Today’s News 19th April 2022

• Doctor Google Will See You Now
  Doctor Google Will See You Now

  For many people nowadays, the first port of call upon discovering an unusual rash or feeling a worrying pain is not the doctor, but rather Google.

  

  As Statista’s Martin Armstrong details below, figures from Eurostat show the countries which are relying the most on medical information from the internet. In Finland, 8 out of 10 respondents said that they had turned to the web for health-related information – an increase of 22 percentage points on 2011. Denmark recorded similar levels of reliance on Dr. Google – 75 percent.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  In Spain in 2011, just 38 percent of adults professed to seeking medical information online, but as statista’s infographic above  shows, there has been a huge increase, with 69 percent now saying they turn to Google et al for health advice. A similarly large increase was also recorded in Ireland.

  In Germany, however, reliance on the internet for these topics saw a decrease between 2011 and 2021 – from 54 to 45 percent.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/19/2022 – 02:45

• Explaining Germany's Russian Gas Problem
  Explaining Germany’s Russian Gas Problem

  Submitted by Jack Raines via Young Money,

  “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

  …You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

  We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

  – 16-year-old Greta Thunberg at the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit, 2019

  *slow claps*

  

  Climate change. The existential crisis that has filled every Gen-Zer with dread since they entered grade school. Politicians, CEOs, and other powerful figures fly their private jets to summits around the world each year to condemn the fossil fuel industry as a vile plague that must be destroyed at all costs.

  To raise awareness about the climate issue, green technology exhibits have popped up in museums around the world. One such museum is the Futurium, located less than a mile from the Reichstag in Berlin, Germany.

  

  While backpacking across Europe last year, I spent 10 days in Berlin. After seeing an advertisement at my hostel for the Futurium, I decided to pay the museum a visit.

  While walking around this exhibit, and I saw all sorts of futuristic examples of climate technology. Green cities with gardens and forests growing on the roofs of skyscrapers. Windmills and solar panels supporting power grids. A future powered by zero-emission, renewable resources. It was certainly a pleasant vision.

  But there was one glaring omission from this exhibit on clean energy: nuclear power.

  I stepped aside to ask one of the museum’s curators if they had a nuclear energy section of the green exhibit.

  “I’m sorry to say that we don’t. This exhibit is meant to highlight Germany’s safe, sustainable green future.”

  “Oh really? That’s interesting bec-,” I bit my tongue. “Ah, okay thanks. I was just curious.”

  Back at the hostel that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the feasibility of the whole thing. Sure, this green future sounded good. A world powered by sunlight and wind power, with no smog or pollution. Green cities with no carbon footprints.

  It matched the utopic vision that had been forced on me since I was a kid: if we drop fossil fuels tomorrow, the world becomes a better place.

  The thing is, reality doesn’t give a damn about what ‘could be’ and what ‘should be’.

  Reality doesn’t give a damn about utopia.

  Reality is reality.

  What happens when policy makers sacrifice reality for utopia?

  

  The above chart was from September, when supply chain disruptions wreaked havoc on energy prices.

  Now let’s fast forward a few months. In the wake of a brutal winter, Russia decided to invade Ukraine, and German gas and power prices have soared to new highs. A household using 20,000 kWh per year agreeing to a new annual contract in March had to pay a record $3,632, up 62% from just three months ago.

  Solar panels and windmills sound great when times are good, energy prices are low, and there’s not a care in the world. However, I can assure you of one thing: when winter sets in, supply chains are wrecked, and war is waging in eastern Europe…

  a climate crisis is the least of your worries, and tears at a UN podium aren’t going to keep your family warm.

  So how did Germany get here? Where did Europe’s most innovative nation drop the ball?

  Let’s go back to the 1950s.

  The Nuclear Dilemma

  German nuclear power began with the construction of research reactors in the 1950s and 1960s, and the first commercial plant came online in 1969. However, the anti-nuclear movement is nearly as old as the reactors themselves. As early as 1964, critics claimed that the “dangers and costs of the necessary final disposal of nuclear waste could possibly make it necessary to forego the development of nuclear energy.”

  As nuclear adoption increased in the 1970s, thousands of protestors would gather at proposed sites for new plants around the country. After the partial meltdown of a US reactor at Three Mile Island in 1979, 200,000 Germans took to the streets in Hannover and Bonn to demonstrate against the use of nuclear power. That being said, the anti-nuclear movement remained largely sporadic and unorganized until 1980.

  On January 13, 1980, a new political party, The Greens, was founded in the central European nation. The Greens emerged from a wave of new social movements including environmentalism, anti-war, and anti-nuclear power. Suddenly, the anti-nuclear movement had a face.

  Since the party’s inception, The Greens have been concerned with the immediate halt of construction and operation of all nuclear power stations. As an alternative, they have promoted a shift to non-nuclear renewable energy sources such and solar and wind power.

  In 1986, large parts of Germany were covered with radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl disaster, sparking widespread hysteria. Anti-nuclear protests broke out across the country, and the Green Party called for “the immediate shut-down of all nuclear facilities.” Support for this new party grew in the wake of Chernobyl, and The Greens increased their share of the vote to 8.3% in the 1987 federal election.

  Unlike the US, where we have a two-party system, the German legislature is a multi-party system. In 2021, for example, seven parties controlled at least 5% of the parliament’s voting power and seats. Given this structure, The Greens’ 8% voting share in 1987 was significant.

  After the Chernobyl disaster, the Greens became more radicalized and refused to compromise on the nuclear issue. Fearing public backlash, politicians across all parties began to stress that nuclear was a “transient technology”, but not the future. After 1989, no new commercial nuclear power plants were built in Germany.

  In 1998, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Greens led the nation as a joint coalition. Gerhard Schröder, leader of the SPD, was elected as Chancellor.

  In his first term, Schröder’s government decided to phase out nuclear power and instead double down on funding renewable energies. This phase out plan, known as the “nuclear consensus”, limited the lifespan of all nuclear plants to 32 years. Each plant was allocated an amount of electricity that it could produce before being shut down, with the end goal being the shutdown of all nuclear plants by 2022.

  The results after 20 years?

  Germany has certainly succeeded in cutting back its nuclear power production. However, it is far from a green utopia. The chart below from the IEA shows Germany’s electricity generation by source from 1990 to 2020:

  

  If colors aren’t your thing, I broke the data down into percentages below. Nuclear is highlighted.

  

  Color me shocked, I mean shocked, to see that the face of the green movement gets most of its electricity from… coal. It turns out that coal isn’t the most environmentally friendly fuel source either! It’s actually 273x more harmful than nuclear power.

  This reliance on coal will be important in a bit.

  

  Fascinating stuff, no?

  Now to Germany’s credit, they have done an excellent job of expanding their wind and solar power, growing them from less than 1% of electricity generation in 2000 to more than 31% in 2020. But that doesn’t answer the question:

  Why the reduction in nuclear power?

  According to Our World in Data, nuclear is the cleanest form of energy available. It is also 351x safer than coal, with only a rounding error separating it from wind and solar (and this includes Chernobyl and Fukushima).

  The shift away from nuclear has little to do with the dangers of nuclear reactors, nor the viability of other renewable energy sources.

  It has a lot to do with natural gas.

  Gas Me Up

  Notice that natural gas jumped from 9% to 17% of German electricity generation since 2000. While Germany was busy cutting its nuclear production, alternative forms of renewable energy couldn’t fill total output deficit left behind.

  Gas still produces 150x more emissions than nuclear, but it is cleaner than coal and oil. Having already committed to phasing out nuclear, Germany turned to natural gas to fulfill its energy needs. There was just one problem:

   Germany produces little natural gas of its own.

  However, Europe’s estranged neighbor to the east, Russia, happens to produce the second-most most natural gas in the world.

  So Germany bumped up its Russian imports. How much gas does Germany import from Russia?

  A lot.

  Germany’s economy and climate ministry said that in 2022, 55% of its gas imports came from Russia, 30% from Norway, and 13% from the Netherlands.

  Part of the reason that Germany is so reliant on Russian gas is that it doesn’t have its own liquified natural gas (LNG) import terminals, meaning that all of its gas has to come through pipelines.

  The Nord Stream 1 pipeline, owned and operated by Russian gas giant Gazprom, can transport up to 55B cubic meters of gas to Germany each year, and the recently completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline would have doubled this capacity. However, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany put the certification of Nord Stream 2 on hold.

  German has now made plans to build two domestic import terminals to reduce energy dependence on Russia in the future, but that does little to fix the supply crunch that the country is facing now.

  To recap: Germany shut down nuclear power, the cleanest form of energy available, and planned to replace it with other renewable energy sources. When demand couldn’t be satisfied by renewable energy alone, it turned to natural gas, a much dirtier form of energy. Germany doesn’t have import terminals for LNG, making it dependent on pipelines.

  Russia has the highest capacity pipeline network to Germany, making it Germany’s main suitor.

  Cool.

  Now let’s bake another layer into Germany’s energy problem.

  While Germany has reduced its dependence on coal by 50% since 2000, coal is still its primary source of electricity.

  There are two kinds of coal used for energy: hard coal and brown coal. Hard coal is notoriously bad for the environment, and Germany has ended all domestic mining of this product. However, while 16.9% of Germany’s electricity is generated from the “cleaner” brown coil, 7.4% of the country’s grid is still powered by hard coal. A product that it no longer produces domestically.

  So Germany now imports 100% of its hard coal, which is responsible for 7.4% of its electricity.

  And who does Germany import 45% of its hard coal from?

  Russia.

  Starting to notice a theme here?

  So this central European country, that is “leading the charge” against climate change, has terminated its greenest energy source. Germany is now reliant on Russia, a country that doesn’t give a damn about climate change, for two of its main power sources, which both happen to be terrible for the environment.

  Surprisingly, there wasn’t much information about this at that Futurium exhibit!

  There Are No Coincidences

  This must have been a miscalculation, right? Germany must have underestimated how long it would take to implement other renewable energy sources. They underestimated what their energy needs would be in 20 years. Maybe they falsely thought that coal was cleaner than nuclear power!

  Maybe, but probably not.

  Let’s circle back to Germany’s Chancellor in year 2000. Since 2017, Gerhard Schröder, the man who led the charge to shut down nuclear in the name of renewable energy, has been the chairman of Russian energy company Rosneft.

  In February 2022, just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Schröder, the man who led the charge to shut down nuclear in the name of renewable energy, was named to the board of Gazprom, the Russian state-owned multinational energy corporation that did $120B of revenue in 2019. You know, the same Gazprom that owns the Nord Stream Pipelines.

  Schröder also happened to be the man who authorized construction of this very Nord Stream Pipeline in 2005!

  It really shouldn’t be a surprise that Schröder has found himself in such an enviable position in the Russian energy industry. After all, he is a long-time friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, spending several birthdays in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

  

  Germany, the most powerful country in the EU, is now at the mercy of Russian energy policy. Guess what product has been conveniently left out of sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine?

  Energy.

  There are no coincidences.

  We knew back in 2014 that Russia was willing to influence foreign energy policy. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then secretary-general of NATO, stated that he had reliable information that Russia was engaged with British environmental organizations working against shale gas. The UK proceeded to ban fracking in 2019.

  Why would Putin be anti-shale? Was he worried about the environmental impact of fracking? No.

  He wanted Europe to remain reliant on Russian gas.

  Best Story Wins

  It is the most ironic plot line, no?

  Russia, a country seemingly stuck in the 1980s era of pollution-heavy industrialization, was actively funding green movements in the United Kingdom. Schröder, the German chancellor who led the “green movement” in his country, who is both best friends with Putin and a board member on multiple Russian energy companies, played an integral role in building the pipeline network from Russia to Germany.

  Oh the irony.

  This happened because we humans aren’t moved by data, statistics, and probabilities. We are compelled by stories.

  I could show you data that zero Germans were adversely affected by the Chernobyl meltdown. I could prove to you that the radiation received from touring the Chernobyl zone is less than what a passenger receives on a NYC to London flight.

  Or I could bombard you with misinformation about radioactive waste, terrify you with stories of nuclear malfunction, and sow seeds of doubt into the mind of the general populace, “What if Fukushima happens here?”

  I could show you evidence that solar and wind power can’t generate enough power to fuel the world’s biggest economies, or I could extrapolate temperature “data” to forecast that climate change will destroy the world if we don’t shut down fossil fuels now.

  Data is no match for powerful stories.

  Stories tug at our emotions. Fear of nuclear fallout and global warming-induced existential threats, no matter how far-fetched, dominate public opinion.

  Stories are the reason that Americans are terrified of plane crashes, an event that happens 1 out of every 16 million flights, but we don’t think for a second about heart disease, a condition that kills 1 out of every 4 of us.

  Stories spread like wildfire, creating protests and demonstrations. The strongest stories make their way into parliaments and congresses around the world, warping public policy, data be damned.

  Stories helped the Green Party outlaw nuclear energy in Germany, despite it being the safest and cleanest form of energy in the world.

