- PCR: WaPo Is CIA's "Propaganda Service For The Military/Security/Pharma Complex"
PCR: WaPo Is CIA’s “Propaganda Service For The Military/Security/Pharma Complex”
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The Washington Post has always been a CIA asset.
The CIA used the Washington Post to orchestrate the Watergate narrative used to drive President Nixon out of office.
The CIA wanted Nixon gone, because Nixon was threatening the military/security complex’s budget and power by making arms control agreements with the Soviets and by opening to China. The CIA was afraid to assassinate Nixon because of the suspicion it was under for assassinating President Kennedy and Senator Kennedy. So the CIA used the Washington Post to assassinate Nixon politically.
The entire history of the Washington Post is one of fake news. The latest fake news from the disinformation sheet claims that the Russian troop pullback is a “deliberate ruse to mislead the United States and other world powers” about Russia’s planned invasion of Ukraine. “Anonymous US intelligence sources” (the CIA) are cited as the source.
First of all, the Russian troops were part of an exercise, not an invasion plan. But push this fact aside and ask yourself what is the point of Russia concealing its plans? If Russia wants to invade Ukraine, no one on earth can do anything whatsoever about it. So why hide it? Indeed, with satellites overhead a force concentrated for invasion cannot be hidden. The presstitute who wrote the story and the CIA that dictated it are thinking in WW II terms when modern surveillance capabilities did not exist.
Ask yourself also why Russia needs to create a false flag attack in order to justify invading Ukraine. If Russia wants Ukraine, Russia has plenty of up front reasons. One is to prevent Ukraine from being a NATO member and hosting US missile bases on Russia’s border. Another is that Ukraine is part of Russia and had been for 300 years until the Americans broke it off from Russia when Russia was to weak to do anything about it. Another reason is that Ukraine has violated the Minsk Agreement and continues to attack the Russian population in the Donbass region.
In actual fact, Russia doesn’t need any excuse, because no one can stop them.
Also ask yourself what is the point of an excuse. No matter how good it is, Washington and NATO would not believe it. The excuse would do no good and serve no purpose. In fact an excuse would be worse than no excuse, because the excuse would simply result in the endless refutation of the excuse.
If I were Putin and I wanted Ukraine, I would just take it. I would say, you Americans took Iraq and Libya. The Israelis stole Palestine. I’m taking Ukraine.
The real question is one the presstitutes will never address. Does all the focus on an imagined Russian invasion of Ukraine serve to direct attention away from the 150,000 Ukrainian troops on the Donbass border as Ukraine prepares to invade the Donetsk and Lugansk republics that broke away from Ukraine and are in the process of evacuating citizens to Russia in anticipation of a Ukrainian invasion?
The United States does not have a media. It has a propaganda service for the military/security complex, the pharmaceutical industry, and the global elite. It is impossible to wring one word of truth out of the US media.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 23:05 - US Navy Charges Five Sailors Over Leaked F-35 Crash Video
US Navy Charges Five Sailors Over Leaked F-35 Crash Video
An image and multiple videos of a Lockheed Martin F-35C stealth fighter jet that crashed-landed on an aircraft carrier transiting an undisclosed location in the South China Sea were leaked onto the internet in early February. After an investigation, the US Navy charged a handful of sailors for leaking internal video footage of the incident.
According to Military.com, four senior enlisted sailors and a junior office were charged for violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The sailors were charged for leaking government footage of the USS Carl Vinson’s Pilots Landing Aid Television (PLAT) showing the F-35C crashing on the flight deck. PLAT is a camera system that corrects a plane’s approach while landing on a carrier.
Naval Air Forces spokesman Cmdr. Zach Harrell told Military.com the five sailors were charged under Article 92 for “failure to obey a lawful order.”
“The investigation into the unauthorized release of the shipboard video footage has concluded,” Harrell said.
Here’s the PLAT video that was leaked.
Cell phone videos and an image leaked onto the internet by other sailors weren’t charged because “the rationale was that the PLAT video was a government document released without being properly cleared, rather than images or video footage from a personal device,” the Navy told USNI. The image of the F-35 floating in the water and videos of the plane crash taken by cell phones aren’t considered government documents.
The Navy has dealt with cell phones in aircraft, ships, and submarines. Some sailors and or pilots have been barred from using cell phones in some classified areas because they might accidentally reveal capabilities on social media to adversaries.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 22:30 - Chinese Agribusiness Poised To Open Factory In North Dakota Draws Scrutiny Over CCP Ties, Security Risks
Chinese Agribusiness Poised To Open Factory In North Dakota Draws Scrutiny Over CCP Ties, Security Risks
Authored by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A China-based bio-fermentation products maker coming to the United States is being touted as a win for the local economy, but there’s growing concern over its national security implications and potential ties to forced labor.
This photo taken on August 30, 2016 shows a Chinese worker sweeping the grounds at a chemical factory in Yichang, central China’s Hubei province. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) The Epoch Times spoke to Ross Kennedy, founder of Fortis Analysis, about his recent research concerning China-based company Fufeng Group Limited that’s poised to set up shop in midwestern America. Fufeng is a manufacturer of bio-fermented products derived from corn, which are used in end products ranging from animal feed to pharmaceuticals. A Hong Kong-listed company, the group has multiple subsidiaries around the world, but most of its production facilities can be found in northeast China.
In early November, it was announced that Fufeng Group is in negotiations to bring its agribusiness company to Grand Forks, North Dakota. The new plant, which employs a manufacturing process revolving around the fermentation of corn starch, is expected to consume about 25 million bushels of corn a year. The cost of construction is estimated to near $350 million. Fufeng USA, the company’s American subsidiary, is handling the new endeavor.
Dubbed as a “historic” investment and game-changer for area farmers, the prospective project has been described as “the largest single private capital investment in the region’s history” according to Keith Lund of the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corporation. On Jan. 12, city officials tentatively approved significant tax breaks for Fufeng Group, the Grand Forks Herald reported.
The future plant will be “wet corn milling” facility and is expected to be fully operational by 2024 or 2025, local media reported. The company will produce corn gluten meal, corn gluten feed, lysine, and threonine for predominate use in animal feed products.
While local economic experts are optimistic, others are concerned about the impact of the facility on the environment. Yet some observers and residents have voiced worry about the human rights and security implications of dealing with a Chinese company amid rising Western scrutiny over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) abuses, including its forced labor of Uyghurs in the far west Xinjiang region.
In a Jan. 31 letter to the editor of the Grand Forks Herald, Diana Hoverson said it “sounds like North Dakota is ready to deal with the devil!” To that end, Kennedy said he expresses many of the same concerns and the initial goal of his research into Fufeng was to simply look for possible ties to Uyghur forced labor. But his discoveries quickly escalated, which raised what he described as a “frightening issue of national security.”
Ties to the Chinese Communist Party
Li Xuechun has been the top executive at Fufeng Group since November 2016, fulfilling the roles of the principal founder, executive director, and chairman. He is also the controlling shareholder of the company.
Li once served as a member of the People’s Congress of northeastern China’s Shandong Province. The People’s Congress is a rubber-stamp legislature of the CCP. According to Kennedy, Li served in this position for five years.
In 2003, Li was honored for “Outstanding Achievement” by Shandong provincial authorities, which Kennedy said reveals that “he embodies the synthesis of economic and political goals of the Shandong region and the CCP.”
The founder’s links to the CCP merit scrutiny, according to Kennedy, in particular given that the firm is set to establish its first base in the United States.
In response to a question from The Epoch Times regarding Li’s ties to the CCO, Brandon Bochenski, mayor of Grand Forks, said the project has been approached with “a high level of due diligence.”
“We have been in contact with our Governor, ND [North Dakota] state agencies, U.S. Senators, and U.S. House Representative regarding the project,” Bochenski said in an emailed statement.
“We see economic benefits of a new wet-corn milling facility in the region. We are doing as much due diligence as possible and look to the appropriate federal agencies for national security insights and direction,” he added.
The first RQ-4 Global Hawk arrives to Grand Forks Air Force Base May 26, 2011. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Johnny Saldivar) National Security Threat?
National security is a key concern for Kennedy, who noted that the regime has, in recent years, become “very involved in major infrastructure projects” around the world, adding that some of their chosen locations have been “regions of strategic and national security importance.”
The fact that the agreed location is only 13 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base (AFB), North Dakota, is one concern. “The property in question is 370 acres and has a direct line of sight [to the air base],” Kennedy said.
Starting in 2023, Grand Forks AFB will undergo construction and renovations to enable the base to become a future leader of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) operations. ISR operations often involve various clandestine activities, like drone or satellite surveillance, to monitor global threats.
With a goal to complete the Fufeng facility by mid-2024, Kennedy believes Grand Forks, North Dakota, was likely the Chinese regime’s target all along.
“This Chinese company may be coming into Grand Forks under the guise of setting up a food nutrient and additive manufacturing facility, but could be setting up the ability to passively and actively monitor one of the nation’s most valuable assets,” Kennedy said.
“There are enormous amounts of data going to and from this location, and when there’s direct line of sight to the receiving or transmitting facility,” he said, adding “the options get an awful lot better for anyone to begin to create traps for that data.” He is also concerned about nefarious actors being able to monitor the physical movement of people, equipment, and aircraft to and from the base.
