxy wars against the other in places like Syria and Yemen over a period of years. Shia Iran has long funded and sent weapons primarily to Hezbollah, as well as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, while the Saudis have funded Sunni jihadists including ISIS. The two sides have also long vied for influence in Lebanon’s politics, with Washington consistently backing the Saudis.

    “Saeed Khatibzadeh, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters that Iran is focusing for now on reopening its offices in OIC with three diplomats. Iran has long said it’s ready to reopen its embassy in Riyadh,” the Associated Press reports Monday, in reference to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. “In recent months, neighboring Iraq has hosted talks between the two Arab nations aimed at normalizing ties.” The OIC has 57 member nations and is based in Riyadh, and is focused on economic cooperation and political solidarity on Islam-related issues. 

    Image: DPA via AP

    Iran cautioned that it will only pursue the formal reestablishment of relations if Riyadh is prepared to also take “practical steps” in this direction, according to a statement by the foreign ministry’s Khatibzadeh.

    “It depends on what practical measures the Saudi side will take,” he said, Monday, stressing that Tehran itself taking great strides. The Iranian spokesman further called the diplomats’ visit “a good prelude for the two sides to send delegations to visit their embassies.”

    But as the Associated Press underscores, a number of pressing problems and disagreements remain between the two: “Saudi Arabia is also concerned about Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programs. Iran says the nuclear program has peaceful purposes and its missile program is merely defensive.”

    Going back at least two years, the Saudis have also pointed the finger at Iran for allegedly supplying Shia rebels in Yemen with missiles capable of reaching deep into Saudi territory. In recent months, sporadic ground-launched missiles from the Houthis have targeted Saudi airports.

    Given these significant steps and signs of growing rapprochement, further positive breakthroughs in this direction would have huge reverberations throughout the region, potentially helping to stabilize still smoldering conflict zones in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

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    It appears that after a decade of war, particularly focused in Syria, Tehran and Riyadh are seeking to draw down the intensity of the proxy wars, with currently the Yemen conflict still being the most intense one in the region.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 22:20

  • The "Myth Of Bipartisanship": Kyrsten Sinema Becomes The Latest Victim Of Rage Politics
    The “Myth Of Bipartisanship”: Kyrsten Sinema Becomes The Latest Victim Of Rage Politics

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the Hill on the Democratic members and groups attacking Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) after she repeated her support for the filibuster rule. The reaction to her floor speech reveals the depth of the addiction to rage in our body politic.  It is the same license that we saw this weekend in Florida when Florida agriculture commissioner and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried compared the support of Gov. Ron DeSantis to the rise of “Hitler.” It is not enough to disagree. You have to compare your opponent to a genocidal murderer. It seems that we cannot discuss even agriculture policies without raising Anschluss in the age of rage.  Many of us criticize former President Trump for his personal attacks and attacks on the press, but many of those same voices are now denouncing others, like Sinema, as enemies of democracy and the people. Sinema is a case study in rage politics.

    Here is the column:

    In Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the character Iago famously declared that “men in rage strike those that wish them best.” It was a warning that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) now understands all too well. Both Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have refused to be bullied into changing the filibuster rule — a rule that forces the parties into dialogue and compromise.

    Sinema supports the voting rights legislation but sees this move as endangering any chance of national healing and resolution. She stated on the Senate floor that “we have but one democracy. We can only survive, we can only keep her, if we do so together.” That deeply felt speech was met with vile, threatening attacks. It appears that, in a nation addicted to rage, even those seeking an intervention can become the casualties of our political distemper.

    Sinema offered the same arguments long used to support the filibuster — indeed, the same arguments made by President Biden until this week. Biden once called earlier efforts to change the filibuster “disastrous” for democracy and proclaimed, “God save us from that fate. … [It] would change this fundamental understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about.” Others joined him then in demanding that Senate Republicans preserve the rule in the name of democracy itself, including then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who insisted that abandoning the rule would be “doomsday for Democracy” and reduce the United States to a “banana Republic.”

    All of those speeches were celebrated back then in the media and by Democrats as powerful and poignant.

    Yet that is the liberating quality of rage: It is pure and absolute without the burden of reason or recognition. Liberal commentators this week went after Sinema with sputtering, blind fury, many mocking that she became emotional as she described the anger and divisions in the country.

    MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell wrote, “Sinema delivers the Senate’s stupidest speech by a Democrat in an edge-of-tears voice to give childish words a melodramatic effect.”

    Onetime MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tweeted that Sinema “needs to resign or be removed from office immediately. … [She] has become a menace to the continuation of American democracy.”

    MSNBC’s Malcolm Nance went further and said Sinema’s staff should “resign at the shame of being handmaidens to the death of Democracy.”

    Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who previously called for burning down the Republican Party, tweeted, “Sinema is effectively asking the authors of Jim Crow and vote-rigging to give their permission for her to stop it. This is worse than incoherent or cowardice. It’s a moral disgrace. Ask the segregationists for permission to vote for Civil Rights Act?”

    So, senators voicing the same position recently held by Democrats such as Biden, Obama and Schumer are now “segregationists”?

    The “Jim Crow on steroids” reference to the Georgia election law was voiced by Biden, who has now yielded entirely to rage politics. He recently pledged to do “whatever it takes” to pass the legislation, and his solution was to go full blind rage in Atlanta by accusing anyone voting for the filibuster as siding with segregationists and seeking the destruction of democracy. The next day, Biden unleashed a tirade denouncing half of the Senate of seeking to establish autocracy through voter suppression.

    The president, who once insisted he would be the nation’s unifier, has discovered the license of rage politics — the same license shown by those who chased Sinema into a bathroom last year. Likewise, after Sinema’s floor speech, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staffer Sarah Michelsen was thrilled to see Sinema close to tears and encouraged activists to “keep going” with the attacks because they are “breaking her.”

    It is the same license to hate and harass that was shown by ACLU lawyer Samuel Crankshaw, who opposed high schooler Nicholas Sandmann being accepted into college even after he was shown to have been falsely accused of harassing a Native American activist in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It is the license that recently led a Los Angeles Times columnist to defend mocking the deaths of unvaccinated people.

    Some Democrats were quick to promise that Sinema had just ended her career; CNN’s Joe Lockhart wrote, “Probably more accurate to refer to her as former Senator Sinema.” Her speech was, in that sense, reminiscent of another courageous senator, Edmund Ross of Kansas, one of seven Republicans who voted to acquit then-President Andrew Johnson in 1868. He described his fateful vote as “literally [looking] down into my open grave.”

    Ross is celebrated as a “profile of courage” for taking such a stand despite the anger of his own party.

    So, too, was Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) when he voted to convict then-President Trump in his second impeachment trial; liberal commentators showered him with praise. In 2020, Stephen Colbert heralded Romney as “a ray of hope” who spoke the truth and was “willing to put up with whatever the blowback for this decision is.”

    O’Donnell tweeted that “each day for the rest of his life [Lindsey Graham] will live in enraged jealousy of [Romney’s] courage.” While Romney also got emotional on the floor, O’Donnell did not mock him for his “edge-of-tears voice to give childish words a melodramatic effect.”