  Stories led Western European nations to sacrifice energy independence now, to guard against a vague potential threat at some point in the future.

  Stories made Russia, the silent enemy of the west for fifty years, Europe’s primary energy provider.

  Putin and company quietly mastered the art of storytelling by using the green energy narrative to increase foreign dependency on Russian gas:

  Make sure everyone is the world views climate change as a threat, vilify western oil and gas companies, encourage legislation that favors renewable energy, amplify unfounded fears about nuclear power, and profit as countries quietly realize that they need natural gas to keep the lights on.

  The green movement was, ironically, the most efficient way for Putin and Schröder to pad their pockets at Europe’s expense.

  But you know what, maybe it would be worth it if it made a difference. Maybe sacrificing energy independence would be a fair trade off if it made the world a cleaner place.

  But it didn’t. If anything, western energy policy managed to make the world a dirtier place.

  While western leaders pat themselves on the back for “doing their part”, for shutting down fossil fuel plants and nuclear reactors, for building windmills and solar farms, they don’t realize that they didn’t change a damn thing.

  The planet isn’t greener, because the pollution didn’t go away. It was simply outsourced with energy independence.

  Germany and England replaced nuclear reactors and domestic shale with Russian gas, and I doubt Putin is losing sleep over his carbon footprint. Believe it or not, the ozone layer doesn’t discriminate by geography, and outsourced fossil fuels are, in fact, still fossil fuels.

  The greatest two lies that the green movement ever told were that we could drop fossil fuels for renewables overnight, and nuclear didn’t need to be part of the solution.

  But these two lies have proven to be quite lucrative for certain Russian energy companies.

  Who knew that Vladimir Putin was renewable energy’s biggest cheerleader?

  – Jack

  If you liked this piece, make sure to subscribe by adding your email below!

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/19/2022 – 02:00

• Beijing's "Elite Capture" Strategy Was A Success: Peter Schweizer
  Beijing’s “Elite Capture” Strategy Was A Success: Peter Schweizer

  Authored by Masooma Haq and Roman Balmakov via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Peter Schweizer, author of the book “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China,” said the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) entry into the WTO changed the global economic structure in large part because it unleashed the regime’s strategy of gaining control of America’s elite class so they would do Beijing’s bidding.

  

  Schweizer calls this strategy “elite capture,” and the CCP’s plan was to target the top levels of big tech, entertainment, education, Wall Street, as well as politics.

  “It’s going to give [the CCP] leverage over them [the elites] because once [the CCP has] sort of touched them and made them rich, or as some CCP officials have said, they’ve tasted the honey that they’ve been offered, they will not want to give it back, they will not want to give it up,” said Schweizer.

  “So that gives enormous leverage to Beijing over elements of our leadership class.”

  U.S. foreign policy and the conventional wisdom of the elite class was that if the West engaged with the CCP, it would become more liberal and less repressive of its own people, and it was this thinking that allowed the CCP to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of 2001.

  

  Schweizer said this strategy not only failed but has been disastrous for the globe.

  “The CCP has become more repressive, more aggressive on the global stage. So, I think that our political and corporate elites have a lot of accounting to do for their failure. Of course, they made a lot of money by pushing this position.”

  He likened the elite capture strategy to decapitating U.S. leadership, leaving U.S. citizenry suffering. “But in fact, the head has effectively been cut off, it’s been co-opted, it’s been bought, and then so the rest of the body, which is the United States and the average citizen, suffers.”

  Big Tech Working With the CCP

  He said the heads of some of the big tech companies, like Tesla, Google, Facebook, etc., have been taken in by the dictatorial regime’s “efficiency” and getting market shares in the world’s most populous country.

  “Elon Musk has said this, that the Chinese dictatorial regime is so efficient, they’re so quickly responsive to the needs of the Chinese people—which of course, if you have a dictatorship, you don’t have to worry about civil rights, property rights, an independent judiciary,” said Schweizer.

  “I mean, if you’re Bill Gates and you’re worth $100 billion, still, being able to access the Chinese market is important for the continued growth of your company.”

  Profit Over National Security

  In the past, Elon Musk used to criticize the Chinese regime but has changed his position after striking a deal with the CCP, Schweizer said.

  “So, the question is, what’s changed? And what’s changed is he became business partners with the Chinese Communist Party. They built him a large factory, Tesla factory in China, which is now churning out a large number of vehicles. He’s already said he’s going to take the design studios out of California and move them to China,” said Schweizer.

  Musk doing business in China also poses a security risk because some of the technologies that Tesla uses in its cars are the same technologies software that is being used on his company’s launch satellites.

  

  “Anyone who gets entangled in doing business with China that requires their good graces for their business to continue to operate is going to end up basically doing what Beijing wants, because if they don’t, Beijing is going to destroy their business.”

  Artificial intelligence (AI) is an important area of tech development, and it’s been said that whoever dominates there will have a global economic and military advantage, said Schweizer.

  “Our biggest and brightest companies, like Google and Microsoft, are actually subsidizing research laboratories in China that are linked to the Chinese military, so they’re helping them in the competition against us.” He called this “extraordinary” and “troubling.”

  “Google has plowed ahead, happily to do so. At the same time, Google employees submitted a petition to an executive saying they did not want to work on any Pentagon, that is U.S. military research contracts, at the same time. It’s really a stunning development.”

  U.S. laws have allowed these tech companies to become successful and profitable, “and yet, they don’t recognize the role that our system of governance has played, and they’re actually subsidizing our enemy,” said Schweizer.

  

  Google’s work with AI in China will help the CCP’s military to attack our own country.

  “You’re required by Chinese national security law—which means if you violate it, you’re going to go to jail for a very long time—you’re required to take any civilian technology or capability you have and find application to Chinese military,” said Schweizer. In addition, “if you are a business operating in China, anything that you have, that you own—whether it’s intellectual property, whether it’s data on citizens in China or overseas—that information is available to the Chinese state whenever they asked for it.”

  U.S. Big Tech only cares about their profitability and power instead of treating the CCP for what it is: a repressive, dictatorial regime that brutalizes its own people, said Schweizer. Facebook has attempted to link China with the United States via undersea cables a number of times, but the projects were halted after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) made a recommendation against the projects due to national security concerns.

  Facebook’s Hong Kong-America project was first proposed in 2018 by a group made up of Facebook and a number of Chinese companies including China Telecom. The plan was for the fiber-optic cable to link up Hong Kong and a site in Taiwan with two sites in California.

  Another joint Facebook-Google undersea cable called the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) was withdrawn in September 2020 due to national security concerns from Trump’s DOJ.

  “Did somehow Facebook or Google not know that Chinese intelligence was going to use this as a massive gateway to spy on Americans? I want to believe and I think it’s pretty obvious that Facebook and Google knew that that opportunity existed. They certainly have more technical knowledge than the Department of Justice. But the bottom line is they didn’t care.”

  Wall Street Profits

  Schweizer said Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs was instrumental in helping the CCP access and profit from U.S. markets. “You don’t have to go very far at all on Wall Street to find a major firm that has contributed to where China is today in terms of its economic growth,” said Schweizer.

  “But at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, it’s the CCP that maintains control. Goldman Sachs started it; other big firms have perfected it. Blackstone and BlackRock invest regularly in Chinese companies. When the Chinese government was privatizing companies and giving away ownership stakes to either political families in Beijing or to favor Wall Street clients, these big firms benefited enormously.”

  Political Influence

  Schweizer said he knows of about two dozen former elected U.S. senators or congressmen who now lobby on behalf of Chinese intelligence and military-linked firms.

  “I’m just talking about military- and intelligence-linked firms, and they are petitioning our government, they want favors, they want to get off of restricted lists they might be on, they try to change the perception—Huawei is trying to convince people that no, we don’t have any links to, you know, the Chinese intelligence apparatus, which is absurd. And this is a huge problem.”

  “Elite capture has worked for a minimal investment. They’ve enriched members of our leadership class, and that leadership class has, in turn, done their bidding, effectively doing their lobbying, in the United States.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 23:45

• Interest In Immigration Surges As Wealthy Chinese Look To Flee Shanghai
  Interest In Immigration Surges As Wealthy Chinese Look To Flee Shanghai

  As even many foreigners who live in Shanghai have been swept up in China’s strict quarantine measures, as we showed over the weekend, the FT reports that many wealthy residents of Shanghai are looking to leave, following the brutal lockdown measures that have forced millions of people to stockpile food and other necessary supplies – or even go without food or essential medical care, sometimes with deadly consequences. 

  

  Immigration consultants who spoke with the FT said requests from wealthy individuals looking to leave Shanghai have soared since the lockdown started three weeks ago. And many clients who had postponed previous plans to leave due to fears that they stood a higher chance of contracting the virus outside China have revived their efforts.

  And to show that there’s more than just anecdotal data behind this, the FT cited a surge in WeChat searches for “immigration” by people in Shanghai. These searches have reportedly increased 7x.

  “The authorities are making people sacrifice their basic needs to fight a disease that’s a bit more severe than seasonal flu,” said James Chen, a Shanghai-based consultant. “Our clients chose to vote with their feet.”

  “I have had so many inquiries over the past few weeks that I couldn’t reply to them in a timely manner,” said an agent at QWOS, a Shanghai-based immigration services company, who received more than 200 requests on Saturday.

  One immigration consultant told the FT that she hasn’t been this busy in “months”.

  Lucy Wang, the owner of an immigration consultancy in the south-western city of Chengdu, said she was working 12 hours a day fielding client requests. “I haven’t been so busy for many months,” she said.

  Some of the potential emigres who spoke with the FT cited the Shanghai lockdown as the primary motivation for their efforts.

  “I have never thought about being confined to my home for many days without enough to eat,” said Jane Wang, a 38-year-old Shanghai-based marketing researcher who contacted QWOS after more than four weeks of home quarantine. “What happened in Shanghai made me feel insecure,” she added. “I want to live in a place without worrying about being quarantined arbitrarily.”

  In terms of potential destinations, Singapore is one popular option, as another potential emigre pointed out.

  “I don’t feel welcome in the US when American politicians and media outlets keep saying negative things about China,” said John Li, a Beijing-based engineer who gave up his dream of moving to San Francisco and paid agents Rmb40,000 ($6,300) last week to obtain a Singaporean residence permit. “I want to move to a country where Chinese people are respected.”

  Still, international travel restrictions and other obstacles remain that could delay potential emigres’ plans by many months.

  “One who wants to reside in another country has to be accepted by that country and go through a complicated admission process,” said Cong Cao, a professor at the University of Nottingham Ningbo. “The current situation in Shanghai and many other Chinese cities may accelerate the exodus of some affected middle-class families but it’s too early to say whether it becomes a trend.”

  Whether or not their interest will cool once life returns to normal and Shanghai remains to be seen.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 23:25

• Inside The Ukraine-Induced Defense Contractor 'Gold Rush' At The Pentagon
  Inside The Ukraine-Induced Defense Contractor ‘Gold Rush’ At The Pentagon

  Authored by William Hartung & Julia Gledhill via Common Dreams,

  The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one group is already benefiting from it: U.S. arms contractors.

  Even before hostilities broke out, the CEOs of major weapons firms were talking about how tensions in Europe could pad their profits. In a January 2022 call with his company’s investors, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes typically bragged that the prospect of conflict in Eastern Europe and other global hot spots would be good for business, adding that “we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales… [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”

  In late March, in an interview with the Harvard Business Review after the war in Ukraine had begun, Hayes defended the way his company would profit from that conflict:

  “So I make no apology for that. I think again recognizing we are there to defend democracy and the fact is eventually we will see some benefit in the business over time. Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD [the Department of Defense] or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the next coming years.”

  

  Arms to Ukraine, Profits to Contractors

  The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.

  Indeed, direct arms transfers to Ukraine already reflect only part of the extra money going to U.S. military contractors. This fiscal year alone, they are guaranteed to also reap significant benefits from the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, both of which finance the acquisition of American weaponry and other equipment, as well as military training. These have, in fact, been the two primary channels for military aid to Ukraine from the moment the Russians invaded and seized Crimea in 2014. Since then, the United States has committed around $5 billion in security assistance to that country.

  According to the State Department, the United States has provided such military aid to help Ukraine “preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO.” So, when Russian troops began to mass on the Ukrainian border last year, Washington quickly upped the ante. On March 31, 2021, the U.S. European Command declared a “potential imminent crisis,” given the estimated 100,000 Russian troops already along that border and within Crimea. As last year ended, the Biden administration had committed $650 million in weaponry to Ukraine, including anti-aircraft and anti-armor equipment like the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin anti-tank missile.

  Despite such elevated levels of American military assistance, Russian troops did indeed invade Ukraine in February. Since then, according to Pentagon reports, the U.S. has committed to giving approximately $2.6 billion in military aid to that country, bringing the Biden administration total to more than $3.2 billion and still rising.