John Lenkart, a retired senior executive at the FBI who was once responsible for counterintelligence threats posed by Chinese telecom companies, expressed some of the same concerns. He told The Epoch Times that the 13-mile distance of the facility to Grand Forks AFB is “a bit of a stretch” to gather communications data, but he doesn’t rule out the possibility. In fact, he suspects the Chinese regime could “find ways to get closer to the base without much notice.”
But what any loyalist to the Chinese regime could easily retrieve, he said, are the flight patterns of aircraft or any other surveillance related to movement to and from the base. “Members of the Chinese regime have proven themselves smart enough to find efficient ways to accomplish this while operating under commercial cover.”
Human intelligence operations are far from out of the question, Lenkart said. With a population of 56,500 people, Grand Forks is the largest city near the air base. “The Chinese regime could put people on the ground, in the city, to gather intel from senior enlisted officers and commissioned officers alike,” he said. “It’s this kind of personnel who will be living in and milling about the city on any given day.”
“It’s the modus operandi of how the Chinese regime works, taking advantage of nearly any opportunity to infiltrate society and steal intellectual property and more,” Lenkart said. Given Fufeng Group’s ties to the CCP, it’s not implausible that the Chinese regime might send agents on espionage missions using the company’s manufacturing operations as a cover.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) recently expressed similar worries. “The critical missions our military executes at Grand Forks Air Force Base must be protected,” Cramer said in a statement to Grand Forks Herald. “[T]he jobs and economic benefits for Grand Forks and North Dakota farmers must be balanced with the long-term concerns of China infiltrating our food supply chains,” the senator continued.
For Cramer, the Fufeng Group project “requires due diligence,” because “China is not a reliable partner.”
Kennedy agreed, saying “with all things considered, the local government and Grand Forks Air Force Base cannot afford to assume the best in [China].”
Grand Forks Mayor Bochenski said he has taken some precautions concerning the facility’s proximity to the air base. He said the city has “been in contact with the Wing Commander of the 319th Reconnaissance Wing, who has assured us the company will be vetted at a higher level within the Air Force and appropriate national security departments.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the U.S. Air Force for comment.
Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang region, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters) Forced Labor Concerns
Fufeng Group has denied that it or any of its subsidiaries has used Uyghur forced labor, and has produced a June 2021 third party audit of its only plant in the Xinjiang region, Xinjiang Fufeng Biotechnologies facility, that did not identify any use of forced labor.
The issue of Uyghur forced labor has rising scrutiny in recent years amid mounting research showing its use in various industries in Xinjiang from cotton to materials for solar panels. The Chinese communist regime has detained over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, subjecting them to forced labor, political indoctrination, torture, and other forms of abuse, in a campaign labeled as a genocide by the U.S. government and other Western parliaments.
The United States last year became the first country to ban all imports from Xinjiang over forced concerns. Mayor Bochenski welcomed the measure, and pointed to the third party Sedex Members Ethical Trade Report (SMETA) conducted on Fufeng’s Xinjiang plant as evidence of its compliance.
Yet, Kennedy, who reviewed the 80-page report, is not entirely convinced by the audit findings, which he described as “whistle clean.”
Having done business in China for almost two decades and being familiar with the conditions of many of its factories, particularly those involved in making chemicals and biological products, Kennedy said he doesn’t rule out a biased report, one that would assure Western stakeholders in the Grand Forks facility that there were no ties to forced labor or otherwise poor working conditions.
The primary reason for his concern is the location of the factory. Slightly west of the Urumqi Export Zone, he said Xinjiang Fufeng Biotechnologies is located about 1.5 miles from a known Uyghur forced labor and detention facility—the Toutunhe Facility #2.
Kennedy also reviewed the company’s employment and financial records. SMETA reported,that there were “708 permanent employees in the factory” at the time of the audit. “Having had an opportunity to take into account the number of laborers and the cost of labor, the numbers simply don’t pencil out,” he said.
In addition, Kennedy pointed to a photo provided by SMETA, on page 77, that he found odd for a modern facility. “In a package room photo, there are a bunch of 25-kilogram bags on the floor, [and] someone can be seen filling them and sealing them by hand—not by automation.”
This kind of labor-intensive work, he said, would warrant the need for the large number of laborers and further heightens his concern for “shady labor practices.”
Fufeng USA did not return a request for comment.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 21:55 - Twin "High-Impact" Winter Storms Could Wreak Havoc Across US on Presidents Week
Twin “High-Impact” Winter Storms Could Wreak Havoc Across US on Presidents Week
Following a fast-moving snowstorm late last week that sparked a massive 100 car and semi pileup in central Illinois, another round of winter storms could wreak havoc across the country during Presidents’ Day week.
Meteorologists at private weather forecaster firm BAMWX reports two rounds of snow and ice are expected from the West to the Plains, Midwest, and Northeast next week.
“Another week lies ahead of us, with multiple high-impact winter storms affecting millions,” said Kirk Hinz, COO and chief meteorologist at BAMWX. He said the first winter blast “comes late Monday into Tuesday as a low-pressure system strengthens from Oklahoma to Detroit, bringing widespread accumulating snow to the northern plains and upper Midwest, ice to Des Moines, near Chicago, Milwaukee, and SE Canada. Also on tap is excessive rainfall + severe weather from the Ark-La-Tex region to the Tennessee Valley.”
Hinz said the second winter storm could be even more powerful than the first and is expected later in the week. He said, “right now, we are targeting a potentially major winter storm developing again from the southern plains to the Northeast. This brings ice threats near Dallas, Oklahoma City, St Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Philadelphia…accumulating snow from Kansas City, Chicago, near Indianapolis, Detroit, and the interior Northeast.”
BAMWX’s weather impact map for next week outlines the two storms and possible timing. Nothing is locked in, so timing and impact areas could change.
For both storms, snowfall totals show the heaviest impact areas could be the Upper Plains, Midwest, and Interior Northeast through the end of next week.
Another component of the storms could be ice. It’s something to watch as accumulated ice total estimates show possible impacts from Texas to the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic region.
Cold weather will be in place and plunge as deep as the Lower Plains. Across the Lower-48, average temperatures will decline on Tuesday and remain well below a 30-year trendline through the end of the month.
Hinz concluded that wintry risks across the Lower-48 could diminish as soon as early to mid-March.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 21:20 - McMaken: The War Party Wants A New Cold War, & The Money That Comes With It
McMaken: The War Party Wants A New Cold War, & The Money That Comes With It
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
In perhaps the most predictable column of the year, the Wall Street Journal last week featured a column by Walter Russell Mead declaring it’s “Time to Increase Defense Spending.”
Using the Beijing Olympics and the potential Ukraine war to push for funneling ever more taxpayer dollars into military spending, Mead outlines how military spending ought to be raised to match the sort of spending not seen since the hot days of the Cold War.
Mead claims that “[t]he world has changed, and American policy must change with it.” The presumption here is that the status quo is one of declining military spending, in which Americans have embraced some sort of isolationist foreign policy. But the reality doesn’t reflect that claim at all. The status quo is really one of very high levels of military spending, and even outright growth in most years. This sort of gaslighting by military hawks is right up there with left-wing attempts to portray the modern economy as one of unregulated laissez-faire.
Rather, according to estimates from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, military spending is set to reach a post–World War II high in 2022, rising to more than $1.1 trillion. That includes $770 billion spent on the Pentagon plus nuclear arms and related spending. Also included is current spending on veterans. Keeping veteran spending apart from defense spending is a convenient and sneaky political fiction, but veteran spending is just deferred spending for past active-duty members—necessary to attract and retain personnel. And finally, we have the “defense” portion of the interest of the debt, estimated to be about 20 percent of total interest spending. Taking all this together, we find military spending has increased thirteen years out of the last twenty and is now at or near the highest levels of spending seen since the Second World War.
This, not surprisingly, is not enough for Mead, who would like to see military spending much closer to the Cold War average of 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from today’s spending of a little less than 4 percent. To get this average back up would require at least an extra $300 billion in spending, and possibly even spending levels not seen since the bad old days of the Vietnam War. In those days, of course, the US was busy spending enormous amounts of taxpayer wealth on a losing war that cost tens of thousands of American lives. The spending was so enormous that the US regime was driven to breaking the dollar’s last link to gold and subjecting ordinary Americans to years of price controls, inflation, and other forms of economic crisis.
But none of that will dissuade hawks like Mead, who pound the drum incessantly for more military spending. Note also that Mead uses the “spending as a percentage of GDP” metric, which is a favorite metric of military hawks. They use this metric because as the US economy has become more productive, wealthy, and generally larger, the US has been able to maintain sky-high military spending levels without growing the amount of spending in relation to GDP. The use of this metric allows hawks to create the false impression that military spending is somehow going down and that the US is being taken over by peaceniks. In reality, spending levels remain very high—it’s just that the larger economy has been robust.
Yet even if we use this metric—and then compare it to those of other states with large militaries—we find that Mead’s narrative doesn’t quite add up. These numbers in no way suggest that the US regime is being eclipsed by rivals in terms of military spending.