    Schumer went public to “salute” Romney: “The pressure on every Republican was enormous. … The fact that this is bipartisan holds up a beacon to what was right and what was wrong.”

    Yet, according to the Liberal pundits, Sinema is no Romney. She had the audacity to stand on principle rather than politics. It is widely believed that other Democratic senators share her discomfort with changing the filibuster, but, thus far, they have not summoned the same courage to face such withering criticism. As I wrote last year, such integrity is rarely rewarded by one’s own party: “Ross, like Romney, jumped — to the applause of opposing party. In the Senate, self-sacrifice remains an act best admired from a distance.”

    Sinema’s speech was denounced by those who insist that bipartisanship is a “myth” in the age of rage. She is, according to MSNBC’s Nina Turner, a “soulless coward” for seeking common ground and compromise. She is hated precisely because she did not hate enough. She did not hate Republicans so blindly as to declare them modern Bull Connors like Biden did or to call the filibuster “a relic of Jim Crow.”

    In the age of rage, civility is repulsive and intolerable. Sinema made herself a reference point that exposed how unhinged many of her fellow Democrats have become. Remove that reference point, and only rage remains.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 21:55

  • US Condemns 4th North Korean Ballistic Missile Test In A Month
    US Condemns 4th North Korean Ballistic Missile Test In A Month

    It’s been confirmed that early Monday morning North Korea launched a pair of ballistic missiles which fell into the Sea of Japan. Crucially this marked the fourth major weapons launch in less than a month, after last week Pyongyang claimed to have conducted successful hypersonic missile tests.

    The DPRK’s state media described that the latest test was of short-range ballistic missiles of (SRBMs) of the KN24 type which “accurately” hit their designated targets in the Sea of Japan, at a distance of about 380km and reaching Mach 5.

    A State Department statement issued soon after Monday’s test said the United States “condemns the DPRK’s ballistic missile launches,” given the ratcheting frequency of the launches, in a signal Kim Jong Un is expanding his arsenal, while rebuffing the idea of any level of communication with Washington and the UN.

    “These launches are in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council Resolutions and pose a threat to the DPRK’s neighbors and the international community. We remain committed to a diplomatic approach to the DPRK and call on them to engage in dialogue,” the US statement said.

    Monday’s US statement emphasized a commitment to protect Japan as well:

    The statement reiterated the U.S.’s “ironclad” commitment to help defend Japan and South Korea.

    Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida instructed his government to do its utmost to gather information about the launch and ensure the safety of vessels and aircraft. Japan’s Coast Guard issued a warning for vessels traveling around Japanese waters to watch out for falling objects, but no immediate damage was reported. 

    To kick off January, the North had said it conducted hypersonic glide vehicle tests on Jan.5 and Jan.11, which grabbed international headlines and got the Pentagon’s attention.

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    That last Tuesday test is believed to have involved a missile that reached Mach 10, alarming intelligence agencies in the West, and which even briefly resulted in an FAA order to ground commercial flights on the US West coast (for an estimated five to seven minutes).

    Importantly, this latest test marks at least seven ballistic missile tests since September 2021, which the US says is a violation of multiple United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs).

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 21:30

  • China's Property Sector Is Crashing Again And This Time It Has Reached The Country's Biggest Developer
    China’s Property Sector Is Crashing Again And This Time It Has Reached The Country’s Biggest Developer

    The crisis engulfing China’s property sector – which has prompted Beijing to capitulate on its tightening ambitions yet again, and forced China to launch an increasingly more aggressive easing campaign, which so far culminated in the first rate cut in Chinese official rates in almost two years – has impacted the country’s biggest developer, sending the shares and bonds of Country Garden Holdings – which is even bigger than Evergrande – plunging amid fears that a reportedly failed fundraising effort may be a harbinger of waning confidence.

    Country Garden is one of the few remaining large, (arguably) better-quality private developers that had been largely unscathed by the liquidity crunch, even as peers such as Shimao Group Holdings – a recently investment grade developer whose collapse in December was viewed as “more devastating than debt crises at Evergrande and Kaisa” – dramatic reversals in their credit ratings.

    At least until now… and now that Shimao has imploded, Country Garden remains perhaps the final and most visible bellwether for contagion risk, as unprecedented levels of stress in the offshore credit market threaten to drag good credits down with bad.

    Since taking the top spot from China Evergrande Group in 2017, Country Garden has remained the nation’s largest developer in China by contracted sales. It employs more than 200,000 people.

    Headquartered in the southern city of Foshan in Guangdong province, the firm – like China Evergrande Group – has focused in recent years on building housing developments in lower-tier cities. 

    And, like Evergrande, Country Garden has also relied heavily on access to funding in the offshore credit market; actually not just Evegrande but virtually all developer peers that binged on debt to fuel growth in the past decade only to see the window slam shut now. According to Bloomberg, it has the largest pool of outstanding US dollar bonds among China’s biggest property firms, excluding defaulters, with some US$11.7 billion outstanding, Bloomberg-compiled data showed.

    Founding chairman Yeung Kwok Keung transferred his controlling stake to his daughter Yang Huiyan in 2005. She is now the firm’s vice-chairman and is the richest woman in China, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

    Or at least she was, because on some of Country Garden’s US dollar notes plunged to record lows in the wake of a report that the firm failed to win sufficient investor support for a possible convertible bond deal. Longer-dated bonds were trading as low as 69 cents on the dollar as of late Friday.

    This is notable because China’s developer was relatively resilient in the face of the liquidity crisis sparked by a government crackdown on excessive borrowing by builders and housing market speculation, and had been unscathed by the crisis at industry giant Evergrande. But just as we warned back in September, China’s slow-motion real estate crisis which revolves around what Goldman calculated last year was the world’s largest asset which absent significant stimulus from Beijing, is facing a very painful derating.

    According to Bloomberg, while Country Garden is not facing imminent repayment pressure – it has US$1.1 billion of dollar bonds due this year and had 186 billion yuan (S$39.5 billion) of available cash as of June last year – risks may emerge if it is seen to have limited access to funding. Any sign of doubt in the firm’s capacity to weather liquidity stress risks may prompt a widespread repricing of other higher-quality developers. With more than 3,000 housing projects located in almost every province in China, Country Garden’s financial health has immense economic and social consequences, far greater than Evergrande.

    Worse, if the firm starts showing signs of stress, it will severely damage already fragile investor and homebuyer confidence, posing threats to China’s economy and even social stability. And that’s when China’s Lehman moment will truly emerge.

    Where it gets challenging is that similar to Evergrande, more than 60% of Country Garden’s contracted sales in mainland China came from the third- and fourth-tier cities, said its 2021 interim report. Demand in lower-tier areas may significantly weaken in 2022, said a forecast by Fitch analysts. Being a “pure developer”, it is less flexible when it comes to raising cash by selling assets, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Andrew Chan.

    Country Garden’s strategy is to manage its current assets effectively, in addition to expanding its business, the told Bloomberg News, although it clearly did not anticipate the recent meltdown in its bonds. “The firm is experiencing less volatility than the overall market” amid a broader market downturn, it said. The developer sold bonds and asset-backed securities in the local market in December, reflecting support from both investors and regulators, and maintained its ratings at all 3 major rating firms last year, said the comments.