  Some of this assistance was included in a March emergency-spending package for Ukraine, which required the direct procurement of weapons from the defense industry, including drones, laser-guided rocket systems, machine guns, ammunition, and other supplies. The major military-industrial corporations will now seek Pentagon contracts to deliver that extra weaponry, even as they are gearing up to replenish Pentagon stocks already delivered to the Ukrainians.

  On that front, in fact, military contractors have much to look forward to. More than half of the Pentagon’s $6.5 billion portion of the emergency-spending package for Ukraine is designated simply to replenish DoD inventories. In all, lawmakers allocated $3.5 billion to that effort, $1.75 billion more than the president even requested. They also boosted funding by $150 million for the State Department’s FMF program for Ukraine. And keep in mind that those figures don’t even include emergency financing for the Pentagon’s acquisition and maintenance costs, which are guaranteed to provide more revenue streams for the major weapons makers.

  Better yet, from the viewpoint of such companies, there are many bites left to take from the apple of Ukrainian military aid. President Biden has already made it all too clear that “we’re going to give Ukraine the arms to fight and defend themselves through all the difficult days ahead.” One can only assume that more commitments are on the way.

  🚨 NEW REPORT: The pundits pushing for U.S. military intervention are being paid by military contractors that stand to make huge profits off a wider war — and corporate media isn’t disclosing that to viewers. https://t.co/YlqDAIxKnV

  — David Sirota (@davidsirota) April 12, 2022

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  Another positive side effect of the war for Lockheed, Raytheon, and other arms merchants like them is the push by House Armed Services Committee chair Adam Smith (D-WA) and ranking committee Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama to speed up production of a next-generation anti-aircraft missile to replace the Stinger. In his congressional confirmation hearing, William LaPlante, the latest nominee to head acquisition at the Pentagon, argued that America also needs more “hot production lines” for bombs, missiles, and drones. Consider that yet another benefit-in-waiting for the major weapons contractors.

  The Pentagon Gold Mine

  For U.S. arms makers, however, the greatest benefits of the war in Ukraine won’t be immediate weapons sales, large as they are, but the changing nature of the ongoing debate over Pentagon spending itself.  Of course, the representatives of such companies were already plugging the long-term challenge posed by China, a greatly exaggerated threat, but the Russian invasion is nothing short of manna from heaven for them, the ultimate rallying cry for advocates of greater military outlays. Even before the war, the Pentagon was slated to receive at least $7.3 trillion over the next decade, more than four times the cost of President Biden’s $1.7 trillion domestic Build Back Better plan, already stymied by members of Congress who labeled it “too expensive” by far.  And keep in mind that, given the current surge in Pentagon spending, that $7.3 trillion could prove a minimal figure.

  Indeed, Pentagon officials like Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks promptly cited Ukraine as one of the rationales for the Biden administration’s proposed record national-security budget proposal of $813 billion, calling Russia’s invasion “an acute threat to the world order.” In another era that budget request for Fiscal Year 2023 would have been mind-boggling, since it’s higher than spending at the peaks of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam and over $100 billion more than the Pentagon received annually at the height of the Cold War.

  Despite its size, however, congressional Republicans — joined by a significant number of their Democratic colleagues — are already pushing for more. Forty Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have, in fact, signed a letter to President Biden calling for 5% growth in military spending beyond inflation, which would potentially add up to $100 billion to that budget request. Typically enough, Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA), who represents the area near the Huntington Ingalls company’s Newport News military shipyard in Virginia, accused the administration of “gutting the Navy” because it contemplates decommissioning some older ships to make way for new ones. That complaint was lodged despite that service’s plan to spend a whopping $28 billion on new ships in FY 2023.

  Who Benefits?

  That planned increase in shipbuilding funds is part of a proposed pool of $276 billion for weapons procurement, as well as further research and development, contained in the new budget, which is where the top five weapons-producing contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — make most of their money. Those firms already split more than $150 billion in Pentagon contracts annually, a figure that will skyrocket if the administration and Congress have their way. To put all of this in context, just one of those top five firms, Lockheed Martin, was awarded $75 billion in Pentagon contracts in fiscal year 2020 alone. That’s considerably more than the entire budget for the State Department, dramatic evidence of how skewed Washington’s priorities are, despite the Biden administration’s pledge to “put diplomacy first.”

  The Pentagon’s weapons wish list for FY 2023 is a catalog of just how the big contractors will cash in. For example, the new Columbia Class ballistic missile submarine, built by General Dynamics Electric Boat plant in southeastern Connecticut, will see its proposed budget for FY 2023 grow from $5.0 billion to $6.2 billion. Spending on Northrop Grumman’s new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, will increase by about one-third annually, to $3.6 billion.  The category of “missile defense and defeat,” a specialty of Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, is slated to receive more than $24 billion.  And space-based missile warning systems, a staple of the Trump administration-created Space Force, will jump from $2.5 billion in FY 2022 to $4.7 billion in this year’s proposed budget.

  Among all the increases, there was a single surprise: a proposed reduction in purchases of the troubled Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft, from 85 to 61 planes in FY 2023.  The reason is clear enough. That plane has more than 800 identified design flaws and its production and performance problems have been little short of legendary.  Luckily for Lockheed Martin, that drop in numbers has not been accompanied by a proportional reduction in funding.  While newly produced planes may be reduced by one-third, the actual budget allocation for the F-35 will drop by less than 10%, from $12 billion to $11 billion, an amount that’s more than the complete discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  (Chris Coons is 58 years old. A graduate of Yale Law with $10 million net worth, he never served in the military. He has 3 children, all 18 or older, yet none serve in the military. So when he advocates that the US send troops to fight Russia in Ukraine, he means other families). pic.twitter.com/o0txYSvBo1

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 17, 2022

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  Since Lockheed Martin won the F-35 contract, development costs have more than doubled, while production delays have set the aircraft back by nearly a decade. Nonetheless, the military services have purchased so many of those planes that manufacturers can’t keep up with the demand for spare parts. And yet the F-35 can’t even be properly tested for combat effectiveness because the simulation software required is not only unfinished, but without even an estimated completion date. So, the F-35 is many years away from the full production of planes that actually work as advertised, if that’s ever in the cards.

  A number of the weapons systems which, in the Ukraine moment, are guaranteed to be showered with cash are so dangerous or dysfunctional that, like the F-35, they should actually be phased out.  Take the new ICBM.  Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because a president would only have minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, greatly increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war based on a false alarm. Nor does it make sense to buy aircraft carriers at $13 billion a pop, especially since the latest version is having trouble even launching and landing aircraft — its primary function — and is increasingly vulnerable to attack by next-generation high-speed missiles.

  The few positives in the new budget like the Navy’s decision to retire the unnecessary and unworkable Littoral Combat Ship — a sort of “F-35 of the sea” designed for multiple tasks none of which it does well — could easily be reversed by advocates from states and districts where those systems are built and maintained.  The House of Representatives, for instance, has a powerful Joint Strike Fighter Caucus, which, in 2021, mustered more than one-third of all House members to press for more F-35s than the Pentagon and Air Force requested, as they will no doubt do again this year. A Shipbuilding Caucus, co-chaired by representatives Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Rob Wittman (R-VA), will fight against the Navy’s plan to retire old ships to buy new ones.  (They would prefer that the Navy keep the old ones and buy new ones with more of your tax money up for grabs.) Similarly, the “ICBM Coalition,” made up of senators from states with either ICBM bases or production centers, has a near perfect record of staving off reductions in the deployment or funding of those weapons and will, in 2022, be hard at work defending its budgetary allocation.

  Towards a New Policy

  Coming up with a sensible, realistic, and affordable defense policy, always a challenge, will be even more so in the midst of the Ukrainian nightmare. Still, given where our taxpayer dollars go, it remains all too worthwhile.  Such a new approach should include things like reducing the numbers of the Pentagon’s private contractors, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are engaged in thoroughly redundant jobs that could be done more cheaply by civilian government employees or simply eliminated. It’s estimated that cutting spending on contractors by 15% would save around $262 billion over 10 years.

  The Pentagon’s three-decades-long near $2 trillion “modernization” plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines, along with new warheads, should, for instance, simply be scrapped in keeping with the kind of “deterrence-only” nuclear strategy developed by the nuclear-policy organization Global Zero.  And the staggering American global military footprint — an invitation to further conflict that includes more than 750 military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, and counterterror operations in 85 countries — should, at the very least, be sharply scaled back. 

  According to the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force and a study of alternative approaches to defense carried out by the Congressional Budget Office, even a relatively minimalist strategic rethinking could save at least $1 trillion over the next decade, enough to make a healthy down payment on investments in public health, preventing or mitigating the worst potential impacts of climate change, or beginning the task of narrowing record levels of income inequality.

  Of course, none of these changes can occur without challenging the power and influence of the military-industrial-congressional complex, a task as urgent as it is difficult in this moment of carnage in Europe. No matter how hard it may be, it’s a fight worth having, both for the security of the world and the future of the planet. One thing is guaranteed: a new gold rush of “defense” spending is a disaster in the making for all of us not in that complex.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 23:05

• Oil From Biden's Emergency SPR Release Is Heading For Europe
  Oil From Biden’s Emergency SPR Release Is Heading For Europe

  Joe Biden’s decision to release 180 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve – one million barrels per day for 180 days, ending just before the midterm elections which the Democrats will lose in an avalanche – was meant to help lower US gasoline prices “because Putin price hike.” Instead, it is heading for Europe.

  

  According to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, the Suezmax ship Advantage Spring – sailing for Rotterdam, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg – received emergency SPR sweet crude from Energy Transfer’s Nederland oil facility around April 1 for export.

  

  The Suezmax also received SPR crude from Aframax Eagle Hatteras, which loaded at same terminal in first week of April.

  The Advantage Spring was chartered by Atlantic Trading, an affiliate of Total, ship fixtures data show.

  

  It appears that somehow the definition of emergency now includes making a profit at the expense of American consumers because sooner or later a real emergency will hit and then it will be too late, while easing the true energy emergency over in Europe.

  According to Matt Smith, oil analyst at commodity data firm Kpler, this is the first export of SPR crude since last November. Which means the oil was apportioned from Biden’s shock SPR release.

  One wonders what is behind Biden’s decision to make US emergency SPR oil available across the Atlantic; one can only hope that it doesn’t mean that in the coming midterms mail in ballots will also be made available to Europeans…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 22:45

• Experts Doubt Mexican States Will Stop Illegal Immigration Despite Texas Deals
  Experts Doubt Mexican States Will Stop Illegal Immigration Despite Texas Deals

  Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  April 15 was quiet in Acuña, Mexico, which sits across the river from the Texas city of Del Rio—a hot spot for illegal immigration.

  

  A day earlier, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott inked a border security agreement with his counterpart in the Mexican state of Coahuila, in which Acuña sits. The deal included “enhanced border security enforcement measures” along the Rio Grande.

  In Acuña, The Epoch Times saw state and local police pull up to the Rio Grande and take photos of themselves for social media. They said they want to show tourists that it’s safe in Acuña during the Easter holiday and confirmed they haven’t been conducting extra river patrols since the agreement was signed.

  Local immigration agents said “everything is normal,” when asked if they had been given any new instructions over the past week.

  The agreements signed between Abbott and his counterparts in four bordering Mexican states have commercial trucks moving smoothly again through most ports of entry again, but critics say the border security part won’t last long.

  The three Mexican states have promised to patrol the Rio Grande and curb illegal immigration into Texas, as well as conduct safety checks on the commercial trucks preparing to enter Texas.

  “They’ll show a good faith effort, but it’s not going to be lasting—it never is,” Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol Union, told The Epoch Times.

  “There’s just too much corruption. The cartels are too embedded in the governments, the corruption is very widespread down there. But at least Governor Abbott was able to force their hand.”

  Over the previous two nights, Border Patrol agents apprehended 235 illegal immigrants who had crossed the river into the Eagle Pass area from the Mexican city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila state.

  Among the first group were 16 illegal aliens from Kyrgyzstan, seven from Kazakhstan, and a Russian, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is responsible for border clearance into the United States.

  

  Texas had signed agreements with three of the four Mexican states: Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo León, before an agreement with Tamaulipas, the furthest eastern state, was announced on April 15.

  Abbott, a Republican, signed the first agreement with the governor of Nuevo León on April 13. That state shares just 8.6 miles of border with Texas, but Abbott immediately unblocked the ports in Laredo that had been clogged by Texas state police inspections close to the ports of entry.

  The next two agreements were signed the following day—with Chihuahua (unclogging El Paso) and Coahuila (across from Del Rio and Eagle Pass, where no slowdowns were recorded).

  The only reason the Mexican governors are signing the deals is because trade is being slowed down, Judd said.

  “They don’t do anything to stop the cartels, they could have done this before,” he said.

  But, he also said, ultimately the Biden administration has failed in border security.

  “It’s sad that the federal government isn’t doing its job. And you have to have state resources to step in and do what our federal government is supposed to do. That’s the saddest part of this entire equation,” he said.

  On April 6, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) was directed by Abbott to begin enhanced safety inspections on commercial vehicles entering Texas from Mexico.