For example, according to the World Bank, China—with a GDP comparable to that of the US—has military spending amounting to about 1.7 percent of GDP (as of 2020). Meanwhile, the total was at 3.7 percent of GDP in the United States. Russian military spending rose to 4.2 percent of GDP in 2020, but that’s based on a GDP total that’s a small fraction of the US’s GDP. Specifically, the Russian economy is less than one-tenth the size of the US economy.
Thus, when we look at actual military spending, we find the disconnect to be quite clear.
According to the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, in 2020 total Chinese military spending totaled approximately $245 billion in 2019 dollars. In Russia, the total was $66 billion. In the US, the total—which in the SIPRI database excludes veteran spending and interest—amounted to $766 billion in 2020.
In other words, total military spending by these presumed rivals amounts to mere fractions of total spending in the US. Moreover, as China scholar Michael Beckley has noted, the US benefits from preexisting military capital—think military know-how and productive capability—built up over decades. Even if the US and China (or Russia) were spending comparable amounts on military capability right now, this would not demonstrate any sort of actual military superiority in real terms.
But, as usual, Mead’s strategy is to claim that financial prudence is in fact imprudence with the usual refrain of “you can’t afford to not spend boatloads of extra money!” This claim is premised on the new domino theory being offered by anti-Russia hawks today. This theory posits that if the US does not start wars with every country that has pushed back against US hegemony—i.e., Iran or Russia—then China will see this “weakness” and start conquering countless nations within its own periphery.
The old cold warriors were telling us this back in 1965 also, insisting that a loss in Vietnam would place all the world under the Communist boot. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, and it turned out Vietnam had nothing to do with American national security.
But none of this will convince the usual hawks—for example, the Heritage Foundation—that there’s never enough military spending.
Prudence, however, suggests the US should be going in the opposite direction. At its most belligerent, the US regime should be adopting a doctrine of restraint—focusing on naval defense and cutting back troop deployments—while changing its nuclear posture to one that is less costly and more defensive.
The ideal solution is far more radically anti-interventionist than that, but a good start would be eliminating hundreds of nuclear warheads and freezing military spending indefinitely. After all, the US’s deterrent second-strike capability does not at all depend on keeping an arsenal of thousands of warheads, as many hawks insist. And geography today continues to favor US conventional defense, just as it always has.
Unfortunately, we’re a long way from a change toward much more sane policy, but at the very least we must reject the latest opportunistic calls for a new cold war and trillions more taxpayer dollars burned in the name of “defense.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 20:45 - Biden Administration Pushes For Even More "Climate Roadblocks" For Upcoming Oil And Gas Projects
Biden Administration Pushes For Even More “Climate Roadblocks” For Upcoming Oil And Gas Projects
Having apparently learned nothing from oil prices skyrocketing out of control, President Biden is now intent on adding even more “climate roadblocks” to upcoming oil and gas projects in the United States.
The administration has “altered the official federal policy on approving new interstate natural gas facilities and pipelines, requiring a climate consideration”, according to The Daily Signal.
Biden’s cabinet prompted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin to “undertake a robust consideration” of the environmental impacts of fossil fuel projects seeking approval in the United States.
Meanwhile, oil continues its ascent to $100/barrel.
The agency said that projects that cause 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year will be recognized as having a “significant impact” on the environment. It also said that, during the approval process it may now “consider the eventual emissions caused by both upstream production and eventual burning of gas transported in a pipeline requiring approval.”
FERC Chairman Rich Glick commented: “I believe today’s long overdue policy statements are essential to ensuring the Commission’s natural gas siting decisions are reflective of all stakeholder concerns and interests. We have witnessed the impact on pipeline projects when federal agencies, including the Commission, fail to fulfill their statutory responsibilities assessing the potential effects of a project on the environment, landowners and communities.”
As The Daily Signal notes, it is the first time the FERC has updated its natural gas policy since 1999.
Gillian Giannetti, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney, added: “For far too long, FERC has allowed private pipeline developers to call the shots, while cutting those affected by the projects out of the process. Communities and landowners will now have a say before new pipelines cut across their land or new compressor stations are built near their homes.”
But not all Democrats were on board. Senator Joe Manchin commented: “Today’s reckless decision by FERC’s Democratic Commissioners puts the security of our nation at risk. The Commission went too far by prioritizing a political agenda over their main mission—ensuring our nation’s energy reliability and security.”
“The only thing they accomplished today was constructing additional road blocks that further delay building out the energy infrastructure our country desperately needs,” he concluded.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 20:10 - Ghislaine Maxwell's Family 'Fears For Her Safety' After Epstein "Pimp" Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged
Ghislaine Maxwell’s Family ‘Fears For Her Safety’ After Epstein “Pimp” Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged
Update (1944ET): Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who served a stretch in federal prison and presumably knows a thing or two about how prisons work from the inside, has some questions now that Brunel has been found hanged in another apparent “suicide” tied to the Epstein case.
It’s a mighty big coincidence that something like this could happen.
“Who’s killing these guys in their prison cells? First Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, and now Jean Luc Brunel, a modeling agent with ties to Epstein, was found dead in his cell. I know about life in prison and this looks like more than a coincidence to me.”
Who’s killing these guys in their prison cells? First Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, and now Jean Luc Brunel, a modeling agent with ties to Epstein, was found dead in his cell.
I know about life in prison and this looks like more than a coincidence to me.— Rod Blagojevich (@realBlagojevich) February 19, 2022
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And he’s not the only one asking questions.
Wow. What an amazing coincidence …https://t.co/pkxIsOm3Tb
— Sue Ellen Collins ✍️ (@SECollins) February 19, 2022
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🚨BREAKING Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead on Friday night in his prison cell at La Santé in Paris. The cause of death is “hanging”.
This is not a coincidence.https://t.co/amBqsv84hX
— Kirby Sommers author/sex slave survivor/espionage (@KirbySommers) February 19, 2022
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Sure is wild that criminals who “hang” themselves also do it when the cameras aren’t working. I’m sure that this is only a coincidence. #Epstein #Brunel
— Rae Rae (@RaeSean8) February 19, 2022
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And it begs another question: are the cameras monitoring inmates ever even on?
* * *
Update (1540ET): Reporters who have been following the Epstein case have started to weigh in on Twitter, noting that Brunel’s death was “a devastating setback for the victims.”
This is shocking. Devastating setback for the victims.
Jean-Luc Brunel was probably the most significant player in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, other than Ghislaine. He helped Epstein procure underage victims and his name is all over the phone records. https://t.co/jzC45H1QMf
— Alana Goodman (@alanagoodman) February 19, 2022
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Even the family of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is still imprisoned, now allegedly “fears for her safety” after the second death of a high-profile offender related to the case who was in a highly secure facility.
The NYPost reached out to Maxwell’s brother, Ian Maxwell, who told the New York tabloid that his family is extremely concerned after Brunel’s death – allegedly suicide by hanging, circumstances similar to those surrounding the death of Epstein himself –
“It’s really shocking,” Ian Maxwell, one of Ghislaine’s siblings, told The Post. “Another death by hanging in a high-security prison. My reaction is one of total shock and bewilderment.”
In an interview from his home in London, Maxwell said the family “fears for her safety” at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where she is being held.
Maxwell is due to be sentenced in June. The family added that it’s unconscionable that Brunel wasn’t on suicide watch, and reiterated that Maxwell has never expressed being suicidal.
As we said below, Maxwell is due to be sentenced in June. Her attorney Bobbi Sternheim refused to comment.
* * *
Stop us if you’ve seen this one before…
Alternatively described as Jeffrey Epstein’s “best mate” and “pimp”, Jean-Luc Brunel, a former French modeling agent who has been imprisoned since 2020 on charges he aided Epstein’s sex-trafficking enterprise, has committed suicide in his cell, according to French newspapers Le Monde and Le Parisian.
He was found hanged in his prison cell at La Santé in Paris just a week after Prince Andrew reached a multi-million dollar settlement with Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein trafficking victim whom Brunel was also alleged to have abused.
Brunel, 76, had been indicted and imprisoned in December 2020 after being denied bail following accusations of rape and sexual assault of minors. including three 12-year-old sisters. He also faced investigation over human trafficking and being part of a criminal conspiracy amid his association with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Specifically, he is alleged to have flown the three sisters to America from Paris so they could be a “birthday present” for Epstein. He is known to have taken at least 25 trips on Epstein’s private plane, “the Lolita Express”. When Epstein was locked up in 2008, he was a regular visitor to his jail in Florida.
Media reports have repeatedly described Brunel as a key member of Epstein’s inner circle. However, now that he is gone, it’s believed he will take many secrets to his grave. His old pal Epstein was also found “hanged” in his cell in Manhattan pending trial back in 2019. In that case, the guards who were supposed to be watching him later struck a plea deal to avoid jail time.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into Brunel’s cause of death.
The French fashion agent was originally detained at Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was about to fly to Senegal.
Brunel denied involvement “directly or indirectly” in any of Epstein’s alleged crimes in a statement he issued in 2015. It read: “I strongly deny having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing in the course of my work.”
But Giuffre alleged that Brunel “farmed out” modelling hopefuls to the pedophile, as well as other men, for sex. She also claimed she was once forced to have sex with Brunel at Epstein’s home. She also alleged that Brunel once set up a photo-shoot with seven Russian girls which Prince Andrew watched.