    Country Garden holds both investment-grade and high-yield credit ratings from the 3 major risk assessors, making it a so-called crossover name that could be vulnerable to becoming a ‘fallen angel’. That could in turn raise its borrowing costs and eliminate yet another builder from the dwindling pool of higher-rated developers that investors can turn to during the credit squeeze.

    It has the equivalent of an investment-grade triple B rating at both Moody’s Investor Services and Fitch Ratings, and the highest possible speculative-grade rating at S&P Global Ratings. Still, the borrower is likely to “strengthen its financial resilience by controlling debt growth and maintaining disciplined land acquisitions”, S&P analysts wrote in a September report that reaffirmed its rating.

    Still, the builder may find it difficult to revive sales in 2022 with weakening market sentiment in lower-tier cities, where 77 per cent of its land bank is located, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kristy Hung. The firm’s sizeable amount of newly acquired land continues to be located in such areas, raising further concern about cash collection, she wrote.

    Meanwhile, in the latest wave of selling, investors are now scrutinizing Country Garden’s capacity to raise funding from a variety of channels, particularly as the offshore credit market remains effectively closed to most developers. It needs to repay or refinance some US$1.3 billion on bonds this year, the majority of which are dollar notes. Its next maturity is a US$425 million bond due Jan 27.

    The selling in Country Garden’s bond accelerated last week after the company struggled to tap the market for fresh funds, reportedly pulling a $300 million convertible bond issue due to weak demand. At the same time, Sunac’s shares sank a record 23% after it sold new equity. Focus has also turned to the spillover effects of Country Garden’s falling bond prices on the notes of other stronger developers as fears of contagion risks remain elevated.

    Just to shore up confidence that it won’t be the next Evergradnde, a statement on the Hong Kong stock exchange late Monday said  that Country Garden bought back an aggregate principal amount of $5m of 4.75% notes due July 2022 and $5m of 7.25% notes due April 2026. And even though the company added that it would monitor market conditions and “may make further repurchase of its bonds”, we are concerned that this tiny, theatrical $10MM buyback will do little to restore investor confidence.

    And as investors nervously eye the fate of China’s largest developer, fresh turmoil rocked Chinese property bonds on Monday on concern over the true scale of the industry’s hidden debts according to Bloomberg, deepening a selloff among higher-rated firms.

    The latest selloff was catalyzed by a Debtwire report according to which Logan Group could be on the hook for $812 million of guarantees on outstanding obligations due through 2023. The news hammered Logan’s note due 2023 which sank 14.1 cents to a record low 62.9 while Country Garden’s shorter-dated bond due 2024 tumbled 12.9 cents to 67.7 cents, extending last week’s selloff for the country’s biggest developer.

    According to Bloomberg, the selling in Property stocks is morphing from one catalyzed by specific event to one sparked by mounting concerns about the transparency of China’s better developers, and is forcing bondholders to question the liquidity of firms whose finances appear sound. More debt would mean more creditors, some of whom could demand early repayment. There’s also the risk that hidden liabilities like trust loans, private bonds or high-yield consumer products receive preferential treatment over money owed to offshore creditors. China Evergrande Group, Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. and Shimao Group Holdings Ltd. have all faced such obligations.

    While Logan, whose bonds traded at close to par as recently as last month, and which rated the equivalent of a BB rating at all three major credit risk assessors, denied both the report and market speculation the company has privately sold debt, that did little to ease the puke in its bonds which quickly spilled over to the rest of the property segment.

    Already fragile investor confidence has taken a battering this year, effectively keeping the dollar bond market shut for developers. That’s left the sector with limited refinancing options, increasing the risk of companies failing to pay debt on time.

    “Risks across the Chinese property sector are rising, evident from difficult refinancing conditions for even the most well-regarded firms,” said Wei Liang Chang, a macro strategist at DBS Bank Ltd. Greater clarity on the disclosure of liabilities as well as asset sales are crucial to shore up confidence, he added.

    Real estate financing received by developers plunged about 19% in December from a year earlier, the sharpest decline in more than seven years, according to Bloomberg calculations based on full-year government figures released Monday. Home sales by value declined 19.6% in December from a year earlier, a sixth consecutive monthly drop, while property investment shrank 14%.

    According to Bloomberg calculations, at least seven developers have defaulted on dollar bonds since October. That includes Evergrande, whose crisis has ensnared lender China Minsheng Banking, the world’s worst-performing bank stock. Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. was downgraded to restricted default by Fitch Ratings last week due to what the ratings firm called a distressed debt exchange.

    As if that wasn’t enough, there remains the problem of the frozen bond market. With bond yields of property developers at stratospheric levels, Chinese property firms need to repay or refinance some $99 billion of local and offshore bonds this year. Just under half of that is outstanding dollar debt, Bloomberg-compiled data show.

    Bottom line: as much as Beijing wants to, it will have to step in and bailout not just the property developers but the entire housing markets, where transactions have cratered and confidence has evaporated. And to do that, China will have to ease financial conditions much more aggressively than it has done so far – yes, overnight Beijing cut rates for the first time since 2020, but that step is nowhere near enough. To avoid an all out depression, Beijing will have to do much, much more… and not just Chine but the rest of the world’s central banks too.  Which is why anyone who believes that the current tightening euphoria will last more than a few months, well we have a bridge in Wuhan  we’d like to sell you.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 21:05

  • Is The Bottom In? Macau Casino Stocks Rally Most In Years After Gaming Bill Eases Concerns
    Is The Bottom In? Macau Casino Stocks Rally Most In Years After Gaming Bill Eases Concerns

    Shares of Macau casino operators jumped the most in six years on Monday after officials in the gaming city introduced less harsh than expected rules, removing a lot of uncertainty that could increase the sector’s valuation. 

    Last Friday, Macau gaming officials proposed measures that would limit gaming licenses to six, and the duration of the license would be shortened to 10 years from 20. Initially, investors feared the licenses would only be five years. 

    The rules reduce the extension periods on licenses and increase domestic ownership of casinos to 15% from 10%. 

    Also, the tax rate of casinos would stay the same and would not require a government official to sit on the company’s board. The rule lifts a massive overhang for casino stocks that have been trashed over the past year. 

    On Monday, casino shares listed in Hong Kong jumped as much as 12%, the most significant daily increase in six years. Wynn Macau Ltd., Sands China Ltd., and Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd were some of the largest movers on the session. 

    Citigroup analyst George Choi wrote in a note to clients that gaming law revisions will “remove most investors’ key concerns, i.e., dividends, government oversight, minimum shareholding by a Macau permanent resident, gaming tax, etc.” He expects the sector’s multiple to “re-rate significantly from the current levels.”

    Choi wrote that potential border reopening would add more positivity to the sector’s valuation. 

    Goldman Sachs also favors Macau gaming stocks after the index has been halved over the last year.