  Almost immediately, the commercial ports of entry became jammed and commerce dropped by around 60 percent in some areas. In the Rio Grande Valley, the Pharr port of entry closed entirely after protestors blocked it on the Mexican side, according to CBP, which issued its own statement on April 12 calling the inspections “unnecessary.”

  White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Abbott’s inspection efforts a “political stunt” during a press conference on April 13.

  

  Abbott defended the inspections at a joint press conference with Nuevo León Gov. Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda in Laredo on April 13.

  “These inspections revealed that about 25 percent of the vehicles crossing into Texas were unsafe for Texas roads and were removed from service,” Abbott said.

  “At the same time, Texas has been overrun with a record number of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into Texas, with the assistance of cartels.”

  María Eugenia Campos Galván, governor of Chihuahua state, wrote in a memo to Abbott that she shares his concerns.

  “I am concerned about the same interests that the Texas government is worried about: drug trafficking, people smuggling, money laundering, and most of all migration,” Campos’s April 13 memo states.

  Campos said she intends to relocate the state’s public safety headquarters from Chihuahua City to Juarez, which sits directly across the border from El Paso.

  The memorandum of understanding between Texas and Chihuahua sets forth that the two states will “work cooperatively to stop the flow of migrants from over 100 countries who illegally enter Texas through Chihuahua—including providing resources to respond to hot spot areas as identified by the Texas DPS.”

  It also says the two states will “work cooperatively to reduce the cartels’ human trafficking and smuggling of deadly fentanyl and other drugs across and between ports of entry.”

  The deal with Coahuila was similar.

  “Until President [Joe] Biden decides to fulfill his constitutional duty to secure the border, we will continue to do whatever it takes to protect the safety and security of all Texans,” Abbott said in an April 15 statement.

  

  In the first three months of 2022, agents apprehended more than 318,000 illegal immigrants entering the state of Texas from Mexico, according to CBP data. Tens of thousands more evaded capture.

  Todd Bensman, national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the whole idea of forcing the agreements through jamming up the commerce routes “is really quite brilliant.”

  But, he said, “the devil is in the details. All of it’s just too vague.”

  “If Abbott’s serious about this, and he’s seeing migrants still coming over and he reinstates a bridge closure, that’s what it’ll take to show that he’s really serious about this,” Bensman said.

  “The only real measure that is going to matter is if they [Mexico] physically pick up migrants and drive them to Guatemala. That’s it. Nothing else matters.”

  The cartels control the Mexican side of the border, and so the governors are walking a fine line, Bensman said.

  “There’s this whole other issue that nobody’s really raising, which is that these agreements put the state governments in conflict with the cartels, which exercise a lot of influence with those governments, state governments,” he said.

  “They’re put in between a rock and a hard place between doing what Abbott wants and doing what they have to do to not get killed.

  “Especially the Tamaulipas agreement. Because you’ve got cartels there making just billions of dollars—most of the money is being made there.”

  Tamaulipas sits across from the Rio Grande Valley, which has long been the busiest sector for both illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 22:25

• US Imposes Ban On Anti-Satellite Weapons Tests To Highlight Russian Malfeasance In Space
  US Imposes Ban On Anti-Satellite Weapons Tests To Highlight Russian Malfeasance In Space

  The Biden administration is implementing a self-imposed ban on all anti-satellite weapons testing, in order to take the lead in highlighting what it says are the dangerous and irresponsible Russian tests in space, which have lately created a potentially disastrous field of space debris. China has also been accused of similarly reckless anti-satellite missile testing.

  NBC reported the initiative Monday based on admin sources, and a briefing provided to Congress indicates that the move is to address “the most pressing threats to the security and sustainability of space, as demonstrated by Russia’s November 2021 destructive direct-ascent ASAT missile test.”

  

  The new moratorium comes as Vice President Harris meets with Space Command and members of the US Space Force at Vanderburg Space Force Base in California, where she is reportedly emphasizing the need for “advancing norms for peaceful and responsible behavior in space.”

  The hope, however unlikely is that both Russia and China would follow Washington’s lead on this – but the reality is that Moscow and Beijing are likely to see it as an extension of the propaganda information war targeting especially Russia amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. 

  In mid-November, US officials were outraged after Russia used anti-satellite weapons, or ASATs, to destroy a defunct spacecraft which had long been in orbit:

  On Nov. 15, 2021, an interceptor missile launched in northern Russia struck a Soviet-era COSMOS 1408 satellite, generating a massive debris field in low-Earth orbit of more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris, U.S. Space Command has said. 

  As a result the space junk is expected to continue orbiting for years, potentially colliding with other satellites. Some of the larger pieces are believed to be up to a few feet across – easily capable of causing severe damage, also to the International Space Station if there was a collision. 

  At the time in November, the Kremlin had defended its actions which the US State Department had slammed as reckless. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had said the missile test was “promising” due to its accuracy in striking the defunct satellite and that “The fragments that formed do not pose any threat to space activity.”

  However, State Department Spokesman Ned Price had countered by explaining that the “destructive satellite test of a direct ascent anti-satellite missile against one of its satellites” had “generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten” space assets of many countries. 

  Price condemned further at the time… “this test will significantly increase the risk to astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station, as well as to other human spaceflight activities.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 22:05

• Americans Should Put A Stop To The 'Biomedical Security State': Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
  Americans Should Put A Stop To The ‘Biomedical Security State’: Dr. Aaron Kheriaty

  Authored by Tammy Hung and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, stringent measures such as mandatory masking, vaccination, and “quarantining healthy populations” have turned the United States into a “Biomedical Security State,” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program on April 9.

  “This welding of public health with digital technologies of surveillance and control and the police powers of the state allows for intrusions on our privacy, on our bodily autonomy, that are unprecedented in history,” said Kheriaty, a psychiatrist and medical ethicist.

  

  Kheriaty, chief of medical ethics at the Unity Project and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, added that a “probably north of 70 percent of Americans still got COVID in spite of almost a year of lockdowns,” and that the lockdowns have essentially brought on “massive collateral damage” in the form of a mental health crisis.

  He cited the pre-pandemic opioid crisis accounting for a total of 70,630 drug overdose deaths in 2019 in the United States, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The lockdown has only “poured gasoline on [the] fire” of the existing drug overdose crisis, resulting in the skyrocketing of drug overdose deaths to over 100,000 last year, said Kheriaty.

  An August 2021 study published on Pub Med found that “state lockdown policies precede greater mental health symptoms,” and that many “non-heavy drinkers” turned to alcohol during lockdowns as a coping mechanism for “anxiety and depressive symptoms.”

  The results may warn against “greater addiction following the pandemic warranting further investigation into utilization of substance use treatment,” the study reported.

  Furthermore, one insurance company has reported a 40 percent rise in death rates during the third quarter of 2021 compared to pre-pandemic rates, which is the highest rate the company has ever seen.

  J. Scott Davison, CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, said during a news conference in December 2021 that the deaths of working-age people between 18 and 64 years of age are on the rise, and are being consistently seen in all insurance companies offering life insurance.

  “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10 percent increase over pre-pandemic,” Davison said during a health care conference organized by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in December 2021.

  Given that 2021 was the year a “mass vaccination campaign” was implemented and that the 18–64 year age group has relatively low COVID-19 mortality rates compared with the over 65 age group, Kheriaty said that “we ought to be very concerned” and dig deeper into whether the deaths were the “effects of the lockdowns that were emerging the following year,” or whether the deaths were due to “vaccine adverse events that may have gone unreported or under-reported,” or a combination of those factors and others that require further investigating.

  “This is a very pressing question that public health authorities need to contend with,” Kheriaty said.

  Since Feb. 1, 2021, the CDC has reported 1,109,851 cases of excess deaths nationwide from all causes. The number of excess deaths excluding COVID-19 related deaths is 220,902; due to other respiratory diseases, circulatory diseases, or other causes such as diabetes, kidney disease, or cancer.

  “Estimated numbers of deaths due to these other causes of death could represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to COVID-19 (e.g., deaths from other causes occurring in the context of health care shortages or overburdened health care systems),” the CDC stated.

  “For the majority of deaths where COVID-19 is reported on the death certificate, COVID-19 is selected as the underlying cause of death,” the CDC added on its website.

  However, the New York Times had recently reported that the CDC still had not published large amounts of the data they collected during the pandemic.

  In comments to The New York Times, a CDC spokesperson said the data were “not yet ready for prime time,” that the information may be misinterpreted to mean the vaccines are ineffective, and that the data they have is based on 10 percent of the U.S. population, which the Times pointed out is the same sample size used to track influenza each year.

  Kheriaty pointed out that there appears to be a “conflict of interest” within the CDC, whereby “rather than releasing the data that American taxpayers have paid for and obviously have the right to see, and independent researchers have the right to scrutinize, they’re keeping that information from the public, because they think it may be harmful to some of the recommendations that they’ve made.”

  He added that there should be a stronger “firewall” between the scientific and political department of an organization such as the CDC to allow for more transparency, otherwise “you end up in a situation in which you have the control of information and basically, giving people only the information that you want them to hear in order to do what you want them to do,” which is essentially propaganda characteristic of “totalitarian regimes.”

  The first step in allowing the “separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers” to resume normalcy, is to put a stop to the state of emergency declared at the start of the pandemic, Kheriaty stated, adding that Americans need to “demand and take back” their “right of informed consent and the right of informed refusal.”

  The state of emergency declaration enables the CDC and other health agencies to take certain actions, including tapping into financial reserves and waiving some requirements from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. In a pandemic-era bill, Congress also ordered all laboratories that perform or analyze COVID-19 tests to report the results to the federal government until the declaration ends.

  In a March 16 email statement to The Epoch Times, a CDC spokesperson stated that it has “no general statutory authority to direct what and how public health data are reported. Data authorities related to COVID-19 test results and hospitalizations are available now because of a public health emergency declaration. When that declaration lapses, so do the federal legal authorities to require the reporting of this important information.”

  Joseph Mercola and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 21:45

• Apple Includes "Pregnant Man" Emoji In Latest Software Update
  Apple Includes “Pregnant Man” Emoji In Latest Software Update

  Far be it for us to predict whether or not history will laugh at us, but it feels like we’ve officially crossed the rubicon of…well, something.

  Apple’s latest software update for its iPhone includes with it a “pregnant man” emoji, according to a new report from Fox News. The new emoticon sets also include “a number of other gender neutral cartoons,” the report says. 

  The update, made available in March, included the pregnant man, as well as a gender neutral “person with crown” emoji, in addition to 35 other emojis. 

  

  The pregnant man and “pregnant person” emoji first debuted back in January as part of an optional update, but now they are being included in iOS 15.4, which is an update that goes to all iPhone users. 

  Fox News Host Greg Gutfeld said the emoji was a “step toward acceptance for men with ‘beer guts.’”

  “Yes, thank God finally, it’s here. A beer gut emoji has arrived to Apple iPhones with its latest voluntary update. This new emoji comes in five different skin tones, so someone with a massive beer gut can be any shade that he, she or they want,” Gutfeld chriped. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 21:25

• Bill O'Reilly: Blame Putin!?
  Bill O’Reilly: Blame Putin!?

  Authored by Bill O’Reilly via RealClearPolitics.com,

  “You did it, you did it,

  you did it in a minute.”

   – Hall & Oates

  Putin caused inflation. That’s what Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Jen Psaki told the nation. We are dealing with the “Putin price rise.”

  Of course, all the stats say consumer prices were going up fast before Russia invaded Ukraine but damn those pesky facts. It was Putin, for sure. Just as the devil made Flip Wilson do it a long time ago, Bad Vlad is the instigator today.

  And it’s not just inflation. Not even close.

  Did you know that Putin made Will Smith slap Chris Rock?

  Didn’t you know that? Old Will simply channeled Vlad, and boom, the Oscars stage was invaded.

  Jennifer Lopez reunited with Ben Affleck because of Putin.

  No lie. Jen is so frightened of the diminutive Vlad that she sought protection from Big Ben. The actor, not the clock.

  Rumor is Jen Psaki will soon blame the chaotic southern border on Putin.

  People in Honduras believe their country is on Vlad’s invasion list, so they are getting the heck out while the getting is good.

  Putin is also responsible for the rise in violent crime in America.

  Criminals are apparently under his spell and want to violate innocent civilians like Vlad’s forces are doing in Mariupol.

  

  President Biden sees this Putin thing clearly and knows his adversary is directly responsible for every single failure of his administration, and it’s a long list that I can tell you.

  Massive airline delays – Putin’s fault.

  Trans restrooms – Vlad did it.

  Critical Race Theory – invented by Putin.

  MSNBC – the dictator secretly runs it.

  The Los Angeles Lakers – Putin.

  Tom Brady coming out of retirement – Vlad ordered him to do it.

  Hunter Biden? Don’t even ask.

  With Vlad having so much power over everything that happens in America, it is only a matter of time before the following occurs.

  Vlad will be appointed CEO of Disney.

  He will partner with Elon Musk to take over Twitter.

  He will be a substitute host on The View.