She later claimed in an affidavit that Epstein had slept with “over 1,000” of Brunel’s girls.
In 2019, French cops raided the offices of Karin Models, an agency founded by Brunel. They received evidence from several of his former victims who waived their anonymity to speak out.
New Zealander Zoe Brock has claimed in statements made to French investigators that she was abused in his Paris home in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Dutch model Thysia Huisman, who was 18 when she first stayed with Brunel, said she was raped by him in 1991.
Brunel’s former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell (who allegedly introduced him to Epstein) was found guilty in the US back in December. Her sentencing has been tentatively set for June.
Of course, the jokes practically write themselves…
👀 Jean-Luc Brunel, 74, was found hanging in his cell in La Santé, Paris, at 1am during a night time check in.
~ Video cameras in his cell were not running at the time he died. pic.twitter.com/SrhE5aWqCZ
— PiQ (@PriapusIQ) February 19, 2022
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 19:55 - Wall Street Hedges As 'Johnny Whipsaw' Rules Today's Markets
Wall Street Hedges As ‘Johnny Whipsaw’ Rules Today’s Markets
Do you not know? Have you not heard? Wall Street is an everlasting marketing machine.
– Book of GMM
Is The Street now day trading their market strategies?
Check out the opposing views from America’s largest bank, the eighth largest in the world. No wonder markets are volatile.
Johnny Whipsaw rules today’s markets.
My guess is they are practicing the Islamic proverb, whether they know it or not,
Trust in Allah but tie your camel.
Hedge your bets, speak cryptically and in double-entendre, claim you were correct whichever way the market turns, and collect the year-end bonus just as the Oracle Of CNBC does.
“We believe that equities still offer upside, and that the cycle is far from over,” the London-based strategists wrote in a Feb. 7 note. In addition to the VIX signal they look for more gains in earnings, a bottoming in Chinese activity and say investor sentiment has become too negative of late.
Expectations about corporate earnings growth are quickly diminishing, JPMorgan Chase & Co. quant strategists said, warning that the gloom could spell more trouble for global stock markets after an underwhelming start to the year.
Secure Your Bonus, Boys And Girls
Discount the cheerleaders, folks.
Moreover, it’s about time we hold them accountable for helping drive stocks into the stratosphere (see chart below), as the extreme valuations are now a significant constraint on the Fed’s ability and willingness to stamp out the inflationary fires.
The Fed Put, Are You Shitting Me?
Good Gawd, they are now even trying to estimate the level of the Fed put. No doubt, the Fed should intervene when markets crash (such as 1987, 2008, and 2020) to stave off systemic risk and a financial collapse but, come on, not to prevent markets from regressing to their fair values.
The timing of this move, known colloquially as the “Fed put”, is of course unclear. But the BoA survey suggests it will occur when the S&P 500 falls below 3700 index points.
Do not these people realize the accumulation of all “Fed puts” over the years are a significant factor that has painted the economy into this god awful corner?.
Moral Hazard
This type of moral hazard behavior is what blew up some of my trading accounts in 1998, betting Russia was “too nuclear to fail.” and would be bailed out by the IMF and U.S. government. Bill Clinton and Larry Summers disagreed.
At least, I was in good company,
Tepper’s Worst Trade
Roger Nachman , Benzinga Staff Writer
September 24, 2010 8:31am
David Tepper said his worst trade was in 1998, as Russia eventually defaulted.
He believed that Russia should devalue its currency, but not default, and Russia wound up doing both.
– Benzinga
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 19:35 - Watch: Helicopter Crashes Into Ocean Off Miami, Narrowly Misses Crowded Beach
Watch: Helicopter Crashes Into Ocean Off Miami, Narrowly Misses Crowded Beach
A helicopter plummeted from the skies into the ocean waters off Miami Beach, narrowly missing a beach packed with tourists, according to AP News.
The Miami Beach Police Department (MBPD) tweeted a video of the helicopter crash. It appears the helicopter may have experienced engine issues as it quickly lost altitude and slammed into the waters just off the beach near 10th street.
This afternoon at 1:10 p.m., MBPD received a call of a helicopter crash in the ocean near 10 Street. Police and @MiamiBeachFire responded to the scene along with several partner agencies. Two occupants have been transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital in stable condition.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/heSIqnQtle
— Miami Beach Police (@MiamiBeachPD) February 19, 2022
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MBPD confirmed the incident occurred around 1310 ET, and two occupants were transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital. They were in stable condition. A third occupant was not injured in the crash.
Dozens of beachgoers whipped out their smartphones and captured the helicopter upside down in the water.
South Beach Miami Helicopter crash pic.twitter.com/6dmdGFx2pB
— iggy luko (@LukoIggy) February 19, 2022
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I’m sittin on south beach Miami… a fuckin helicopter has just crashed into the sea in front of us… pic.twitter.com/U2RCcy63Ot
— stan the man (@StanthemanAVFC) February 19, 2022
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Helicopter Crash directly in front of beach goers on 10th st and Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, Fl. I just cleared the area so they can call the helicopter out, they pic.twitter.com/ZnpGY4nvPY
— How To Lose W8 Fast (@HowToLoseW8Fast) February 19, 2022
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MBPD said Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board responded to the scene and took over the investigation.
Why don’t helicopters have ballistic reserve parachute systems in case of an emergency, so incidents like these don’t happen?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 19:00 - Why Is Biden Now Less Popular Than Trump?
Why Is Biden Now Less Popular Than Trump?
Authored by James Robbins, op-ed via USAToday.com,
President Joe Biden is now so unpopular that he has fallen a bit below even Donald Trump’s dismal showing at this point in his presidency.
Real Clear Politics average of presidential approval polls has Biden at 41% approval and 53% disapproval. Trump’s corresponding 2018 approval number edges Biden at 41.4%, with disapproval at 53.9%.
How did it come to this? Biden started out with much higher approval than Trump, who was hampered in his first year by the false Russian collusion narrative and highly negative news coverage. But by the start of Trump’s second year, his numbers began slowly to improve; Biden’s have continued to sink. Now those converging lines have crossed.
“Lower than Trump” is hardly the first year result the White House expected. Biden received the most popular votes of anyone elected to the presidency. “Working class Joe” ran as a moderate who would restore sanity to Washington and move Americans forward together. He used the word “unity” eight times in his inaugural address.
But then came the bait and switch. In office, Biden veered to the left, pursuing a “big and bold” progressive legislative agenda.
Things looked good at first; Biden’s honeymoon period of robust poll numbers stretched into July.
Mistakes began to pile up
Then the hits began to pile up.
The White House declared July 4 was Independence Day from the COVID-19 pandemic, but was blindsided by the delta variant, followed by the omicron wave. Public confidence in Biden’s ability to manage the crisis plummeted.
In August, the botched pullout from Afghanistan and surprise Taliban entry into Kabul also drove numbers lower. Though many expected this to be a temporary blip, by Labor Day, Biden’s approval rating was firmly underwater and heading down.
The legislative foibles of the fall and winter – the collapse of the Build Back Better bill, the defeat of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and no progress on immigration reform, minimum wage or student debt relief – sent the message that this White House could not deliver.
Then came inflation. The White House downplayed it, joked about it, said it was temporary, then slammed NBC News anchor Lester Holt for even asking about it.
And as reports of worsening inflation began piling up, Biden touted the supposed “strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years.” No wonder Obama adviser David Axelrod says it’s time for Biden to start “painting a credible, realistic picture.”
Comparing the numbers in the latest Economist/YouGov poll with those of a year ago shows how decisively Biden has lost his mojo:
►His approval on managing the economy went from plus 13 to negative 7, with 70% now rating economic conditions either just fair or poor.
►59% now call inflation “very serious,” when a year ago it was such a nonissue the poll did not even ask about it.
►On handling the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden dropped from an optimistic plus 19 to negative 9.
►Biden’s general favorability plunged from plus 9 to minus 10, and his reputation for being a strong leader cratered from plus 7 to minus 30.
With midterm elections looming this fall, Biden is below where President Barack Obama was when his party suffered the 2010 electoral shellacking.
[ZH: And Biden is tracking below Trump for current ‘favorability’…]
Being at the bottom of the approval heap does not augur well for Biden’s 2024 reelection chances, either, should he choose to run, something a majority of Democrats would rather not see happen.
Comeback is still possible
But trends are not destiny. President Ronald Reagan went from low approval during the 1982 recession to the strongest reelection in modern history. On the other hand, George H.W. Bush was soaring at 80% approval at the start of his second year, and two years later was staring at defeat at the hands of a previously little known Arkansas governor.
Biden could turn things around, but his government seems less to be charting its own course than the product of events beyond its control. And despite his historically bad approval numbers, the White House still seems unaware or unconvinced that Biden’s presidency is failing.
Maybe miracles will happen. COVID will ebb, inflation will fade, the economy will bloom, Russia will retreat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will cave, progressives will rally, Republicans will cooperate, unity will prevail, and those sub-Trump approval numbers will shoot right back up.
Maybe.