    It seems like some notable research desks are willing to catch the falling knife in Macau gaming stocks. Some other positive news is that the People’s Bank of China slashed interest rates that could soon add liquidity to markets. Investors are also trying to catch the falling knife in Chinese technology stocks. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:55

  • '270 Doctors' Called Out Joe Rogan – But Vast Majority Of Authors, Signatories Are Not Medical Doctors
    ‘270 Doctors’ Called Out Joe Rogan – But Vast Majority Of Authors, Signatories Are Not Medical Doctors

    Authored by Jordan Schachtel via The Dossier,

    Are you seeing all of those blaring corporate press headlines targeting Joe Rogan this weekend, reporting on a letter from “270 doctors,” which described the famous podcaster as a “menace to public health”? Well, it turns out that the real arbiters of misinformation are the individuals behind the letter itself, and they are being helped along by a corrupt corporate media that is misreporting the credentials of its signatories.

    It was first reported by Rolling Stone, with a story titled, “Doctors Demand Spotify Puts an End to Covid Lies on ‘Joe Rogan Experience’”

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    Yes, the media and Big Tech want to create the image of a hundreds-strong coalition of medical doctors who are genuinely concerned about Joe Rogan’s conversations on his massive platform. 

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    Twitter even got in on the propaganda campaign against Rogan, adding this “medical experts” letter to their curated headlines section.

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    Well, I reviewed this open letter, and it turns out that only around 100 of the 270+ signatories to the letter are people with qualified medical degrees. And a large chunk of that 100 or so medical doctors are MDs employed at universities who are not in fact practitioners of medicine. 

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    Yet part of the letter reads:

    “As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan’s podcast.”

    Paradoxically, the disseminators of this petition are guilty of the very misinformation label that they’ve attached to Rogan. In fact, neither of the two reported co authors of the letter — Jessica Rivera and Ben Rein — possess medical degrees. Rivera holds a master’s degree and Rein is a PhD academic who researches psychiatry.

    The letter denouncing Joe Rogan and pressuring Spotify to censor his speech has all kinds of random signatories. By my count, the letter is signed by over 50 PhD academics, around 60 college professors, 29 nurses, 10 students, 4 medical residents, and even a handful of… science podcasters. 

    The letter, which uses the word misinformation nine times in five paragraphs, concludes with a call for Spotify to censor Rogan as part of a policy to “moderate misinformation on the platform.”

    Notably, there is no information on who or what group is behind the creation and circulation of the open letter. Rivera, the reported lead author of the letter, is associated with the far-left Rockefeller Foundation and The Atlantic, and she is a CNN contributor.

    * * *

    Subscribe to The Dossier

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:31

  • Luongo: We Are All Djokovic, Now!
    Luongo: We Are All Djokovic, Now!

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post COVID-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star.

    Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones.

    To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons.

    But it goes far deeper than that. It’s impossible to even conceive of the ways petty bureaucrats and middle managers around the world have destroyed the lives of ordinary people simply trying to get through the day because of a flu.

    Since the beginning of the COVID-19 insanity Australia has been the poster child for this kind of thoughtless crime against common decency.

    Australian Immigration Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to revoke Djokovic’s visa was made for political reasons. He didn’t try to hide it. If anything, he was proud of this decision.

    Hawke said he accepted Djokovic’s recent Covid-19 infection meant he was a “negligible risk to those around him”, but that he was “perceived by some as a talisman of a community of anti-vaccine sentiment”.

    “I consider that Mr Djokovic’s ongoing presence in Australia may lead to an increase in anti-vaccination sentiment generated in the Australian community, potentially leading to an increase in civil unrest of the kind previously experienced in Australia with rallies and protests which may themselves be a source of community transmission.

    “Mr Djokovic is … a person of influence and status.

    “Having regard to … Mr Djokovic’s conduct after receiving a positive Covid-19 result, his publicly stated views, as well as his unvaccinated status, I consider that his ongoing presence in Australia may encourage other people to disregard or act inconsistently with public health advice and policies in Australia.”

    These are the words of the committed totalitarian. He hides it behind his public responsibilities, in this case the health status of an entire nation. If he’s not being controlled by outside forces (yeah, right) then he’s been infected with that dangerous solipsism which comes with this much raw power.

    That corruption cannot be avoided.

    But Hawke’s decision stems from Australia’s backing themselves into the corner over COVID-9/11 policy. They cannot be seen as backing down for anyone, especially someone like Djokovic.

    To do so, as Hawke points out, would invite questioning the policy. And their policy is sacrosanct.

    However, having admitted that Djokovic posed almost no threat of spreading COVID-9/11 the only thing at stake was the Australian government’s power.

    This type of decision reveals 1) how deeply unpopular the COVID-9/11 rules are in Australia and 2) how weak the Aussie government’s hold over its people really is.

    They could have weathered this if they had just quietly let Djokovic into the country to compete. They could have spun it had they wanted to.

    They chose escalating the standoff to make an example of him to the unvaxxed population. There is no hope. You will submit. If we can humiliate Djokovic, just imagine what we can do to you.

    And they revealed just how desperate they are.

    Bureaucrats like Hawke have no sense of the politics of their decisions. They are order-takers, not order-makers. He was ordered to do this. When this standoff started it was during the height of the big push to drive fear over the Omicron variant of COVID-9/11.

    That rollout failed spectacularly.

    Omicron has flared up and out so quickly this affair now looks like the most insane application of government paranoia this side of Pyongyang.

    Those that started this standoff created the mess and didn’t have the sense to clean it up.

    Because they insist on building trailer parks in the face of a Cat-5 hurricane of public anger.

    They hoped to send the message that no one can escape the jab. The Davos agenda of health passes and total technocratic control is inevitable. It’s the EU variant of the virus which Hawke’s immigration policies couldn’t stop coming to Australia.

    What they wound up with is a whole lotta people shaking their heads.

    But, don’t think for a second Australia is done sending messages to the untermenschen. Now, after he’s been deported, barred from competing and earning his living, Djokovic is liable for all the court costs associated with this decision.

    Those costs are estimated to be $500,000.

    The three judge panel that upheld the lower court ruling avoided any responsibility in the matter, neatly throwing the decision right back on Minister Hawke. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, clearly one of the people pushing this disaster behind the scenes, also left Hawke out to dry.

    Next up for Djokovic will a standoff with France over the French Open. France and Davos will hound him until he submits because they think he cares more about his 21st Grand Slam title than he does his own health. It guess they didn’t get his message during the Australian affair.

    But their message is very clear. We are in charge. We can make whatever rules we deem necessary. If you challenge them not only will we deny your challenge on arbitrary grounds but we’ll bankrupt you in the process.

    And here I thought we in the post-enlightenment West could petition our governments over unjust laws. I thought this was the first world and not some tin pot dictatorship of thin-lipped, fat-headed midwits?

    Only the most insane people are cheering this decision today. They are a part of the 29% of Democrats in the US who believe the unvaxxed should have their children taken from them. Sadly, there are still too many in the thrall of the COVID-9/11 mind virus.

    But, if you didn’t get the message before the persecution of Novak Djokovic, I hope you get it now. And I hope he continues to be an example for the rest of us.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you got the message

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:30

  • China Halts All Foreign Mail Due To COVID Threat As Tianjin Reports 80 New Cases
    China Halts All Foreign Mail Due To COVID Threat As Tianjin Reports 80 New Cases

    With the Winter Olympics in Beijing set to start in just a few weeks, the CCP is still struggling to suppress a handful of small but alarming outbreaks of COVID, several of which have involved cases of the omicron variant.