  He’ll run Ocasio-Cortez’s next campaign.

  Vlad will make Kamala Harris stop giggling.

  He will tour with the Rolling Stones.

  And finally, The New York Times will discover, through anonymous sources, that Putin forced that bird to poop on Biden’s suit.

  I know all that sounds incredible. But it’s not nearly as unbelievable as blaming the Vlad-meister for the nearly ten percent inflation rate now battering the USA.

  Is it?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 21:05

• Tesla's Planned Shanghai Reopening For This Week Pushed Back Due To "Logistics Problems With Supplier"
  Tesla’s Planned Shanghai Reopening For This Week Pushed Back Due To “Logistics Problems With Supplier”

  All weekend, articles were posted about how Tesla’s Shanghai factory was finally going to be re-opening in the coming days. For example, Reuters reported that the company was “sputtering” to reopen its Shanghai plant after 3 weeks of lockdown.

  Pro-Tesla blog electrek also reported that Tesla was aiming to restart production “on Monday, April 18 after roughly three weeks of being shut down and missing out on the production of over 40,000 electric vehicles”.

  “To prepare for the restart, Tesla has recalled workers to its Shanghai plant where they will need to live on site, in line with China’s ‘closed loop management’ process,” two sources told Reuters.

   

  But hopes of a restart may have been dashed almost as soon as they came to be, according to a Monday morning report by Street Insider. The company was preparing to re-open on Monday but has been forced to push its restart back by a day due “to logistic problems with its supplier”. 

  Competitor Volkswagen, meanwhile, has reportedly restarted production in China. General Motors is also considering plans for re-opening this week, the report says. 

  Meanwhile, China continues to extend its lockdowns across parts of the country creating not only chaos domestically, but another coming shock to the supply chain for countries like the U.S., who are highly reliant on importing Chinese goods. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 20:45

• Rabobank: We Won't Get Bretton Woods 3 But What We Do Get Won't Be Peaceful Or Painless
  Rabobank: We Won’t Get Bretton Woods 3 But What We Do Get Won’t Be Peaceful Or Painless

  By Michael Every of Rabobank

  Bancor, Rancor, and Rancour

  What lies beneath

  As usual, just over two weeks into the new quarter, and well in advance of the developed economies, GDP-giant China told us exactly what happened there in Q1. When I say ‘exactly’, I mean to the usual degree of decimal-place detail, but the same lack of any useful breakdown: and despite lockdowns so hard that China’s Weibo is allegedly censoring the first line of the Chinese national anthem (“Stand up! Those who refuse to be slaves”) after it was used to vent frustrations.

  Somehow, the expectation was for a 0.7% q/q GDP print, 4.2% y/y, up from 4.0% in Q42021: we got a far stronger print to show Covid, and Chinese data, don’t matter – GDP rose 1.3% q/q and 4.8% y/y.

  • Does one celebrate the resilience of the economy?
  • Does one ask how that was possible when March data saw retail sales -3.5% y/y, below consensus of -3.0%, down from 1.7%… and yet higher than expected at 3.3% y/y year-to-date (YTD) vs. a 6.7% print in February that already did not match what *any* retailer is seeing? When fixed asset investment, albeit above consensus, slowed to 9.3% from 12.2% y/y even as property investment was weaker than seen at just 0.7% from 3.7% y/y? And industrial production rose to 5.0% from 4.3% y/y – which must have been via net exports… despite port closures!
  • Does one ask why monetary policy was eased last week anyway, with the reserve requirement ratio cut 0.25% again? (That’s a move which will be as ineffectual for the real economy as all the previous cuts were: the only thing it perks up is enthusiasm from analysts who don’t understand how the real economy works.)
  • Does one ask why China just announced details-free economic stimulus measures? (e.g., “Reform will be deepened to remove consumption constraints. Sound and steady development of consumption platforms will be advanced.” How so, when rumours are that we are soon to see bank deposit rates cuts to make room for lower lending rates, which follows the same financial-repression/demand-destruction path seen in the ‘new normal’ elsewhere?) Probably not.
  • Does one ask how local-government debt to build more infrastructure is ‘consumption’? (e.g., “consumption-related infrastructure development may be funded by local government special-purpose bonds, to leverage the catalytic role of investment in expanding consumption.”)
  • Does one note an easily achievable stimulus floated is a de facto export subsidy? (e.g., “Export rebates will be better utilized as an inclusive and equitable policy tool that is consistent with international rules, and the business environment for foreign trade will be improved on multiple fronts.”) Yet if China thinks it can grow its way out of a structural crisis by flooding the world with more goods *again*, then it is in for a real shock.

  Making that point, Bloomberg warns: ‘Global Investors Flee China Fearing That Risks Eclipse Rewards’. All the more reason for a 1.3 % q/q print then(?) The article notes, “Russian sanctions raise concerns the same could happen to China… a growing list of risks is turning China into a potential quagmire for global investors. The central question is what could happen in a country willing to go to great lengths to achieve its leader’s goals.” This is hardly news to those who wanted to see it: but a South China Morning Post politics podcast this weekend in which one of their correspondents stated he had heard directly from an EU source that in recent discussions over Russian sanctions, US officials stated they are already gaming-out the same measures for China – and using language such as “when we sanction China”, not “if”.

  Imperialism and realism: Bancor and Rancor

  Meanwhile, in Ukraine, hopes of peace talks appear forlorn: Mariupol appears close to falling, as the city of 400,000 stands in ruins; and despite talking of risks of a Russian tactical nuke, President Zelenskiy defiantly states his country won’t give up the Donbas and can keep fighting for 10 years, if needed. If supported by the West, perhaps it can – and the EU’s Von der Leyen is pushing for Europe to accelerate arms shipments to Kyiv, talking about an oil boycott, again, and sanctioning Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. Markets were thinking 10 days and none of the above when this all started.

  On another front, as Finland and Sweden race towards NATO membership, Russia is moving forces towards the Baltic. Is this a bluff, as some felt it was over Ukraine? Or is Moscow going to engage in some form of limited confrontation with either or both Scandinavian states to ensure that if they enter NATO they do so already in a conflict with Russia?

  Taking things to a more meta level, last week I argued ‘Bretton Woods 3’ (BW3) — a new global FX and financial architecture– is a fancy name for militarized mercantilism; that the West used to be good at it; that it will be again, even if it means lots of neoliberal norms have to go; and anyone who thinks a BW3 emerges painlessly hasn’t read any history. Usefully, one of the key proponents of ‘anti-American imperialism’ just made the point for me in depth.

  (NB For these thinkers, American imperialism is the only imperialism: everything else is ‘realism’. That was underlined by humanist and coffee-table intellectual’s intellectual —and long-time believer that the auto-genocidal Khmer Rouge get a bad press— Noam Chomsky, who explained this weekend that Ukraine should surrender, because that’s ‘just the way the world is’.)

  In an interview, Russian politician Sergey Glazyev talks about “the imminent disintegration of the USD-based global economic system, which provided the foundation of the US global dominance… the new economic system [unites] various strata of their societies around the goal of increasing common well-being in a way that is substantially stronger than the Anglo-Saxon and European alternatives. This is the main reason why Washington will not be able to win the global hybrid war that it started. This is also the main reason why the current dollar-centric global financial system will be superseded by a new one, based on a consensus of the countries who join the new world economic order.”

  So far, so gold-bug, crypto-nite, Chomskyite, Russian/Chinese nationalist, US billionaire hedge-fund manager, or general Down With This Sort of Thing. But we get details:

  “In the first phase of the transition, these countries fall back on using their national currencies and clearing mechanisms, backed by bilateral currency swaps. At this point, price formation is still mostly driven by prices at various exchanges, denominated in dollars.”

  That’s what I have been flagging: things remain priced in USD and, for a few, at the margin, and inefficiently, USD are netted out via bilateral, geopolitical barter. However, “This phase is almost over.” That seems ambitious: it isn’t even a month old! Regardless, next comes “a shift to national currencies and gold,” and then:

  “The second stage of the transition will involve new pricing mechanisms that do not reference the USD. Price formation in national currencies involves substantial overheads, however, it will still be more attractive than pricing in ‘un-anchored’ and treacherous currencies like USD, GBP, EUR, and JPY. The only remaining global currency candidate –CNY– won’t be taking their place due to its inconvertibility and the restricted external access to the Chinese capital markets. The use of gold as the price reference is constrained by the inconvenience of its use for payments.”

  So, as I pointed out, nothing really works; which, alongside final consumption being in the West, and lots of aircraft carriers, is a strong argument for the USD status quo, imperialist or not. But not to worry if you disagree, because after that:

  “The third and the final stage on the new economic order transition will involve a creation of a new digital payment currency founded through an international agreement based on principles of transparency, fairness, goodwill, and efficiency.” Which the international community is of course famous for. “A currency like this can be issued by a pool of currency reserves of BRICS countries, which all interested countries will be able to join.”

  Except India is questionable, and even Brazil might be shaky given where it sits geographically, near the source of all those aircraft carriers. And so we have Russia, China, and South Africa. That doesn’t even make a good acronym, let alone bloc.

  “The weight of each currency in the basket could be proportional to the GDP of each country (based on purchasing power parity, for example), its share in international trade, as well as the population and territory size of participating countries.” So, it will be dominated by China; and so India is definitely out. “In addition, the basket could contain an index of prices of main exchange-traded commodities: gold and other precious metals, key industrial metals, hydrocarbons, grains, sugar, as well as water and other natural resources. To provide backing… relevant international resource reserves can be created in due course. This new currency would be used exclusively for cross-border payments and issued to the participating countries based on a pre-defined formula. Participating countries would instead use their national currencies for credit creation, in order to finance national investments and industry, as well as for sovereign wealth reserves. Capital account cross-border flows would remain governed by national currency regulations.”

  So, he is talking about a new ‘gold standard’ based on everything from precious metals to base metals, to water, to one of the key ingredients for cakes, to the GDP of China, questionable data and all. Somehow these back a new global reserve currency which somebody will manage, and provide emergency liquidity in, despite *ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE NEW BLOC RUNNING TRADE SURPLUSES* – and most so with the West, who are not going to join. As such, this is not so much a proposed Bancor, as Keynes floated at the original Bretton Woods before the US insisted on the global role of the USD; nor a monstrous Rancor to devour Wall Street; it’s just plain rancour (“bitterness or resentfulness, especially when long standing”). Indeed, here is the coup de grace:

  “Transition to the new world economic order will likely be accompanied by systematic refusal to honor obligations in USD, EUR, GBP, and JPY. In this respect, it will be no different from the example set by the countries issuing these currencies who thought it appropriate to steal foreign exchange reserves of Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Russia to the tune of trillions of USD…. Even if they were to default on their obligations in those currencies, this would have no bearing on their credit rating in the new financial system. Nationalization of extraction industry, likewise, would not cause a disruption.”

  In other words, adopt the new world order and you get to default on all your FX debt and nationalise all your foreign-owned businesses! That is precisely what I also argued: bet on the new and bet on the default of the old. That is not going to be peaceful or painless – and it will be vigorously resisted.

  You want to ensure that even vampire-squid on Wall Street and global-not-local US billionaire hedge-fund managers agree to dump neoliberalism for Western mercantilism and a bifurcated Cold War world of tariffs, capital controls, and naval blockades? Keep talking about mass nationalisations and organised debt defaults in the Eurodollar markets.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 20:25

• Shanghai Finally Confirms First COVID Deaths Since Start Of Lockdown
  Shanghai Finally Confirms First COVID Deaths Since Start Of Lockdown

  After weeks of allegedly covering up COVID-related deaths in senior-living facilities, Shanghai has curiously picked Monday – just hours after releasing stronger-than-expected (and likely goalseeked) Q1 GDP figures – to confirm the first COVID deaths in the city of 26 million, where more than 100K people have been confirmed positive with the virus over the past month alone.

  To be sure, the official figures are still pretty small: the city confirmed that people have died as of Sunday, the city said, attributing the deaths to preexisting health conditions. The official announcement noted all three people were elderly and were also not vaccinated.

  Shanghai authorities have been doing everything they can to try and force more older Chinese to accept its vaccines, which have been said to be less effective than their western counterparts.

  

  To be sure, about 224.8 million people over the age of 60 have already been vaccinated, which represents about 85% of that age group.

  But for those who haven’t yet received the vaccine, local authorities are trying another novel tactic: bribing them.

  According to CNBC, at least one neighborhood in the capital city of Beijing has said that anyone over the age of 60 getting their first COVID shot could receive a reward worth the equivalent of about $70 to $80, citing anecdotal reports.

  Case numbers have started to cool, per the official data, as authorities hope to be able to start rolling back restrictions in the country’s largest city (which is 3x the size of NYC) by Wednesday: On Sunday, Shanghai reported 19,831 cases with no symptoms, and 2,417 new confirmed COVID cases with symptoms. Meanwhile, outside of Shanghai, another 300 newly confirmed cases with symptoms were reported across the rest of mainland China.