But don’t bet on it.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 18:25 - A Historical Guide To How Stocks Perform During Tightening Cycles
A Historical Guide To How Stocks Perform During Tightening Cycles
When Wall Street strategists – a vast majority of whom are bullish – address the touchy topic of how stocks react during a tightening cycle, the first thing they will point to is that the S&P 500 has traditionally seen positive returns during tightening cycles (in two of the last seven cycles, the S&P 500 peak occurred within the range of 6 months prior to the initial hike to 12 months after the initial hike), however this is almost always the case only when growth is rising, for example as indicated for example by a rising ISM. When the Fed is tightening into a slowing economy – i.e., when the ISM is falling like now– returns since 1950 are the flat and the worst of all possible permutations.
But an even bigger risk to the upcoming tightening cycle, where banks are now rushing to outbid each other on how many rate hikes they think the Fed will let loose before sending the economy into a recession, is that as Bank of America’s Savita Subramanian writes, the “key risk today is that the Fed is tightening into an overvalued market.”
Indeed, the S&P 500 today is more expensive ahead of the first rate hike than any other cycle besides 1999-00 (23x P/E vs. 30 P/E) and everyone remember what happened to the Nasdaq then. Making matters worse, this time the real cost of debt is negative, where in ‘99, the cost of equity was negative. The Fed Funds rate increased by 150bp during that cycle, and the market was up during the hiking, but the S&P peaked in March of 2000, and subsequently declined by 49% over the next 2.5 years
With those two major risk factors in mind, here is what to expect during the upcoming tightening cycle, however brief it may be (and it will be brief, since the Fed Funds futures are already pricing in at least 2 rate cuts before 2024):
… according to Bank of America, bond proxies fare worst, cyclical sectors fare best.
The sectors which underperformed the index most consistently during historical tightening cycles were bond proxies (Utilities and Real Estate) along with Industrials (all with a 20% hit rate).Consumer Discretionary outperformed the S&P 500 in more cycles than any other sector but we see risks today on its high labor intensity amid wage pressures. Other sectors which have historically fared well are Tech, Energy, Materials, and Staples. But dispersion of sector alpha during hiking cycles was wide, indicating that factors rather than sectors may be a stronger explanatory variable.
Value and Cash Return for tightening cycles: Factor performance in the initial 12 months of the Fed’s hiking cycles (or the entire length of the cycle if it was shorter than 12 months) indicate that Value (+7.1ppt vs. the equal-weighted S&P 500 index), followed by Cash Deployment (+5.6ppt) and Momentum (+1.6ppt) are superior factors. Risk factors lagged (-2.4ppt relative return). Returns-based Quality and Growth performed in line with the benchmark
Low EV/EBITDA, High Free Cash Flow /EV and Low Price / Book fared well, with Low EV/EBITDA and High FCF/EV leading the index in every cycle, and Low Price / Book outperforming in 80% of the cases. Sectors which are currently inexpensive on these metrics are Energy Materials on EV/EBITDA; Energy and Health Care and Materials on free cash flow to EV and Financials and Energy on Price to Book. Technical/Momentum factors like 12-m and 1-m Reversal Price Return and 30wk / 75wk MA were also strong. See tables below.
Energy consistently screens well on Value factors that outperform during hiking
Performance when tiered by size:
- Performance when the Fed hikes: Small caps have typically outperformed in the months leading into tightening and slightly underperformed over the course of hiking (by 1ppt – with both size segments seeing positive returns) – but unlike the majority of other hiking cycles, small caps are historically cheap vs. large caps today.
- Multiples reflecting the risks: Small caps’ P/E has typically risen 5-6% in the three months ahead hiking and compressed 8% during hiking. But the Russell 2000 P/E is already -12% since Nov., and the relative P/E is its lowest since 2000.
- 10yr more important than Fed Funds rate: Small vs. large performance is much more highlight correlated with changes in the 10-year (positive relationship) than changes in the Fed Funds rate (virtually no correlation).
- Faster tightening not more detrimental to small: BofA finds no consistent relationship between the pace of hikes and relative size performance (above).
Asset classes and Fed balance sheet shrinkage
According to BofA, during times of QT, history suggests that stocks>bonds, Value>Growth, large = small.
Factor Performance: Free Cash Flow is King
Stocks with attractive free cash flow (based on FCF/EV and FCF yield) have been among the best performers during historical Fed hiking cycles. FCF/EV ailed during the zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) period but has also been the best long-term stock selection factor out of all the Value factors we track.
Free Cash Flow to EV factor suffered during the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) period…..but could begin to outperform again
Value factors have historically performed best during Fed hiking cycles (shown earlier). And work on Late Cycle regimes suggests that Free Cash Flow to EV was the most alpha-generative factor in Late Cycle periods historically.
FCF/EV for the long-run: Free Cash Flow to EV factor outperformed other Value factors since 1986.
What offers the highest FCF/EV? Energy, Financials and Health Care (our three overweight sectors).
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 17:50 - Noland: Existing Global Order Is "One Serious Catalyst Away From A Megaquake"
Noland: Existing Global Order Is “One Serious Catalyst Away From A Megaquake”
Excerpted from Doug Noland’s Credit Bubble Bulletin (emphasis ours),
Bubbles are sustained only by ever increasing amounts of Credit.
The most pernicious Bubbles are those fueled by “money” – perceived safe and liquid Credit instruments.
Bubbles are mechanisms of wealth redistribution and destruction.
Structural impairment caused by Bubble excess escalates over the life of the boom.
The pain and dislocation unleashed during the bust is proportional to the excesses of the preceding boom.
Though we’re in uncharted waters when it comes to global Bubble Dynamics, I’ll suggest that geopolitical risks expand exponentially over time.
My thesis holds that 2022 is a pivotal year for a historic multi-decade Bubble period. On multiple fronts, things have come to a head. Today, more than ever, historical context is invaluable for making sense of current developments, while also recognizing the dynamics behind unfolding instability, turmoil and Crisis Dynamics.
Following 1999’s manic blow-off excess, I thought the Bubble had burst in 2000. I had to reverse course in 2002, warning that Fed reflationary policies were unleashing a “mortgage finance Bubble”. The “Moneyness of Credit” – the transformation of Trillions of risky loans into perceived safe and liquid AAA securities – was instrumental in, at the time, unparalleled Credit and risk-intermediation excesses.
I thought the bubble had burst in 2008. I reversed course (again) in 2009, warning of an unfolding “global government finance Bubble” – the “Granddaddy of all Bubbles.” The so-called “Great Financial Crisis” (GFC) gave cover to a perilous – and fateful – escalation of government inflationism.
I feared QE – the wholesale inflation of central bank Credit – would prove a slippery slope. In the markets, Bernanke’s coercion of savers into the risk markets created a dynamic whereby the markets would become only more integral to system financial conditions, perceived wealth and economic performance. I worried about a “moneyness of risk assets” dynamic that would see the Fed entrapped in market liquidity and price backstopping operations, crystallizing the already dangerous market misperception that securities entail minimal risk. Stock prices always rise over time, with occasional downdrafts sure to induce Federal Reserve reflationary measures.
While memories have faded, mortgage finance Bubble consequences were horrible, levying a steep cost on our social wellbeing. From my analytical perspective, the global government finance Bubble created a whole new level of risk. For one, it unleashed capricious inflationary forces globally. Importantly, the custodian of the world’s reverse currency succumbing to rank inflationism (central bank Credit and government debt) freed nations everywhere to do the same.
Post-GFC reflationary measures opened the monetary floodgates. I don’t see how China’s incredible Bubble is sustained without U.S. QE, massive federal deficits, and ongoing Bubble excess. China’s international reserve holdings inflated from about $200 billion to $1.5 TN during the mortgage finance Bubble period, only to then rise parabolically to a high of $4.0 TN in 2014 (as the Fed ratcheted up QE2). Massive reserves, with enormous and unending trade surpluses with the U.S., empowered China to recklessly inflate Credit without the traditional risk of currency instability.
During a Bubble’s upswing, perceptions hold that the pie is getting bigger. The forces of cooperation, coordination and integration hold sway. But eventually, the reality of wealth inequities is unmasked. Stagnation and fear of a shriveling pie foment animosity, disintegration and conflict.
China doesn’t become so powerful – financially, economically, militarily, geopolitically – without the protracted U.S. (and then global) Bubble.
For today’s heated rivals, the days of cooperation are over. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Hostile to a U.S. global order it views as deeply unjust and contra to its interests, Russia is jubilant over the opportunity to partner closely with a likeminded Beijing. Russia gains the security of a vast market for its energy resources outside of U.S. influence, while a military alliance creates the most powerful opposition to U.S. global dominance in decades. Without his harmonious partnership with Xi, Putin doesn’t take the risk of such a confrontational approach with Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO. Might the U.S. and its allies being bogged down with a war in Europe embolden Beijing’s Taiwan aspirations?
President Biden believes Putin has “Made the Decision” to invade Ukraine. The situation in eastern Ukraine is rapidly deteriorating. A car explosion at a government building. Gas pipelines bombed. Satellite imagery showing aggressive Russian military positioning along the Ukraine border – in Russia, Belarus and Crimea. Russian-supported separatists announcing plans to evacuate women and children to Russia. Aggressive cyberattacks.