    And now, in the capital city, Beijing officials are warning locals not to order items and products from abroad, because they’re worried that COVID might be carried into the country on the outsides of these packages. Or at least that’s what they want the public to think.

    Chinese authorities have been warning for years that COVID might be spread on the packaging of foodstuffs and other goods shipped internationally, something that many scientists have questioned, but that Chinese authorities have nonetheless kept alive with their state-controlled media.

    One woman who apparently tested positive for the virus, then traces of the virus had been found on the packaging, or so at least Chinese authorities say.

    All of this is happening as authorities have imposed tough restrictions on Beijing as it prepares to host the Olympics. For example, all new arrivals to the city must take a virus test within a day of travel to show that they are testing negative, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated or not.

    Health official Pang Xinghuo told reporters on Monday that the virus had been found on the surface of a letter the infected person had received from Canada, as well as inside the unopened letter, according to AFP.

    Dozens of letters from the same batch were tested, and five showed positive traces of COVID, Pang said, including samples from inside unopened letters. Beijing’s CDC said the possibility that the woman was infected by a parcel from another country could not be ruled out.

    Nordea’s economists still expect China’s economy to grow at a pace of 5% over the next year, despite the risk posed by omicron. China’s growth outlook stabilized in the last quarter of 2021.

    The main factors that adversely affected China’s growth prospects in the second half of 2021 were the tight COVID policy and the real estate sector slowdown. They are expected to continue to dampen. And on a positive note, the shortage of electricity has eased since the start of October. Beijing’s real problem, according to Nordea, is that it doesn’t seem to have an “exit strategy” from its “COVID Zero” lockdown-centric approach.

    Meanwhile, in Tianjin, a port city that’s just 130 Km from Beijing, another 80 local cases of COVID have been reported, the biggest daily jump yet. The city and the port are still open and running as authorities have locked down a handful of neighborhoods in the city.

    For the record, Tianjin, which is situated about 30 minutes by train from Beijing, is one of China’s largest cities by population and home to one of its most active ports. It is the “recommended” port of entry for goods for the Winter Olympics and operations have not been affected by the outbreak, according to the state-controlled local media.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:00

  • AMA Defies Supreme Court Ruling, Own Code Of Ethics, Calls For Employer Vaccine Mandates
    AMA Defies Supreme Court Ruling, Own Code Of Ethics, Calls For Employer Vaccine Mandates

    By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    The president of the Chicago-based American Medical Association, Gerald E. Harmon, M.D., wrote on Friday in Crain’s Chicago Business that employers should impose COVID vaccine mandates as a condition of employment.

    Last week’s decision by the United States Supreme Court invalidating the Biden Administration’s attempt to force employers to do so “should not,” Harmon wrote, “prevent these employers from doing what must be done in the name of public health: requiring vaccines to protect their workers, our communities and our nation from the ravages of this pandemic.”

    “Our only hope is that large employers do what’s right—not only for their own employees and their families, but for the health of our nation,” says Harmon.

    If only we could hope that Harmon and his association would honor their own code of ethics. The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 2.1.1 says this:

    Informed consent to medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making. The process of informed consent occurs when communication between a patient and physician results in the patient’s authorization or agreement to undergo a specific medical intervention.

    That’s a plain statement of the informed consent doctrine, which is among the most widely recognized and time-honored principles of medical ethics here and abroad. Everybody of sufficient age and sound mind is supposed to have right to decide what is to be done to his or her body.

    It’s “arguably the most deeply rooted doctrine in contemporary medical ethics,” wrote two medical ethics experts last year in the Wall Street Journal. In that column, a director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California, Irvine and a law professor at Notre Dame wrote, “Authorities rushing to implement mandatory vaccination protocols are ignoring available scientific data, basic principles of immunology and elementary norms.”

    The AMA’s Code of Ethics is for physicians, not employers, but that’s precisely what makes Harmon’s indifference to the principle of informed consent so egregious. He is effectively calling on employers to override the physician-patient relationship entirely, thereby avoiding the duty physicians would have to honor it.

    That workaround may not fly legally since employers may have a legal duty to get informed consent to coerced vaccinations, at least as some mandate opponents see things. I have no opinion on that; the point here is not about the legalities.

    The point, instead, is about doing what is right and what is ethical. It’s the principle that matters, and it should matter not just for physicians. The AMA’s code of ethics properly states that principle and it is rightly applied to any person or entity, including employers, who are in a position to force medical treatment on somebody else. Harmon and the AMA apparently care nothing about that principle.

    Harmon went on to cite as “evidence of a vaccine mandate’s effectiveness” the case of United Airlines, which imposed a vax mandate on its employees. That’s not scientific evidence. Harmon ignored countless studies now available addressing many points of debate about the vax.

    What we do know is that experts seem to agree that the vax significantly reduces chances of hospitalization or death. But it has also become clear that the vax is of little or no value in reducing spread of the virus to others, which we wrote about last week. That destroys any rationale for mandates by employers or anybody else. Vaccinations affect only the vaccinated so the decision should be left to the individual.

    The only other possible rationale for an employer mandate is the hospital and staff overload, which is real in many locations. But that overload results largely from mandates themselves, imposed on healthcare workers, many of whom have quit as a consequence. The Supreme Court upheld that mandate on any recipient of federal funding, which includes most every hospital and provider.

    The load on hospitals and healthcare workers is also undoubtedly attributable in large part to the indifference of most of the medical establishments to treatments. The best, newest treatments are in such short supply that that they are now rationed by the federal government. The AMA, like the federal government, systematically ignored therapeutics from the start, focusing almost exclusively on the vaccines and masks as prevention, which has turned out to be futile. Had development and distribution of therapeutics been emphasized early, countless victims might never be reaching the hospital. The AMA shares blame for that.

    Finally, Harmon complained about politicized science. “It is most unfortunate that politicization of the virus and the vaccines developed to protect against severe illness and death has become a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to defeating the pandemic.”

    The AMA and Harmon are perhaps the least credible voices in America to be complaining about politicized science. They have gone to truly absurd lengths inserting woke, racial politics into healthcare, as documented by RealClear Investigations in a two-part series. A lead editorial in the AMA journal’s August special issue dedicated to racial health disparities called systemic racism “a scientific fact beyond dispute and said all medical journals are morally obligated to document it in their research.”

    Even The Atlantic, which is very progressive, ridiculed the AMA and Harmon for the damage their racial politics are inflicting on medical science and on the genuine interests of disadvantaged people. And dissenting from the AMA’s racial politics can jeopardize you job, The Atlantic wrote.

    Let’s hope employers are more ethical than Harmon and the American Medical Association.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 19:30

  • WEF's Schwab Gives China's Xi Propaganda Platform Against "Hegemonic Bullying… Cold War Mentality"
    WEF’s Schwab Gives China’s Xi Propaganda Platform Against “Hegemonic Bullying… Cold War Mentality”

    With Davos shut down by the latest incarnation of COVID variant, the world’s great-est and good-est decided this year’s get together to tell the world what they should think would be done virtually this year.