  Shanghai’s lockdown has been particularly brutal, as local residents describe running low on food and essential supplies while being effectively sealed inside their homes. Many who took to social media – or their balconies – to protest the lockdown were ordered to cease and desist by the authorities, who haven’t hesitated to crack down on all dissent, even while the CCP’s policies have led to unnecessary and otherwise preventable deaths.

  One memorable video, which made the rounds on western social media, depicted Shanghaiers taking to their balconies to chant in protest, as CCP drones ordered them to halt and go back inside.

  As seen on Weibo: Shanghai residents go to their balconies to sing & protest lack of supplies. A drone appears: “Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.” https://t.co/0ZTc8fznaV pic.twitter.com/pAnEGOlBIh

  — Alice Su (@aliceysu) April 6, 2022

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  As we have previously noted, analysts at Nomura estimated last week that 45 cities responsible for about 40% of China’s GDP were under complete or partial lockdowns, and said the country was at “risk of recession.” As a result, prices of commodities both agricultural and industrial, have tumbled in China, leading to some speculation that the CCP is using the lockdowns to manipulate commodity prices and prevent the levels of inflation afflicting western economies from ever being imported to China.

  Keep in mind: China is desperately in need of crude oil, LNG, food, basic materials, base metals, and other commodities. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has created additional energy scarcity, inflation, and skyrocketing food inflation. While China hasn’t had any material problems with the virus from Wuhan in the past, it’s interesting that their draconian lockdowns (in conjunction with telegraphing the purchase of fewer cargoes of LNG and crude) are forcing global economists to ratchet growth expectations lower while concurrently blunting future demand projections.

  And as the impact of China’s broken supply chains reverberate across the world (from Europe, to North America, and beyond), we can’t help but wonder if the CCP secretly wants to country’s supply chains to remain broken.

  *SHANGHAI REPORTS FIRST DEATHS DURING CURRENT COVID OUTBREAK

  China really wants those supply chains to stay broken.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 18, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 20:05

• Hunter Biden's China Business Deals Should Raise "Alarm Bells"
  Hunter Biden’s China Business Deals Should Raise “Alarm Bells”

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As federal investigation into Hunter Biden moves forward, his tangled business dealings, in particular those related to China, are drawing greater scrutiny.

  

  Author Peter Schweizer, who wrote the book “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win,” recently told The Epoch Times that there is one simple way people can look at Hunter Bidens’ business activities.

  During the Cold War, It would have raised “alarm bells” if Jimmy Carter’s or Ronald Reagan’s family, were found to have received millions from Russian businessmen connected to the KGB, according to Schweizer.

  “That’s what happened here. All we’re doing is replacing the KGB with the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS). It’s the exact same story and it ought to be setting off the exact alarm bells,” he said, referring to the Chinese regime’s top intelligence agency.

  Recent attention has been on a damaged laptop that was dropped off at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware in April 2019. The owner of the shop, who said the customer of the laptop never came back to retrieve it, made a copy of the hard drive for former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliano’s lawyer Robert Costello.

  

  Ahead of the November 2020 presidential election, the New York Post and Senate committees were among the first to obtain and review emails on the hard drive, revealing how Joe Biden, his brother James, and his son Hunter Biden, were involved in various foreign business ventures, in countries such as Ukraine, Russia, and China. At the time, many media outlets discredited the revelations as “Russian disinformation” and the news was blocked by social media platforms.

  The Washington Post and the New York Times authenticated the emails and published their own reports relating to Hunter’s laptop only last month.

  “We’re very clear that the Bidens got some $31 million, based on the laptop, from a series of deals that happened beginning when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States. And those deals happened courtesy of four Chinese businessmen,” Schweizer said.

  All four Chinese businessmen were “directly linked” to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, he added.

  The fact that these Chinese businessmen would want to talk to the Bidens was interesting, Schweizer said, since the latter did not bring any capital or investors to the table, something financial investment firms would do.

  Surely, the Chinese businessmen weren’t philanthropies either, he added, the question then became what they wanted in return.

  “When you look at the cluster of who provided the funds to the Bidens, and the fact that the Bidens did not really provide anything tangible in return, this has all the markings of elite capture and of a Chinese intelligence operation,” he said.

  Ties 

  According to his book, one of the Chinese businessmen was a Chinese tycoon named Che Feng, who helped Hunter Biden and his associates secure a deal involving a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). Schweizer said the deal netted him about $20 million.

  Rosemont Seneca Partners, a U.S. investment and advisory firm Hunter Biden co-founded, became one of the shareholders of BHR, which was incorporated in Shanghai in 2013. Hunter gained an unpaid board seat on BHR as a result. In October 2019, George Mesires, Hunter Biden’s attorney, issued a statement saying that the younger Biden had decided to resign from his seat on the BHR board of directors.

  Hunter Biden held a 10 percent stake in BHR but divested as of November last year, his lawyer told The New York Times.

  Che was business partners with Ma Jian, who was then-vice minister of China’s MSS and was reportedly headed the ministry’s No. 8 bureau, which targeted foreigners with its counterintelligence apparatus, according to the book.

  

  when he was placed under Party investigation for corruption, amid a sweeping anti-corruption campaign initiated by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2012. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2018, after being found guilty of accepting bribes, insider trading, and making “coercive” business deals.

  Before his political downfall, Ma was a key member of a political faction loyal to former Chinese regime leader Jiang Zemin. The so-called Jiang faction is known for opposing Xi’s leadership.

  Che, who is also the son-in-law of Dai Xianlong, the former governor of China’s central bank, was also named in the 2017 Paradise Papers for making about $14.6 million in preferred stocks through his offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands between 2009 and 2013.

  According to Chinese media, Che was placed under investigation in June 2015.

  “[Che] would fade from the [BHR] deal after both he and Ma were arrested and charged with money laundering and bribery, respectively. But the partnership between Hunter and Chinese officials was off and running,” according to his book.

  Deals

  Schweizer said he wrote in his book how some deals made by the BHR were “benefiting the Chinese state in its competition with the United States.”

  One such deal allegedly involved BHR buying an “anchor investment” stake in a Chinese state-owned nuclear company called China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN). The investment was made “within a year” before the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accused CGN of nuclear espionage.

  In April 2016, the DOJ unsealed an indictment against CGN and its engineer Allen Ho for conspiracy to unlawfully engage and participate in the production and development of special nuclear material outside the United States, without the required authorization from the U.S. Department of Energy.

  Ho, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China who held dual residency in Delaware and China, was sentenced to two years in prison for violating the U.S. Atomic Energy Act in August 2017.

  

  Another deal involved the BHR and its Chinese partner AVIC Auto acquiring Henniges in 2015, a U.S. maker of anti-vibration technologies with civilian and military applications. AVIC Auto is a subsidiary of China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).

  Schweizer said the acquisition was “suspicious” given that AVIC “has a long history of engaging in espionage in the United States.”

  The Pentagon has identified both CGN and AVIC among many Chinese companies having ties to the Chinese military. AVIC is currently also on the U.S. investment blacklist.

  AVIC was the beneficiary of a hacking campaign from 2010 to 2015 carried out by hackers associated with MSS, during which several U.S. companies, including Honeywell and General Electric, were breached, according to a 2019 report. The campaign allowed AVIC’s shareholding company AECC to domestically produce an aircraft engine similar to a foreign design.

  “So the bottom line is, there are very serious implications for these deals,” Schweizer said. “I’ve never seen anything like this involving a political family this prominent.”

  The White House and Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

  Discoveries

  Recently, more information about Hunter Biden’s overseas business activities has come to light.

  He was found to have tried to broker a $120 million oil agreement in 2014 and 2015 between a Chinese state-owned oil company and Kazakhstan’s prime minister at that time, the Daily Mail reported in February, citing emails obtained from his alleged abandoned laptop. The Chinese company, the State China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), has also been named by the Pentagon as having ties to the Chinese military and is also currently on a U.S. investment blacklist.

  In March, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) presented bank records on the Senate floor showing CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct company, made payments to Hunter Biden.

  Leaked emails recently reviewed by Fox News and the New York Post showed that James J. Bulger, the nephew of now-deceased Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, played an active role in Hunter Biden’s business activities in China. One 2014 email discussed a potential meeting between Bulger, Hunter Biden, Rosemont Seneca co-founder Devon Archer, and the Chinese ambassador to the United States at that time, to talk about a Chinese fund.

  U.S. Attorney David Weiss is currently investigating Hunter Biden for possible tax violations,  but little has been revealed to the public other than that he has not been charged with any crime.

  

  On April 13, 16 Republican House lawmakers sent a joint letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling on the Department of Justice to brief Congress on Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden.

  “Congress has a constitutional obligation to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch and a moral obligation to examine if the President of the United States or any senior official in his administration is ethically compromised or injured​,” the letter stated.

  Schweizer said the key to the investigation is finding out what China has gotten out of Hunter Biden.

  “They could have leveraged him and used him for intelligence source [and] blackmailed him,” he said. “Those are the areas where I think the investigation needs to proceed.”

  “Now, the next question is, what were they [China] getting for their money?” he added.

  Roman Balmakov contributed to this report. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 19:45

• Corn Exceeds $8 A Bushel For First Time In Decade On Shortage Fears
  Corn Exceeds $8 A Bushel For First Time In Decade On Shortage Fears

  A combination of factors has sent corn futures in Chicago to the highest level in a decade as investors fret over dwindling supplies. 

  Corn futures haven’t exceeded $8 a bushel since September 2012, following a devastating drought that damaged crops across the U.S. Midwest. Now supply risks return but for different reasons. 

  

  The global outlook for corn supplies has plunged since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February. The war-torn country supplies a fifth of the world’s corn and could experience a 50% decline in output this year. 

  

  Soaring fertilizer costs have forced some farmers in the U.S. to increase plantings of soybeans this growing season versus corn as the crop requires fewer nutrients. 

  

  Fertilizer prices are at record highs because of rising natural gas costs and Russia limiting fertilizer exports to ‘unfriendly‘ countries. Russia is one of the biggest exporters globally — the U.S. just so happens to be a large importer of nitrogen and potash from Russia. 

  

  And the latest development pushing corn prices to the stratosphere is the Biden administration’s announcement of emergency measures last week to expand biofuel sales to curb soaring gasoline prices. The problem with this move is that the ethanol industry absorbs a larger share of the corn crop, which would curb supplies to the food industry. So ultimately, it would increase prices. 

  This is happening as global food prices jumped a stunning 12.64% MoM in March – almost double the previous record monthly surge…

  

  Global food prices have exceeded levels only seen during the inflation riots of 2010/11, known as Arab Spring. 

  

  Investors appear to be pricing in a corn shortage. It’s never been a better time to start growing your own garden

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 19:25

• Florida School Chief Rejects Math Textbooks Over 'Attempts To Indoctrinate Students'
  Florida School Chief Rejects Math Textbooks Over ‘Attempts To Indoctrinate Students’

  Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Florida’s Department of Education has rejected dozens of K–12 mathematics textbooks after officials said they include “indoctrinating concepts,” such as critical race theory (CRT).

  

  According to Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, his department reviewed 132 submitted textbooks and found that 54 of them, or 41 percent, didn’t meet Florida’s K–12 curriculum standards or contained prohibited topics.

  “Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the department said in an April 15 statement. “The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K–5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies.”

  Specifically, 28 rejected textbooks “incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies” including CRT, 12 don’t properly align with Florida standards, and 14 were rejected for both reasons.

  “It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”

  Under current Florida law, public schools are prohibited from teaching key concepts of CRT, such as that one should feel guilt or shame because of his or her race or that the United States is inherently racist. Florida parents can sue school districts they suspect of incorporating CRT concepts and recover attorney fees if they prevail.

  In 2020, Florida officially removed Common Core and adopted the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (BEST) standards. The state plans to fully implement the new standard after 2023, giving school districts approximately three years to familiarize their teachers with the new benchmarks and purchase new textbooks and other instructional materials.

  DeSantis called the new standards a “return to the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

  When it comes to math, the BEST standards promote a simplified approach and focus on the usefulness of content. The Florida framework also has an emphasis on getting the correct answer, rather than using the required method, meaning that students won’t lose points for the method they use as long as the answer is correct.

  By contrast, Common Core math has long been criticized for expecting students to master several different new experimental methods to solve the same math problem. Following these methods, some teachers have created questions that are confusing or otherwise have no practical meaning, causing frustration among students and parents.

  “It really goes beyond Common Core to embrace common sense, something that’s long been necessary,” DeSantis said in 2020, when he unveiled the new education standards.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 19:05

• Pakistan Hit With Power Blackouts As It Struggles With Fuel Shortages And Technical Problems
  Pakistan Hit With Power Blackouts As It Struggles With Fuel Shortages And Technical Problems

  A once-in-a-generation inflation shock is rippling worldwide and has become a significant source of social and political instability in the weakest countries. Pakistan is the latest country to experience paralyzing inflation. 

  Bloomberg reports almost a fifth of electricity generation capacity is offline in the South Asian country because some power plants struggle to purchase liquefied natural gas and coal due to record high prices. 