While the administration stresses it’s not too late for diplomacy, the situation appears increasingly dire. U.S. intelligence believes Russia is now executing its plan of “false flag” attacks and provocations (i.e. accusations of Ukrainian genocide) that it will use as justification for an invasion. “Nearly half of Russian forces surrounding Ukraine are in attack position.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: “I don’t believe it’s a bluff.”
Chinese Bubble developments this week were no less ominous. A Friday Bloomberg headline: “Crisis in China’s Property Industry Deepens With No End in Sight.” And Thursday: “China Builders Miss More Deadlines as Yango Fails to Pay Coupons.” “Chinese high-yield dollar bonds fall 1-3 cents on the dollar Thursday…, putting them on track for a fourth day of declines.” One cannot overstate the significance of the ongoing spectacular collapse of China’s massive (and massively levered) developer industry.
From the nineties “tech” Bubble to the grander “mortgage finance” Bubble to the unbelievably colossal and historic “global government finance” Bubble. Bubble inflation not only made it to every nook and cranny across the global landscape. Wild excess went to the very foundation of global finance – central bank Credit and government debt. This is it. Nearing the end of the road. There’s no fledging Bubble waiting to heroically save the day this time around.
Moreover, the amount of monetary inflation necessary to sustain aged financial and economic Bubbles has fueled dangerous inflationary dynamics. The Fed and global central bank community are being forced into action, with the tightening of finance necessary to rein in inflation, placing myriad Bubbles in danger. There is today acute fragility throughout global finance. “Money” and Credit have been severely degraded. Financial manias and speculative leverage have destabilized markets and economies virtually across the board. Gross inequities have destabilized societies and international relationships.
In sum, the existing global order appears one serious catalyst away from a megaquake.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 17:15 - Lumber Prices Have Never Been This High Ahead Of Spring Building Season
Lumber Prices Have Never Been This High Ahead Of Spring Building Season
The spring construction season is about to begin as homeowners face some of the highest lumber prices ever for this time of year.
March lumber futures in Chicago closed at $1,270 per 1,000 board ft. in Chicago on Friday, up more than 36% since the beginning of the month due to tighter Canadian supplies ahead of the spring building season.
Bloomberg reports the increase in lumber prices comes as Canfor Corporation, the world’s third-largest integrated forest products company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, announced a supply cut of 150 million board feet of production due to mountain pine beetle infestation that has devastated trees. Simultaneously, West Fraser Timber Co, the world’s largest timber company, reported port congestion and truck and rail car shortage make it challenging to transport lumber to buyers.
“In Western Canada, these transportation challenges are really unprecedented in both scale and duration,” West Fraser Chief Executive Officer Ray Ferris told investors on an earnings call last Wednesday.
Over three decades, lumber prices have never been higher for this time of year as the first and third-largest timber companies report supply woes.
Ferris said lumber and plywood shipments fell 20% year-over-year, and pulp shipments plunged 30% in January. He also said shipping “products in a timely manner remains challenged,” warning the company might be forced to take “unscheduled downtime” due to the transportation problems.
Tight lumber supplies ahead of the spring construction season in North America are likely to add more housing inflation to not just prospective homebuyers but also homeowners who want to remodel their kitchens or bathrooms.
Add lumber to the list of the “shortage of everything,” as Goldman Sachs’ head commodity strategist and one of the closest-followed analysts on Wall Street, Jeffery Currie told Bloomberg TV last week, “We’re out of everything, I don’t care if it’s oil, gas, coal, copper, aluminum, you name it we’re out of it.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 16:40 - Is It 'Monetization' Yet, Dr. Bernanke?
Is It ‘Monetization’ Yet, Dr. Bernanke?
Authored by Jesse Felder via The Felder Report,
Eleven years ago, shortly after the onset of QE 2, Ben Bernanke gave us his definition for “monetization” of the debt, telling Congress (hat tip, Grant’s):
Monetization would require a permanent increase in the money supply to pay the government’s bills through money creation.
What we’re doing here is a temporary measure which will be reversed, so that at the end of this process, the money supply will be normalized, the Fed’s balance sheet will be normalized and there will be no permanent increase, either in money outstanding or in the Fed’s balance sheet.
At the time, The Fed’s balance sheet was approaching $2.5 trillion.
Today, it stands at nearly $9 trillion, more than triple the figure from a decade ago.
And so it only seems fair to ask, ‘Is it monetization yet, Dr. Ben?’
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 16:10 - Geopolitical Crises: What Happens Next In Markets?
Geopolitical Crises: What Happens Next In Markets?
With the rank smell of geopolitical crisis again overpowering the air (not to mention the bidstack in the S&P500), Deutsche Bank’s head of thematic research Jim Reid thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight a table the bank’s equity strategists Binky Chadha and Parag Thatte did a few years ago examining what happens to the S&P 500 around domestic political and geopolitical events.
The two show that these events have typically been short-lived, with a median sell-off of -5.7%. They tend to take around 3 weeks to reach a bottom and further 3 weeks to recover prior levels. On average the market was +6.5% and +13% higher from the bottom 3 and 12 months after.
The other point the DB duo makes is that the underlying economic context tends to ultimately dominate. He highlights that:
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The oil embargo of 1973, with clearly visible negative economic impacts, saw the biggest selloff in the S&P 500 and the slowest equity market recovery since World War II.
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The Vietnam and two Gulf wars by contrast occurred against the backdrop of economic recoveries and saw sharp selloffs followed by long-lived rallies.
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The selloffs following President Kennedy’s assassination and President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings occurred during economic expansions and were again very short lived (down -4% but regaining their prior levels in under a week) and saw strong rallies thereafter, while the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, which occurred in the middle of a recession saw a sharp selloff and rebound but this gave way to a renewed slide after.
As Reid concludes, “if you believe this template, much might depend on what you think the momentum was before the geopolitical sell-off.”
The point is that geopolitical events have rarely left a deep scar on markets but even before events escalated around Ukraine, markets were trying to come to terms with inflation and rate hikes. That – and not the ongoing theatrical false flag farce in Ukraine – will be the dominant theme for markets in H1 and likely beyond.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 15:40 -
- How Markets Tank & Gold Rises
How Markets Tank & Gold Rises
Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,
Critical warning signs from the credit and rates markets are being ignored by tough-talking experts while gold bides its time before it rises in a global financial crisis mathematically too sick to save.
It is fascinating to watch market pundits, policy makers, commercial bankers and other media-supported experts talk tough on the need to fight inflation via rate hikes and central bank balance sheet cuts.
In fact, such chest-puffing would be comical if not otherwise so tragic.
The current war cries to battle persistent rather than transitory inflation (of which we warned a year ago) amount to far too little, far too late.
Like the “science” behind mask or no mask, last year’s omni-changing Fed narrative as to temporary or long-term inflation was a theater of incompetency bordering upon dishonesty, as inflation was as plain to foresee as the rising money supply.
Today, a similar tragi-comedy of open confusion and equally open hypocrisy about tough vs. accommodative (or hawkish vs. dovish) central banking is all the rage.
In our mind, however, all this “taper talk” is little more than public posturing rather effective policy—as it once again ignores math, history and commonsense.
The Gluttons Suddenly Demand a Diet?
After years and years of dovish Fed support which has led to the most inflated asset bubbles in modern history (as well as the greatest wealth disparity since the French revolution), the very engineers and beneficiaries of this mega bubble are suddenly chiming in with calls for restraint and discipline?
That’s rich…
It seems they can no longer deny the year-over-year 7% inflation data, but what they still seem to be ignoring is the far more un-natural inflation in the S&P…
As I like to say: The Ironies abound.
The very players who gave us the fake liquidity and engineered low rates to create this monster bubble are suddenly screaming for the tapering and rate hikes which will kill it.
As to both the math-ignoring comedy as well as open hypocrisy which underlies such hawkish chest-puffing, I gave two headline examples from Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater in my last report.
Such post-battle courage is nothing new from the experts, and I’ve openly warned elsewhere that there is a genuine danger in trusting the group-think advice of the so-called “experts.”
Of course, the same critiques could be leveled against our own expertise (or bias?) when it comes to gold ownership in the backdrop of an openly distorted and crumbling financial system.
We get this. Fair enough.
But if one simply looks past the immense fog of de-contextualized tweets, incomplete data, endless macro debates and hawkish virtue signaling, the predictable (and dark) future of the global financial system in general, and gold’s bright horizon in particular, is a clear lighthouse rather than a precious metal bias.
The $300T Elephant in the Room
How can we be this certain in a world where nothing is certain?
The answer boils down to the honest but hard math of record-breaking debt.
At $300T and counting, total global debt levels have long ago crossed the Rubicon of sustainability, and no amount of “stimulus” or promised GDP growth (currently stagnating at 1/3 global debt levels) will ever prevent the disastrous consequences to come.
As history and math confirm, the toxic relationship between desperate sovereigns and eager bankers promising that a fatal debt sickness can be cured with more debt has never, not ever, been proven true.
Instead, the hard yet blunt reality (as David Hume warned centuries ago) is that too much debt always destroys economies.
The fact, moreover, that today’s global and sovereign debt levels are the highest ever recorded in the history of capital markets is perhaps worth some honest examination, as history’s debt-to-disaster pattern is mathematical rather than political or academic.