    None other than the Dr.Evil-esque Klaus Schwab kicked things off in a brief introductory statement that had everything except a pinky-finger-in-the-corner-of-the-mouth:

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    After urging his fellow elites to “narrow the gap between rich and poor,” Schwab introduced Chinese President Xi Jinping who wasted not time in warning against the “fanning of ideological antagonism and the politicizing of economic, scientific and technological issues.”

    Diplomatically careful not to accuse any individual country – but blatantly obvious to anyone not completely red-pilled by Schwab’s heroic introduction of the Chinese leader – Xi warned nations against protectionism, well as “hegemony and bullying,” urging countries to work cooperatively on global challenges.

     “We need to discard Cold War mentality and seek peaceful co-existence and win-win outcomes.”

    “Our world today is far from being tranquil. Rhetorics that stoke hatred and prejudice abound. Acts of containment, suppression or confrontation arising thereof do all harm, not the least good to world peace and security,” he added, according to a translation.

    “History has proved time and again that confrontation does not solve problems. It only invites catastrophic consequences.”

    “Protectionism and unilateralism can protect no one. They ultimately hurt the interests of others as well as one’s own. Even worse are the practices of hegemony and bullying, which run counter to the tide of history.”

    Xi said the “right way forward for humanity is peaceful development and win-win cooperation.”

    Read Xi’s full statement here.

    This is the same Xi who is peacefully militarizing islands in the Pacific, recently bullied any dissenters (or media) in Hong Kong, hegemonically pressuring Taiwan’s democratically-elected leaders to accept his rule, and ‘allegedly’ is suppressing millions of Uyghur muslims.

    However, amid all the blame-scaping for global unease, Xi’s true fears emerged as he made it very clear that “economic globalization is the trend of the times” and that other nations tightening policies (as China eases) is a recipe for disaster (in the world according to Xi):

    “The global low inflation environment has notably changed, and the risks of inflation driven by multiple factors are surfacing.

    If major economies slam on the brakes or take a U-turn in their monetary policies, there would be serious negative spillovers.

    They would present challenges to global economic and financial stability, and developing countries would bear the brunt of it.”

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    As we have noted previously, this is likely to become THE global economy story of the first half of 2022 as China is forced to ease (with PPI in the double-digits and growth still above 8%) to forestall a housing crisis and social unrest while the rest of the world is tightening (especially The Fed) amid multi-decade high inflation and political pressures.

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    We have little doubt that the rhetoric from Beijing will crank up to ’11’ once The Fed starts hiking and China sees huge capital outflows – mostly via crypto.

    The forward FX market still expected Yuan to weaken (against the USD) over the next 12 months…

    BUT, simply put, one of these two ‘markets’ will be wrong – the market is anticipating dramatic rate-hikes this year by The Fed AND is expecting the Chinese Yuan to strengthen (or weaken less) over the same period…

    And we suspect we know which as Rabobank noted earlier:

    “Whichever way the Fed goes, it will be wrong. Back off, and watch inflation expectations become more entrenched. Press on, and watch things get ugly.”

    And finally, if you doubted Xi’s support for one-world-government (presumably based in Beijing), this closing paragraph should clarify things:

    “Major economies should see the world as one community, think in a more systematic way, increase policy transparency and information sharing, and coordinate the objectives, intensity and pace of fiscal and monetary policies, so as to prevent the world economy from plummeting again. Major developed countries should adopt responsible economic policies, manage policy spillovers, and avoid severe impacts on developing countries. International economic and financial institutions should play their constructive role to pool global consensus, enhance policy synergy and prevent systemic risks.”

    …

    “We should follow the trend of history, work for a stable international order, advocate common values of humanity, and build a community with a shared future for mankind. We should choose dialogue over confrontation, inclusiveness over exclusion, and stand against all forms of unilateralism, protectionism, hegemony or power politics.”

    Translation: Can’t we all just get along… in line behind Beijing.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 19:00

  • Don't Underestimate How Badly The Powerful Need Control Of Online Speech
    Don’t Underestimate How Badly The Powerful Need Control Of Online Speech

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

    Seems like almost every day now the mass media are blaring about the need for speech on the internet to be controlled or restricted in some way. Today they’re running stories about Joe Rogan and Covid misinformation; tomorrow it will be something else.

    The reasons for the need to control online speech change from day to day, but the demand for that control remains a constant. Some days it’s a need to protect the citizenry from online disinformation campaigns by foreign governments. Sometimes it’s the need to guarantee election security. Sometimes it’s the need to eliminate domestic extremism and conspiracy theories. Sometimes it’s Covid misinformation. The problems change, but the solution is always the same: increased regulation of speech by monopolistic online platforms in steadily increasing coordination with the US government.

    It’s actually pretty comical at this point, once you notice it. It’s like if you had an expensive Prada bag that your friend really coveted and she was always making up excuses to try and take it home with her. “Gosh I’m carrying all these small objects and I have nothing to carry them in!” “You’re going on vacation? I’ll look after your Prada bag for you!” “Oh no you slipped and now you’re clinging to a cliff’s edge! Quick! Throw me your Prada bag!” Once you know what they’re actually after, their attempts to obtain it look clownish and silly.

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    Whenever I talk about how the immense power structure which the mass media serves and protects has a desperate need to control online speech, I’ll always get a few people objecting that the powerful don’t care about what ideas and information the ordinary riff raff share with each other on internet forums. They just do what they want regardless of public opinion, like Greek gods on Mount Olympus.

    And really nothing could be further from the truth. Controlling the thoughts we think about our nation and our world are of paramount importance to our rulers, because it’s only by controlling what we think that they can control how we vote, how we act, and whether or not we get fed up with being exploited and oppressed by a loose alliance of unelected plutocrats and government operatives. There is nothing, literally nothing, that these people would not do to maintain this control. Their very survival depends on it.

    Michael Parenti summed this up perfectly in his 2015 book “Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies” with this passage that was recently shared by Louis Allday:

    “But they don’t care about what we think. They turn a deaf ear to us,” some people complain. That is not true. They care very much about what you think. In fact, that is the only thing about you that holds their attention and concern. They don’t care if you go hungry, unemployed, sick, or homeless. But they do care when you are beginning to entertain resistant democratic thoughts. They get nervous when you discard your liberal complaints and adopt a radical analysis. They do care that you are catching on as to what the motives and functions of the national security state and the US global empire are all about at home and in so many corners of the world. They get furiously concerned when you and millions like you are rejecting the pap that is served up by corporate media and establishment leaders.

    By controlling our perceptions, they control our society; they control public opinion and public discourse. And they limit the range and impact of our political consciousness. The plutocrats know that their power comes from their ability to control our empowering responses. They know they can live at the apex of the social pyramid only as long as they can keep us in line at the pyramid’s base. Who pays for all their wars? We do. Who fights these wars? We do or our low-income loved ones do. If we refuse to be led around on a super-patriotic, fear-ridden leash and if we come to our own decisions and act upon them more and more as our ranks grow, then the ruling profiteers’ power shrinks and can even unwind and crash — as has happened with dynasties and monarchies of previous epochs.