  Pakistan’s energy costs have doubled to $15 billion in the last nine months ended February from a year earlier. The country has struggled with purchasing energy products to fuel its power plants since the conflict in Ukraine exacerbated commodity shortages, sending prices to record highs. 

  

  Miftah Ismail, appointed as finance minister by new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, tweeted that 3,500 megawatts worth of power capacity are offline due to fuel shortages, and a similar amount is due to technical faults. The total capacity offline is 7,000 megawatts or about a fifth of the country’s total generation capacity. 

  On April 13, 7140 MW capacity plants were shut either due to fuel shortage or technical faults. Is it due to PTI’s incompetence or corruption or both? pic.twitter.com/XUoj7b9laV

  — Miftah Ismail (@MiftahIsmail) April 14, 2022

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  The poor South Asian country is heavily dependent on imported energy, making it highly sensitive to price swings. 

  “Pakistan’s situation will not change in the near term since global dynamics are still the same.

  “There have been forced outages to deal with the energy shortages,” said Samiullah Tariq, head of research at Pakistan Kuwait Investment Co. 

  High inflation has already led to a recent government change (so far peaceful). Still, it raises near-term policy turmoil even as the country faces fiscal challenges from soaring commodity prices. 

  It could only be a matter of time before rolling power blackouts, soaring food and fuel prices incite unrest. This is already happening around the world in the weakest of countries. 

  The tiny island nation of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean and Peru have already experienced unrest because of rapid inflation. It appears the dominos are already falling. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 18:45

• The Monopoly On Your Mind: These 6 Companies Control 90% Of What You Read, Watch, & Hear
  The Monopoly On Your Mind: These 6 Companies Control 90% Of What You Read, Watch, & Hear

  Authored by Rebecca Strong via ‘Down The Rabbit Hole’ Substack,

  In a recent Twitter survey I conducted, nearly 90% of people rated their trust in mainstream media as either “very low” or “low.” And is it any surprise? Ever-mounting media consolidation has narrowed the perspectives the public is privy to, ownership and funding of these corporations are riddled with conflicts of interest, crucial stories keep suspiciously getting buried, and big tech companies are outright censoring and demonetizing independent outlets trying to break through the noise. The media is supposed to function as a power check — and a means of arming us with vital information for shaping the society we want to live in.

  It’s never been a more important industry.

  And it’s never been more at risk.

  In this series, I’ll tackle each factor threatening the media’s ability to serve our democracy — with input from journalists, media critics and professors, and other experts.

  TL;DR:

  • As regulations around ownership have continued to loosen over the last 40 years, the power over the media has become increasingly concentrated. A major culprit is the Telecommunications Act signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996, which 72% of the public didn’t even know about and no one voted on.

  • Today, Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Sony, Fox, and Paramount Global control 90% of what you watch, read, or listen to. These companies spend millions on lobbying each year to sway legislation in their favor.

  • Local news is dying out, with more than 2,000 U.S. counties (63.6%) now lacking a daily newspaper.

  • Interlocking directorates — which describe situations in which a board member at a media company also sits on the board at other companies, also create conflicts of interest. Publicly traded American newspapers are interlocked by 1,276 connections to 530 organizations, including advertisers, financial institutions, tech firms, and government/political entities. These interlocks are only disclosed to readers about half the time.

  • More than 30% of editors report experiencing some form of pressure on the newsroom from their parent company or its board of directors. Pressured editors admit to taking a more relaxed approach in reporting practices when covering interlocked individuals or organizations in the news.

  • Half of investigative journalists say newsworthy stories often or sometimes go unreported because they could hurt the financial interests of their organization, and 61% believe corporate owners exert at least a fair amount of influence on decisions about which stories to cover.

  

  “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

  On a crisp November day in 2014, as I hustled through Boston’s Downtown Crossing at rush hour, I got a call that would change the course of my career: I was offered my first full-time journalism job, as a tech and startups reporter for a local online outlet called BostInno. When I look back on that moment and recall the dizzying rush of excitement that set in, I see an idealistic young woman who has yet to understand the way the media machine really works. I wish I could somehow temper her expectations. I wish I could protect her from the crushing disappointment that comes with realizing this industry she’s chosen isn’t what she naively thinks it is.

  Not too long before I was hired, BostInno had been acquired by American City Business Journals, the largest publisher of metropolitan business newsweeklies in the U.S. In my early conversations with colleagues, it was apparent they were still adjusting to post-acquisition life. Sure, there were perks that came with being acquired — but the pressure to hit lofty traffic goals meant writers now had to prioritize certain clickbaity stories over others. Moreover, I distinctly remember a fixation on quantity. Writers were expected to churn out at least three or four stories a day in an effort to reach as wide an audience as possible, which frustratingly, meant we often didn’t have time to cover complex topics in the depth required. Our experience, as it turns out, is not exactly a unique one.

  In a recent survey I conducted, 60% of journalists said they’d worked for a publication that got bought by a larger company while they were there — and 40% of that group admitted to witnessing negative changes in their job expectations or work environment after the acquisition.

  If you examine the history of countless media mergers and acquisitions over the last several decades, you’ll come to an unsettling discovery: local, independent outlets are dying out in droves. The result? The vast majority of the news you digest is tailored to serve the interests of corporations and their leaders, rather than citizens.

  The Great Media Consolidation continues:

  – NYT buys The Athletic
  – BuzzFeed buys Complex
  – VOX buys GroupNine
  – Axel Springer buys Politico
  – Dot Dash buys Meredith
  – Minute Media buys Player’s Tribune

  What’s next? https://t.co/P435ij5Zxc

  — Cristian Nyari (@Cnyari) January 6, 2022

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  It may go without saying, but the media plays an almost nauseatingly prominent role in our everyday lives, especially here in the United States. In fact, Americans spend an average of 12 and a half hours per day consuming news via the television, Internet, newspapers, magazines, and radio. The media molds our society in a myriad of ways. It tells us which world events deserve our attention. It has the power to affect what we buy. In shaping our opinions on everything from immigration, healthcare, education, and the environment to individual political candidates, it can also have significant sway when it comes to elections. Studies have shown that media coverage sometimes has a strong impact on criminal court decisions, particularly for violent crimes. And by influencing consumers and investors, our current 24-hour real-time news cycle can impact our economic climate, driving the market values of certain industries and companies (this is known as “the CNN effect”).

  But have you ever noticed that so much of what you’re reading, seeing, and hearing has started to sound — well, exactly the same? You’re not imagining things. There’s even a name for this phenomenon: “the illusion of choice.” We’re presented with what feels like an endless array of options for where to get our news. But in reality, the information from most of those sources trickles down from the same few conglomerates. Year after year, economic power has become increasingly concentrated across numerous industries — including tech, healthcare, banking, airlines, and pharmaceuticals. In fact, mergers reached a record high of $5.8 trillion in 2021. If you ever took Economics 101, you’re probably well aware that monopolies are great for the providers and bad for consumers — by eliminating competition, they give corporations in control no incentive to improve, innovate, or otherwise meet our needs, desires, and expectations.

  So, how did we get here? During the 1940s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a number of rules to limit ownership of multiple local radio stations and television stations, as well as multiple national broadcast networks. Then in the ‘70s, the FCC banned one company from owning both a newspaper and TV or radio station in the same market. But during the ‘80s, major deregulatory moves made by Congress and the FCC under then-president Ronald Reagan’s administration increased the number of TV stations any single entity could own, triggering a wave of media mergers.

  The real kiss of death to local news happened in 1996 when President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act, which allowed large corporations already dominating the media market to further expand their control via acquisitions and mergers. Only 3% of Congress voted against this bill, including then House of Representatives member Bernie Sanders. In the years following, more and more small outlets and stations either got gobbled up by the big guys or outright failed because they simply couldn’t compete with them.

  Then, in 2017, the FCC reversed a regulation that opened the floodgates on consolidation even further. That regulation had prevented one company from owning multiple television stations in markets that didn’t have at least eight independent stations, and prevented one company from owning both a newspaper and broadcast station or TV and radio station in the same market. Finally, in 2021, the Supreme Court overturned an appeals ruling asking the FCC to study the potential impact on female and minority ownership in the media industry before loosening restrictions on ownership. At the time, Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who wrote the ruling — claimed that not only was there zero evidence that relaxing these rules would cause any harm, but that consolidation could benefit consumers.

  As for the consequences of all this deregulation — whereas 50 companies dominated the media landscape in 1983, that dwindled to nine companies by the 1990s. It got worse from there.

  Today, just six conglomerates — Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Sony, Fox, and Paramount Global (formerly known as ViacomCBS) — control 90% of what you watch, read, or listen to. To put this into perspective: that means about 232 media executives have the power to decide what information 277 million Americans are able to access. In 2021, the “big six” banked a total of more than $478 billion in revenue. That’s more than both Finland’s and Ukraine’s GDP combined.

  The issue extends to print media and radio giants, too: iHeartMedia owns 863 radio stations nationwide, while Gannett owns over 100 daily U.S. newspapers and nearly 1,000 weeklies.

  As the pool controlling the media keeps shrinking, so does the breadth of the information reported. Hence why today’s thousands of news outlets often churn out embarrassingly duplicative content.

  One glaring issue with these sweeping regulatory changes is that they passed with little publicity, meaning citizens had little to no opportunity to push back. In fact, a 2003 Pew Research study found that a whopping 72% of Americans heard absolutely nothing at all about changing rules for media ownership. But when asked how they felt about relaxing the rules for how many media outlets corporations can own, far more Americans said they thought it would have a negative impact than a positive one.

  According to Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and RootsAction and author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media,” the Telecommunications Act progressed largely under the radar.

  “The public didn’t vote on it, or know about it,” he told me in an interview. “Conglomeration and the shrinkage of media diversity happened because of backroom legislation and rule-making, out of sight of the public.”

  In fact, when a consumer group tried to buy ad space on CNN to criticize the Telecommunications Bill, Cohen says CNN wouldn’t sell them the time. It’s not all that surprising when you consider how powerful Big Media lobbyists are: An OpenSecrets report shows that NCTA – The Internet & Television Association (which represents more than 90% of the U.S. cable market) spent more than $14 million trying to influence government policy in 2021, while Comcast shelled out $13.38 million, putting them both in the top 15 spenders for lobbying.

  Not only were Americans kept mostly in the dark about these regulatory moves, but information about their implications may have been intentionally hidden. In 2006, former FCC attorney Adam Candeub claimed the FCC allegedly buried a federal study proving more concentration of media ownership would hurt local news coverage. Senior managers ordered staff to destroy “every last piece” of the report, according to Candeub. Still, other research has since revealed the same worrisome findings: a 2019 study showed that stations newly acquired by Sinclair increased their focus on national politics by around 25% — at the expense of covering local politics.

  Nowadays, there are entire cities and towns across the country with no local coverage. According to a 2018 study, more than 2,000 U.S. counties (63.6%) have no daily newspaper, while 1,449 counties (46%) only have one. Meanwhile, 171 counties — totaling 3.2 million residents — have zero newspapers whatsoever. These areas are known as “news deserts,” and studies have shown they have fewer candidates running for mayor, lower voter turnout, and more government corruption. When citizens are left with a colossal information gap, they’re forced to turn to social media to get their news.

  One of the media giants responsible for this trend is Sinclair Broadcast Group, which now owns or operates 185 television stations across 620 channels in 86 U.S. markets. In the above compilation video, the anchors parroting the same exact script about the dangers of “fake news” all worked for Sinclair-owned stations. While expressing concerns about the negative effects of media consolidation in a 2017 interview with Democracy Now!, former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called Sinclair the “most dangerous company out there that people have never heard of” due not only to the scope of its control but also its well-known ideological agenda.

  In his book “The New Media Monopoly,” the late author Ben Bagdikian asserts that today’s big six have amassed more communications power than was ever wielded by any dictatorship in history. Worse yet, he notes that close-knit hierarchies like these find ways to “cooperate” to keep expanding their power.

  “They jointly invest in the same ventures, and they even go through motions that, in effect, lend each other money and swap properties when it is mutually advantageous,” Bagdikian writes.

  I’m old enough to remember when those who warned against the dangers of media consolidation were ridiculed as alarmists. Score one for the alarmists. 🔥

  — Eliot Rosewater (@SteveSchindler9) April 6, 2022

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  Christopher Terry, an assistant professor of media law at the University of Minnesota, started his career in the radio industry as a producer for Hearst and ClearChannel in the mid-’90s — during the height of this consolidation frenzy.

  “I saw what it did for the stations that I worked for, and I didn’t like it,” he told me in an interview.

  Terry had been working for a conservative talk station in Milwaukee when it was acquired by ClearChannel, triggering drastic staff cuts.

  “Prior to consolidation, we were a legitimate source with a fully operational newsroom,” he explained. “I didn’t necessarily agree with our politics all the time, but I liked that it was focused on the things people need information about, and it had local ties. It was an operation that was contributing to the public good.”