This is true not only of places like Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Argentina, Weimar Germany, 18th century Paris or 3rd century Rome, but equally so of the once-powerful US of A and current home to the 21st century’s world reserve currency.
With combined household, corporate and public debt now flirting with the $90T marker and US true interest expenses now greater than 100% of incoming tax receipts, it’s frankly almost impossible to understand why and how this ticking debt timebomb is not otherwise a daily headline?
Looking for Flowers, Ignoring the Manure
Part of the answer lies in the ever-reliable and ever-desperate attempts by bankers, politicos and prompt-readers to see only what they want to see (and you to see).
Thanks to massive deficit spending, care packages to Wall Street, handouts to banks and free checks to Main Street in 2020, it is no surprise, for example, that private sector balance sheets aren’t as ugly as pre-2020.
This is something the experts want you to see. Fair enough.
And as for US Households, their debt service ratios have in fact seen a corollary and understandably comforting decline:
But such lauded and frequently acclaimed progresses (or data flowers) in the US debt landscape completely ignores the far more toxic debt levels (i.e., manure piles) at the government level, as Uncle Sam’s $30T bar tab has gone from embarrassingly drunk to just plain difunctionally sick.
The Fog of Distorted Markets
But like the fog of war, the fog of market distortions can often make it hard for sincere investors to see the guiding lights (or golden lighthouse).
As for the guiding reality of an American policy that produces infinitely more debt-drunk IOU’s (i.e., Treasury bonds) than it does income streams, you may be wondering who is buying those IOU’s?
The graph below makes this unmistakably clear.
As the IOU’s keep coming (rising blue line), the purchasing of those IOUs from foreign parties (lagging red line) has tanked.
What this data confirms is simple: Since the 2008 crisis, the primary buyers of US debt are its central and commercial banks, and all with money created by a mouse-click.
How Markets Tank
Meanwhile, as those some banks and bankers now puff their chests calling for 2-7 rate hikes in 2022 or G4 central-bank balance sheet reductions of at least 2T in the same year, have any of them paused to ask this simple question:
If they taper QE bond support and thus rates and yields subsequently spike (as they do and will), what happens to that once-accommodated bond market and otherwise debt-soaked stock market?
Well, we’ll tell you plainly: They tank.
Shark Fins Emerging from the Bond Market Depths
If this seems theoretical rather than inevitable, just look at what has already been hiding in plain sight, namely tanking global bonds and hence rising global yields.
Prior to recent “tough talk” from on high, the global bond market enjoyed so many years of extreme central bank purchasing of otherwise crappy sovereign and corporate bonds that for the first time in history, bond yields (which move inversely to price) were negative (to the whopping tune of $19T) globally.
Yet in just the past few weeks, the mounting tough-talk from on high has so thoroughly frightened this hitherto “accommodated” bond market that bonds have been tanking in price, which means yields have been rising like Lazarus.
As a result, the levels of global negative yielding debt has been cut literally in half in the span of just a single week (!), as the following chart from Bloomberg confirms:
But as anyone who tracks historically-unprecedented levels of debt-soaked and debt-driven risk assets knows, rising bond yields are to debt-driven asset bubbles what approaching shark fins are to surfers: Bad news.
Given that the combined balance sheets of the G4 central banks exceeds $30T, one has to ask how they plan to pay for the rising cost of their own government debt as they get tough and “taper” their QE-hot money printers and send rates (and hence debt costs) higher?
We think those pumping their hawkish chests today will be hiding in a corner tomorrow.
Gold Making Telling Moves
With mounting distortions, ignored warnings and too-little-too-late tough-talk and long-overdue tightening policies comes equally obvious changes.
Traditionally and normally, for example, rising yields and rising interest rates were seen as good for the USD and less good for gold and just about any other asset class.
But what is equally clear after years and years of central bank intervention, accommodation, experimentation and distortion, is that nothing is normal nor traditional anymore.
One of gold’s many attributes is its historical honesty, and as far as we see it, as gold rises, it calls “BS” on the recent tough-talk from on high.
Markets, for example, expected gold to fall hundreds of dollars given the recent and unprecedented yield spikes.
Instead, the gold price rose.
This is because gold knows what Lagarde and Powell are afraid to confess, namely: Systems are falling apart.
Gold knows that tough-talk from on high is ignoring much higher debt levels, the catastrophic implications of which are rising (like bond yields and shark fins) ever more to the surface with each passing day.
Gold also knows that the tapering in vogue today will not last, and that the balance-sheet reductions promised now will be followed by balance sheet expansions (i.e., more money printing) later.
Take the Bank of Japan; they’ve effectively gone full-on QE to keep 10-Year yields down with now unlimited purchases of JGB’s.
Why?
Because they know what the Fed won’t tell you: Broke sovereign can’t afford rising yields.
Gold, in other words, sees the aforementioned disconnect between U.S. bond issuance and bond demand, which means more U.S. “money printing” and more Yield Curve Controls are inevitable, as the cornered Fed literally has no choice but to “turn Japanese.”
While gold rises long-term, in the interim gold can still fall and/or gyrate near-term.
But as currencies and financial systems, from discredited banks to grotesquely at-risk derivatives markets lose credibility in the bond market’s death spiral, gold’s role and value will be measured in grams and ounces not useless dollars and euros.
Much disorder brings extreme price moves. But the informed, patient and prepared buy their insurance before rather than after the fire.
Toward this end, we’ve also noticed some interesting and very big buyers of gold of late, and one wonders who they/it might be and what they/it know is coming?
Hint: We think it’s a sovereign buyer…
As currencies expand, and in turn debase, as bubbles rise, and in turn crash, as pundits squawk and in turn vanish, and as debt rises and in turn destroys, gold is always the patient real asset which, unlike any other, gets the last word over the increasingly discredited words we are hearing from on high today.
For those who know as much about history and math as they do about currencies and debt bubbles, the daily gold price is never a concern, as the long-term play is always clear and always the same: Gold is the ultimate insurance against currencies and systems already burning to the ground.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 15:10 - Germany's Spiegel Asks "Is Vladimir Putin Right?" Over NATO Expansion
Germany’s Spiegel Asks “Is Vladimir Putin Right?” Over NATO Expansion
With all eyes on the situation unfolding at the Ukraine border – as separatists in Donbas reporting intensified shelling amid a “general mobilization” of military-age males – Germany’s left-leaning Spiegel asks a question fundamental to the entire conflict…
“Vladimir Putin insists that the West cheated Russia by expanding NATO eastward following the end of the Cold War. Is there anything to his claims? The short answer: It’s complicated.“
The essence of the argument is this; In September 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin penned a long letter to US President Bill Clinton, which railed against the eastward expansion of NATO at a time when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were interested in joining the organization. Yeltsin argued that the Russian public saw this “as a sort of neo-isolation” of Russia, and that the “Two Plus Four Treaty” linked to Germany’s 1990 reunification “precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East.”
As Spiegel writes, “There is essentially no other historical issue that has poisoned relations between Moscow and the West as much in the last three decades as the disagreement over what, precisely, was agreed to in 1990.”
Since the 1990 letter, NATO has accepted 14 countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, which the Kremlin has complained of haaving been duped every step of the way.”
According to current Russian President Vladimir Putin, “You cheated us shamelessly.“
“You promised us in the 1990s that (NATO) would not move an inch to the East,” he said late last month in comments used to justify his current demands for written guarantees that Ukraine will never be accepted into the Western alliance.
Ukraine, meanwhile, wants to know how fast they can join.
Muddied waters
Post-1990 NATO expansion isn’t black-and-white though, according to Spiegel – and is muddied by a chorus of ‘he-said-she-said’ between prominent officials from the early 1990s.
There is no lack of accounts from a variety of witnesses to the various discussions between the West and Moscow following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, a veritable army of politicians and high-ranking officials from Moscow, Washington, Paris, London, Bonn and East Berlin met for discussions on German reunification, on the disarmament of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and on a new charter for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) – which became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1995. -Spiegel
For example – former French foreign minister, Roland Dumas, said that a pledge was made that NATO troops wouldn’t advanced closer to the former Soviet Union’s territory. Former US Secretary of State James Baker denied it – saying no such promise was ever made. Yet, several diplomats under Baker have contradicted him.
Former US ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, has said that “categorical assurances” were given to the Soviet Union that NATO wouldn’t continue expanding eastward.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said on one occasion that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had made assurances that NATO “will not move one centimeter further east.” Another time, Gorbachev said that “the topic of NATO expansion was never discussed,” while saying that the West had violated the spirit of various agreements regardless.
What’s more, US government documents declassified in 2017 appear to confirm that assurances were given.
Luckily, there are plenty of documents available from the various countries that took part in the talks, including memos from conversations, negotiation transcripts and reports. According to those documents, the U.S., the UK and Germany signaled to the Kremlin that a NATO membership of countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic was out of the question. In March 1991, British Prime Minister John Major promised during a visit to Moscow that “nothing of the sort will happen.” Yeltsin expressed significant displeasure when the step was ultimately taken. He gave his approval for NATO’s eastward expansion in 1997, but complained that he was only doing so because the West had forced him to. -Spiegel
Der Spiegel also published a document on Friday from March 1991 which shows US, French, UK and German officials discussing the pledge not to expand to Poland and beyond. The document contains multiple references to “2+4” talks regarding German unification – which makes clear that NATO would not expand east of Germany.