    We need to strive in every way possible for the revolutionary unraveling, a revolution of organized consciousness striking at the empire’s heart with full force when democracy is in the streets and mobilized for the kind of irresistible upsurge that seems to come from nowhere yet is sometimes able to carry everything before it.

    There is nothing sacred about the existing system. All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic.

    Preventing their replacement with a system that is more responsive, just and democratic is precisely why our rulers are so keen on controlling the way we think, act and vote. They exert this control with their total domination of the mass media and mainstream education systems, with Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and with the rapidly increasing normalization of internet censorship.

    The dawn of the internet sparked great hope for those who knew that the ruling power structures of our day retain supremacy by controlling and manipulating people’s access to and understanding of information; the possibility of billions of human minds freely spreading awareness of what’s going on in our world and sharing revolutionary ideas to address our problems spelled beautiful things for our future to anyone with a lucid understanding of the obstacles we face.

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    Unfortunately, our rulers understood the significance of that moment too. They’ve been working tirelessly to ensure that the internet serves as a net positive for themselves and a net negative for the rest of us, manipulating the large-scale movements of information so that dissident voices are increasingly marginalized and inconsequential while giving themselves the ability to funnel propaganda into public minds far more rapidly and efficiently than ever before. If they succeed in their objectives, ordinary people will wind up no better at sharing unauthorized ideas and information than they were before the internet, while our rulers will be far more effective in controlling the way we think at mass scale.

    That they will succeed is by no means guaranteed. We are living in an entirely unprecedented moment in human history with many large-scale systems on the precipice of failure while technological advancement creates many other unpredictable factors; gaps could open up at any time to let light shine through in the massive movements that humanity is poised for. There is no way to accurately predict the future in a situation the likes of which we’ve never seen before, where patterns are crumbling and narrative is hitting white noise saturation point.

    Anything can happen. Win or lose, this is a hell of a time to be alive.

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 18:30

  • Apple Tells Employees They Have "Four Weeks To Comply" After Becoming Eligible For Booster Shots
    Apple Tells Employees They Have “Four Weeks To Comply” After Becoming Eligible For Booster Shots

    Apple is one of the first major corporations going on the record and telling its employees that it doesn’t just need to see proof of vaccination, but now it also needs proof of a booster shot. 

    The company is requiring boosters for store and corporate employees, according to an internal email seen by The Verge.

    Employees have “four weeks to comply” once they become eligible for booster shots, or else they will have to take “frequent tests to enter a retail store, partner store, or Apple office starting on February 15th,” the report says. 

    Unvaccinated employees must now always provide negative COVID-19 rapid antigen tests before entering the workplace. 

    Apple’s internal memo reportedly reads: “Due to waning efficacy of the primary series of COVID-19 vaccines and the emergence of highly transmissible variants such as Omicron, a booster shot is now part of staying up to date with your COVID-19 vaccination to protect against severe disease.”

    The company started requiring unvaccinated employees to take daily tests before entering the office last year. It also required retail workers to test twice a week. 

    Meta also said this past week that its employees would need to get booster shots before its company-wide return to office in March. 

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 18:00

  • Politics Is Dead, Here's What Killed It
    Politics Is Dead, Here’s What Killed It

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Here’s “politics” in America now: come with mega-millions or don’t even bother to show up.

    Representational democracy–a.k.a. politics as a solution to social and economic problems–has passed away. It did not die a natural death. Politics developed a cancer very early in life (circa the early 1800s), caused by wealth outweighing public opinion. This cancer spread slowly but metastasized in the past few decades, spreading to every nook and cranny of our society and economy as “democracy” devolved into an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors.

    Politics might have had a fighting chance but three forces betrayed the nation and its citizenry.

    1. The Federal Reserve transferred trillions of dollars of unearned wealth into the feeding troughs of the super-wealthy and corporations, vastly increasing the wealth the top 0.01% had to buy elections and favors. The Federal Reserve cloaked its treachery with jargon– quantitative easing, stimulus, etc.–and then stabbed the nation’s representational democracy in the back.

    2. The Supreme Court betrayed the nation’s representative democracy by labeling corporations buying elections and political favors a form of “free speech.” (Please don’t hurt yourself laughing too hard.) The Supreme Court’s equating wealth buying elections and favors with individual citizens’ sacrosanct right of free speech was a knife in the back of the nation and its citizenry.

    3. The two political parties betrayed their traditional voter bases to kneel at the altar of corporate / elite wealth, wealth which bought elections and political favors. The Democrats, traditional champions of the workforce in the 20th century, abandoned workers in favor of serving their corporate masters, masking their betrayal with fine-sounding phrases.

    The Republican Party, traditionally promoters of Big Business (Wall Street, banks, mega-corporations), had maintained a narrow but crucial interest in trust-busting (limiting monopolies) to defend free enterprise and small business from the predations of monopolies and cartels. Those days are long past; just as the Democratic Party tossed the working class overboard to the sharks, the Republican Party walked small business off the gangplank right into the voracious jaws of cartels and globalized, financialized corporate sharks.

    To cloak their betrayal and treachery, the parties have pursued a divide-and-conquer distraction game, pushing half the nation into one-size-fits-all “enemies lists” with labels that have lost all meaning other than as means to promote divisiveness and rancor: Liberal and Conservative, socialist and capitalist, etc.

    It’s not the citizenry who are “deplorable,” it’s the parties’ corporate-derriere-kissing toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks, purveyors of propaganda, enforcers, apologists, sycophants, grifters and “leaders” who manage to greatly increase their private wealth while “serving the public” (heh).

    These three betrayals of public trust and representational democracy caused the demise of politics as a solution to social and economic problems. “Politics” has been stripped to its essence: an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors. The price to watch from the rear of the auction is $1 million; to actually place a bid, the minimum is $10 million, but the winning bids are generally much higher.

    (Lobbying, campaign contributions, bogus think-tanks, and philanthro-capitalist foundations are all part of the auction funding.)

    Here’s “politics” in America now: come with mega-millions or don’t even bother to show up. Choose which “enemies list” you want to be on; there’s not much choice. And don’t forget to put a flower on the grave of representational democracy.

    *  *  *

    My new book is now available at a 20% discount this month: Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $8.95, print $20). If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 17:30

  • Pfizer CEO Predicts Life On Earth "Will Return To Normal" In The Spring
    Pfizer CEO Predicts Life On Earth “Will Return To Normal” In The Spring

    Just a few days ago, Bill Gates shared some of his (revised) thoughts on the COVID pandemic and the trajectory that omicron has left us on. Several weeks after warning that omicron’s heightened infectiousness might send the pandemic into overdrive, the Microsoft founder postulated instead that omicron might hasten the end of the pandemic by leaving the human population with more antibodies against the virus. As a result, SARS-CoV-2 might enter its endemic stage more quickly, Gates suggested.

    This view, that the end of the pandemic might finally be at hand after two years of suffering, has become increasingly popular as of late. Take this piece from the BBC: “Endemic COVID: Is the pandemic entering its endgame?”.