  Experts like Terry and Cohen will tell you there are numerous reasons why media consolidation is bad for our democracy. In the documentary “Is The Press Really Free?” sociology professor and former Project Censored director Dr. Peter Phillips points out that as a direct result of the staff cuts caused by consolidation, reporters often become increasingly dependent on PR people for stories. He calls this a form of structural censorship — when a large portion of the news has been pre-written by a PR professional who works for a public or private bureaucracy, that means the stories are spun to meet the needs of corporations or the government in advance.

  Nolan Higdon, a media studies and history lecturer and author of “The Anatomy of Fake News,” also notes that this concentration of power has meant fewer checks and balances — without the pressure that comes with competition, conglomerates aren’t likely to be challenged for their questionable practices.

  “When most of the news is controlled by six corporations, and Internet traffic is controlled by five or six companies that privilege those companies under the auspices of fighting ‘fake news,’ you can lie with impunity,” Higdon told me. “And worse, because we’re a fragmented audience, if I’m being lied to every single day by The Washington Post, I’m not going to turn on Fox or read The Wall Street Journal to hear I’m being lied to. I’m going to be in my little information bubble.”

  As these media corporations continue to expand their power, they rake in ever-growing profits — which then translates to more political influence. Not only do owners of media giants contribute money directly to campaigns, but their outlets control the discourse around them. And the larger the conglomerate, the more easily and effectively they can lobby to kill regulations and pass laws that further their domination.

  But this consolidation of power extends beyond just monopolies and mergers galore — compounding the issue are shared board members. All media corporations have a board of directors, which is responsible for making decisions that support the interests of stakeholders. When someone sits on the board at multiple companies, that creates an “interlock.” Scroll through The New York Times board of directors, for example, and you’ll find a certain member is also on the board for McDonald’s and Nike and is chairman of Ariel Investments. Up until last year, a Disney chairwoman happened to be on the board for private equity giant The Carlyle Group.

  A 2021 study published in Mass Communication & Society (MCS) revealed that publicly traded American newspaper companies were interlocked by 1,276 connections to 530 organizations. The data showed that about 36% of these connections were to other media organizations, 20% to advertisers, 16% to financial institutions, 12% to tech firms, and 2% to government and political entities.

  More specifically, a 2012 list compiled by FAIR revealed the following interlocks:

  • CBS/Viacom: Amazon, Pfizer, CVS, Dell, Cardinal Health, and Verizon

  • Fox/News Corp: Rothschild Investment Corporation, Phillip Morris, British Airways, and New York Stock Exchange

  • ABC/Disney: Boeing, City National Bank, FedEx, and HCA Healthcare

  • NBC: Anheuser-Busch, Morgan Chase & Co., Coca-Cola, and Chase Manhattan

  • CNN/TimeWarner: Citigroup, American Express, Fannie Mae, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton Hotels, PepsiCo, Sears, and Pfizer

  • The New York Times Co: Johnson & Johnson, Ford, Texaco, Alcoa, Avon, Campbell Soup, Metropolitan Life, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts

  (And those are just a few examples of the more than 300 crossovers FAIR discovered.)

  Some say it would be naive not to suspect that interlocking directorates don’t cause a major conflict of interest — allowing news content to potentially be shaped by profit-driven motives. As former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner put it in an infamous leaked internal memo: “We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”

  As it turns out, there’s evidence to legitimaze this concern. In a 2021 MCS study, more than 30% of editors reported experiencing some form of pressure on the newsroom from their parent company or its board of directors. And 29% said they knew reporters had “self-censored” due to such interference. Pressured editors admitted to taking a more relaxed approach in reporting practices when interlocked individuals or organizations were the topics of news coverage. They also admitted to lowering their expectations for balance in coverage of board members.

  Higdon noted that it can be especially problematic when media board members also happen to sit on the boards of defense companies — because such an interlock can lead to an increasing push for pro-war narratives. (As of 2011, before U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, Raytheon interlocked with The New York Times, and Lockheed Martin interlocked with The Washington Post). The Intercept’s recent video of a White House Press briefing on the Ukraine-Russia conflict illustrates this perfectly. In the video, members of the media are shown repeatedly asking questions framed around why President Biden isn’t providing Ukraine with more military support. If you know what questions they’re asking, you can pretty much guess what angle their story will be taking. And in this case, every journalist is laser-focused on what needs to happen to escalate this into U.S. war involvement with Russia. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim is quite literally the only member of the media asking what the U.S. is doing to encourage negotiations for peace.

  What makes all this particularly troublesome is the lack of transparency.

  A 2021 MCS study found that interlocks between newspapers and other companies were only disclosed to readers about half of the time, and never appeared in articles published by certain conglomerates, like Gannett and Digital First.

  The Society of Professional Journalists, along with most respectable media organizations, has a code of ethics. That includes avoiding conflicts of interest whenever possible and revealing them when they’re unavoidable. Sometimes, when a writer initially neglects to do this and they’re called out for it, they’ll update the article after publication. For instance, a 2016 Business Insider article singing Jeff Bezos’ praises for “revitalizing” The Washington Post now includes an important addition: “Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions. An earlier version of this article failed to disclose this in an editorial error.” (While we’re on the subject of transparency — a disclosure: I write for Insider.)

  But that particular case seems to be an exception to the rule. According to Higdon, the outlets at large don’t typically disclose conflicts of interest in the way writers are expected to.

  “When you hear that the title of a channel is ‘Russia Today,’ it’s very clear that the Russian government is funding it,” Higdon explained. “It’s right in your face. But when I turn on CNN, I don’t know who’s funding that network. I have to do some digging to figure it out.”

  In a 2003 Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) report, author Aaron Moore expressed concerns that independent reporting could be undermined when a board member is linked to other businesses that its newsrooms cover. According to Higdon, most journalists adamantly claim no one tells what to write and what not to write. But whether they know it or not, he says many may engage in a form of self-censorship: skipping certain stories in order to avoid getting fired.

  In a 2000 Pew Research and CJR survey of more than 300 journalists at local and national outlets, 41% admitted to either purposely avoiding newsworthy stories, “softening the tone” of stories to benefit the interests of their news organizations, or both. Half of investigative journalists said newsworthy stories often or sometimes go unreported because they could hurt the financial interests of their organization, and 61% stated they believe corporate owners exert at least a fair amount of influence on decisions about which stories to cover.

  Here’s how this form of self-censorship works. Say you work for ABC, but you want to pursue an investigative report on the labor practices of Disney — which owns ABC.

  “You know you’re risking your job at ABC, so you may stay away from it,” explained Higdon. “Also, there are organizational studies on the ways that they institutionalize these policies. So, it’s not that ABC says, ‘you can’t report on that story about Disney.’ It’s that once you pitch the story on Disney or collect initial interviews, the editor says something like, ‘yeah, we don’t think that story is interesting enough. We’d rather have you cover this instead.’”

  While some intervention from media owners is direct, most of it is subtle and subconscious, according to Bagdikian — like when writers learn to conform to their owner’s ideologies in order to ensure they aren’t overlooked for a raise or a promotion.

  “Corporations have multimillion-dollar budgets to dissect and attack news reports they dislike,” writes Bagdikian. “But with each passing year, they have yet another power: They are not only hostile to independent journalists. They are their employers.”

  Case in point: A 1991 FAIR investigation revealed that General Electric (GE) — which owned NBC from 1986 to 2009 — designed, manufactured, or supplied parts for essentially every major weapon system the U.S. military used during the Gulf War. In other words, as the authors stated, when NBC brought on correspondents and consultants to praise the performance of U.S. missiles, bombers, and spy satellites, they were applauding products made by the corporation cutting their paychecks. During the time that GE owned NBC, there was plenty of evidence that the news outlet was underplaying big stories about its parent company — particularly around GE plants dumping hazardous chemicals into the Hudson River, and safety issues in GE-designed nuclear power plants.

  In their book “Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media,” Martin Lee and Norton Solomon detailed how GE insisted that an NBC program remove any references to GE in reports on substandard products. NBC also seemed to shy away from exposing GE’s poor environmental record and banned televised commercials urging a boycott of GE products. NBC also remained mysteriously silent on the bombshell story that GE didn’t pay federal taxes in 2010. Apparently, the network thought the addition of “OMG” and “muffin top” to the Oxford English Dictionary was more of a newsworthy priority at the time.

  Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has been an early and frequent critic of media consolidation. Like Sanders, Victor Pickard — a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and author of “Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society”, argues that as a result of this consolidation, we may miss out on pivotal issues because we’re only exposed to topics that serve those corporations in control.

  “There are a number of important issues that are given too little attention in our mainstream news media,” Pickard told me in an interview. “Oftentimes this isn’t a direct consequence of corporate censorship but instead what might be called ‘market censorship.’ These issues do not attract the eyeballs that advertisers covet or generate the revenues that owners and investors privilege above all else. Consequently, issues like climate change, mass incarceration, and other structural inequalities do not get nearly as much coverage as, say, the latest celebrity scandal.”

  Cohen adds that for all the discussion of systemic racism, there’s very little exploration or analysis of the actual system in place fueling the exploitation — especially when the finger of blame might point to powerful corporate forces.

  “That’s why coverage of racial injustice is so often victims, without victimizers,” he said. “Not surprisingly, victimizers are often powerful sponsors of the news — banks, big pharma and healthcare, and oil and gas corporations. If Sanders had not run for president twice, how often do you think class inequality would have been in the news? Or CEO compensation compared to the average worker? Or the fact that roughly 70 or 80 million people in our country were uninsured or underinsured even when Obamacare was at its peak performance? Or the wealth of big pharma execs while people can’t afford medicines?”

  The mission of Project Censored, a media watchdog nonprofit founded at Sonoma State University in 1976, is to shed a much-needed spotlight on these underreported issues. Since 1993, the organization has published an annual book of the top stories that were ignored or misrepresented that year titled “Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News.” The 2021 edition includes the following:

  • YouTube inexplicably demonetized independent news sources or removed entire videos or channels without any explanation as to how/why they violated community guidelines.

  • A study showed that corporate media consistently sidelined independent health experts during the COVID-19 pandemic, instead featuring mostly government appointees as guests.

  • A report revealed journalists investigating financial crimes are being threatened by global political and business elites.

  • A study found that more than 1.1 million seniors on Medicare could die prematurely over the next decade simply because of the astronomical costs of prescription medications. This would make unaffordable drugs a leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of diabetes, influenza, pneumonia, and kidney disease by 2030.

  • A report alleged that Google hired an outside firm to collect personal data on its employees — a surveillance effort that was aimed at preventing them from unionizing.

  • Dangerous newly proposed domestic terrorism laws could be used to “repress legitimate political protest and to target activists and religious or ethnic minorities.”

  • An investigation is uncovering mounting evidence that Black men are being specifically targeted by police dogs.

  If none of these stories ring a bell, maybe it’s time to ask yourself why the corporate media didn’t deem them worthy of coverage. Mainstream outlets will often cite time constraints as an excuse for why they’re failing to tackle crucial stories. But is it possible that maybe their silence is by design? After all, in 2021, they apparently had ample time to report on the murder investigation for a travel blogger, gossip about Melania Trump, and a maskless Rudy Giuliani leaving a New Year’s Eve party. (And don’t get me started on the Oscars #SlapGate).

  In 2017, Senator Sanders wrote that the more important the issue is to the working class masses, the less interesting it is to corporate media. But if we aren’t leveraging the press to put pressure on the legal system, how can it ever fulfill its potential for driving positive change? That’s the question Mickey Huff — director of Project Censored, president of the Media Freedom Foundation, and co-author of “United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it)” — asked me toward the end of our interview. “How do we get people informed? And to understand the problems? That’s why journalism matters. It does matter what they do and don’t report.”

  Reversing the aggressive media consolidation would require undoing decades of legislation that loosened restrictions on ownership. That probably won’t happen in the immediate future. So, as journalist and media commentator Jim Fallows wrote in 2005: “The remaining hope is to acknowledge the existence of this disorder and use that knowledge to offset or limit its most damaging effects.”

  As with any problem, recognizing that it exists is the first step to handling it. And all hope is not lost, because remember: you get to choose where you get your information. Across the board, experts recommend deliberately seeking out independent, nonprofit news channels. Just a few of these organizations that don’t accept corporate backing or funding from advertising include: Democracy Now!, FAIR, ProPublica, Media Roots, The Lever, MintPress News, Truthout, The Conversation, The Nation, The Intercept, The Grayzone, Citizen Truth, and Common Dreams.

  “It’s not healthy to be so cynical about it that you give up,” added Huff. “And turning off corporate media is only one step. But I would argue that once you’re media literate, you need to watch it to understand why everyone else is walking around like a zombie repeating the same thing.”

  As Jim Morrison once said, “whoever controls the media controls the mind.” Taking that into consideration, it’s high time to ask yourself: who are you granting the power to control your mind? And given that any profit-making company’s ultimate goal is to make money, how might their motives mean keeping you distracted or in the dark?

  […to be continued.]

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/18/2022 – 18:25

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