The document was found in the UK National Archives by Boston University political science professor, Josh Shifrinson.
Honored to work with @derspiegel‘s Klaus Wiegrefe in drawing attention to British documents (cc: @UkNatArchives) from 1990-1991 showing senior Western diplomats believed they had indeed made a NATO non-enlargement pledge. Link below:https://t.co/hep8aCKRrM
— Josh Shifrinson (@shifrinson) February 18, 2022
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“We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” reads the document, citing US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, Raymond Seitz.
“NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” he added.
A UK official mentioned the existence of a “general agreement” which held NATO membership for eastern European countries as “unacceptable.”
“We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe [sic],” according to West German diplomat Juergen Hrobog. “We could not therefore offer Poland and others membership in NATO.”
Minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting of German, UK, US and French diplomats discussing NATO expansion Der Spiegel also notes a January 1990 initiative from German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who said in a Jan. 31, 1990 speech that NATO should issue a statement saying: “Whatever happens to the Warsaw Pact, there will be no expansion of NATO territory to the east and closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”
Genscher’s American counterpart, James Baker, said he “wasn’t exactly elated” at the idea, but admitted it was “the best we had at the moment.”
In early February, Genscher and Baker presented the idea in Moscow independently of one another. The German foreign minister assured the Kremlin that: “For us, it is a certainty that NATO will not expand to the east. And that applies generally,” clearly meaning beyond just East Germany. The American, for his part, offered “ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” When Gorbachev said that NATO expansion was “unacceptable,” Baker responded: “We agree with that.” -Spiegel
Baker and Genscher have since downplayed the events, with Baker saying that his exclusive focus had been on Germany, and Genscher later saying he wanted to simply “gauge” the Soviet response.
The message was clear. If Gorbachev were to provide his acquiescence for German reunification within NATO, the West would aim at establishing a Western security architecture that took Moscow’s interests into account.
Informal assurances were not unusual during the Cold War. U.S. political scientist Joshua Shifrinson compares the 1990 discussions with the verbal agreements made between the Americans and Soviets that led to the easing of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
…
Given the documents available, some even speculate that the West intentionally misled the Soviets from the very beginning. A few weeks after his trip to the Kremlin, in any case, Baker expressly told Genscher that some Eastern European countries were eager to join NATO, engendering Genscher’s response that the issue “shouldn’t be touched for now.” A formulation which kept all options on the table for later. -Spiegel
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, however, said that the alliance “has never promised not to expand,” and told Spiegel that “there has never been such a promise, there has never been such a behind-the-scenes deal, it is simply not true.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg © Reuters / Ints Kalnins Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted into NATO in 1999, right before launching an air war against Yugoslavia which put NATO forces along the Russian border for the first time.
In 2004, the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joined the Organization, putting NATO even closer to Russian assets.
Now, Russia is demanding that NATO publicly renounce expansion into the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Ukraine, and recall US forces to the 1997 boundaries of the bloc.
The US and NATO have told Putin to pound sand, and that NATO’s “open door” policy is fundamental.
Which brings us to today. Ukraine wants to join NATO, while the threat implied by the buildup of Russian forces at the border couldn’t couldn’t be more clear: call it off or we’re taking Kiev.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 14:40 - ConocoPhillips Sells Excess Bakken Gas To Bitcoin Miner
ConocoPhillips Sells Excess Bakken Gas To Bitcoin Miner
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
ConocoPhillips is selling natural gas that would have been otherwise flared to a third-party Bitcoin miner in the Bakken in North Dakota, the U.S. oil and gas producer said this week.
ConocoPhillips has one pilot project in Bitcoin mining currently in operation in the Bakken, the second-largest major shale play after the Permian, a ConocoPhillips representative said in a statement to CNBC.
“ConocoPhillips has one bitcoin pilot project currently operating in the Bakken, where gas that would otherwise have been flared is routed to a bitcoin processor owned and managed by a third party,” a spokesperson for ConocoPhillips told CoinDesk in an emailed statement.
Selling excess natural gas from production in the Bakken fits the company’s pledge to end routine flaring by 2030.
ConocoPhillips has endorsed the World Bank Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative and set a target to reduce methane emissions intensity in 2020. The oil and gas company set an ambition to reduce operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net-zero by 2050. ConocoPhillips has a target to get to zero routine flaring by 2030, with an ambition to get there by 2025.
Flaring emissions make up only 8 percent of ConocoPhillips’s total greenhouse gas emissions, yet the target “will drive continued near-term focus on routine flaring reductions across our assets,” it says.
By selling the extra gas to a third-party Bitcoin miner, ConocoPhillips also gets paid for the gas it would have otherwise just wasted and flared.
Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive endeavor, and recently, some U.S. Democratic lawmakers sent letters to six major cryptocurrency mining companies, asking them to detail their high energy usage, the possible impact on the environment, and the role in driving up power bills for U.S. consumers.
Riot Blockchain, Marathon Digital Holdings, Stronghold Digital Mining, Bitdeer, Bitfury Group, and Bit Digital were sent letters by the lawmakers, who were concerned about “their extraordinarily high energy usage,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said last month.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 14:10 - Ottawa Arrests Top 100 As "Freedom Convoy" Organizers Face Judge For First Time
Ottawa Arrests Top 100 As “Freedom Convoy” Organizers Face Judge For First Time
As the number of “Freedom Convoy” protesters arrested in Ottawa grows to top 100, organizers Tamara Lich, Pat King and Chris Barber – who were arrested Friday as police cracked down on the still-numerous Parliament Hill protesters – are set to face a judge for the first time on Saturday. They will be arraigned on a number of mostly minor charges, including counseling to commit mischief, counseling to obey a court order, and obstructing police.
Police broke up the protests using a number of aggressive techniques Friday as they moved to break up what had become a four-week occupation. Ottawa Police eventually denied that they had used tear gas on protesters – instead they said protesters had launched gas at them. Police said no gas had been used Friday and Saturday.
One protester launched a gas canister and was arrested. Police response will be with public and officer safety in mind. Police remind protesters to remain peaceful.
— Ottawa Police (@OttawaPolice) February 19, 2022
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Police did not used gas on protesters yesterday. They have not used gas on protesters today.
— Ottawa Police (@OttawaPolice) February 19, 2022
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This looks a little “gas”-like to us…
Tear gas has been deployed in Ottawa pic.twitter.com/WulMRdzetA
— GuyFrees (@GuyFrees) February 19, 2022
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Barber has already been released on bail, with Canadian Justice Julie Bourgeois releasing him on a $100,000 bond and on the conditions he leave Ontario by next Wednesday and not publicly endorse the convoy or have any contact with the other protest organizers. Both King and Lich will appear in court on Saturday. The bail amount in Barber’s case was notably high considering the charges, the most serious of which is the obstructing police charge.
King, Lich and other organizers of the “Freedom Convoy” protests also saw a temporary freeze to their bank accounts, including even their bitcoin and cryptocurrency funds, following an Ontario Superior Court ruling on Thursday.
As of early Saturday, police say so far at least 21 vehicles were towed on Friday as hundreds of officers – some of them riding on horseback – fanned out across Parliament Hill and the surrounding area to remove any resistant protesters from the streets, and forcing the removal of the hundreds of big rigs and trucks that have been there for weeks.
Ottawa police interim chief Steve Bell told a Friday evening news conference that clearing the area would take time, but the operation was “deliberate and methodical” and police were in control on the ground.
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He said no serious injuries had been reported, and those arrested had been charged with various offenses including mischief, adding that police were still urging demonstrators to leave peacefully.
Yesterday’s crackdown included several instances of police brutality that were caught on video. In one video, an elderly woman can be seen being “trampled” by police horses. Early reports claiming she had died proved incorrect.
Her name was Roberta Paulson. No quarter for the Ottowa police https://t.co/4H0LlxdqPJ
— Witnessthehorror (@clownworldguide) February 19, 2022
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In another incident of violence, a police officer can be seen smashing the butt of a rifle into a protesters face.
A police officer repeatedly smashes butt of rifle up and down. It appears to be on a protester. Question @OttawaPolice @JustinTrudeau @fordnation is how is person doing health-wise? Will there be probe to determine if force necessary?If someone knows who that is please contact me https://t.co/CBL5CJNA08
— Joe Warmington (@joe_warmington) February 18, 2022
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For those who have been arrested: those helmets and batons that police carried were for “your safety” not theirs.
PROTESTORS: We told you to leave. We gave you time to leave. We were slow and methodical, yet you were assaultive and aggressive with officers and the horses. Based on your behaviour, we are responding by including helmets and batons for our safety. pic.twitter.com/drxfhG9clP
— Ottawa Police (@OttawaPolice) February 19, 2022
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Meanwhile, inside the House of Commons today MPs will resume debate on the use of the Emergencies Act to respond to the “illegal” protests and street blockades. The debate began on Thursday but Government House leader Mark Holland said in a Twitter post that House leaders from all parties had agreed to cancel Friday’s session thanks to a recommendation from Parliament security.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/19/2022 – 13:40
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