    While the piece mostly focused on the UK, the sense is that the developed world more broadly is closer to the end because of its access to vaccines.

    So, is a new Covid-era truly imminent and what will that actually mean for our lives?

    “We’re almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK,” Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, tells me. “I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic.”

    What’s changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help.

    It even came with his handy illustration depicting the difference between “pandemic” and “endemic” COVID:

    Source: The BBC

    Well, it appears the CEO of Pfizer has caught on to this narrative – and he approves. Speaking to the French media, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that while he expects COVID to continue to circulate for many years to come, he expects future waves won’t cause the types of restrictions that people have become used to over the last two years, and that life will return to “normal” in the spring.

    Bourla told French news outlet Le Figaro in an interview published Jan. 16 that he expects a “return to normal life” at some point in spring of this year. However, he added the caveat that the mysterious dynamics of COVID’s spread make accurate predictions more difficult.

    “We will soon be able to resume a normal life,” Albert Bourla told the French paper. “We are well positioned to get there in the spring thanks to all the tools at our disposal: tests, very effective vaccines and the first treatments that can be taken at home.”

    He also credited improvements in COVID testing, vaccines, and therapeutics for his optimistic outlook, telling BFM TV that he expects the current omicron-driven wave to be the “last with so many restrictions.”

    But given its affinity for its human hosts, COVID will likely be “very difficult to get rid of,” which is why Bourla expects it to become endemic, with the occasional seasonal flareup, like the flu.

    Finally, the Pfizer CEO shared details of local partnerships that he said would help France produce more of Pfizer’s COVID fighting drug Paxlovid.

    With his approval rating at an all-time low, President Biden better hope the likes of Bourla and Gates are right. Ending the COVID pandemic might be the only thing that could help Biden regain some support among the tired and frustrated American electorate.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 17:00

  • Convicted Pedophile Funneled Millions In Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton's 2016 Campaign
    Convicted Pedophile Funneled Millions In Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign

    Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.

    In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.

    Nader conspired to hide the funds “out of a desire to lobby on behalf and advance the interests of his client, the government of the United Arab Emirates,” according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memo. Nader received the money for the illegal donations from the UAE government, the memo said. The filing marks the first time that the U.S. government has explicitly accused the UAE, a close ally, of illegally seeking to buy access to candidates during a presidential election.

    Nader’s guilty plea opens a new window into the efforts of the United Arab Emirates and its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and shape subsequent U.S. policy in the Gulf. The government’s memo notes that Nader and Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja also sought to cultivate “key figures” in the Trump campaign and that Khawaja donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. It is unclear where that money came from. -The Intercept

    Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince MBZ, and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.

    In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.

    In 2016, Khawaja co-hosted an August fundraiser for Clinton which included a laundry list of high-profile guests, including Univision owner Haim Saban, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and basketball legend Magic Johnson, according to the report. According to the indictment, Khawaja conspired with six other individuals to conceal his excessive contributions. Others who were indicted were also linked to donations to Clinton and other Democrats.

    The indictment quotes an alleged encrypted message that Nader sent an official from Foreign Country A via WhatsApp after Khawaja contributed $275,000 and invited Nader to attend and April 16, 2016, event for presidential Candidate 1.

    Wonderful meeting with the Big Lady . . . Cant wait to tell you about it, Nader allegedly wrote, in an apparent reference to Clinton.

    The indictment noted that political committees that received funding unwittingly submitted false disclosure reports and were presumably victims of the plot. Still, Hillary Clinton apparently attended numerous events, including small gatherings, with Nader, who on July 19, 2016, messaged the foreign official a photograph of him with Candidate 1s spouse an apparent reference to Bill Clinton at Khawajas home. –Washington Post

    Prosecutors have sought a five-year sentence for Nader – after he completes the 10-year sentence he’s currently serving for possessing child pornography, and for sex-trafficking a minor to the US “for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual activity.”

    Nader was arrested in January 2018 at Dulles Airport by agents working for Mueller. A search of his iPhones revealed child pornography, which we imagine was used as leverage to gain his cooperation. Three months later, prosecutors filed charges against Nader for the images – however they were filed under seal and kept secret from Nader’s lawyers while he was working with Mueller.

    In July of 2017 – 15 months after Mueller let a serial pedophile roam the streets in the hopes he’d be able to nail Trump, Nader was finally indicted on both the child porn and for sex-trafficking a 14-year-old boy.

    And of course, Mueller knew about Nader’s 1991 conviction on child pornography charges in the US – for which he served only six months in a halfway house thanks to his role in helping to free American hostages in Beirut. He was also convicted in the Czech Republic in 2003 on 10 counts of having sex with underage boys, and eventually received a one-year prison sentence.

    Read the rest of the report here.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 16:30

  • Union Pacific Bashes LA's Social Justice Reform, Threatens To Leave City Amid Soaring Train Thefts
    Union Pacific Bashes LA’s Social Justice Reform, Threatens To Leave City Amid Soaring Train Thefts

    A top Union Pacific Railroad official threatened to leave Los Angeles over the District Attorney’s progressive measures to lower criminal theft offenses amid a wave of criminal gangs looting rail cars. 

    Adrian Guerrero, Union Pacific’s director of public affairs, wrote a letter to LA County District Attorney George Gascón, denouncing the local government’s relaxed criminal policies, or rather “well-intentioned social justice goals,” as a catalyst for a wave of rail car thefts. 

    “We find ourselves coming back to the same results with the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine,” wrote Guerrero.

    He said most criminals robbing trains search for Amazon and UPS packages, are released back onto the streets within a day. 

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    “Even with all these arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to UP by these same criminals,” Guerrero continued. “In fact, criminals boast to our officers that charges will be pled down to simple trespassing – which bears no serious consequence.”

    “Without any judicial deterrence or consequence, it is no surprise that over the past year, UP has witnessed the significant increase in criminal rail theft described above,” he said.

    “While we understand the well-intended social justice goals of the policy, we need our justice system to support our partnership efforts with local law enforcement, hold these criminals accountable, and most importantly, help protect our employees and the critical local and national rail network.”

    Guerrero disclosed that “over 90 containers are compromised per day,” and the company “has experienced an over 160% increase in criminal rail theft in Los Angeles County” since December 2020. “In several months during that period, the increase from the previous year surpassed 200%. In October 2021 alone, the increase was 356% over compared to October 2020,” he noted.

    Looters and smash and grab gangs have elevated their thefts in recent months. From pharmacies to grocery stores to jewelry stores to expensive boutique shops, thieves are becoming more intelligent and target high-value items. Almost like someone is directing them what to target and how. 

    Guerrero said the thefts are so severe and costing the company millions of dollars that it has been “contemplating serious changes to our operating plans to avoid Los Angeles County.” 

    Los Angeles is in a state of lawlessness, and there’s no turning back. Far-left progressive policies transform the metro area into America’s new wild west. What the city needs is a regime change. Otherwise, businesses like Union Pacific will leave if criminals aren’t held accountable for their actions. 

     * * * 

    Here’s Guerrero’s full letter: 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/17/2022 – 16:00

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